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Run your car on tap water rumor.

Posted on: Tuesday, July 1, 2008

There is a company on the web that says it can transform your traditional automobile with a gasoline-burning engine into a hydrogen vehicle using off-the-shelf parts.

There are other places that will sell you top secret plans for $15 - $20 and you can forgo the million dollar development plans that most current manufacturers are using.

Currently there are no hydrogen generator available to produce enough under the hood to even save gas, never mind completely run on hydrogen produced from the water.
Simple calculations:

Hydrogen burnable (combustible) mixture must be 4-75% by volume with air.
Calculation on how much hydrogen needed for 2.5 liter 4 stroke engine at 5% air/hydrogen mixture.
1,000 RPM
1,000 RPM * 2.5L / 2 = 1,250 liters of mixture per minute
1,250 * 5% = 62.5 liter per minute of hydrogen
this is to run engine purely on hydrogen.
To run the same engine @ 3000rpm you'd need three times as much hydrogen produced = 187.5 liters per minute.

Calculation for 1.5 liter engine - they tend to run at 4500 rpm

4,500 RPM * 1.5L / 2 = 3,375 liters of mixture
3,375 * 5% = 168.75 liters per minute of hydrogen gas
not much of a difference with 2.5L engine
168.75 / 60 = 2.8125 liter of hydrogen per second

Production of hydrogen at that rate would require an alternator that takes-up a most of the space under the hood of any car. At least for now.