Forget Water - My Car Runs On Nothing!
81Fresh Air and Ingenuity
Like many others, I gave up on fuel years ago and started running my car on water. The savings were great of course, and the performance, though not brilliant, was quite good enough for rush hour commuting.
But after a while, I found I was getting tired of the hassle of having to check water levels every other day and, to be honest, the smell of the catalyst (used to dissociate the water into Hydrogen and Oxygen) was starting to get to me big time. So, I sat down to think it through from first principles, and this is what I came up with:
- I don't need a performance car since all my driving is around town.
- An electric car would be quite fine.
- Electric cars don't need combustible fuel, but they do need electricity to charge the batteries.
- Of course! Make the car generate its own electricity!
The idea seemed so simple I wondered why no-one had done it before. Now, I'm more of a theoretician than a practical guy, but fortunately my next door neighbour, Jim, is a keen amateur mechanic with a well equipped garage workshop. When I explained my plans, he couldn't wait to give it a go.
Block Diagram
The Project
The project took a few weeks to come to fruition but, though it was hard to do, it's simple to describe. Here's the gist:
- Obtain an electric vehicle of your choice. I settled on the Dynasty Electric Sedan.
- Obtain two alternators. We used Lucas as Jim already had a couple lying around in the workshop.
- Mount these to the chassis and couple them, with drive belts, to the rear half-axles.
- Regulate and rectify the electrical outputs from the alternators and connect them to the battery stack via heavy duty diodes. (The latter should be mounted on a heat sink).
Of course, I've compressed several weeks of effort into a few short lines, but I'm sure you get the picture. Here's how the system works:
The battery drives the motor in the normal way, so the car moves along the road. Normally, the battery would gradually discharge till the car stops. But here, the rotating rear half-axles turn the alternators, which in turn keep the battery fully charged.
I've been told it can't work. People used to say cars couldn't run on water! There's always someone looking to be negative. But consider this - this is the secret of my success - there are two alternators and only one motor! Everyone knows nothing can be 100% efficient. There are losses in friction, in the drive belts, in the heat sink. Yes, but even with the losses, I'm getting 60% from each alternator! That's 120% total. So, I have 100% to recharge the battery and drive the motor, and 20% left over, which looks after lights, radio and all the rest.
Already Jim and I are working on a new model with four alternators! Jim's had the devil's own job inventing a flexible coupling to the steerable front wheels. But he's completed the prototype. Four alternators all giving 60% - that's 240% folks! This one, we're going to race!
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Postscript - if in any doubt:
This hub is for entertainment only, and is my response to the 'run your car on water' scam. I'm a physicist by training and have been an engineer all my working life. There are little things like the Carnot cycle and Entropy that can't be circumvented. You can't run a car on water because to dissociate water into hydrogen and oxygen takes more energy than is released by recombining it (in the engine). An alternator cannot give out more electrical energy than the mechanical input. So my 'invention' is also a scam - the alternators would simply act as brakes! But in my favour, I'm not trying to sell you anything. Don't believe everything you read, and beware of pseudo-science and spurious statistics.
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Comments
Perpetual energy! You'll have so much extra power that you could discharge back to the "grid" and pay for the car many times over! :)
Very entertaining Paraglider.
I can't wait to see the video of your new model on the racetrack. Do you steer while jim pushes or the other way around?
Jim (the other one)
I guess when you make your billions we won't see you on hubpages any more. Any vaguely good idea (and a lot of bad ones) is quashed or bought out by the automobile companies before anything comes of it. But, if we look at Toyota (Prius and its derivitives) as well as some of the experimental vehicles now being shown, some of those patents are coming out of mothballs. Look forward to seeing pictures of you car soon!
Paraglider - I have a physics degree and am an old sceptic but even I can see you have something here. This is very persuasive stuff. As long as your rectifying diodes are better than 50% then you should get a net energy gain. Keep the friction down and away she goes.
To make it go faster add a third alternator and start storing the surplus energy in a storage device of some kind (charge up more batteries?). When you get home you can use the spare electricity to heat your home etc. brilliant! Is is patented or can I copy it?
Paraglider, I am actually sitting down trying to digest stuff I can't fully comprehend. Gee with the prices of fuel increasing every week, I so long to see that day when our cars truly would run on nothing. :)
Thanks all for commenting. As I'm sure most of you know, this hub is for entertainment only, and is my response to the 'run your car on water' scam. I'm a physicist by training and have been an engineer all my working life. There are little things like the Carnot cycle and Entropy that can't be circumvented. You can't run a car on water because to dissociate water into hydrogen and oxygen takes more energy than is released by recombining it (in the engine). An alternator cannot give out more electrical energy than the mechanical input. So my 'invention' is also a scam - the alternators would simply act as brakes! But in my favour, I'm not trying to sell you anything :) Rik - nice red herring about the diodes - aren't spurious statistics wonderful? Thanks all, for humouring me!
Hi there paraglyder I think we have all been tossing it around, for me I've been thinking about it for a real long time LOL,but I keep thinking about a generator device at each wheel run off electricity It,s all too funny have a good one.
Personaly, I'd like the Fred Flintstone car. Do a bit of legwork to get it moving then it seems to keep going forever!
Hi Paraglider,
You'll have to bear with me for a bit. I'm getting on a bit now, and I've developed an unfortunate tendency to ramble.
Amongst many other things I'm a trained research scientist and a qualified physics teacher. Many moons ago, when I too was "a distant young hippy", I designed and built a high energy spark ignition system. It was a joy to behold. At one atmosphere the "spark" was an inch or so long. It glowed a delicate shade of blue and hummed rather then crackled and popped.
The reason for indulging in this seemingly pointless exercise was, and still is, that the average car engine doesn't do a very good job of extracting energy from all that expensive gasoline that you keep pumping into it. In fact one of the jobs of your catalytic converter is to stop too many unburnt hydrocarbons from being pumped into the atmosphere.
Having now done my due diligence it appears that what the hordes of get rich quick merchants are currently promoting here on hubpages, and despite their highly misleading sales copy, is not in fact a device for running your car on water, and nothing but water. It appears instead to be a blueprint for an inferior version of what is often termed a "hydrogen booster", designs for which are available free of charge from numerous sources on the internet.
Now there is plenty of hard evidence that simply adding a little bit of water to the fuel/air mixture rushing into your engine improves the power output and/or miles per gallon. I see no a priori reason why adding 3 or 4% hydrogen and oxygen to the fuel/air mixture shouldn't have a similar effect. As long as the energy that is lost in the alternator and the electrolysis is compensated for by burning more gasoline than an unmodified engine this doesn't violate any fundamental laws of nature.
What do you reckon?
Jim
Optimise, optimise, optimise! Tinkering with the mixture, the timing, the compression - all of these can get you a little bit closer to the ideal, which isn't 100% efficiency but 100% minus entropy & the Carnot cycle. And of course maximum fuel efficiency isn't compatible with high speed, high acceleration or even with good road-holding.
I'm not denying that introducing free hydrogen & oxygen could in some circumstances give you some efficiency improvements in the engine itself, but if you start with water, dissociate it any way you like then recombine it, that requires a net input of energy which ultimately can only come from the fuel you're burning. Worse, you start with cold water, dissociate it, then recombine it into steam. Where did that energy come from? If it was free, why do we have to plug in our electric kettles to make a cup of tea :)
Hi Paraglider,
Exactly! (How do you do quotes on here?)
The "net input of energy which ultimately can only come from the fuel you're burning" hits the proverbial nail on the head.
A car engine doesn't burn all the fuel you squirt into it. If you can find a way to burn some more of that fuel your engine produces more energy. Q.E.D.
Your electric kettle analogy is perfect too. What happens when you turn water into steam? What might happen if you managed to do that in a modest way above each piston in your V8?
Cheers,
Jim
Hilarious, and thank you for a laugh. I LOVE your math. 60 and 60 ARE 120... why hasn't anyone figure this out before? YOu do realize that if you put FIVE alternators on there, you could generate 300% and could actually run THREE cars. You rule.
Paraglider for president! You're a genius.
Would this work for jet airliners as well, where the moisture laden air could be converted to hydrogen to power electric turbofans instead of having jet engines?
This truly has potential to transform our society, so be very careful about your personal safety. Those oil company hitmen will have you on the top of their list for extermination. Like they have done with hundreds of others who have invented something that affects their profits.
So - be very scared :lol:
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Shadesbreath - scammers all love spurious statistics, especially percentages and meaningless graphs.
Eric - I'm going to make enough out of the cars, so I won't muscle in on your aircraft design. Go for it!
Does anybody know where I can buy some catalyst? I just ran out and my water tank is nearly empty.
Why doesn't somebody just create robots everywhere with webcams and we could activate the robots (electric) and virtually travel anywhere, virtual conference, virtual shop. but not virtual delivery so the retailers will have to cough up to deliver while we stay at home, write hubs and socialise virtually. Don't know about virtual sex though!
What happened to kinetic energy, antimagnetics and the like?
Lots of good ideas there! Something else just occurred to me - when we have floods, why do we not just set fire to them and burn off the excess water? It would save on the sandbags and pumps surely?
Pity we could not organise the floods in volcano zones!!
I have been following the water4gas debate on Hubpages and I must admit I do not know much about the issue. However, I find your hub very entertaining and I think it is good because some people who were about to fall for the scam will find this hub instead. Good job.
Thanks SweetiePie - Even without worrying too much about the laws of Physics, if something sounds to good to be true, it probably is!
Lets optimize, my project car just finished converting a fiero to ferrari look, now its going to get the speed of a real ferrari with the gas mileage of a prius by using a supercharged 3800 (300+hp) + NOS (+100hp when needed) + plus 150hp electric motor upfront(for short burst boost) for speed...all this when someone needs to race (550hp on 2800lbs) 0-60 in 4 seconds and 1/4 in 11second BUT for cruising, running HHO system to take the 28mpg standard of the SC3800 to 42mpg +plus your design of 2 alternators charging my quick boost battery that will run my electric motor for burst (if I can keep the axles from breaking from the eletric motor torque). Today's supercar - Supercharged, NOS boosted, Hydro-Oxygen, Electic Hybrid Supercar! MMM What should I call it?
Call it magic ;)
Laws are to be broken!!!
The question is WHO PAYS THE PENALTY?
Well done man! You made me laugh!
I'm a teacher and I will teach the new laws of physics to my students showing them how to save earth by creating energy from nothing.
Go for it, PK - there's no stopping us now!
Don't you know there is a free-energy crisis? People like you keep wasting it all on perputual motion and such.
My car runs on rainbows and wishes. Its much more eco-friendly.
Brian - that sounds ideal. Don't ever change it :)
love it!! lol
Paraglider, all the stuff that we used to see on the old star trek movies were all inetended for entertainment purposes hase become a reality such as sliding doors to video conferencing etc and bodly going further etc, so who knows how this idea of yours will evolve!
I should have read this hub before buying my Honda Hybrid lol. Who knows maybe I would chose one with holes in the bottom to allow me to use my legs as motor. I was scammed, my hybrid still runs on fuel :( LOL.
Paraglider;
Awesome hub. Maybe we can mount a windmill on our car so that the faster we go, the more energy it produces. Then we can get it to power the electrolyzer to separate the hydrogen to run the car. We can take that pure oxygen to pump into the passenger compartment so we don't breathe all that smog.
I did not know you were such a technical expert. Outstanding!
Compu-smart - there have been many times, especially in business meetings or traffic jams, that I've wished I could just say 'Beam me up, Scottie'. Maybe next year...
funride - aren't you in Lisbon? Surely there you need a car that can climb stairs, no?
VP - Thanks very much. I like the liberated oxygen idea! (BTW, I'm a physicist turned engineer and, since that pays the bills, I suppose all the other things I'm interested in have to be classed as hobbies!)
I don't think anyone got around to mention the cars that run on compressed air.
agvulpes - sounds like a winner (for an e-book!)
Gee I need something like this while travelling but dont think it would pull our van
Oh, I don't know - fit a couple of alternators to the caravan too!
good .project ...i wish that my car can also run without water and fuel
hardikinn - it can, downhill ...
perpetual motion has been said not possible but I say it is possible as an example has been given to us by our creator,hence everyday the world rotates as it rotates around the sun as do all the other planets near us do?hence perpetual motion.
We just need to figure out how to do it
Sorry Bill, but that's not really true. What you're seeing is angular momentum being conserved, as described hundreds of years ago in classical physics. But it is slowing down, very very gradually (free space is not wholly free and there is a little friction). This is measurable and has been measured. But don't worry. It will keep spinning for a year or two yet!
energy from nothing good luck
wow paraglider's and soulsurfer's discussion realy opened my eye's. im going to try this on my scooter, haha wish me luck
Luke - for symmetry, go with 2 alternators - one on each side ;)
What can you tell me about microhydro generatorsPlease keep in mind that i am not a scientist, just an interested poser looking to change things up at home.
To be honest, I'd never heard of it until your post. It looks like an interesting medium scale technology, but I can say nothing about it from first hand.
I got to admit I was thinking that you wre a nutter, then I read the postscript and laugh myself silly. Maybe you could point in the direction of an old subaru front drive system. I firmly believe that this will aid you in coupling the alt drives to steerable front wheels. Of course the alternators act as brakes, that is the beauty of the system, you want more brakes, simply apply more load to the alternator by switching the headlights to full beam. I imagine that this same principle would make use of the turn indicators interesting, to say the least, but plenty of people seem to survive without ever using them.
Very nice concept but as funride said, I think Honda beat ya to the punch there as I seem to remember seeing something like that in the plans for the Civic and Insight hybrids. What if you used a water kit on your car, but instead of using the battery to separate the oxygen from the hydrogen, you used a Marx Generator? Or just have the generator set up to continuously discharge and pump the free H and O gas mixture into a reservoir tank for while you are driving.
Great read though man.
Another new propulsion system that has both zero emissions and an inexhaustible source of power has been developed by the Derby Downs labs in Akron, Ohio, the company is currently seeking venture capitol funding needed to bring the gravity car to market. A safety feature integrated into the design automatically brings the vehicle to a gentle stop, in the event the driver falls asleep or incapacitated.
Thank the gods for the last paragraph. I've read enough of your hubs to know you aren't a kook, but for a while there I thought your "cheese" had "slid off the cracker."
Liam - you want a short course in Scottish dry humour? Totally tongue in cheek, this one ;) Thanks for the visit!
GoogleCashMoney says:
17 months ago
Very Informative Hub.
I wish someone will come up with an idea - alternative to fuel.