Need Help Investigating a New Combustion Engine Technology

It sounds like GEET to me. Be careful, you'll put your eye(s) out. I like keeping mine in the sockets where they belong.

Yes, it is possible to "push" fuels "uphill" by thermal changes (pyrolysis), not to mention the conversion from liquid to gas, not just vaporizing.

It is also possible to blow one's person to smithereens in some of these contraptions.

So she gets offended when you ask questions about this wonderful invention that she wants you to invest your money in?

I think that says it all.

I also noticed that you are the CEO of this company.....

Clarification: I am not the CEO of the manufacturer. I set myself up as the distributor and I am the CEO of this company. The money I invested went into 10 units so my money is not directly invested in their factory.

Clarified..

But the manufacturer gets offended when you ask questions about the product that you are distributing for them? That doesn't seem to make good business sense to me. You as the distributor should know as much about the product you are selling as possible. One would think the manufacturer would want this, unless they can't back up their claims.

You were right, you'll will probably get some negativity and some serious skepticism.

You are not the first to come here with the claims of cheap hydrogen via a catalyst to improve fuel efficiency. The others made these wild claims but would not / could not provide any data to back up their claims. They also got offended when asked questions on how their invention works.

You seem to be different, you are not the inventor and are looking for advice on how to prove the claims of the manufacturer.

My advice is to follow Lyn's advice (very sound in my book) and keep us updated on your progress.

I for one am very curious to hear your results.

Good Luck!

unless you turbocharge your compression ratio will limit your output.

methanol has less energy than gas but I'd like to see your final data.

Good job, Lyn! I am the hydrogen proponent here lately, as a fuel gas additive.

I have not seen this one, but whatever, if it works without placing any additional load on alternator, or exhaust back-pressure, then so much the better.

I don't see any such system lowering the NOx by 85%, but that is just a basic statement. I have heard of hydrogen lowering NOx in a boiler plant, so it might help.

Ammonia with SCR catalyst works best.

Thanks Lyn. The website went through a few iterations. It started off without the fluff, but I got comments that before I presented the solution I need to explain the problem. Not all the customers are engineers �� Thanks also for the test spec. I planned this more or less like that. I have some questions about the setup though which I detailed near the bottom of my original post.

I kind of expected people to pole a bit of fun at me but no progress was made without ridicule, so onward .... ��

When you say, ""When you use the Fuel Pro with your engine the formation of NOx is reduced by 85% and meets the standard regulations." Means exhaust gas analysis tests are required.", it reminds me of what I heard about dragsters. I heard that they intentionally added Nitrous Oxide to the fuel/air as an added source of oxygen. The oxygen atom would leave the nitrogen atom and help burn the fuel better. That could be what's happening when you add hydrogen; the burning of the hydrogen strips away the oxygen atom from the Nitrous Oxide and leaves behind just plain ol' nitrogen.

Something like this?

https://www.summitracing.com/search/part-type/water-methanol-injection-systems

Not exactly new....

It is kinda the same, but not quite hardly. On this "new" proposed system, the researcher is heating up methanol water air mixture to decompose the methanol to hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide, with left-over nitrogen. This is subsequently entrained in the intake air, so it might even raise the inlet temperature of the engine (not good).

If it improves the burn off of the diesel fuel during the power stroke, then the research will be successful, since un-burned diesel fuel represents inefficiency, plain and simple.

Well I'm thinking that direct injection of a fine mist into the intake of an engine does the same thing, and additionally lowers the temperature producing a denser air/fuel mixture resulting in more power...plus you get the steam expansion adding to the power...

Where does the energy come from to turn the mist into steam? (That part seems often forgotten.)

Compression and fuel burning....Why does an engine need a cooling system? same reason....Granted that these systems work better on boosted or high compression engines, and/or in the summer months in cold climes....

You don't see the circular problems with that?

Please elaborate....

You said "compression"; you don't get energy from compression; instead you have to put energy into it.

Yes you get heat from compression, that comes from the mechanical energy, that is created by the fuel burning and driving an opposing piston down....

That's an energy consumer rather than an energy creator. Good grief.

So there was no compression before the gases were introduced in addition to air intake? GOOD GRIEF YOURSELF! Just stop it, you are being obtuse, and argumentative.

ICE isn't my strengths...

Methanol burns cooler, and the calorific value of methanol is also lower as well as using some of the energy to flash steam, I didn't realize that this process would be that much more efficient, under certain conditions you stated.

leaning in the direction of Tornado comments with the conservation of energy.

Interesting...

I also found this as a comparison to Gasoline and cut and paste...

Methanol has 9,500 BTU/lb - that's British Thermal Units per pound, which is an
accurate measurement of its energy potential and can be directly compared with Gasoline, which has 18,400 BTU/lb.

Conclusion: Gasoline has nearly twice the energy potential as Methanol

link

Energy density of a fuel does not always directly correlate with actual useful power output from an engine.

I have worked with propane fuel for ~16 years now and have come to see that despite the lower energy level per unit of volume, as are fuels typically measured by since that is how we purchase them, when used in a properly designed engine it has a superior power output and efficiency over gasoline.

Also, even in a unmodified emission compliant engine it is a now on average a equal in both power and MPG numbers but has the advantage of typically costing 1/2 as much at the pump and at times 1/3 - 1/4 as much in bulk.

back in the early 90's, I had some interesting hobby's (I call them hobby's to justify them) , I made a ramjet and that used propane as a fuel. learned quite a bit sees I built everything from scratch. The problem I had and had to overcome with using Propane as a fuel, is that I ran it through the injectors, and had the problems such ass with a thing called Boyles law. .

The majority of the combustion didn't happen in the actual combustion chamber, but about 6' behind the exhaust.

WARNING GOING OFF TOPIC

As I was looking to solve it, (your local library). I came across a solution, but in doing so, I kept reading about a name when I was researching and in one of the books it had a telephone number that went with the name. so I called and he answered. He was in his 80's and turned out, he was one of the people that was brought over in Operation Paperclip after WWII.

Quite a interesting fellow, and the problems I was having, he was quite familiar with, and I told him my solutions, he said I was correct and thast how they did it.

My solutions were, to get a preheater on the fuels line, very dangerous, but it did work better, but still unsatisfactory. My next solution was changing fuels, which he suggested to do.

Since we were on the farm that had a few hundred acres of corn, I had the raw ingredients for the new fuel source,... but that's another story and was quite an interesting year.

Your problem was that the gas velocity in the combustion chamber was too high. The flame speed for a given fuel/air mix is fixed (but related to temperature). Supersonic jet engines have to slow the speed down in the combustion chambers and then re-accelerate it out the exhaust to well over the speed of sound.

Injecting propane adds a cooling effect (latent heat of vapourisation).

By heating the inlet stream, the flame velocity increases and will bring the combustion back into the combustion chamber. It will also raise the exhaust temperature and therefore velocity.

Thanks... I eventually found out about that.... I later read about that with the SR71, that has a modified ramjet where the nozzle actually moved to change the velocity... our farm machine shop, didn't have that kind of equipment.

yes it does add a cooling effect... I had frozen propane dropping out of the exhaust... how I handled that was just what you said...

i adding a preheater just like you said which amounted to the propane supply line coiled around the outside combustion chamber that heated the fuel up...

it was dangerous enough... but that 'project' was an interesting project

i had it on a jig I made from a tire spindle with a 16' plank, the jet was on one end, the 30 lb. (maybe it was a 50 lb) propane fuel tank in the middle and a counterweight on the other side.

i opened the valves and lit the candle and gave it a good spin and kept backing up. That thing took off.. my backing changed to all out running sprint... when I was about 100 yards away I looked back... that thing was spinning like a top... and loud... my brother was in the barn about 10 acres away and the windows were rattling... he ran out to catch the tail end as it was running out of fuel.

i then switch to alcohol... unfortunately... my brother hit it a little too much and my dad got mad and poured 50 gallons of my 'jet fuel' out on the ground... but... I feel I would have had other problem if I would have tried it.

but I did have a blast in build the still, and learned quite a bit in distilling and design.

I see your point, and it is known, and it works, and is related to enhancement of mass flow to the engine. The only thing I do not see in this system is a seriously enhanced flame velocity, although methanol does have an impressive burn rate.

stretched flame velocities of various alcohols with isooctane

The above link is a well-prepared, and well-written scholarly paper on the subject in regards to methanol. The highest S₀ in m/s I saw was only 0.6 m/s! I find that somewhat dismal, but maybe that is the intercept value, and not the speed one gets at the conditions of the ignition.

S⁰_u = ρ_b · S⁰_b ·ρ_u Eq.(3 in paper. where the subscripts b and u refer to burned and unburned, respectively. Rho is gas density, and S is the laminar flame speed. S = dr/dt, basically for "point source" ignition, although in the paper, they only use data from radius 8-22 mm.

Hydrogen flame speed: The laminar burning velocity of hydrogen–air mixtures is known to depend on the chemical composition, the pressure, and the temperature. This sensitivity is commonly described by a power law expression of the form SuL So uL Z Tu Tu0 � b1 P P0 � b2 ; (20) where So uL denotes the laminar burning velocity at reference conditions of pressure and temperature, and SuL the laminar burning velocity at arbitrary conditions of pressure and temperature. (The formatting of the equation got butchered during copy/paste) - source:

Laminar burning velocities of hydrogen–air mixtures from closed vessel gas explosions A.E. Dahoe* another good technically written paper on topic. They see an S value of about 3 m/s, which is about 5 times that of methanol! There is mention of extreme particle acceleration in some of the implosion studies, where the model predicted velocities over 2000 m/s. Maybe someone can clear me up on that one, because I just don't see it.

I saw one study (it was done by USAF at Wright Patterson Field), where they studied stoichiometric oxygen-hydrogen premixed gases with an eye toward use in jet propulsion. They could not stabilize a pre-mixed burner where the line feed pressure was at or above 10 bar, simply because the line kept blowing up, seriously damaging the burner head equipment. {This is where I say, definitely do not try this one at home}!

flame speed references - additional papers on topic

Found this fuel comparison....nitromethane (CH3NO2) is the way to go...haha

TABLE 1

..."Methanol will make more power, typically around 10% more power than a similar engine running gasoline. Some things to consider in running methanol is your fuel system will have to be completely changed / upgraded. Based on the table above the fuel system will have to flow approximately 2.5 times as much as the gasoline engine."...

http://www.smokemup.com/tech/fuels.php

"There is mention of extreme particle acceleration in some of the implosion studies, where the model predicted velocities over 2000 m/s." I'm only guessing here, but the burning of hydrogen is an unusual beast because of the fact that it turns into a much denser water molecule (unlike other by-products that remain gasses). Even tho steam is still a gas, it condenses quickly. Normally, when fuel burns in an internal combustion engine, it expands greatly raising the pressure. When hydrogen burns, it might still produce heat, but the expansion/pressure is not so high. Therefore, hydrogen might be a good fuel for a heat source, but not so much for a pressure source. Those particle accelerations might be reflecting the fact that the combustion by-products are mostly collapsing instead of expanding; thus the "implosion". And that collapsing may or may not affect the flame-propagation speed. I don't know, but it's worth considering.

I played around with full hydrogen fuel for IC engines years ago.

Doesn't work worth crap unless the engine is modified extensively to run at diesel compression ratios. A real problem for the small lawn and garden engines I experimented with.

Some noteworthy issues I found were that despite hydrogens high A/F ratio which looks like a little will goa long way the reality is its density is so low that, on a volume to volume not mass to mass comparison, the hydrogen fuel vapor volume requirements are crazy high for the energy produced.

Beyond that, at the proper A/F ratios any backfire has the combustion velocity and power to blow a carburetor and intake right off an engine. A small 3.5 HP push mower engine can backfire with a sharp bang equivalent to a point blank firing of a higher powered hunting rifle.

A hydrogen fuel IC engine systems sound all promising but I can assure you there are major engineering hurdles involved to make it work well beyond just adding a vapor carburetor and a high pressure fuel tank to a common vehicle.

Tell me about it. Me and my buddy took some gas off our experiment a few weeks back, filled up some 12" balloons, taped them to the shop table (steel), and rolled a propane torch over to set them off. Dern, that was loud!!

I can tell you for a fact you can run hydrogen in a normal spark engine. Our factory has been doing it for years without any issues. If the hydrogen is around 36% of the gas it works fine. Pure hydrogen is something else.

Yes, I never said it didn't run. I said it didn't run well on a stock engine. It was extremely weak on power. May be half of what normal gasoline was.

As for adding to another fuel and how that works, that's a whole different story.

This sounds like a lot of BS to me. To start you have multiple energy sources (220V, compressed air, Methanol fuel) for your miracle engine but you wish the investor to only compare the Methanol consumption to an unspecified diesel engines fuel consumption. I also don't believe for one minute your fractional cracking process (in air, that where the nitrogen comes from) produces just H2 and carbon oxides without water being present somewhere. Next the idea of removing any of the initial bond energy in a cracking process to produce more power later violates basic energy conservation. I will admit this may make easier to dissociate reactants entering the engine but less total chemical energy is entering the engine that is burning the fuel and converting heat to mechanical energy while getting the exact same final reactants.

IMHO this is a sham.

However, if an independent test department supports your claim then don't brag about it here or try to find investors anywhere. Sell this design to an engine manufacturer or carbon fuel developer. They already have the infrastructure to use this.

Where did you get this: "Next the idea of removing any of the initial bond energy in a cracking process to produce more power later violates basic energy conservation. I will admit this may make easier to dissociate reactants entering the engine but less total chemical energy is entering the engine that is burning the fuel and converting heat to mechanical energy while getting the exact same final reactants."

Did he actually say all that? WOOOO...

How are you/her/anyone weighting the actual supposed total GWP values of the reduced NOx values against their realistic CO2 increases?

Reason being, from all data I have ever been able to find most every supposedly 'low NOx' producing engine has in real life operating conditions scored worse on total GWP values per useful unit of actual work/output power given per unit of fuel consumed thus making them worse wore the environment than had they done nothing at all but worked on making the combination of both NOx and CO2 production per unit of energy output of the engine per unit of fuel consumed lower by building for peak fuel efficiency rather than emissions compliance.

Gwp means global warming potential? I am all for clean air but we are not making claims about saving the world from global warming unless the user uses biomass made methanol, in which case the process is carbon neutral.

If the thing does not reduce net fuel consumption, and does not reduce volatile hydrocarbon emissions, net you are mostly correct.

If it does what is intended, fuel consumption is reduced (for equivalent work output), and thus, so would the pollutant loading, in spite of CO2 being present in the amount included in air bolus. Hydrogen might reduce the NOx, but has no effect on SOx, and no effect on CO2 other than reduction proportional to the reduction in fuel needed to arrive at the same work, and it should not be all that much, since if hydrogen not present, not all the fuel is burning off in the power stroke to begin with.

Case in point: I have never seen a diesel anything that did not stink of fuel fumes at the exhaust (and most gasoline engines for that matter), CO2 is in fact odorless.

I don't have any idea what the OP's concept MAY do but I do know for a fact from countless first hand accounts of penny pinching people who actually do the raw numbers on al of their operating costs that have bought Tier 3 and now Tier 4 heavy truck, heavy industrial and heavy farming equipment that both Tiers brought worse and worse fuel efficiency.

Plus both Tiers brough far higher operating cost than ever before for what are realistically/theoretically tiny gains on NOx reductions while having traded their GWP values for equal to to in many real world working condition higher gross GWP values simply for the extra fuel being burned to do no real useful work.

That hard hit on fuel efficiency plus higher operating costs is where the black market retuning industry is making a killing. I know people in commercial trucking, heavy industrial equipment operation and large farming that happily pay upward of $5000 a unit to have their trucks, construction machines and farm machinery 'chipped' to cut the fuel loss numbers and operating cost numbers down while turning the performance and actual service lives up on their machines in trade by reducing the fuel mapping to work at peak fuel efficiency and shut down as much emissions related stuff as possible.

When you own a $250 - $500K machine and $5000 buys you a black market reprogrammer that can pay for itself in 6 months on fuel savings alone plus gives you 10 - 20% more power and a likely 10 -20% extension on engine service life for a $50K - 100K engine that's something a person cannot afford to pass up.

That is all well and fine until the John Deere dealership finds out you "tampered" with the computer. Then they will not service your tractor, or void your warranty, or any number of other penalty related things they do. I do not agree with what is taking place, either.

Bottom line: If it takes less fuel to get the work done, then the mass balance is highly in favor of less mass throughput in terms of CO2, although NOx should about even out. Less fuel means more savings.

Look: I know you are skeptical in the extreme, and that is a good thing.

I wish you would get an ACE cell from my buddy, and try it on your large machinery, truck, etc., and report back to us with your experimental results. If it worked for you, and you operate the thing according to the "rules" (i.e. - dump it out once in a while (according to the instructions), and add new water once in a while (as per instructions), then what in hell do you have to lose by trying it?

Why would JD care about what some does to their Case tractor, backhoe or Kenworth Truck?

JD not the only game in town running crap emissions compliance junk on their machines.

As I have been told theres companies dealing in the blackmarket reprogramers guarantee they are seamless on instal and removal so I suspect that why no one cares.

Now as for most authorized dealer mechanics, such as a number of may associates are, they really don't care what most customers do in that area given they too run reprogrammers in their personal vehicles and equipment where they feel fit for the same reasons.

I know for myself if I ever went to work as a service tech for any company I would never rat out a customer for having reprogrammed their equipment to save fuel and run longer.

I heard something in a news blurb where farmers were getting fined or something after changing out the factory computer chip with something that actually worked.

They could not get their local JD house to work on equipment within acceptable time frame either, and the chip was shutting down the equipment, I think.

It turned into a real peeing contest.

At a glance, my view is that there is not too much chance of your product being worthwhile - for simple reasons that always rule.

First is that it's a thermodynamic process, so efficiency is primarily about lowest and highest gas temperatures in the cycle. This is what limits upper efficiency. Don't get the fact that (say) a diesel/petrol engine is only 35% efficient confused with the idea that this means that there is 65% of available improvement possible with much of that by burning unburned fuel.

Second is that NOx, as I recall, is primarily about highest temperature reached, and unless you get rid of most of the oxygen there will roughly be a given amount of NOx for a given amount of oxygen.

Thirdly, it is true that hydrogen burns quickly and hotly BUT it gets hot because it has a low capacity to absorb heat energy - the temperature it generates is not so great when the working gas it has to heat and expand to produce work is all that other heavy stuff in the mixture - like nitrogen and oxygen and CO2

Fourthly, you are essentially burning a carbon fuel and so its not global warming friendly - and in an environment where this type of engine will be less and less favoured (UK to ban sale of petrol/diesel engines in 2040), the market will be diminishing,

Fifthly, All that new complexity will cost and take a lot of time to develop and establish itself in the market place, and without a significant edge you won't get there.

Don't want to be a knocker and I am the first to look at anything new, but unless there is something major I've overlooked your odds of success are not good.

Thermodynamics is one thing, and yes, burning fuel is spontaneous, but that states not one damned thing about the rates of chemical reactions. This is what nearly every one of you is missing! Chemical reaction rates tell us more about the real world sometimes.

In fact, in nearly every system operating far from equilibrium (you and I for example, or a track star on a miler), are all operating in rate-limit mode.

Yes, we all know about Rankine cycle, Brayton cycle, theoretical Carnot cycle (which has never actually existed in real life), and with all due respect, we are talking about kinetic processes at the limits of mass/energy transfer in piston engines.

Under those conditions, having a higher flame velocity is critical to 100% burn of injected fuel, so that the maximum work extraction from the heat content of the fuel is possible (and it still does not approach the Carnot limit, for obvious reasons of irreversibility versus reversibility)

Getting rid of NOx may have more to do with getting rid of nitrogen than oxygen, although obviously removing either reagent should work.

Hydrogen not only burns fast, it transfer heat to metal or other gases at the fastest rate (maybe with exception being helium, but who can afford helium), and is used for generator cooling just for that specific reason.

I don't think the ICE is dead. If morons would pull their heads out of the freaking sand, and read where all the data on climate change is a giant fake, then we can move on. I do object to people drinking the government spewed Kool-Aid, all the time, when the facts is that the data is fake from the beginning. The damn Kind is not wearing any clothes.

It is absolutely you who are a knocker. Have you ever tested anything, or do you just knock down other people's dreams?

Just because fossil fuels make a burr under your or some Parliamentarian in England or France's blanket, does not mean the rest of us have to put up with the nonsense.

The Paris Accord is nothing but smoke and mirrors. It is a means of extracting money from the United States, plain and simple. That is why the USA is out.

"The Paris Accord is nothing but smoke and mirrors. It is a means of extracting money from the United States, plain and simple. That is why the USA is out."

As this is an engineering forum, I have to assume that you are kidding?

Whatever lyn.

Liquid fuel is great. Getting liquid fuel out hundreds of meters underground from sequestered sources is asinine. Don't kid yourself or anyone more impressionable than you.

Don't forget methanol is half oxygen by weight.

Gaining 30% efficiency through use of hydrogen is dreaming, you can only get out what you put in.

Getting more pressure rise on a diesel engine closer to the top-dead-centre may not be ideal. Engines are designed to have controlled pressure rise to limit loads on bearing and reduce noise. The diesel idle noise comes from high rates of pressure increase due to ignition lag.

Another moron has spoken! OK everyone else shut up and listen to GJM! NOT!

You cannot apparently count from 10 backwards can you?

As far as comparing intrinsic heat values, you have to consider the storage/delivery methods. If you store it as a liquid, but deliver it as a gas, then you have to convert your measurements to reflect that change. Suppose you have some unburnt fuel that doesn't contribute to the out-put. That would give you a higher consumption rate. When comparing gaseous hydrogen to liquid diesel, the storage/delivery combo could affect how it actually burns. Is this being done with the same air/fuel metering device (carburetor, injector)? If you want to keep it purely scientific, then I'd recommend calculating how many molecules of diesel/hydrogen are in each unit that the intrinsic heat is valued at, then figuring out the intrinsic heat value of each individual molecule, then how many molecules you can actually cram into the cylinder, and then the maximum power that each fuel can actually deliver in the cylinder. If you try to do it with conventional means of testing/measuring, then it would be like comparing apples & oranges. Hydrogen gas (H2) needs two oxygen atoms (one molecule) to burn into water (2x H2O; or 2x H2+O2=2x H2O). if you have only one oxygen atom "burning" with one hydrogen atom (like what would happen if you only had one hydrogen molecule burning with one oxygen molecule; or H2+O2=2x OH), then that would produce an OH- ion. I don't know how many oxygen atoms are required to completely burn a molecule of diesel, but more than likely it would need a different mixture than hydrogen would. If you used the same engine with the same fuel/air mixing adjustments, i"m sure that one or the other would not be burning properly. And that would definitely give you false results.

If you could find out the real intrinsic heat value of one cylinder's worth of properly mixed fuel/air, then you wouldn't even have to know what the load is on the engine because you'd know the max power it can put out with either fuel.

But, for proving it to skeptics, you'd have to have a meticulous set-up with pristine sensors to avoid any inaccuracies and conversion errors. You'd be better off proving it to yourself on paper first, before you try to prove it to anyone else in real life.

Hi Dennis, thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately I am not a rocket scientist, I am the investor, so that's beyond my abilities :)

I am just speculating but when the fuel is injected into the air intake it also displaces diesel via the fuel governor regulating the diesel fed into the engine so this may be what keeps the ratio of diesel to air consistent enough not to create problems.

Baloney!

I hoped to gain some clarification but I guess the advice to get on with the test and check it asap is the best. Now I am just more annoyed and confused :)

Illegitimus non Carborundum: Don't let the bastards wear you down.

Seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened.

This is what America is built on! Even when it starts out as "pure bullshine".

If every inventor or investor listened to the nay-sayers, New York City would have been buried under unadulterated horse poop a long time ago - OH snap, am I talking NYC, or Washington, D.B.?

So to help with the test you correctly identify as wise.

Keep the test/s simple - so (say) run the diesel motor up to full operating temperature, then for a long period to reduce "fuel" measurement error - say one hour at a particular electrical load, and monitor the voltage and load over that time.

Keeping things steady should minimise any error if you do not have high tech data sampling gear. All you are interested in, in round one, is how much diesel was used (energy in), and what electrical energy was produced (energy out) - that's voltage x current x time x phase.

You don't need to know what the phase is if the load is the same for the second test as the first - but for your information phase is the angle between the voltage wave and the current wave in an AC signal relates apparent power to real power.

For the second phase, just change from diesel to diesel plus and repeat. This time your inputs will be the amount od diesel plus the amount of ethanol plus any electrical energy put into heating up the methanol fuel and or running a compressor etc.

For the output just compare the test 1 and test 2 energy consumption amounts. While a scientist would compare energy in kWh (kilowatt hours) or BTU (British thermal units) or Horsepower-hrs or whatever, a useful starting point, since all that matters really is money, is the $ fuel costs for the energy inputs against a given Kwh electrical output.

And because we live in a dishonest world - make sure there is no secret injection of energy or something into the system - there have been dozens of famous cases over the years.

One easy trick with power is to just measure volts and current and ignore changes in phase angle that arise out of a changed form of load. i.e. 240 volts x 10 amps is not equal to 240 volts x 10 amps if one load is into a simple resistance when the other is into an inductive load with a little bit of resistance. This is why you need to keep the electrical load situation or both tests more or less constant.

Good luck

Excellent Trevor. Thank you very much. I plan to hire an engine expert to conduct the test for me and he will read this thread to get as much background as possible.

And one more thing.

Make sure the engine you start with is running well. optimum tune etc. its performance has to be good compared with the best, else you run the chance of just accidentally improving it to what i should have been all along.

And the last caveat is that my suggestion does not cover measuring NOx. If you can't measure NOx directly then at least look at peak engine combustion temperatures and or exhaust gas temperatures.

And there is something else to watch. If the engine has exhaust gas recirculation to control NOx, and I am guessing not if it is not an automotive engine, then be careful that this is not moving the results around to something that is different from what it seems.

In that regard remember that VW did a fiddle, I think on tuning point and NOx, to get more efficient engines and or performance than they really could have if they'd honoured the NOx requirement.

Thanks again Trevor. Yes a good point about the EGR! I will make sure the engine guy disconnects anything like that.

What is up with all the generator talk? He could just hook the test engine up to a constant load dynamometer, and be done with it, merely track fuel consumption, and perhaps some engine operating parameters in addition.

Surely you were not injecting pure bull-shine about analysis of the power required by his auxiliary system were you? That is nonsense. Ignore that, and just look at total fuel burn for equal work.

James the dynamometer tracks total work done by the engine?

Yes, that is the reason for having it.

My plan is to rent an 80kW generator and set it to run at 75% and then to inject our reformate gas...

After running this through a rental, you may have just turned it into a purchase!

Kind of a slimey thing to do to a rental company's generator.

My take on this scheme is that it is a pure and simple scam.

The veteran chemist has forgotten that energy nor matter can not be obtained out of "thin air". He is simply supplying some of the energy in a different form and not accounting for it in his efficiency calculation

The system is simply replacing some of the fuel (diesel) with methanol and electricity. So, depending on the cost of methanol and electricity - there may be a small savings or not.

The use of small amounts of methanol in fuels was researched decades ago and their small improvement in engine performance is well known. Known also is the improvement in emissions from engines using small amounts methanol.

As I was writing my (long winded) response, you beat me to it!

One must question the amount of energy needed to operate the new system.

Nope. That is not how it works. You made faulty baseline assumptions (such as 100% fuel conversion into BTU's without the device), and that is where you, and a lot of other "geniuses" are dead wrong.

It is not supposed to replace 30% or even 5% of the fuel as another fuel BTU value, it is supposed to result in a complete burn during the power stroke, not in exhaust system.

Hello sir,

Very interesting topic and thank you for the detailed description! As we all know, that is not always common.

I actually did a very similar test to this for my senior project in college. We improved efficiency by increasing compression ratio and prevented the resulting engine knock by recirculating "theoretically" inert, cooled exhaust gas. Say what you will about the theory, but our testing methods were sound. Not sure what tools you have access to, but the basics were easy enough to obtain:

- The engine (of course). We used a single cylinder engine attached to a generator.

- A measurable load. We constructed ours using many light bulbs on switches. Easy to adjust for different test conditions.

- Fuel meter. Hardly a meter, we used a large pipet. It was suitable for about 15min of testing. That may not be enough for your case, but it should be simple enough to measure the amount of fuel used for a given run time at a given load by weight or by volume.

We also measured exhaust gas temp (thermocouple), additive inlet temp (thermocouple), and additive inlet flow rate (pressure transducer), using a DAQ system. This may be over the top for your purposes, but could be useful when talking about the emissions data. Granted, the manufacturer probably should be the one doing this sort of testing before making their claims.

As others have mentioned, be sure to have good baseline test data before installing the system.

There was one other thing I noticed/wondered about this product that I didn't see anyone mention other than redfred briefly (sorry if I missed others). Do these claims factor in the additional energy required to add compressed air and 220V to the system? An ICEs produces work from fuel energy alone. To truly compare this new technology to a standard engine, you must also have measurable energy input data from the compressed air and the electrical energy required to power the unit. Not to nay-say, but you may find that the apparent gains in engine efficiency are offset by the energy needed to power the system.

Hope this helps. I look forward to hearing back on the results. Good luck!

It will compensate for the 220 V required to run this "gasifier" system, if the power comes off the engine alternator, as a parasitic auxiliary load.

I agree with this 100%. But I could not tell one way or another from the OP's comments or the website.

Just another factor to consider for an accurate test.

Yes, I have seen the 220v load accounted for in the calculations (1.4kW for 35 mins and 600W thereafter), but I admit not the compressor. I have asked for a spec for the compressor but I can't imagine it uses much power as it only need to run periodically.

Thanks for actually sticking around to reply! I imagine you are right about the compressor power compared to the amount of power generated by the large systems in your target market.

Best of luck in the business. It does look like quite a nice product.

To separate the issue of BTU substitution from "improved combustion" I have requested a rough and ready test in a petrol engine without bothering with load. I can't get a dynamometer here in Bulgaria.

This is my planned test:

1) Reform 10 litres methanol into H2 and CO and burn it directly in the spark engine. Note RPM and time taken to burn all the fuel at a constant rate.

2) Run the same spark engine on petrol at the same RPM as was noted in test 1 for same duration. Measure petrol used.

I also ran some numbers to work out the actual energy in H, methanol and gasoline and here they are: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14W-Thd0Q-lLOELIHKo8kNDn3f0pl_kUjoZnSv8Pgh3w/edit#gid=0

It's going to be interesting to see if the hydrogen performs better than predicted by calorific value.

Here's something else to consider. Just comparing one fuel by itself with another by itself, gives you no an idea of how the by-products of each fuel will react with each other in secondary reactions when mixed. That's how "fuel additives" work to improve combustion. Sometimes those side-effects/unintended-consequences can make a big difference (good or bad). This is really one of those times when working out a chemical formula will really help. You can see easier all the possible ways the mixture can burn. It might reveal something no one has thought of yet.

The way I did my testing with hydrogen fuel and for general emission compliant engine modifications to get maximum power and efficiency back was/is simple.

I just use a generator that is of higher output capacity than the engine can possibly produce that feeds a fixed resistance load.

From there I simply measure the Volts, Amps, and engine RPM's while the engine is at 100% throttle over a range of RPM's by adjusting the excitation of the generator, via an independently powered variable power supply, thuly tuning the load to find the RPM's that gave the highest peak volts and amps and then calculate the actual output power of the engine in watts at that point.

I did some research with a 20kW engine (gasoline engine modified to run propane), and we used an electro-magnet brake to load the engine and measure output. You might be going through lovejoy couplings every few weeks.

We used EFI, so the fuel consumption records came for the computer. There was another instrument on the gas liquefier, but we didn't use it for fuel consumption records.

Characterizing the engine is going to be much more complicated than running one test without contraption at x speed and y load for z amount of time, and then one with contraption at same speed, load, and time. I imagine the fuel timing and compression ratio will be changed with different fractions of methanol, so you may need to control and test spark angle and compression (and maybe even intake and exhaust timing).

Set up a volume flow meter in the intake before and after the methanol entry. Put a tachometer at the flywheel or somewhere on the crankshaft. You also might want record the cylinder temperature and exhaust temp to look at the difference between the two as you run the tests as a function of the other variables and outputs. Maybe the oil temp, too? As well as any similar variable for the methanol contraption.

If Nissan was talking JUST about the engine specs, then it was probably BSFC (Brake Specific Fuel Consumption-- efficiency) and Base Power (as opposed to Wheel Power), which is more or less what you'll get from a reading off the generator.