Henry "Dad" Garret's Patent

Frankly, I personally could not put a whole lot of faith in the Garrett Carb. even tho he doubled the size of the generator. I pause to wonder tho just how far a really efficiently designed engine might be able to push/pull an automobile, if it were designed to run on the blend of the single duct fuel gas, that was being created by the use of assorted energies, such as breaking, rolling down hill, a more efficient alternator, along with a battery, say something the size used in a 36/48 volt battery like currently used in forklifts, or maybe two of them. Be fair to the engine by leaving out the power robbing things like fuel pumps, and all of the now un-necessary emission pumps, and map/maf, and oxygen sensors, etc. Include of course, AC, and a radio, and maybe a few other comfort providers.

Considering the REAL COSTs of the production of Gasoline such as finding the petroleum deposit, getting it to the surface (drilling and pumping include the cost of electricity and to maintain this equipment) transporting the petroleum to the refinery, distillation/cracking of the petroleum to recover the gasoline, storing it until it is transported to local sites for further storage, shipping it to the point of delivery, such as your local Hess Mart store, and the cost of the under ground storage, pumps and above ground pumps where we lucky folks get to put into our cars and trucks. AND OH YES! The TAX BREAKS the Govt. of the purchasers of this product, Grant to the Producers of said product.

I would presume that the Wizards of the Scientific world would like to consult the Wizards of the Engineering world, and the Wizards of the Accounting world, in order to assess the real cost vs value of GASOLINE in terms of realities. Now pack all of these costs into your energy formulas and compare value for value against the cost of creating on board single duct oxy-hydrogen as a fuel for an automobile.

Are you lost yet? Your brilliance being unsurpassed, I certain someone will respond with more "baffel them with B--- S---.

TMF

Good morning TMF.

You make several great points.

the parasitic loads on the engine being the first. We have gone pretty far afield from the idea of autos as "Its just transportation." I took some pictures of an old model A to use for an article I wrote and was amazed at how little "material" there was- EXCEPT FOR WHAT WAS ACTUALLY MOVING OR BRAKING THE CAR.

Getting to the REAL COSTS OF GASOLINE is another Great point that you make.

R.Buckminster Fuller (If ever there was a modern day Wizard, he would be my nominee) dollarizes your point in the below excerpt: (He's a bit wordy, you can skip to what I highlighted to get the real meat of his ideas)

WASTE VS EFFICIENCY

Throughout the multi-millions of years of humanity's known presence aboard planet Earth -- until the inception a century ago of applied science's conversion of water-wheel and steam-engine power through electro-magnetic regenerators distantly delivered by wire to electric-motor driven or heated or refrigerated tools -- 99 percent of the total energy consumed and used by humanity was consumed as food to power both humans and domestic animals.

In the U.S.A., in 1971, only 1 percent of all the energy consumed was in the form of food to support muscle- accomplished work, while 99 percent of the energy was consumed by inanimate power-driven tools and electro- chemical processes.

Twenty percent of all the inanimate energy was consumed by automobiles; that is, the American automobiles consumed twenty times as much energy as that going to feed Americans. In America, at all times, 2 million cars are halted at stoplights with their engines running. This means that the equivalent of 200 million horses are jumping up and down going nowhere.

While human metabolic processes are far from 100 percent efficient in converting food energy to realized foot- pounds of work, humanity's ignorant, sheepish waste of both its muscle power and technological power is horrendous.

Mechanical efficiency is expressed in relative percentages of work realized per units of energy consumed: water wheels are 90 percent; fuel cells, 80 percent; jet engines, 60 percent; turbines, 30 percent; reciprocating engines, 15 percent.

But as operated, all the work that humanity gets out of its technology is 5 percent of the potential 100 percent energy consumed. Only one-twentieth of all the energy consumed by humanity-produced physical work is either useful or wasteful.

BLACK GOLD

Out of every 100 barrels of petroleum distributed and consumed by world society today, 80 barrels are completely wasted, going into powering machines and processes that, averaged overall, are 80 percent inefficient.

Scientific calculation shows that the amount of time and energy invested by nature to produce one gallon of petroleum, "safety deposited" in subterranean oil wells, when calculated in foot-pounds of work and chemical time converted into kilowatt-hours and at the present commercial rates at which electricity is sold, amounts to approximately $1 million per gallon of petroleum as cosmically developed prior to its discovery and exploitation by humans.

When humans discovered the petroleum, they wrongly assumed that it was absolutely free and belonged to the finder. Humans take into account only the cost of pumping, processing, and distributing oil. Anyone should be able to sell a million dollars for fifty cents!

end of quote whole article here:

http://www.sharelynx.org/papers/ABriefDescriptionOfEverything.php

$1,000,000 per Gallon!

This was written in the early 1970's, so the figures need to be adjusted for inflation,. Basically, Bucky is understating the 'true cost.'

As engineers, we are unlikely to solve the flawed basis of our world's accounting for value of resources. However, As you and others on this forum point out, given the situtation as it is, it is up to us to find a better way to do what it is that is inevitable for us to live the quality of life that we choose.

Great points!

milo

Cheers Milo.

Your response was right on. I was not aware of Bucky's
calculations/values/in terms of real dollars, tho I was aware that folks have attempted to come to at least some level of agreement regarding the subject. As a Contractor I have constructed buildings used for both retail food stuffs and the offering of liquid fuels, and I can tell you that only the experienced individuals can really appreciate what cannot be seen.

TMF

Milo

I am soon to be a 66yr.old man with more ideas than I can possibly research and or develop. I look at my pile of junk, at all of those useful parts of something not yet created, and say to my self, there must be life after death after all. Just look at all of those dead parts that I might be able to bring back to life. Or maybe even provide a better life than was ever dreamed of for said part. Friends keep me well stocked with new and interesting stuff. It's a great life, "IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN". my grand pa! Now if I can just find a way to violate the first law of thermodynamics, with out getting caught???????

TMF

It's a great life, "IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN".

A favorite line of mine from one of my steel salesmen back in the day. Brings back a grin.

At one point in my career I was on some very thin ice because of some politics (which came to be sorted out and all the better for me as well as the company) and I had three little ones, my wife at home, and had just moved out of state.

The CEO came down from Chicago to Atlanta to take me to lunch and tell me that they no longer needed my services in the office, and that all they had was a job in the shop if I wanted it.

I told him my guiding principle is "What can I do today that will make my company the most money?" and that if he wanted my a$$ in the Shop, i'd be there as soon as we were done eating.

Boy was he pi$$Ed, He and the plant manager cooked this up to get me to quit.

Instead, I helped my crew put in a preventive predictive maintenance scheme, (eliminated 90% unscheduled down time), Standardized work, and did what would now be called a lean 5-S inventory plan so that we had the right stuff where it needed to be. 5 months later they fired plant manager, and I was being assigned to the company that bought up ours.

My point- Look at all of that cool stuff you have, write down your top 25 ideas, and then give yourself the same challenge_ "What can i do today (With this stuff and these ideas) that will give me the most satisfaction, and that I can complete in 6 months.'

And keep us posted with pictures and details.

Looking for your next report.

milo

Unfortunately good things don't always happen to good people. Your event clearly worked well for you.Thats a good thing! I have a similar event in my life. The trumped up gasoline shortage of the 1970's brought all construction to a halt in Florida. At that time I was a General Superintendent for a large construction co. I was running several condominium projects at the same time. Suddenly there was no work for anyone, me included. About a year of unemployment had befallen me. I had returned to doing handyman jobs to go along with unem comp. and food stamps to provide for my family. One day I received a call from a contractor who I didn't know existed. To shorten the story, I was hired to build a mansion for a Mr. John Hagerty, on Captiva Island, just off the west coast of Florida, north of Sanibel. Mr. Hagerty was present at the interview, in a room next door, I was not aware of his presence. I was happily surprised to learn that I would be working for the Chairman of the Board of Texas Instruments.

TMF

TMF,

Sorta know where you're going with this (or, as my old mate says,"we know what you're smokin').

The problem with the 'ole reciprocator', like the 'ole guvmunt' is there are too many losses.

Reducing it to the very basics, fuel of any nature, these days is just 'canned heat'.

Comprendez?

And of every unit of that fuel ingested, around 70%, give or take a little, depending on the type of engine you're thinking of, of that heat goes 'up in smoke'. Lost!! Out the window!! NOW, if you can come up with the solution to that little conundrum, you'll have it made. But only if you can get someone to listen.

The word is ADIABATIC/S.

Smokey Yunic, genius, 40 years ago, built one to show to GM. He did, they did. But they wouldn't LISTEN. Neither would we, as a society. (Resistance to change, and all that). Well, I did. But I didn't matter in the great scheme of things.

Damned shame. It would have made him, properly, and us, as a society.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Cheers

Stu

I remember well that Ole Smokey had the Best Damd Garage in Town. I am also aware of the drivers that raced his cars, and the Chevelle with that little 327 ci. engine. Maybe you might remember the demise of that car. Curtis "PoP" Turner managed to take it end over end, something like 13 times At Daytona Fla. Not long after that Ole Smokey got away from racing, "said something like" "I don' want any more of my friends dieing in my race cars."By the way Pop Turner walked away from that wreck"

TMF

I remember well that Ole Smokey had the Best Damd Garage in Town. I am also aware of the drivers that raced his cars, and the Chevelle with that little 327 ci. engine. Maybe you might remember the demise of that car. Curtis "PoP" Turner managed to take it end over end, something like 13 times At Daytona Fla. Not long after that Ole Smokey got away from racing, "said something like" "I don' want any more of my friends dieing in my race cars."By the way Pop Turner walked away from that wreck"

Ole Smokey

I REMEMBER HIM WELL...USED TO READ HIS ARTICLES IN THE POP SCIENCE MAGAZINE...LOOKED FORWARD TO EACH ISSUE.

MR. GUY

82 years...........

It appears that you followed Nascar Racing. One of my fathers best Friends was Harold Braisington Sr. His son little Harold was one of my best friends. I went under the fence at Darlington for the first race back in 1950, I was just a few days short of being 8 yr. old. I managed to get in to all of the races on the sneak, until we moved to N.J. when I was 12. Been a Nascar fan ever sense.

TMF

Milo, Actually you are right and wrong (about several things.) Wikipedia scholars = Wrong! You are right that Garret's carburator was not ncredibly efficient or the car it ran on. Bearing technology, and the transfer of the combustion energy to rotational kinetic energy is now approaching 70-75% efficient. Thus making Garret's invention 35-50% efficient. However....

Francisco Pacheco created a system where dis-similar metals in a bath of seawater were used as annode and cathode and a closed system where the system became significantly more efficient.

The key here is two fold. 1.) how do you break the bond between H and O more effieciently. 2.) how do we get a perfected system through the tight fist of the gov. oil companies and power companies?

Personally I think it is possible to make this more than 100% efficient and no I am not suggesting violating the first or second rule of thermodynamics. The issues of breaking the bond and harvesting the potential energy of Brown's gas from the water ar completely separate. the ratio between Input energy (to break the H2O bond) and output energy (from Brown's gas) are not known as we are using 202 years old technolgy for electrolysis. This is the area that we should focus on, not on making a new carburator (which is 100 year old technology.)

Batteries run dead on fossil fuel burning cars. If thecar ran directly off of the battery and had no alternator to re-charge he battery whilst driving, the battery would go flat in a few hours. So the immediate "litmus test" is to get the battery used in the Brown's gas car to spec and perform the same as a conventional gasolne fueled auto.

I hope someone is interested in this technology as the world needs this technology. The real benefit from this science will not be from automotive installation, but from other areas of pd.

Good luck.

Well, yes, you are suggesting violation of the laws of thermodynamics. Either you don't understand thermodynamics or you're distorting their meaning. Do you have any technical training or education?

TMF,and others, without prejudice,

Always amazes me when folks start sprouting that we, the mainstream scientific and engineering community, don't know WTF we're talking about, when we deign to arrest some drivel with reference to the LAWS of physics or chemistry or whatever. Who the hell ever invented or made ANYTHING work outside those laws? Those very laws weren't dreamed up in some nightmare. They were discovered, established when we, thousands (nay, millions) of us were trying like hell to make something work and found that those workings were bound, inextricably, to certain phenomena, repeatedly, so much so that they became the constants called LAWS. Simply; drop an apple and it falls to the ground. It doesn't float around in the ether. LAW = Gravity.

The list goes on and on, and on.

There's so much crap going on in the realm of automotive alternative energy production with little regard to the immutable laws relevant to the pursuit.

One sector of our community would want us to believe that there is, in fact a 'free lunch' to be had - eg. Browns Gas. There is no free lunch. Never was. Never will be.

Hydrogen is one of the most 'hard-won' fuel gasses ( energy expensive to produce). Why the hell would you even think of wasting 75% of it in an IC recpirocating piston engine?

As one who has been immersed in this fracas for a whole lifetime, I have no alternative but to question the minds of those who've never produced anything in their own name, and then want to ram down my throat that the LAWS don't matter/ are wrong.

The existing laws are there. They do apply. Get used to it.

Stu.

Sorry, I should have used 'scholars.' to better commnicate my point.

The idea of greater than 100% efficency sets off my "that thinking does not correspond to my world where 100% is all that you can get BS detector."

I believe that we do know how much energy we can get from the oxidation of Hydrogen, and that it is easily calculable how much energy any particular Bond breaking electrolysis setup requires per mole of Hydrogen produced.

When I was in sixth grade, I made a voltaic cell, and to win the science fair, we needed to light a light bulb. Not just move a volt meter needle. No matter what we tried using copper and steel, we got the same voltage, about 0.3v as I recall, I would have needed five of these cells, to get to 1.5 volts. But what I learned was that as I made the plates bigger, the volts stayed the same, but the amps increased dramatically. Stronger acids didn't change the voltage either, but changing metals did. Bottom line is that some ideas are considered to be established or settled because they are repeatable, and in the absence of some magick catalytic lodestone, it will continue to take the same amount of energy to dissociate water as it always has, and that by doing this, it does not create "hydrogen fuel" with more energy than was taken up by the dissociation reaction.

You are correct in saying that i am both right and wrong about many things, but I would urge you to consider my batting average, which continues to please my employer and my clients, family and friends.

We're (I'm) not going to be working on Hydrogen as a fuel-IT TAKES ~24 TRUCKLOADS OF HYDROGEN to equal the same energy as a single truckload of GASOLINE. For a small device as a battery replacement, perhaps the economics could work- whats the price per kilowatt hour of AAA cels anyone?

That 24:1 ratio just happens to be about the same ratio as the typical US hourly labor rate in manufacturing compared to that in China about 5 years ago, and we know how that worked out...

milo

Obtaining a patent does involve demonstrating it works, even if that is in theoretical terms. A patent cannot be gained for a perpetual motion machine; that is a specific exemption. All patents are examined before they are granted. This is part of the reason that some take a long time to come through. If the idea cannot be shown to produce the result that the patent is for, it cannot receive a patent.

What a person claims about his patented invention is entirely another matter!

Andy, nice to hear from ya!

Right on with your patent info, anyone who has tried to get a patent in the last 30 or so years knows just how difficult energy patents can be to get. If you haven't been following lately I suggest you check out the forums of the past few months, regarding anything HYDROGEN. The crap flew from every corner to every corner. A few of the naysayers and skeptoids finally ended up being so abusive that I walked until I could cool off.

As for the naysayers, these are people that you need not try to change their minds. They have already been programed to defy the possibility that their learned equasions, passed down through history, from the ancients are the laws of the universe and cannot be tampered with let alone adjusted for modern Theories, especially if the tinkerer isn degreed.

As for the skeptoids, they seem to at least be willing to accept change when it becomes inevitable that late editions to the world such as micro chips and other mini electronics can possibly bring about performance not practicable with entry grade electronics.

We need the skeptoids to balance the playing field, you know, like the folks from Missouri being in the middle of the attached USA.

AS for the "Lawyers" finding a way around an undesirable law, isn't exactly breaking the law. I'm just glad they didn't all become Govt. Attorneys'.

TMF

Follow this link to a couple of really nutty patents.

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/04/09/patents-nutty-or-novel/

You are certainly correct! There has been a lot of stuff patented that wasn't worth the print on the paper used, and likewise, some very interesting stuff is in the public domain, that likely only needed a little later technology to bring it to functional reality. Micro processors have forever changed the world, and will undeniably change the opinions of those who look forward, those however who insist on accepting the status quo are in reality looking backward as nothing will ever be the same!

ALL ANY MAN NEEDS TO INVENT IS AN IDEA AND A PILE OF JUNK ! T. EDISON

TMF

Hi All,

You know I really wanna say a big thanks to all who contribute to CR4 - I am a corporate lawyer and deal everyday with more fruity nut-cases and stupid egotistically driven catch-22 'situations' than you can possibly imagine. (think truth is stranger than fiction!) And these are the people that are our 'leaders'. Whenever I need to reground myself I turn to my favourite place and read a few postings from mostly ordinary guys (n ladys?) doing the 'ordinary' everyday stuff.

Well the ordinary everyday stuff collectively results in a better world for everybody in my opinion. Almost always I find some pearls of wisdom that allows me to go no with my day in a more positive frame of mind - so please keep it up.

Best Rogerzz