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Ray White

Joined: 02 Dec 2014 Posts: 7080 Location: Derby
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Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2024 3:42 pm Post subject: one or two ideas. |
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All this fuss about electric cars has got me thinking about the alternatives.
I once suggested that hydrogen powered engines might produce sufficient heat that could be used to produce steam...which in turn could power a turbine. If only water is used to produce hydrogen for a cell and the only by product is water vapour then why not use it?
I also suggested that if an engine's air intake incorporated a voltage source it would have the effect of ionising the air; leading to a much better fuel/air mixture. I think the bi products of Ozone and oxides of Nitrogen (although useful as elements of combustion) may fall foul of emissions regulations. I don't know.
I understand that relevant Patents have lapsed.
Any thoughts?? |
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Norseman
Joined: 09 Jan 2019 Posts: 114 Location: Essex UK
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Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2024 3:31 pm Post subject: wayer vapour |
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Wasn't there devices years ago that used water vapour injection to increase power output?
In the same way as F1 practice laps are preferably conducted just before rain actually falls & of course the the age-old declaration by many car drivers that 'the old girl goes better in damp/wet weather' _________________ 1987 classic Range Rover Vogue auto
1998 E39 523i SE auto sedan
A great many models have served me well since the 'sixties, all of them old & some even older than me. |
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Ray White

Joined: 02 Dec 2014 Posts: 7080 Location: Derby
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Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2024 4:04 pm Post subject: Re: wayer vapour |
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Norseman wrote: | Wasn't there devices years ago that used water vapour injection to increase power output?
In the same way as F1 practice laps are preferably conducted just before rain actually falls & of course the the age-old declaration by many car drivers that 'the old girl goes better in damp/wet weather' |
The idea was put to good effect in fighter planes during WW2.
At one time it was accepted practise to use a fine spray of water into the air intake to "decoke" an engine. It was never good practise, however and anyway, with better oils, the need disappeared.
Inonising the air intake would be a useful way to boost power in a race car. I wonder if it is done in F1.? If not, perhaps I should patent a device and sell the rights. ???
(KerCHING!) |
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Rusty
Joined: 10 Feb 2009 Posts: 272 Location: Bunbury, Western Australia
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Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2024 5:48 am Post subject: |
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A lot of the time a "water injection" was used to counteract pre ignition and detonation by cooling the cylinders. Very common on old engines that worked hard on low grade fuels.
As for "alternatives", I think some of the boffins are revisiting "Hydrogen" as a fuel source, both in Hydrogen fuel cells and also as a liquefied gas in an internal combustion engine. A few years ago I remember reading about experimentation with completely ceramic engines, cylinders, pistons etc. The beauty of a system like that would be if you burn hydrogen, the by product is water which wrecks an iron based engine internal component, but ceramic is not affected by corrosion. It would never work unless they can get "nuclear fusion reactors" to work like the Physicists recon is feasible. If they ever do suss it out, you would have more power than needed, without the toxic waste and could crack the water to make the fuel that once burn'd returned to water again.
Pipe dreams I know 😉 |
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Ray White

Joined: 02 Dec 2014 Posts: 7080 Location: Derby
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Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2024 10:55 am Post subject: |
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According to the IEA (International Energy Agency) in 2022 there were 72,000 hydrogen powered vehicles - an increase of 40% on 2021.
What interests me is the potential for steam in combination with hydrogen.
There is an irony in that a few years ago there was a push to convert vehicles to LPG and that seems to have been ignored. In fact the main supplier of LPG has packed up and now I can't get it locally!. |
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ukdave2002
Joined: 23 Nov 2007 Posts: 4232 Location: South Cheshire
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Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2024 11:49 am Post subject: |
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Ray White wrote: | There is an irony in that a few years ago there was a push to convert vehicles to LPG and that seems to have been ignored. In fact the main supplier of LPG has packed up and now I can't get it locally!. |
Just like we ended up with the inferior VHS system rather than Betamax in the 80s  |
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Rusty
Joined: 10 Feb 2009 Posts: 272 Location: Bunbury, Western Australia
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Posted: Sun Dec 08, 2024 1:15 am Post subject: |
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Ray White wrote: | According to the IEA (International Energy Agency) in 2022 there were 72,000 hydrogen powered vehicles - an increase of 40% on 2021.
What interests me is the potential for steam in combination with hydrogen.
There is an irony in that a few years ago there was a push to convert vehicles to LPG and that seems to have been ignored. In fact the main supplier of LPG has packed up and now I can't get it locally!. |
Out here in West OZ, we are a very large exporter of LPG and road going cars everywhere used it back in the 80s and 90s, and even though you can still get it very few vehicles have it and those that do are all older models. I don't remember seeing "any" newer cars with it fitted, and as they were all conversions, I don't think the new Teknowledgy liked it much. It also got "priced" out, so now there is no cost benifit to use it. |
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bjacko
Joined: 28 Oct 2013 Posts: 516 Location: Melbourne Australia
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2024 5:33 am Post subject: Water injection |
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Aircraft piston engines and turbines have been using Water Methanol injection systems for years. It was used to give extra boost on take-off.
I remember all the plumbing had skull and crossbones tape on them because Methanol is highly toxic. Such tapes are no longer used but all plumbing used to have tapes identifying what was in the pipes. It disappeared in the 1960's. _________________ 1938 Morris 8 Ser II Coupe Utility (Pickup)
1985 Rover SD1 VDP |
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Bitumen Boy
Joined: 26 Jan 2012 Posts: 1763 Location: Above the snow line in old Monmouthshire
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Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2024 6:39 pm Post subject: |
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Ray White wrote: | According to the IEA (International Energy Agency) in 2022 there were 72,000 hydrogen powered vehicles - an increase of 40% on 2021.
What interests me is the potential for steam in combination with hydrogen.
There is an irony in that a few years ago there was a push to convert vehicles to LPG and that seems to have been ignored. In fact the main supplier of LPG has packed up and now I can't get it locally!. |
I think the main issue with LPG in the UK was that practically nobody trusted the government not to whack up the tax on the fuel after they had shelled out for an expensive conversion, and so uptake was always limited. |
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ukdave2002
Joined: 23 Nov 2007 Posts: 4232 Location: South Cheshire
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Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2024 7:54 pm Post subject: |
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Bitumen Boy wrote: | I think the main issue with LPG in the UK was that practically nobody trusted the government not to whack up the tax on the fuel after they had shelled out for an expensive conversion, and so uptake was always limited. |
I think there is a similar nervousness with Electric vehicles?..
Last edited by ukdave2002 on Wed Dec 11, 2024 9:20 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Ray White

Joined: 02 Dec 2014 Posts: 7080 Location: Derby
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Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2024 8:32 pm Post subject: |
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It cost me two grand to have the P38 converted to LPG... and that was at least 15 years ago... but now the brilliant guys who did such a good job are out of a job and their place has closed down.
It was going to be the fuel of the future because it was so clean and reasonably priced. |
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Keith D
Joined: 16 Oct 2008 Posts: 1165 Location: Upper Swan, Western Australia
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Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2024 2:02 am Post subject: |
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We had two large six cylinder cars (Mitsubishi Magnas) converted to run on LPG as well as petrol. About twehty years ago the state gevernment gave a $1000 grant for the conversion and the federal government $2000. Total of $3000 per car. That was the cost of the conversion. The vehicles ran perfectly on LPG at just over half the cost of petrol.
Then the two governments shut the grants down. Businesses installing the conversions that had sprung up all over Perth, closed down and LPG cars could not even get their gas equipment serviced properly. We had two local petrol stations that sold LPG. Both are now petrol or diesel only.
LPG costs almost as much as petrol or diesel nowadays and it is hard to find a distributer.
I'll stay with my petrol and diesel powered cars thank you.
Keith _________________ 1926 Chrysler 60 tourer
1932 Austin Seven RN long wheelbase box sedan
1950 Austin A40 tourer
1999 BMW Z3
Its weird being the same age as old people.
You are either part of the problem or part of the solution |
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Norseman
Joined: 09 Jan 2019 Posts: 114 Location: Essex UK
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Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2024 9:31 am Post subject: |
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Keith D wrote: | We had two large six cylinder cars (Mitsubishi Magnas) converted to run on LPG as well as petrol. About twehty years ago the state gevernment gave a $1000 grant for the conversion and the federal government $2000. Total of $3000 per car. That was the cost of the conversion. The vehicles ran perfectly on LPG at just over half the cost of petrol.
Then the two governments shut the grants down. Businesses installing the conversions that had sprung up all over Perth, closed down and LPG cars could not even get their gas equipment serviced properly. We had two local petrol stations that sold LPG. Both are now petrol or diesel only.
LPG costs almost as much as petrol or diesel nowadays and it is hard to find a distributer.
I'll stay with my petrol and diesel powered cars thank you.
Keith |
Much the same here in the UK, I can't remember the last time I saw LPG for sale on any forecourt, though it did used to be just over half the price of petrol albeit at the expense of slightly lower performance & higher fuel consumption.
I had a 70k mile Range Rover classic converted back in 2002 & a year/12k miles later the higher combustion chamber temperature of the gas damaged the engine BER. Still run an old RR (not the same one) but even if LPG was still available I wouldn't even consider conversion, on any vehicle. _________________ 1987 classic Range Rover Vogue auto
1998 E39 523i SE auto sedan
A great many models have served me well since the 'sixties, all of them old & some even older than me. |
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ukdave2002
Joined: 23 Nov 2007 Posts: 4232 Location: South Cheshire
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Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2024 9:51 am Post subject: |
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I ran an Omega on LPG , converted to LPG when it was a year old in 2000, conversion cost around a grand, I must have covered 150,000 miles on LPG, which was then around 1/3 the cost of petrol.
The only additional servicing was, more frequent plug changes and a couple of HT lead + coil pack changes, at the time there were a few manufacturers who offered factory LPG cars, including Vauxhall & Volvo, and I though it was the way things were moving, sadly not.
Re Hydrogen vehicles, my job takes me to Germany frequently, and it interesting to see there are far more Hydrogen pumps at fuel stations than one sees in the UK.
I don't see how the UK can move to a position where the majority of folk have an electric (battery) vehicle without a massive investment to increase our power generating capacity, together putting beefier cables in every road with a property in... it will take decades to achieve this.
When England FC play, the national grid have to buy in extra power from France during half time because millions of people switch their 3KW kettle on for a couple of mins, how are they going to cope when millions of people get home from work and start to charge their vehicles with 40KW chargers for a few hours ? Even if the national grid could generate or buy in electricity to meet this demand, the current infrastructure would not be able to distribute it!
Hydrogen distribution is far far simpler to implement at existing fuel stations.
IMHO the future of motoring will certainly see vehicles drive being an electric motor, but the power source won't be a huge battery, it will be a hydrogen generator.
Dave |
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Ray White

Joined: 02 Dec 2014 Posts: 7080 Location: Derby
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Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2024 12:30 pm Post subject: |
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I looked into the higher temperatures that can be generated by LPG when I had my P38 (4.6 litre) converted. I believe it requires a degree of electronic tuning (mapping?) to get this right or damage will result.
Ideally, the engine should also be fitted with plugs that have a silver electrode. These have the disadvantage of requiring more frequent changes.
I believe the public were originally mis-sold the virtues of running older cars on LPG and because it was fairly easy to do, many people did their own conversions. Private operators set up in business doing LPG conversions but they have now all but disappeared.
The DIY phase ended when the law changed; stating that after a certain date only qualified fitters could legally be permitted to carry out the work.
My Range Rover starts on petrol then automatically switches to LPG when the engine has warmed. As I am now unable to get LPG locally, I simply cannot justify running the P38 due to the fuel consumption, so I will probably sell it. (If I can find a buyer!) |
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