Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Ray White]

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??

[Norseman]

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.

[Ray White]

[Rusty]

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 😉

[Ray White]

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!.

[ukdave2002]

[Rusty]

[bjacko]

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

[Bitumen Boy]

[ukdave2002]

[Ray White]

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.

[Keith D]

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

[Norseman]

[ukdave2002]

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

[Ray White]

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!)