Just a thought but I may get my own Electolisis Set to change water into Hydrogen and use Solor Power here at my house to generate it. I would have to design in a new Tank to hold the Hydrogen in the car but with few modifications to the engine it would run on it. Just thinking but that would be great since most of where I drive is here near the house, It would only cost to buy the materials and put them in the house and car and I would have a Hydrogen Powered Fiero and would be ahead of the times with power. However Hydrogen is a Higher Octain and would require beafing up the lower end in the duke but I would love to make the car run off the stuff. It would be a eco friendly Fiero with Water Vaper being the only bi-product.

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Don Pottorff
Red 88 Fiero 2M4
Silver 86 Fiero 2M4

cool! do it, keep us informed with lots of pics. and when the oil company's hit-men come around, dont give in!

I dont have the Cash yet for it and first part will be research into putting togather the Electrolisis equeptment and Buying the parts for that and the car. the History channel made it clear to me last night that anyone could make there car run on Hydrogen and I think it will be people like me to make the change over.
Not only would it Be Zero Emmisions but it would also be Free energy since it is made out of Water and Solor Power.

Oh man... You wanna be careful there;

Hydrogen is a savage reactor. The internals of your car would not last a minute. Hydrogen gas reaction would create pretty much exclusively heat. Which will fry your car in no time.

You need a water-injection system (hydrogen makes it pretty much a steam engine) and you need to be able to meter that properly.

Water/hydrogen engines tend to put out about 300% more power for fuel used than a gasoline engine.

Then you have lubrication concerns; Water and oil don't mix, remember?

According to the Show last night it isnt that hard of a change to do but yes it causes a higher horsepower out put as well. and no it will not burn out the engine and the fuel and oil dont mix and if it does you have to change your rings as fuel and oil dont go to the same place in your engine. If it does you need to replace your rings and several Gaskets to stop it before you have major Problems.

with the by-product being a water vapor, water in an engine is harmful for it, may serious damage

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+ a silver 85 2M4 and a gold 87 2M4
--Adam--
IM AOL: FieroGT5speed

Higher horsepower means a MUCH higher load on the rotating assembly. The timing curves are going to be WAY different; You stand a huge risk of predetonating and blowing a piston out the bottom of your oil-pan.

You also need to get the water/fuel/air mix just right, or else if you DO get it to fire, you stand to get all sorts of issues. Notwitstanding the fact that when you turn the car off, you are likely to have an unburnt charge left in the cylinder. Which will spot-rust the rings to the cylinder wall in about 4 hours

All the internal combustion hydrogen engines I read up about (about 8 years ago; can't find any of them now) used ceramic cylinder sleeves and CF rings. even microscopic rust-spots create hot-spots and stress-points.

Next, the thin layer of oil that's burnt off leaves soot on the piston/combustion chamber/cylinder walls. Gasoline tends to clean this out, as does the steam from water injection. but I'd be worried about gunking up the ring guides on the piston with the buildups. Especially since the water will displace the oil, and bind the gunk to it. Ever tried to clean grease/carbon off anything with water?

Next, I don't know what the ideal compression ratio is going to be like, but I'm willing to bet that the stock compression is pretty far off.

Then you have the fact that **ALL** motors leak combustion gases into the oil pan. That is why you have an EGR system. And trust me, the EGR system is NOT equipped to remove that volume of pure water from the system. When the engine cools, you are literally going to have water sweating off the walls of the oil-pan. And this will sink to the bottom, and go straight to the bearings when you next start the car. That is why engines wear out faster in cold climes; the little amount of water exhausted in gas engines pools in the crankcase, and doesn't boil off.

Next you have the issue with the intake valves (or the iron heads) rusting like mo-fos because they are constantly having water blown over them.

Next you have the problem with metering a high-pressure GAS that is very, very, VERY light and an escapist to boot; this causes several problems:
1) How do you leak-proof it?
2) How do you meter it?
3) How do you ensure it doesn't just float away from the engine in the first place?

This leads to the problem of heat. hydrogen burns MUCH faster and hotter than gasoline ever will. but it doesn't expand anywhere NEAR as much as vaporized gasoline. This is alleviated by the injection of water. The water instantly evaporates (due to the insane temps) and provides the motive force. In doing so, it will absorb some of that heat energy and use it for expansion.

However, too little water will mean that the combustion temps will be WAY high. Trust me, melting your exhaust valve (and I don't mean breaking bits off the seats or "burning a valve"), REALLY melting it will totally ruin your day.

Hey man, I'm not trying to mock your idea; But it is NOT a simple solution like switching to LP or Natural Gas. Hydrogen interacts with other chemicals in MUCH different ways, and presents a horde of problems as a practical fuel source in an internal combustion engine.

Oh, but it'd be cool to get 300hp/L in a streetable car, though, eh?

I'm not positive, but I do remember seeing a concept car that was hydrogen compatable. The stats showed that the engine ran at about 60%(I'm not sure) power on hydrogen. They said it wasn't as good as when it ran on gasoline. I'm not arguing any point, just repeating what I heard...

Instead of hydrogen, why not use canola oil in a diesel engine? Its a renewable resource thats environmentally friendly. Plus the diesel engine from an older volkswagen wont need any modifications but heating the oil before it is injected.

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1986 Fiero SE

quote Originally posted by Mach10: BTW, Hydrogen would be considered a VERY low octane-rated fuel, since it burns hyper-fast, and has a ridiculously low reaction energy. Think Hindenburg...

As it turns out, the Hindenburg fire wasn't it's hydrogen. Hydrogen requires two parts Oxygen to combust one part Hydrogen. Since most of the O in air is in the form of O2, and only 21% of air is O2, it takes more than four volumes of air to provide the O2 needed to ignite one volume of H. Remember how slowly the Hindenburn sank? It's because the rubber bladders holding the H were still intact as the ship burned, and they ruptured one by one as the fire finally burned through and the ship sank gradually.

No, what burned on the Hindenburg was the skin. Guess how the skin was made? Nitrocellulose binder with aluminum powder, painted onto a cotton fabric. It turns out that this is extremely similar to the Shuttle solid rocket booster's fuel, which is aluminum perchlorate. Witnesses of the time reported the oranges and reds of the fire. Hydrogen burns in the ultraviolet, it can't be seen. The Shuttle boosters burn in oranges and reds.

The escaping hydrogen from the melting bladders floated through the flames to the clear air above, where it finally found enough O2 to combust with, and it would have burned invisibly.

All this info is courtesy of a Smithsonian Air and Space article I read a few years ago.

JazzMan

Hehehe... I *KNEW* someone would call me on it!

Ever torched a balloon full of hydrogen? It's a gas!

And I disagree; Hydrogen burns in the ultraviolet when there's enough available oxygen. It goes orangey yellow otherwise.

It's even cooler to blow soap-bubbles with hydrogen in 'em. Then lights 'em on fire!

On hydrogen as a fuel:

It sucks.

It has only a fraction of the energy per gaseous volume as other, denser fuels. To use it as a means to store and distribute energy requires liquifying it, a very expensive process. It will cost trillions of dollars to build a hydrogen distribution infrastructure that can move meaningful amounts of H around the country. If that infrastructure is built it will be a very desireable target for terrorists because of the consequences of damage to a LH pipeline. Can you imagine a jetliner with hundreds of thousands of gallons of liquid hydrogen crashing? Remember Terminator 2?

So, why does Bush, a proven anti-environment president, want to develop a hydrogen economy? The answer may surprise you.

It turns out that using electricity to make hydrogen by electrolysis is very, very expensive. So expensive that were you to make fuel to burn in an engine with it, you'll be paying on the order of hundreds of dollars per gallon. So, where do they get all the H for shuttle launches, etc? They get it from cracking natural gas. It's way, way cheaper to get H from natural gas than it will ever be from water, at least for the foreseable future. Well, Bush and Cheney have already demonstrated their allegience to the energy companies, so anything that will use more fossil fuels and drive up demand will increase profits. Demand for the H from natural gas, demand for burning natural gas to make electricity to crack natural gas for H and to cryo it. You think we have supply problems now.

On the other hand, fuel cells offer some good potential here. When you burn a fuel, the vast bulk of its energy goes out the tailpipe and radiator as waste heat. We're talking 70-80% wasted. If that fuel is the hyrogen in natural gas, you can run it through a fuel cell and get almost twice as much work for the same amount of fuel as you would burning it. If you use a fuel-cell powered hybrid car that has storage batteries on board, you can recover energy from braking, that's regenerative braking, and increase the work efficiency even further. The distribution infrastructure exists now. If natural gas were used to make electricity using fuel cells instead of burning it, almost twice as much electricity can be produced from the same amount of gas.

The technology for running fuel cells directly of natural gas exists now, but it's too expensive in the small volumes it's being produced in to be economically feasible to use in a car. But, it's still cheaper than going with gaseous hydrogen combustion.

In the distant future when fusion may become practical and cheap enough, then it would make sense to crack water for H. That's centuries away at least.

JazzMan

Cool idea, but...

Remember the Hindenburg?

I think hydrogen is a very viable fuel. On cracking natural gas, the products are hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is starting to be used in the oil and gas industry for miscible flood. Meaning you put liquid CO2 down one oil well and take it out of another. Its a very good solvent of oil and gas. Whats presently being used is either water or liquid ethane. Water is being used less and less because once you put it down a well you loose it forever. Ethane is expensive to process and get to cryogenic temperatures.

The problem with CO2 is getting enough of a supply. You can strip it from the air but there is very little to begin with. You mainly get it from cracking natural gas. So on one side, you get hydrogen which is a fuel, and you get C02 which is being used to chase oil out of the ground. When the oil caverns are empty you leave the CO2 in the ground which is environmentaly friendly.

The reason miscible flooding is becoming popular is because we have pretty much taken all of the "easy" oil out of the ground. Even dead wells are still full of hydrocarbons. Flooding gets the heavier ends out of the ground.

I work in a gas plant as an operator, the hydrogen fuel idea sounds good to me. Keep the greenhouse gasses underground and use the hydrogen as fuel. Its a win win.

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86SE 5 speed
85GT 4.9 isuzu 5 speed
https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/027839.html

quote Originally posted by JazzMan: On hydrogen as a fuel: It sucks. It has only a fraction of the energy per gaseous volume as other, denser fuels.JazzMan

See, that's weird. I did a little reading, and it seems that everyone has a different answer to that. Most .edu sites state hydrogen as having [theoretically] 2x the available energy per volume...

And most other sites list exactly the opposite. I should go talk to my old chem prof

I do know this: Directly, hydrogen by itself is NOT a good combustion fuel; As I said, there is very little gaseous expansion.

However, it's a tremendous source of heat, and it burns unbelievably fast. Which is why I brought up water-injection.

The water absorbes the heat energy and turns it into kinetic energy acting on the piston. Water alone has a significantlu higher expansion rate than the CO2 released by petroleum fuels.

quote Originally posted by RTNmsds: Cool idea, but... Remember the Hindenburg?

I can remember seeing a few wells in Iraq burning as well. the fact of the matter is Gasoline is just as flamable and when your gas tank is empty it is a nice big bomb in its own right as the vapers that is left behind is very explicive.... enuf so that it would blow your car apart and render it a piece of charcoal in the road... its just we are used to Gasoline even though it is just as dangrous and Explosive as Hydrogen.
The Hendenburg was 860 feet long and held 1000's times more Hydrogen than any tank in a car would hold.
So if your looking for a hendenburg size explosion look at the Challenger not a fuel tank in a car. Besides a Hydrogen tank in a car is thick skinned unlike the thin tank that holds your gasoline and would be far less apt to rupture then your gas tank that is already in the car.
If Hydrogen is so bad to use then why is it even being the main consideration by the Goverment and Auto Makers.

That History channel show had a guy who was running a hybrid hydrogen engine. It was a combination of gasolene with some hydrogen mixed in. I think the best one was the bio diesel engine. The owner of the truck stated that his mileage went from 20 mpgs to 40 mpgs.

Hydrogen is a great fuel source...unless you are using it to power a rotating mass internal combusition engine.

There have been several companies (BMW for one) who have created test vehicles using hydrogen power plants.

The cost of maintenance and the inherant dangers are many. not to mention that hydrogen can't be simply stored in a gas tack. You need a high pressure cell, fuel lines, manifolds, and injectors. Wanna talk about expensive parts?? Try injectors and fuel pumps. Could buy a new Fiero for less.

You will need a water injection system as well. And calibration is CRITICAL! And I do mean that literally or you will turn your Fiero into a Nova in a second.

it has great potential and many benefits but hydrogen power is not an inexpensive option nor is it for the do-it-yourselfer.

quote Originally posted by crzyone: I work in a gas plant as an operator, the hydrogen fuel idea sounds good to me. Keep the greenhouse gasses underground and use the hydrogen as fuel. Its a win win.

I also worked as an engineer at a hydrogenation facility. (Yeah, that's past tense. I'm an old fart compared to most of you out there.) I remember touring a new operator around and having to yank his hands away from the dripping liquid from the lines near the evaporators. He just wanted to see how cold the "water" was that was dripping from these lines. Problem was, it was actually liquid nitrogen and oxygen that was dripping - colder than you can even imagine.

Hydrogen power is great theoretical discussion, but that's about it for now.

Hydrogen can be introduced into an engine just like propane. propane tanks are considered to be safe so why wouldn't hydrogen be?

And water can be injected into an engine like gasonline, which is carefuly metered so you don't melt down your pistons from running lean.

This is not a difficult thing, not for automotive engineers anyways. The only thing stopping them is the price to produce hydrogen gas.

A nuclear or natural gas furnace can crack all kinds of natural gas, and they hydrogen is easy to remove from the C02, but what do you do with all the excess C02? Until miscible flood is implimented its not environmentaly friendly. Storing C02 underground is the only option.