Hydrogen fuel gadget.

I don't know enough about the science to form a view on whether it's convincing BS or unconvincing BS, but I do know that this looks fishy - no address or registered office on the page, no detailed description of what it is or how you fit it, etc. etc.

If it seems to good to be true, it usually is. Any thoughts?

SCAM!

Also watch out for that old one that's coming back to life about magnatising the fule line so it's burns more efficently.

some freak was telling me it's true and when asked if he not come across this one before he was lost for words.

i can see the price of mopeds goinf up and you can bet gov will increase the tax on them as soon as any number of people take them up.

Surely a rubber hose doesn't cost £75?

I remember quite a few years ago some joker claimed he could cut fuel consumption dramatically for £30.

Those who sent the money were sent a cheap steering lock with the wrong unlocking key.

I've cut fuel consumption by never owning a car and not going out much.

OK, it's not an ideal solution, but it's offered for free.

Probably snake-oil but there might be something in it as follows:

Catalytic converters are an integral part of most modern cars. According to wikipedia, a three way catalytic converter will carry out:

1. Reduction of nitrogen oxides to nitrogen and oxygen
2. Oxidation of carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide
3. Oxidation of unburnt hydrocarbons to carbon dioxide and water

Point 3 is of most interest here because it indicates that most engines don't fully burn all of their fuel, meaning that not all of the available energy has been extracted in the engine.

The idea behind the product in question is that the cell uses electrical energy from the battery to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. The theory is (as I understand it) that by enriching the fuel intake with the highly flammable hydrogen gas, higher overall levels of combustion of the primary fuel will be achieved, leading to better efficiency as well as lower hydrocarbon (and possibly NOx/CO) emissions.

Whether this actually does make a difference is open to experimental study (some of which is reported in the second of the two references), but I don't see why it couldn't work, assuming you could generate the hydrogen fast enough to feed into the engine (at the right point in the combustion cycle) in sufficient quantities to make a difference.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter - Catalytic converters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyhydrogen_flame - Oxyhydrogen (see Applications section)

Look, if these things actually work dont you think all the major car manufacturers would be using them by now? They are just so obviously a scam its almost an insult to the word scam to call them a scam.

=> cue the tinfoil hat brigade coming out and claiming the auto-industrial-military-george-bush-9/11-holocaust-didnt-happen complex is suppressing the technology so haliburton can keep its profits.

I know an engineer who worked on this 'precatalysation' of fuel before it enters the combustion chamber back in the 1980's. His take on the process was that the car industry had already spent billions developing platimum exhaust catalysers so they bought the patents of many of the pre-treatment ideas and buried them.

Interesting stuff!

oh dear oh dear oh dear I just actually clicked on the link.

For starters, any website that uses colours like that is automatically a scam. No questions asked. Its a scam. You dont need to read any further, just look at the colours!

Then theres this:

10 litres (20%) are burned i.e. used in driving your vehicle
40 litres (80%) wasted and blown out the exhaust

Uhh... yeah right. Whatever.

Yes, you can split H2O into H2 and O2 but this requires industrial amounts of electrical power. Hardly going to fit Sellafield B into some tacky widget installed on the fuel line or wherever are we.

Honestly, what a pile of old steaming wobblers.

No it isnt interesting. Its just dumb.

Even if they had "buried the patents" dont you think at least one of the major manufacturers would think "Hmmm maybe by delivering 50% more fuel economy, I could sell more cars than my competitor"

I mean really. FFS! WTF is wrong with people?

This is quite apart from the sheer physics of how much energy it takes to split H20 into H2 and O.

I didn't say they work. In fact I stated at the outset that they probably were a scam. What I did say was that the science behind them seemed plausible, although I did question whether they could work fast enough for a car engine. In addition, references were provided that linked to actual research to enable people make up their own mind.

£75 gadget

Monthly bus pass is cheaper and cuts your fuel consumption 100%

Guaranteed.

Thats simply not true.
You can do this with a simple battery. Indeed iirc you can do it with a lemon. The quantity you want to generate depends on the power supply, but not the fact of generation.

Nobody is anonymous on the net. Use betterwhois.com to find out who registered the site:

Thornton Barry, 11 Walkers Ridge, Surrey

Point taken: mine (admittedly, implicit) was that if the individual behind this was kosher, he'd have no problem putting full contact details (address, phone, fax, company registration no.) etc. on his home page for all to see. From the look of this page, he clearly doesn't want to be found.

Incidentally, Multimap can't find anywhere called Walker's [or Walkers'] Ridge in Surrey. Changing one letter in this probably fictional address would probably be appropriate, though! And I'd bet anyone a stiff G & T that were you to investigate the prospective Paypal recipient of your £75, it would be linked to a bank account in Lagos.



This doesn't exactly sound like quick and easy installation to me! Drilling into the cylinder head (which you need to do in order to enable a fuel injection petrol engine to run on LPG, BTW) would be required at the very least, I'd have thought.

Sounds to me like this is a scam based on a theoretically feasible scientific principle, but that if anyone had been able to implement it as a viable, mass-production technology, it would indeed be making headline news, as other posters have pointed out.

Ah well ... back to my weekly £25 fill-ups (£17ish around this time last year).