<VV> Re: Can This Man Save the World? NO CORVAIR

[Jim Burkhard]

Marc -

Sorry it took me a while to reply, as I've got a big inbox ;-)  By the 
way, if anybody wants to send me something and be sure that I read it in 
a timely fashion, remove the VV (or Fastvair) tag from the header.  VV & 
Fastvair mail all gets sorted into VV & Fastvair folders. The idea is 
that I'll try to read it there "eventually", but sometimes that takes a 
while. Without the tags, it stays in the main inbox and I read it the 
same day (usually).

In any event, the guy is probably well-meaning, but errant. I won't call 
him nuts because I recently was actually scolded on here for asking 
someone facetiously "if they were nuts". In any event, some of the stuff 
in the article is really screwed up. Some of that can be attributed to 
journalism majors writing about scientific topics, but much of it they 
obviously reflects the view of the inventor himself.

Firstly, the basic idea of burning fuel to make torque to drive an 
alternator to make current to electrolyze H2 to burn with the gasoline 
is one that has a lot of inefficiency. It isn't going to be a good way 
to do things...

The basis for his sales pitch is flawed... beliefs like this -- "Most 
internal combustion engines operate at about 35 per cent efficiency. 
This means that only 35 per cent of the fuel is fully burned."

Aghhh! This is patently untrue!  He is mixing up the very different 
concepts of "indicated thermal efficiency" and "combustion efficiency". 
  The amount of the fuel burned on a modern closed-loop control (running 
at stoich) will be usually 95-98%. This is termed the combustion 
efficiency. The indicated thermal efficiency # (under good conditions) 
will indeed be around 35%, but it isn't because most of the fuel isn't 
burned!  The 35% number is governed largely by thermodynamic laws and 
relates to how much of the potential fuel energy is converted into 
useful pressure to move the pistons.  The remaining ~65% is waste heat 
that is rejected from the engine via the exhaust and cooling system (and 
a bit radiated off the engine surfaces as well). It's VERY hard to 
increase that number more than a couple points (diesels are just a 
couple points better).

He talks about his system increasing the "burn efficiency" (Whatever 
that is) to 97%.  Well, from his description, he means combustion 
efficiency and it's already there! 97% is a typical combustion 
efficiency for part load on any modern engine.

 From the description, he can't be making very much hydrogen. If he was, 
though, the engine control with such a bolt-on gizmo would be very 
difficult, because the laminar flame speeds of H2 is MUCH higher than 
gasoline.  You won't be able to add very much to an unmodified control 
system without really screwing things up. The natural question is "Under 
normal running conditions, what % of the fuel energy supplied into the 
intake manifold is via H2?". Unfortunately, the journalists missed that 
one, forcing us to guess.

They mention "The rest [fuel] either turns to carbon corroding the 
engine or goes out the exhaust pipe as greenhouse gases."  This 
statement is whacked as well and shows a lack of understanding of the 
chemistry involved and the difference between regulated emission 
pollutants (HC, CO, NOx) and greenhouse gases (typically CO2 when 
engines are concerned).  Even if you fully burn 100% of the gasoline 
under conditions of PERFECT combustion, the carbon atoms have to go 
*somewhere*!  His system cannot eliminate them (unless he turns off the 
gasoline supply entirely). Under "perfect combustion" all the carbon in 
the hydrocarbon goes out the tailpipe as CO2 (greenhouse gases). Under 
less-than-perfect conditions, a little (1-2%) leaves the engine as CO, 
but gets cleaned up in the catalyst (>1975 model year gasoline engines) 
to be CO2 and just the tiniest bit (hundreths of %) goes out as CO.  In 
any event, you make CO2, which is considered by some to be a greenhouse 
gas. If you want to make less CO2 for some reason, you need to burn less 
hydrocarbon fuel, not burn it more cleanly.  Burning less is the only 
way.  His device won't accomplish that since the H2 added to the mix is 
generated by burning gasoline on-vehicle in the first place. He only 
loses efficiency in the process -- the fuel value gained by the H2, is 
less than that provided by the gasoline created it with.

Finally, there is some discussion about how the author drove a Jeep 
equipped with the gizmo and found that it 1) consumed less fuel than the 
vehicle's highway rating and 2) later also showed lower CO emissions 
than the gov't standard. If you want to do such tests, you need to 
conduct the tests under the same conditions in a true A:B (before and 
after) scenario.  Thus, they should have done their fuel economy test 
with the system running and then ON THE SAME VEHICLE with the system 
turned OFF. This would have been an easy test.  Instead, they equated a 
steady 62 mph (100 kph) cruise to running the highway fuel economy test 
(comparing to the official numbers), which is far from the way the HWFET 
tet is actually run. The real test isn't driven at anything near a 
constant speed and the speeds go up to 70 mph as well.  They are 
comparing pounds of Apples with numbers of Pickles.

Similarly, they compared the CO numbers at an inspection station to the 
manufacturer's emission class for the vehicle.  I'm not sure how Ontario 
does their test, but if it is not dyno driven, any emission figure is 
totally worthless. Idle sniffer tests are useless for making any useful 
conclusions about real world emission performance.  SOme places in the 
US do test under load with chassis dynos, measuring exhaust volume in 
addition to concentration.  Such a setup could be used to make a 
relevant comparison, but again, it should be "system ON" v. "system 
OFF", not "system ON" v. manufacturer's standard. If they provided A:B 
(like discussed in the prior paragraph) emission numbers for HC, CO, and 
NOx on a chassis dyno, that could be useful data. Comparing a sniffer 
*concentration* to a gram per mile mass number (different units on a 
different test!) doesn't amount to anything.

In, short, I would probably invest elsewhere.

best regards-
Jim Burkhard