siannie

Considering getting one as I may have to commute - and REALLY don't want to sell the scoob.
I'm getting max 25mpg on good runs, and hydrogenhybrids are saying that I would get around 30-35mpg minimum with 2 cells. £499 + VAT
However the savings would be worth it in the long run...

OR get a brand new ECU and a remap for £1k...

Opinions/views welcomed!!

chasey

iTrader: (2)

buy a second car

siannie

thought of that - however would need to rent/buy garage for scoob then and can't afford both

dunx

iTrader: (3)

Hydrogen fuel cell...

It's a kettle !

HHO is steam, or at best water vapour, send me £100 and I'll build you one...

Do these people have any morals ?

dunx

P.S. A real hydrogen fuel cell is going to cost more than a Scooby...

http://www.thenaturalstore.co.uk/pro...-cell-car/6095

Korrosiv

iTrader: (1)

That's ten pence a mile cheaper @ £1.19 a litre ( based on my local V-power prices) which would mean you would need to drive for 50,000miles before seeing a return on the cells? i think

jonny_693

iTrader: (5)

I bet in conjunction with a turbonator It would add a fair bit of power as well.

Korrosiv

iTrader: (1)

And with a bit of perpetual motion who knows how much you could save.

vindaloo

I take it you mean these people: http://www.hydrogenhybrids.uk.com/

IMO you should read this first and then walk away: http://www.aardvark.co.nz/hho.shtml

Alternative that is known to work would be to fit an LPG system. That won't be cheap but as LPG is cheap, your weekly fuel bills will be lower. However, LPG can't be found everywhere and some places (ferries, Euro tunnel etc) may not accept vehicles with LPG conversions. I know Eurotunnel's Le Shuttle service doesn't.

Personally, for commuting any distance, I'd consider a small/medium diesel car. Even a Fiesta Zetec S diesel can be fun and most small/medium diesel cars can be remapped safely to give 20-30% more power.

HTH

J.

Korrosiv

iTrader: (1)

Take a look here and do some comparisons, Diesel is not as cheap as you would think. Some cars you would need to drive for ten years to regain the extra it cost to buy a diesel in the first place.

Worth having a look

Gear Head

iTrader: (2)

Hang on, you can afford to blow a grand on this rubbish but yet you can't a afford a £300-£400 banger? I'm a garage to rent would be no more than £75 a month. makes a lot more sense.

If the technology was really that good, don't you think the manufacturers would be using it???

Fat Boy

I run on baked beans and sandwiches and curries mainly using the oem install (stomach/guts).

HTH

siannie

I thought you guys wouldn't like it!!! my fiance runs an alfa 147 with 1 fuel cell and he thinks it's brilliant... yet he doesn't 'enjoy' his car like I enjoy mine.
Hydrogenhybrids are currently rolling out agents/fitters for all Jag dealerships in uk, and in negociations with Ford in the US to roll out agents/fitters for all 1600 dealerships.
Again the cost of buying/insuring a 2nd car plus garaging scoob I may as well get the fuel cells. Hmm toughie this one.

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

siannie
PLEASE don't waste any more of your money lining the pockets of these scamming low-lifes!

If you don't believe vindaloo's excellently researched debunking website, see the maths for yourself below and then try to explain how it can possibly work. I've made this as simple and easy to follow as I can, but I'm happy to answer any questions here or by PM if you've got them.

We'll start off with this from Hydrogen-Hybrids own website:
"A single litre of distilled water can produce many thousands of litres of trapped gas, so you have to top it up from time to time. (6 months to a year)"

OK, so we don't know exactly how big their water-tank actually is yet, but we do know how often it needs to be topped up - roughly every 10,000 miles, since most people drive between 10,000 to 20,000 miles a year. We can come back to the actual tank size later, but for the sake of argument let's call it 10 liters for now.

Next, how much energy would be in that much water, assuming you could get all of it out? Not so hard to work out, once you know how. Water is H20, meaning each molecule of it contains twice as many hydrogen atoms as oxygen atoms, but you have to remember that hydrogen is much lighter than oxygen:
molecular weight of hydrogen=1.008
molecular weight of oxygen=16
weight of one liter of water=1000g
(1000/(16+(2*1.008)))*(1.008*2)=111.9g

So for every liter of water, 111.9g of it is actually hydrogen, or roughly one part in nine.

Next, how much energy is there in that amount of hydrogen:
gross calorific value (GCV) hydrogen=141,700kJ/kg
141,700*0.1119=15866.38

So that's 15866 KiloJoules of energy from 111.9 grams of hydrogen in one liter of water, or 158664 KJ in 10 liters.

As we don't normally measure the energy in our cars in KiloJoules, we'll convert that into something more recognizable, like watts or horsepower.
1 kilowatt=1 KiloJoule per second = 1.341 horsepower

As there's 3600 seconds in 1 hour and we have 158664 KJ total from the hydrogen in our 10 liter tank of water, we've got potentially an extra 44 horsepower per tank of water.
158664/3600=44.07

On the face of it 44 horsepower might seem pretty impressive if you're managing to get it out of plain distilled water somehow, but don't forget that's the total power released from a tank that's supposedly going to last 10,000 miles, so you'd only actually be getting an extra 0.0044 horsepower for every mile you drive. Now go back to how much fuel-saving Hydrogen Hybrids say they can get you from their product, and ask yourself this question:
is an extra 0.0044 horsepower per mile really going to make your engine get 5mpg better fuel consumption?

If you're really honest, there's no possible way you can answer 'yes' to that question, is there?

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Well put; My chemistry GCSE is somewhat rusty but even I know this system is unworkable.

Bearing in mind this system requires electrical current via electrolysis to generate the hydrogen comes from the engine its supposed to feed.

Remember generating hydrogen at school? remember it needed electricity to do it? Now where does the electricity in a car come from? Battery. What charges the battery? Alternator. What drives the Alternator? Engine. What does the engine run on? Fuel.

Then what is the "law of conservation of energy"? Energy in = Energy out. In a car thats Fuel-->Combustion-->motive power+noise+heat. If that motive power is used to generate the fuel, then you need more power, and thus you need more fuel.

The only chemical known to man that breaks the laws of energy conservation is Snake oil.

jonny_693

iTrader: (5)

Why don't you just lpg it?

GC8

I tried to build my first perpetual motion machine when I was five (with lego and elastic bands) and it didnt work.

Saint AAI

The extra energy is not meant to come from burning the Hydrogen I don't think, the Hydrogen Oxygen enrichment increases the efficiency of the combustion process that's already happening, releasing more energy from there. However according to the site already posted above, the article here, shows that it still requires more energy to split the water in the electrolosis process, then the amount of energy released through improving the engines effieciency during the combustion cycle.

If the system truly did work, they would be fitted as OEM items. Maybe really old ICE engines would have benefitted from such a system? Modern ones however, have had millions invested to make them more efficient. If a simple electrosis kit from "my first chemistry set" made any significant improvement, it would be fitted. The fact that Jaguar dealers are introducing them probably just means one of their execs has been duped by the same crap other people have, or, they want to cash in on this aswell.

Edit: Done some more reading on stuff, I was wondering what the octane rating of Hydrogen was, thinking that if it was high you could maybe lean the engine out more, increase ignition advance and or raise the compression ratio. Turns out it has a very high RON of over 130 octane, but a very low MON, so would be more prone to knock. Maybe it would be possible to map the ECU to give better economy using Hydrogen enrichment when the engine is not under load? I don't know, but another problem with this is that you have no idea how much HHO is going into the engine, and the amount doesn't change depending on engine speed or load etc.. it just keeps bubbling away at a constant rate. Engines are certainly not constant hence the need for an ECU or carb etc.. Just my thoughts anyway.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Hydrogen doesn't burn very well: Proof is BMW's Hydrogen 7 car. Its MPG on pure hydrogen is something like 5mpg on hydrogen and 16mpg on petrol (its a 2ton 6.0 v12, so its naturally thirsty), and to cap it off it only produces 260bhp.

My Jag Xj-S has a 5.3 V12 and very basic (by modern standards) fueling and ignition...it does about 17mpg and has 290bhp on 97ron fuel. A Vauxhall monaro with the 6.0 LS2 V8 has 400bhp and does around 20+mpg on 95ron fuel. If hydrogen burnt so well, the BMW v12 would be able to match or exceed those figues, but instead it falls well short on both power and economy.

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

Hmm, that's not really the problem. The plain fact is that petrol has nearly four times the calorific value per volume as hydrogen, so it just 'contains' far more energy to start off with. Hydrogen actually burns very, very well.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Thats the precise problem, but you are misinterpreting my reasoning: Its poor density, in addition to the MON value as mentioned in post #17 also compounds the problem; it burns too fast and ignites too easily despite its high RON. So in lamens terms regarding a internal combustion engine: it doesn't burn very well.

As these properties are not ideal in a normal car engine (or one modified to run on it).

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

Exactly right, it's a far from ideal choice of fuel for any internal combustion engine, let alone one that hasn't had its ECU custom-designed to use it like the Beemer.

In any case, the sooner the scammers selling this rubbish are put out of business (and hopefully put behind bars for fraud), the better. There's a guy over on a Jag forum who's already reported them to the OFT and Devon Trading Standards, so I just hope they pull their finger out and take action quickly:
S Type V 8 40MPG

siannie

Interesting thread - read all 12 pages!! Have slight reservations now. Will wait and see what fiance's readings are on tues when he does a long trip.