Water Succeeds Gasoline As New Invention Is Perfected (Dec, 1935)
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Dec, 1935
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Water Succeeds Gasoline As New Invention Is Perfected
WATER powered automobiles are predicted for the not too distant future as the result of an invention of G. H. Garrett of Dallas, Texas, which substitutes water for gasoline.
Garrett uses an electrolytic carburetor which breaks up water by electrolysis into its component gases, hydrogen and oxygen, and then forces the explosive hydrogen into the combustion chambers for fuel.
For operating the automobile motor on which the tests have been conducted, Garrett has added an over-size generator to supply the extra electricity needed by the carburetor. Beyond that, the motor has needed no changes, though it has been in operation continuously for several days.
Garrett has protected his device with patents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
is this for real
Comment by michael — July 21, 2006 @ 10:23 pm
Yes, the patent is certainly for real:
Filing date: Jul 1, 1932
Issue date: Jul 1935
Inventor: Charles H. Garrett
http://www.google.com/patents?id=bQh5AAAAEBAJ
That said, it’s not entirely clear how effective/efficient it would be in practice, but apparently it does come up from time to time throughout history:
http://www.brownsgas.com/brownsgashistory.html
Comment by Kris Boutilier — August 3, 2007 @ 8:23 pm
yes it’s real I use water myslef and alt’s
Comment by vaughn — August 19, 2008 @ 12:44 pm
it works trie it.
Comment by vaughn — August 22, 2008 @ 8:22 pm
The smell of ignorance is rife in here.
Shills and hucksters promoting electrolysis or “browns” gas are interested in nothing but the money in your wallet.
Electrolysis takes energy. The hydrogen and oxygen create energy. For this to work, the process would need to create more energy than it consumes. :rolleyes:
Read a physics textbook once in a while people…
Comment by Nathan — September 7, 2008 @ 7:25 am
Nathan, your physics/chemistry/science…and all facets of learning are becoming more suppressed every day. I am no fan of electrolysis as commonly used and exploited today by reasons you mention, but not thinking outside he book gets you nowhere in the way of a true education!
Btw, you should have said something like, hydrogen derives its energy via the energy put into it, since hydrogen has no energy by itself. Makes a great energy medium, but neither create energy.
Example: Do some real research and you will find with an open mind IF you use your hands that getting, say, over 100MPG is NOT hard to do, even on a good sized V8 like my old 302, or as the youngsters (or anyone NOT in the USA) would call it, a 5 liter. The first thing you need to forget about is the all common standard homogenious charge that has been the standard way of introducing BIG carbon mole fuel into the engines we run (FI is the same, only closer to the cylinder and slightly more controlled) which would-be “experts” expect a wet fuel such as petrol to completely burn ( with a muiti-range boiling point from 130F-430F) in 5-7 ms of the power stroke.
Yeah, right, and why do engines run so hot? Lucky to get half of those light ends to burn and do work in what is essentially a fancy steam engine. Meaning the engine was never engineered by any mass producing company to burn the fuel in a complete, proper manner. Bourqe and Vaux did what they could mechanically, but those engines while up to twice as efficient never saw an assembly line.
Get it? The bigger carbon moles carry more BTUs. The majority. Wet “gas” does not burn, most of the fuel is burning in the exhaust.
Get your 120,000 BTUs per gallon to do some work in a typical engine? Well, do what the oil companies do, within the “laws”, and re-refine it until it all has a low, 110F singular boiling point or something close to that number. There are a few ways to make it a reality..what does your physics book say?
The energy content of the fuel does not change, the time in which it can be released does. It takes energy to do this, yes..but IF engineered decently (the fuel system) it will more than pay off, 120k BTUs is nothing to sneeze at…yet it is wasted by ignorance. You can reform this down to what will be detected as CH4..synthetic..with a low range singular boiling point that will easily burn complete in well under 5-7ms.
And your engine will run cool..so cool in fact, that unless you get a much smaller radiator, your water will not carry enough heat via the heater core to keep you warm when it is cold.
You can ridicule this all you like, but the truth is, this is not theory, it is fact and has been proven by many throughout the history of the ICE, and I just happen to be one more that has proven this to myself and friends.
Sure, my system is a prototype..but it works on a big ugly car. Always room for refinement when you work out of a garage and do your own research. It is complex, but it is not rocket science.
See how many “mechanics” know the boiling point of the fuel that they use, there is a lot more to consider aside from the basics they are taught..compression, spark, and fuel just get an engine to run, but not efficiently if that is all is considered, which most everywhere, it does not go much further in the way of physics or chemistry. Especially in regards to the fuel.
I might ad, people are fooled into thinking “modern” engines are sooo much more efficient than before..well, on a really really good day most are very lucky to hit 22%…that other 78%?
What a waste of heat and junk out the pipe out into the air!
Comment by Scott — October 24, 2008 @ 7:31 am
The article sounds like a Hybrid in reverse.
Electricity used to make internal combustion engine fuel.
Basically, an electric car.
Comment by jayessell — October 24, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
In 1918 Charles Frazer patented a simular type energy saving device. Many people believe this patent was suppressed by the oil companies because they saw this as a direct threat to their sales. See the original patent.
http://www.h2-hydro-gen.com/CFrazier.html
Comment by John — November 15, 2008 @ 2:09 pm
Scott and John,
I would sure love to see this working. According to the accepted Laws of Thermodynamics, by which accurate predictions in Physics are made, this should not work.
However, I have seen SO MANY proponents of this on the web that I would really like to see one of these engines working. I am skeptical and must see this actually working. I have re-built a few internal combustion gasoline engines so I know what the internal mechanics of them look like and how they work.
Sure, I’m a DOUBTING THOMAS. Unless I can put my hand into the engine and see that it actually RUNS ON WATER I will not believe.
Comment by Rick — November 30, 2008 @ 1:04 pm
There is a great explanation here of why we all aren’t running on Hydrogen (Yet)
http://www.newscientist.com/ar.....tml?page=1
Basically wet cell electrolysis needs electricity and a platinum catalyst which is expensive.
The inefficiencies in electrolysis, fuel compression, hydrogen burning and generating electricity from the burning hydrogen to carry out the electrolysis means you need about 4 times as much energy going in as you get.
Unless this engine works by cold fusion using dueterium it’s not going to work.
As for Scott’s answer, lighter hydrocarbon molecules burn more readily and it’s very difficult to get heavy molecules to light, (ever tried setting light to a road paved with bitumen)
Comment by Absolutejagauar — December 1, 2008 @ 5:38 am
One of the comments to the article about a build it yourself vacuum tube electronic organ mentioned hydrogen.
I suspect he wanted to decompose water using a fraction of the power the chemistry books say.
(As if there were some magic frequency of pulsed DC that works better than a constant current.)
(Charlie, what should I type to find that? The search feature is useless.)
Comment by jayessell — December 1, 2008 @ 9:30 am
Rick and Absoloutejag,
Just to be clear, I was commenting on a way to get better mpg via further refining the fuel we use…I too would have to see something like this or most things work before accepting as fact.
And to be further clear, Jag, this is what I meant..as I am sure you understood, by further refining petrol in regards to bigger hard to light molecules. It is difficult to get all of it reformed into a low, singular boiling point fuel, meaning it is all light molecules now and is very ready to go bang with the energy converted.
This does not go against the laws of thermodynamics at all. It takes quite a lot of controlled heat to do this and that purposes obvious things that need to be done when designing a good reformer. The biggest problem one would have is first, keeping it all gaseous, especially under compression because simply vaporizing fuel will NOT keep all of it a vapor unless it is pretty cold out and you do not intend to compress the fuel. Many people used a process called thermal catalytic cracking, or as it is know to the oil companies, TCC.
This will work with white gas or Naphtha, but not very long with petrol as things in the petrol will foul the catalyst up pretty quickly. I’ve heard of filtering..but ahh.
Basically it takes about 500F and a catalyst for TCC. But with those problems mentioned there are other ways. One is Straight Thermal…this is more dangerous but is still very possible and takes red hot temps..in short, if you can in stages get petrol in a chamber obviously with no free oxygen to that temp, you will have your fuel converted on demand but it needs to either go into the combustion chamber right after it reaches that point or cooled below autoignition and then introduced.
Another way, interestingly, but not well known, is using a bit of hydrogen alone in such a reformer with the petrol. Doing this you can do the Straight Thermal process with no catalyst to worry about at 850f with a small amount of hydrogen from a supplier. This I know to be true, however I do not know the exact amount of hydrogen, only that it was not much..It may be that you can use a little more and reduce the temp further, I do not know as I am researching and building things that are proving to possibly be much better than the IC engine or using any hydrocarbon as a fuel.
As for a magic frequency, lol. Well as mentioned Deutarium would be the obvious..I hear that is what the Joe Cell produced and that it was nothing more than prolonged electrolisys using a few wall chargers..like cell phone chargers or whatever, that kind of power for 3 days. But who really knows without trying..there is some truth out there but there is a heck of a lot of myth to dig through and misinformation before you can discern the nuggets. That is why nothing will be learned without hands on trial and error.
Not being able to adjust frequencies is exactly why I didn’t want to spend money and time on trying to better my own electrolyzer design, which functions nicely as a toy for a torch or whatever. If I had the equipment I would like to toy with the resonance phenomenon. Perhaps 24-25,000Hz is a place to start or look? I don’t know I thought that because I thought that was the frequency microwaves were produced via the magnetrons in them. But I do not know I am just going by what is said on the internet regarding that.
I do believe any material could probably be destroyed or at least disrupted by inducing it’s own resonant frequency..but finding that alone could take lifetimes as one must consider that you will be using rather low power, and in changing frequencies I have seen it take 5 minutes for it to produce an effect visually in electrolysys…and that was just a few days of toying with someone elses equipment, after many many 3-5 minute tests once I noticed minutes could be and was a factor in this area.
It is hard to simply dismiss things because some pretty well accepted laws say so also sometimes. There are things missing in the textbooks obviously and even if we ever decide to update what we find, we will never know all. Virtually any chemical effect can be induced by the right frequency in an electromagnetic field so with that concept in mind just about anything is possible by some way.
One thing for certain, the Earth has or gets it’s own power…if you are dreaming of a car running on water ( please use seawater if successful if we are gonna waste water ) think of what happens in a storm and try and recreate some of those effects. Duplicating things synthetically that happen in nature is likely key to many discoveries.
Comment by Scott — December 19, 2008 @ 3:49 pm
Hydrogen Powered Car Celebrates 200th Year Anniversary!!
Two hundred years ago, Swiss engineer François Isaac de Rivaz invented an internal combustion engine that used a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen as fuel.
http://www.h2-hydro-gen.com/RivazCar.html
Comment by John — December 21, 2008 @ 12:55 am
Yes..rather depressing when you look at the joke of a system regarding energy in general today considering that, and the much better systems that have been under the radar media-wise in the last 100 years but obviously were not adopted just for the sake of greed isn’t it?
Comment by Scott — December 26, 2008 @ 2:32 am
Scott… If I can trust Jodie Foster, Hydrogen’s frequency is 1.42 Ghz.
I don’t know if that lends itself to super efficient disassociation experiments.
Comment by jayessell — December 26, 2008 @ 7:27 pm
Thanks, Jay.
Is there a way or a chart for certain elements of or finding out their resonant resonant frequency?!
I know, seems like a dumb question, to me at least…but I had to ask.
I don’t know if you or anyone else here is interested, but some years ago I saved some pages from a message board ( I think it may have been oupower.com but I’m not sure ) on the topic of a super efficient way a guy claimed to have found in mostly a chemical reaction..little bit of electrochemistry.
He claimed he was issued a “gag order” but thought he would be able to release the info in a year from that time…of course he didn’t, but he did give enough clues for everyone to put together the basics of what he was using and doing. After that he stopped posting when people were endlessly going on about different things for a membrane, which I do not think is needed in this system at all, as I think it only produces hydrogen.
It went something like this…( if anyone is interested I will look on the pages saved on disk and see if they are still up and post links ) the guy explained in initial experiments, he did a test in a 5 gallon bucket. It involved a bit of Sulfuric Acid (diluted I believe..going by memory) as in most cases, but not much as I recall, Quicklime I know was a big part of it, and I think there was some form of waste, though it may have been steel, I do not remember at this point.
I say waste because that was a clue…where he was from ( Alaska ) he said this was a big waste disposal problem and he could get as much as needed for free. In fact in extreme excess. If I remember right now that I think about it, it very well may have been batteries, and this is where I think he got his Acid.
He said it was very profitable, something of $12 yielding 120k cubic feet of hydrogen and the only byproduct being fertilizer. He said he had a suitcase design, where I imagine he had two pumps or at least one and a way to mix the two things together and an output.
I believe it was only battery acid and the quicklime, but I haven’t tried it yet. He said his test was just putting what he used in the bucket and snapping the lid and running. I assume when pressure built up it popped the lid.
I don’t know any more than that by memory without looking at the pages but before people put together what he was using the main clues were “extreme opposites in the valance charts….” in grams or weight I think..do not recall that either exactly.
Well, don’t know what you guys think, let me know and like I said, if interested I will post the links if they are up. I would like to talk to some people about this method.
Take care all..
Comment by Scott — December 27, 2008 @ 3:54 am
Most hydrogen production done today is done by cracking methane. Methane gas is sealed in a container then heated to 700°C causing the methane to seperate into hydrogen and carbon. This method is used because it requires less enegy than electrolysis for the production of large quantities of hydrogen.
That said hydrogen produced by electrolysis could be used as a storage medium for wasted energy produced by wind and solar schemes.
As prohibition killed alcohol fuels the Hindenburg crash killed hydrogen fuels.
Comment by JMyint — December 27, 2008 @ 10:17 am
Yeah, well I assume everyone here knows the facts about the Hindenburg. It would a burned and crashed regardless of if it had an inert lifting gas such as helium.
Ignition would not have occurred if it did not have the varnished aluminum cloth surrounding the airship in the storm. They used this only for visual effect…to make it look more modern. It was not until they released the cables to the Earth to “anchor” the ship. This effectively made a ground, and thus made the ship sort of like a giant capacitor.
If you watch the video, the flames of the hydrogen and the gas went up.
Only two people died due to burns..most survivors rode the ship to the ground, while most deaths were due to jumping.
The flames on the ground, and likely the two killed were of the tanks of Diesel, being much heavier than air sustained ground fires. ( The diesel fuel powered the big twin engined ship )
Only ignorance and bad propaganda sustaining the myths about hydrogen effectively scared the public as far as using it for a fuel. Many people still think the ship “exploded” and all sorts of other things. Very few know and are surprised to learn only two died due to burns.
For some reference to those that are not familiar. The Germans proved this soon after the fact, and replicated the ignition in a controlled environment…but we didn’t trust the Germans back then, and the media likely helped scare people about hydrogen. Even though it wasn’t said, what was said implied or could easily make people think “Anything “they” were or are doing is bad” so why should this be any different?
It wasn’t until not all that long ago that our Dr. Addison Bain of NASA replicated the cause of the tragedy many times over (as did the Germans) using the exact same type of cloth with the aluminum filled varnish igniting it easily over and over only using electrostatic energy.
It’s really too bad that hydrogen got a bad rap mainly due to a war…or any non-factual reasons.
There are many ways to extract hydrogen, as any fuel it can be dangerous. But with material science always improving, today it can easily be handled, used, or stored much safer than many fuels such as Gasoline that we consider safe.
Other than the myths regarding people always thinking cars always blow up or are highly likely to blow up after a crash…Thanks Hollywood!
I only mention that since I have been in some bad wrecks as a passenger, and recently pulled a man from a truck that most everyone was afraid to approach because they thought it was going to “blow up”….this after the truck lost control under a bridge, hit some ice and then a pillar of the bridge. All frontal impact.
Some people take too much truth from movies (and other entertainment where the goal is high drama) and I have seen it affect what people do in emergency situations, hindering their abilities when time is very critical.
Comment by Scott — December 29, 2008 @ 12:36 am