Electrolysis of water on Old Car (fuel, engine, battery, compared)

[mikeyking]

Thinking about setting up a Water Electrolysis Cell for pumping Hydrogen and Oxygen into car.

The basic argument is that you cannot produce more hydrogen and oxygen, than the electricity put into the water, and that energy is lost in conversion, and with heat etc. Although some argue you can improve the efficiency of Electrolysis by passing a DC current at the resonance frequency of water
Not being a mechanic, electrician etc - just interested on wether its possible to boost the fuel effiency. Some argue the hydrogen and oxygen don't improve fuel effiency, some argue with Alternator will recharge the electricity used for the Electrolysis, some argue it ultimately runs down the battery.

However I have my doubts, if you could for example boost it by 25%, wouldn't someone have done it years ago?

Please no armchair experts, scientists, engineers, or conspiracy theorists about stanley meyers being killed by the oil companies, just someone who actually knows what there talking about.

Anyone who has actually done this, got an example of real world figures - why hasn't this been investigated properly, or at least had an attempt by a car manafacturer to create some sort of efficient Electrolysis - rather than sketchy information of the net.

[ferretkona]

I thought the mods shut down a thread on this. You will get a lot of argument both ways here. But remember that energy can not come from nothing, any electricity created to break down water to hydrogen and oxygen will create more drag on the drivetrain.

[Lux Hauler]

There is no definitive answer. It depends on the electrolysis system and the engine it is being used with.

Ponder this. For every 1 HP of load on the alternator to power the electrolysis system, how many moles of hydrogen are generated? From that, how much chemical energy potential is in that amount? How efficient is the engine at releasing that energy? The engine can only burn so much fuel at one time, so how much hydrogen has replaced the existing air/fuel ratio? And what sort of energy "boost" do you achieve as compared to strictly air/fuel? It's a good deal of work to determine theoretically, but what combination of factors do you choose to solve empirically?