Humidity

[Michael Skolones]

--IMA.Boundary.760640578
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Description: cc:Mail note part

     Perhaps I misunderstood the propsed reaction.
     If the water is split into hydrogen and oxygen, and then combusts to 
     form water again, there is no net energy gain.  I suppose you could 
     argue that "wasted" energy--i.e., the energy produced by fuel 
     combustion that is not being transformed into mechanical energy by the 
     piston and crankshaft-- is used to split the H20, but it is also 
     likely (not being a combustion engineer, I can't say how likely) that 
     the energy going into the H20 bond system is reducing the amount of 
     energy available to be converted into mechanical energy as the 
     combusting gasses expand. Since the subsequent combustion of H2 and O2 
     into H20 will only give back the same amount of energy that was 
     required to break the bonds, the amount of energy available to do 
     mechanical work will not have changed.  
     
     
     The case with N2O is different, because the combustion product is not 
     N2O.  That is, we're not splitting up the N2O and recombining it, 
     we're splitting up the N2O and using the O to react with the 
     hydrocarbon fuel, forming H2O and CO2.  The binding energy of N2O is 
     less than the energy change associated with the hydrocarbon 
     combustion, so there is a net transformation of energy from chemical 
     form to thermal, and from there to mechanical by means of the motor.
     
     As an aside, in order to satisfy the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics-- that 
     the change in entropy of a system is equal to or greater than zero for 
     any process taken as a whole--there is a limit to the efficiency of 
     any heat engine, and it's less than 100%.  Not that a _real_ internal 
     combustion engine will really approach the limit imposed by the 2nd 
     Law, but the excess inefficiencies (those not imposed by the 2nd law) 
     probably have more to do with speed of combustion, variations in 
     pressure and temperature throughout the combustion chamber, incomplete 
     combustions, etc, 


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Humidity
Author:  diy_efi at coulomb.eng.ohio-state.edu at Internet
Date:    9/23/97 1:39 PM


     
     
Michael Skolones wrote:
     
> I'm afraid there's an energy conservation problem in this hypothesis.  The
> energy produced by the hydrogen/oxygen combustion will be equal to the energy 
> required to split the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen in the first
> place. The net energy change due to this water combustion cycle will be zero. 
> Mike Skolones
     
True it does take energy to split the Hydrogen and Oxygen but we must remember 
that an internal combustion engine is not even
close to 100% efficient or else the exhaust wouldn't be any hotter than the air 
going in.  So why couldn't some of the
otherwise wasted heat be used to break down water and reuse the components in a 
more productive way.  We don't violate
conservation of energy with this just convert otherwise unused energy into a 
useable form.  Water injection is a proven method
as is nitrous, and there are plenty of guys to tell you that nitrous makes more 
power.
     
Charlie
     
--IMA.Boundary.760640578
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; name="RFC822 message headers"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Description: cc:Mail note part
Content-Disposition: inline; filename="RFC822 message headers"

Received: from coulomb.eng.ohio-state.edu (128.146.90.150) by
mailserver.mail1.com with SMTP
  (IMA Internet Exchange 2.1 Enterprise) id 000A0ED4; Tue, 23 Sep 97 12:10:48
-0700
Received: by coulomb.eng.ohio-state.edu (940816.SGI.8.6.9/940406.SGI)
	for diy_efi-outgoing id RAA19002; Tue, 23 Sep 1997 17:40:43 GMT
Received: from oak.cats.ohiou.edu by coulomb.eng.ohio-state.edu via SMTP
(940816.SGI.8.6.9/940406.SGI)
	for <diy_efi at coulomb.eng.ohio-state.edu> id NAA18997; Tue, 23 Sep 1997 13:40:40
-0400
Received: from s0152.south-green.ohiou.edu by oak.cats.ohiou.edu
(5.65v4.0/1.1.8.2/03Feb95-1128AM)
	id AA07230; Tue, 23 Sep 1997 13:40:39 -0400
Message-Id: <3427FEE4.23C9344C at oak.cats.ohiou.edu>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 13:39:48 -0400
From: Charles Fulton <cf352197 at oak.cats.ohiou.edu>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.03 [en] (Win95; I)
Mime-Version: 1.0
To: diy_efi at coulomb.eng.ohio-state.edu
Subject: Re: Humidity
References: <000A08FD.3146 at telerobot.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: owner-diy_efi at coulomb.eng.ohio-state.edu
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: diy_efi at coulomb.eng.ohio-state.edu

--IMA.Boundary.760640578--