Disastrous Versus Merely Inefficient
Henry Ford’s Model T went 25 miles for every gallon of gasoline in its tank. Today, a full century later, the average mass-production automobile performs worse than Mr. Ford’s early benchmark. There are many reasons for this, of course, including such necessities as power steering but the ultimate truth is this: little has changed in the fundamental design of the internal combustion gasoline engine.
Given this neglect of a vital economic and environmental aspect of personal transportation, it is tempting to assume that great gains in fuel efficiency are ripe for the taking. Purchase of a kit for running a car on water is a small mental leap from there. So, what’s the truth? Well, I have a rare treat in store for you, an interview with Adam Nehr of the Kennedy Space Center who knows a great deal about mechanical engineering. Adam will elucidate the inescapable facts about bringing a kit for running a car on water into your garage including the law of physics known as entropy.
Before sharing Adam’s recorded thoughts with you, though, I need to explain the role of water in conventional gasoline engines. After all, as I mentioned last time, automotive tailpipes often drip water.
So, what is gasoline? Also known as benzene and petrol, gasoline is a noxious mixture of 200+ volatile hydrocarbons. In laymen’s terms, it is a string of carbon atoms connected with hydrogen atoms floating in a viscous mixture of other poisons. We use it in our engines because it is relatively resistant to catching fire but also is highly explosive under the right conditions.
When vaporized and then exposed to pressure and a spark inside an engine, the gasoline molecule explodes, resulting in thrust and expelling the constituent elements through the tailpipe. The constituent elements freed by the combustion process include hydrogen. At or near sea level, hydrogen cannot exist by itself. It naturally seeks to join with other elements, including oxygen. Free oxygen molecules, in turn, are only too happy to join with hydrogen to form water.
Boring On Their Own, Intriguing When Taken Together
The water which we see dripping from automobile tailpipes might lead us to believe that gasoline contains water. It’s a liquid, after all. However, the reality is that only the hydrogen is in the fuel and when we burn it, we free some of the hydrogen, which bonds with ambient oxygen to form water. Put another way, water expelled from our cars is much like a serving of rice and beans – very nutritious but if we ate the rice for one meal and the beans later, we wouldn’t derive nearly the benefit of consuming them together.
All kidding aside, we are left with a question, aren’t we? If automobile engines always have run on hydrocarbons such as gasoline and we know that billions of dollars are being spent experimenting with hydrogen in engines, won’t the purchase of a kit for running a car on water be a good idea? In the third and final part of this series, my friend Adam Nehr will explain the ins and outs to you.
Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line
Corbett Kroehler
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