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Saad Masood Bhatti
Sep 23, 2012
Saad Masood Bhatti
Sep 23, 2012
For the last few days water-kit has become talk of town and much has been said and written taking the issue. The whole issue appeared to be exaggerated in an act of excitement leaving energy starved nation caught between dream of abundant energy and realities of science. Irrational response from common people can be justified but involvement of government’s top ministers without having sought first hand opinion of professionals working in the field is incomprehensible. On top of it, opinion of country’s renowned scientists seems divided regarding credibility of the claim.
Simple calculations made towards the end of this piece would hopefully contribute to reader’s knowledge and help assessing authenticity of the claim. In the past many efforts have been made to use electrical energy to power automobiles but failed due to low speed and short ranges offered by existing battery systems. A fuel having high energy density (Wh/L) gets you to longer distances and that with high power (W/L) offers high speed. To date energy to dollar ratio of fossil fuels used in automobiles remains unmatched by any other fuel. Yet pure hydrogen when burned with oxygen is an excellent fuel that offers high performance with no harmful tale end gases released to the environment. But being an explosive gas, many safety issues and handling problems are associated with hydrogen.
Agha Waqar’s claim does not go along with well-established conservation of energy law that does not allow extracting more energy out of a system than that put into the system. The only way to do so is by breaking an atom’s nucleus apart or fusing atoms together. The latter process called fusion produces tremendous amounts of energy and is what keeps our sun alive. Scientists are desperately trying to fuse hydrogen atoms of water molecule in a controlled manner to produce clean energy but it proves to be a wild goose chase thanks to the negative watt balance of the process. That mean process consumes more energy than what it gives back. Therefore till date, fusion process is commercially not viable though scientists expect break through by the mid of this century. The same negative watt balance is problem with the water-kit. It can only improve mileage of the automobile when used in combination with conventional fuel but cannot power engine of its own for more than a few minutes.
Water-kit consists of an electrolytic cell or generator that uses electrical energy to break water molecule into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Mixture of hydrogen and oxygen called oxy-hydrogen or HHO gas is normally introduced to the pre-burner or air intake system of engine to improve combustion efficiency of gasoline. In other words using water-kit you can increase efficiency of engine giving a bit of extra mileage. Using water-kit alone to power engine means battery has continuously to deliver enough of power needed to propel car wheels. Present day batteries used in vehicles are of lead-acid type which is not capable of matching energy and power demands of a modern day vehicle to be driven to longer distances cruising at reasonable speed. Although lead–acid batteries are used to power forklifts, airport ground support equipment, and likes in a cost effective manner yet due to lower energy density and limitations on repeated charge-discharge cycles, it does not show any promise to high speed vehicle application.
Let us now make simple calculations to find what a water-kit can offer us. An average car cruising at 100 kilometers per hour needs about 18000 watt-hours of energy for an hour drive. Standard lead-acid battery used in cars is a 33 ampere-hour, 12 volt system energy rating of which can be obtained by multiplying current by voltage. Using the above numbers, we can have;
Energy delivered by a single battery = 33 ampere-hours × 12 volts = 396 watt-hour
Energy required by the car = 18000 watt-hour
That means once fully charged, battery can continuously deliver 396 watts for one hour or 792 watts for half an hour because as we increase load on the battery, operation time decreases. Assuming 100% efficiencies of HHO generator (not true in reality) 1500 amperes of current would be required to generate enough gas. Since one battery cannot deliver such large amounts of current we have to use multiple batteries to make up 1500 amperes.
Number of batteries required = 18000/396 = 45.5
This implies that to drive an average car at about 100 kilometers per hour for an hour, about 45 batteries will be required to make enough HHO gas.
Let us now consider an example drive from Islamabad to Lahore or vice versa which most of perspective users of water-kit would expect. One-way trip means driving at 100 kilometers per hour for about 4 hours requires about 180 batteries to deliver enough energy. Now taking average weight of a battery equal to 10 kilograms, an extra 1800 kilogram weight have to be added to the car. Which means the car would need extra power to pull added weight of batteries. These calculations are based on assumption that HHO generator and car engine operate at 100% efficiency which is not the case in reality. Taking inefficiencies of the engine and HHO cells into account makes things even worst.
In view of above calculations it is up to the readers to decide if claims regarding water-powered car are justified. Is there is something to learn from this episode? We as a nation should try to stay modest in our approaches towards issues and look into things with logic and reason before setting off to challenge the world. But I would also add that we should not discourage amateur researchers like Agha Waqar. Government should allow motivated researchers without higher degrees access to laboratories and other resources to conduct research in a more organized and scientific manner so that they could not only satisfy their zeal for research but contribute to development of the country.
Simple calculations made towards the end of this piece would hopefully contribute to reader’s knowledge and help assessing authenticity of the claim. In the past many efforts have been made to use electrical energy to power automobiles but failed due to low speed and short ranges offered by existing battery systems. A fuel having high energy density (Wh/L) gets you to longer distances and that with high power (W/L) offers high speed. To date energy to dollar ratio of fossil fuels used in automobiles remains unmatched by any other fuel. Yet pure hydrogen when burned with oxygen is an excellent fuel that offers high performance with no harmful tale end gases released to the environment. But being an explosive gas, many safety issues and handling problems are associated with hydrogen.
Agha Waqar’s claim does not go along with well-established conservation of energy law that does not allow extracting more energy out of a system than that put into the system. The only way to do so is by breaking an atom’s nucleus apart or fusing atoms together. The latter process called fusion produces tremendous amounts of energy and is what keeps our sun alive. Scientists are desperately trying to fuse hydrogen atoms of water molecule in a controlled manner to produce clean energy but it proves to be a wild goose chase thanks to the negative watt balance of the process. That mean process consumes more energy than what it gives back. Therefore till date, fusion process is commercially not viable though scientists expect break through by the mid of this century. The same negative watt balance is problem with the water-kit. It can only improve mileage of the automobile when used in combination with conventional fuel but cannot power engine of its own for more than a few minutes.
Water-kit consists of an electrolytic cell or generator that uses electrical energy to break water molecule into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Mixture of hydrogen and oxygen called oxy-hydrogen or HHO gas is normally introduced to the pre-burner or air intake system of engine to improve combustion efficiency of gasoline. In other words using water-kit you can increase efficiency of engine giving a bit of extra mileage. Using water-kit alone to power engine means battery has continuously to deliver enough of power needed to propel car wheels. Present day batteries used in vehicles are of lead-acid type which is not capable of matching energy and power demands of a modern day vehicle to be driven to longer distances cruising at reasonable speed. Although lead–acid batteries are used to power forklifts, airport ground support equipment, and likes in a cost effective manner yet due to lower energy density and limitations on repeated charge-discharge cycles, it does not show any promise to high speed vehicle application.
Let us now make simple calculations to find what a water-kit can offer us. An average car cruising at 100 kilometers per hour needs about 18000 watt-hours of energy for an hour drive. Standard lead-acid battery used in cars is a 33 ampere-hour, 12 volt system energy rating of which can be obtained by multiplying current by voltage. Using the above numbers, we can have;
Energy delivered by a single battery = 33 ampere-hours × 12 volts = 396 watt-hour
Energy required by the car = 18000 watt-hour
That means once fully charged, battery can continuously deliver 396 watts for one hour or 792 watts for half an hour because as we increase load on the battery, operation time decreases. Assuming 100% efficiencies of HHO generator (not true in reality) 1500 amperes of current would be required to generate enough gas. Since one battery cannot deliver such large amounts of current we have to use multiple batteries to make up 1500 amperes.
Number of batteries required = 18000/396 = 45.5
This implies that to drive an average car at about 100 kilometers per hour for an hour, about 45 batteries will be required to make enough HHO gas.
Let us now consider an example drive from Islamabad to Lahore or vice versa which most of perspective users of water-kit would expect. One-way trip means driving at 100 kilometers per hour for about 4 hours requires about 180 batteries to deliver enough energy. Now taking average weight of a battery equal to 10 kilograms, an extra 1800 kilogram weight have to be added to the car. Which means the car would need extra power to pull added weight of batteries. These calculations are based on assumption that HHO generator and car engine operate at 100% efficiency which is not the case in reality. Taking inefficiencies of the engine and HHO cells into account makes things even worst.
In view of above calculations it is up to the readers to decide if claims regarding water-powered car are justified. Is there is something to learn from this episode? We as a nation should try to stay modest in our approaches towards issues and look into things with logic and reason before setting off to challenge the world. But I would also add that we should not discourage amateur researchers like Agha Waqar. Government should allow motivated researchers without higher degrees access to laboratories and other resources to conduct research in a more organized and scientific manner so that they could not only satisfy their zeal for research but contribute to development of the country.
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