Sorry for the long post
I have been discussing this elsewhere, here is a summary.
(Executive Summary; yes it produces Hydrogen, but it’s a scam)
See:
Stanley Meyer's water fuel cell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Onboard Automotive Hydrogen Generator
The Law of Conservation of Energy.
"Energy can neither be created nor destroyed"
All energy conversions processes involve Losses (heat, friction etc.)
1) Convert the energy in fossil fuel to electrical energy with the engines alternator.
2) Convert electrical energy into chemical energy...Produce Hydrogen.
3) Convert chemical energy to mechanical energy through thermal expansion.
The process loses energy at each step to heat and friction, it can not boost fuel economy
You are loosing more energy than you gain. The on board hydrogen generator consumes around 180 watts. That is about 1/4 HP. Add losses in the alternator wiring and Hydrogen Generator… it puts about a 1/2 HP load on the engine. So you have 1/2 HP loss to make enough hydrogen to produce >1/6 HP.
(15A X 12V is 180 watts. There are 746 watts in a horsepower.)
More Detail:
A Modern Engine has a 99%+ combustion efficiency, anyone claiming to dramatically
increase combustion efficiency is lying, it's all ready near maximum.
“Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source. Energy is required to separate it from other compounds. Once produced, hydrogen stores energy until it is delivered in a usable form, such as hydrogen gas delivered into a fuel cell. Hydrogen can be produced using diverse, domestic resources including fossil fuels, nuclear energy, biomass, and other renewable energy technologies. The environmental impact and energy efficiency of hydrogen depends greatly on how it is produced. The primary challenge for hydrogen production is reducing the cost of production technologies to make the resulting hydrogen cost competitive with conventional transportation fuels.”
eere.energy.gov
“Electrolysis of water is the decomposition of water (H2O) into oxygen (O2) and hydrogen gas (H2) due to an electric current being passed through the water. This electrolytic process is used in some industrial applications when hydrogen is needed.
Efficiency:
Water electrolysis does not convert 100% of the electrical energy into the chemical energy of hydrogen. The process requires more extreme potentials than what would be expected based on the cell's total reversible reduction potentials. This excess potential accounts for various forms of over potential by which the extra energy is eventually lost as heat. For a well designed cell the largest over potential is the reaction over potential for the four electron oxidation of water to oxygen at the anode. An effective electro-catalyst to facilitate this reaction has not been developed. Platinum alloys are the default state of the art for this oxidation. The reverse reaction, the reduction of oxygen to water, is responsible for the greatest loss of efficiency in fuel cells. Developing a cheap effective electro-catalyst for this reaction would be a great advance.
The simpler two electron reaction to produce hydrogen at the cathode can be electro-catalyzed with almost no reaction over potential by platinum or in theory a hydro-genase enzyme. If other, less effective, materials are used for the cathode then another large over potential must be paid.
The energy efficiency of water electrolysis varies widely with the numbers cited below on the optimistic side. Some report 50–70%[2], while the theoretical maximum efficiency of the electrolysis of water is between 80–94%.[3] These values refer only to the efficiency of converting electrical energy into hydrogen's chemical energy. The energy lost in generating the electricity is not included. For instance, when considering a power plant that converts the heat of nuclear reactions into hydrogen via electrolysis, the total efficiency may be closer to 30–45%.[4]”
[en.wikipedia.org]
