10. My simple devices.
10.1 Supplement to craigslist's message on job search.
What we enjoy at after work hours - is another thing. In general, this is what distinguishes us.
We do projects for fun, more precisely it is a chain of projects that flow from one another. Just a few examples.
Probably the most fun project happened many years ago, when gas prices jumped to the roof, and I decided to switch my car to alcohol. At that time it was economically beneficial, even if you bought alcohol in Walmart.
We do projects for fun, more precisely it is a chain of projects that flow from one another. Just a few examples.
Probably the most fun project happened many years ago, when gas prices jumped to the roof, and I decided to switch my car to alcohol. At that time it was economically beneficial, even if you bought alcohol in Walmart.
The hardware side is simple and calculations have shown that this can be done, even if we lose 1/2 of engine power. Passing the details I will say that it does not work, since the engine control system is not designed for this. You can cheat by adding 25% of cheep pure alcohol, but you will lost 50% of power.
This experiment can make everyone adding alcohol to the gas tank. But significantly fewer people have access to diagnostic equipment, which allows us to see what is really happening inside engine and why we have such an outcome. I have had this access and have many results that are mostly boring. But the result was confirmed. That is how it should be.
Gas prices remained high, so the project did not end there. In the final, I achieved sustainable fuel savings of 5–10%, but in a different way.
At that time, Hydrogen was very popular and I decided to try it. A simple calculation showed that a regular gas engine cannot run on pure hydrogen. Even if you make all the necessary changes and try, the engine will lose 3/4 of power. Plus, a mixture of hydrogen and air is very dangerous and can cause an explosion at any time.
On the other hand, the addition of a small amount of hydrogen (<1% of air volume) worked well. It is hard to see immediately on the diagnostic equipment, because it has limitations, but it did save some fuel. The latter was easily confirmed by the statistics of '20+20 miles' road tests.
Theoretically, you can repeat it (and I can help you), but it is not as easy as it seems.
First, you should get hydrogen (not a mix w/oxygen), on board, by splitting water. This requires an electrolyzer or so. It should have a certain design, and most likely you will not be able to buy it on-line.
Secondly, you must optimize the electrolysis process, since your battery and alternator has a very limited amount of power.
Third, you must have a low pressure accumulator tank for hydrogen, since the hydrogen consumption of the engine is uneven.
And finally, you must make a unique control system that will power the engine with hydrogen depending on the engine load and its RPM. Hydrogen production requires a separate control system that includes safety.
Since I did this in after work time, it took a year. That was enough time for gas prices to fall :)
But I have the result to share. My car (Ford Tempo, 1994), without modifying, did 25MPG. With the addition of hydrogen (when car's internal power used), I was able to get 26-27MPG. At the end, I added one pre-charged battery and used only it. On this kind of 'hybrid car', I got 28-30MPG.
As I said before, this is a chain of projects that bring unexpected results and discoveries. For example, I refreshed my knowledge in chemistry. The find was that most experiments can be done without leaving the kitchen. Everything is there, and if something is missing, you can purchase in local grocery store or Dollar Store. With the exception of chemical indicator paper to check pH and small scales. And you are ready for real chemical analysis, qualitative and quantitative. This is not a rocket science and very simple if you know how.
It is also possible to produce many chemicals in the kitchen, including hazardous and explosive ones. But thank God that chemistry is taught very badly at schools and universities.
Here is another interesting result that we obtained by analyzing the chemical composition of the products that we usually bought in our grocery store. Some of them, especially those that are grown quickly, are pumped by chemical compounds that do not exist in the same plants grown in nature. And we simply excluded them from our diet.
If we go back to the project with a hydrogen car, then as the complexity increases, simple automation is required. In general, in all the projects, MSP430 micro controllers were used, just because they consumed the least amount of energy. Good docs from TI and basic knowledge of C allowed projects to be done quickly and reliably. In the car, they adjusted the process, freeing me from having to do it manually at 60 mph. In chemistry, they simply received sensors data and sent it via RS232 to a computer, for further analysis. It’s easy to make a basic chromatography tool on MSP430 (using HPLC techniques), but I didn’t go that far.
The fun thing was that micro controllers consume very little power. This allows calculators, from Taxes Instrument, to run 10 years from one set of batteries. It would be foolish not to use it.
Sorry, Not ended yet :)