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| In the book, "Implement & Tractor: Reflection on 100 years of Farm Equipment" on page 184 there are a couple paragraphs about using hydrogen as motor fuel. Time period was 1914 to 1918. Those with the original magazines may find more details.
" RAN on WATER and GREEN LIQUID
"Lewis Enright, a German chemist of Farmingdale, L. I., it is reported, recently ran an automobile six miles with no fuel except two quarts of water and two ounces of a greenish liquid of his invention. There was a five gallon gasoline tank back of the dashboard. Attached to the cap of the tank was an electrode connected with a two-cell dry battery. There was no other electrical equipment and the tank was empty. Enright declares that by his discovery he can produce automobile fuel for approximately one and a half cents a gallon. He says his invention utilizes the extraction of hydrogen from water."
"Water Versus Gasoline
"Just how much, or how little, there may be in the stories emanating from New York concerning an alleged invention of Louis Enright by which by the addition of a little powder -- some reports say a "green liquid" -- water of the common or hydrant variety may be transmogrified into motor fuel is problematical. Reports further have it that Henry Ford may corral the output for this "tinlizzies," also that it is to be backed by B. F. Yoakum, formerly of the Frisco railway company. Nevertheless, skeptical though they may be, every car or tractor or gas engine owner who is paying 20 cents or more for gasoline will stretch his credulity to the cracking point hoping it may prove true."
I'd guess the green was copper sulfate to make the water more conductive for better dissociation. I would have had the engine inhale both hydrogen and oxygen, since they come off the water in the optimum combustion ratio though hydrogen in air will burn at ratios from 4% to 80%. I suspect the car was something like a very lightweight Oldsmobile rolled dash.
In the 1916 Channon Supply catalog (analogous to today's McMaster-Carr, but the catalog is only 800 pages thick), #6 dry cells cost 70 cents each. $1.40 for 6 miles looks a lot more expensive than a penny and a half per gallon.
I've quoted all there was to show in this book. There might be more in the original article, but I've not dug for that periodical in the local university library. Nor searched for Lewis Enright.
Gerald J. | |
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Hydrogen as motor fuel
