PopSci: Increase SUV MPG by 40 %...?

[lockerc18]

The December 2005 issue of Popular Science has an article entitled "Taming Your Gas Guzzler", which is about a device which is forthcoming from a Canadian outfit called Innovative Hydrogen Solutions. The device, the H2N-Gen, supposedly provides an increase of up to 40 percent in the mileage of vehicles it's installed on, by injecting hydrogen into the combustion process to make it more efficient. There is a website which talks about it at http://hydrogenpowernews.com/2005/09/18/innovative-hydrogen-solutions-hydrogen-generating-module/ .

The question is, is this just more snake oil, or is this thing really going to work? I don't know if it would fit on an 4Runner, but the referenced website says Toyota is making an investment in this, so who knows?

 

[szekany]

It's for real. Sort of. The science behind it is legitimate. These devices have apparently become relatively popular for truckers, at least in Canada.

IIRC, the big problem with it is when you start to actually crunch the numbers behind it. Real world efficiency increases are apparently more on the order of 10% - 15%, for a device that costs about $4k. (Sorry, I don't remember where I heard those numbers from.) Not sure how difficult installation is. The trucker say they save about $700/month on fuel this way, so obviously for them it'll pay off relatively quickly. For consumer vehicles it's a different ballgame - from a pure economics standpoint, you'd be hard pressed to justify buying one even if gas prices doubled or tripled from what they are today. Whether it's worth it from an evironmental perspective is debatable.