Alternate-fuel Motorcycles

[grayman]

Since we have a thread on a water-powered car, I thought I'd add one on motorcycles that run on hydrogen and water:

Hydrogen:
B_Whbb_hlPs

Water:
FW_LQqJk740&NR=1

[Olowkow]

So "not being educated" is the key to developing magical inventions. Sort of the "Roadrunner" theory of gravity.
The first, hydrogen powered bike seems plausible,but the second is woo.
The mechanic should have brought his exhaust analyzer.

[grayman]

Yeah, I thought that the hydrogen-powered bike may have plausibility and potential (At least in the metro areas), but the watered-powered one seemed like I was watching a magician's trick.

[Bikewer]

Someone on the Make magazine blog had an air-powered moped; took a carbon-fiber tank and two small air engines.
Says he gets about four miles out of the thing; perfect for campus commuting.....

[Olowkow]

The Bios website is all over the map with various suspect inventions. This is the guy with the water powered car.

http://www.biosfuel.org/biobattery.html

The "biobattery" uses human urine as an electrolyte, and produces phosphorus! which he has just laying around in piles. Yeah, right. He states that when it is depleted, you just have to "piss on it." This is unbearable enough, with his stupid measurement of 1.5 volts (a potato will do same thing), but when he measures the "current" by applying the ammeter across the "biobattery" (with no series load), it is over the top for me. For the layman, you can't measure current without a load, since the ammeter presents a very low resistance, and merely measures voltage drop across this low resistance "shunt" as current. There is a part II to this, which gets even sillier.

This guy is another Steorn. He is totally clueless, and I'd love to see this "water mobile" debunked.

[X]

The hydrogen bike is interesting.
80 kph is really all you need in a city, and 8 horses on an electric motor is quite a bit (heck, my bike only makes 10 hp stock, maybe 12 with the tweaking its had).
I wonder if it's straight hydrogen, or if it sues a hydrogen-on-demand system.
Either way, I'd ride it. Besides, it's dual-sport capable.
(Did anybody else notice that it seemed to have either no transmission, or a CVT?)


The second one sets off my woo-alarm. I'd want to see more testing before I lent it any credence.

[LordoftheLeftHand]

The performance in the second video might be done with a "double tank". Basically a fuel tank that is divided into 2 sections. A lower section with a standard fuel (that makes the bike run), and a top section that leads nowhere where you can pour water in.

I'd like to see someone put a match to his special water or better yet pour it directly into the carburetor and see if it will burn (like you can do with conventional fuels).

Anyway that is just my guess.

LLH

[X]

The performance in the second video might be done with a "double tank". Basically a fuel tank that is divided into 2 sections. A lower section with a standard fuel (that makes the bike run), and a top section that leads nowhere where you can pour water in.

I'd like to see someone put a match to his special water or better yet pour it directly into the carburetor and see if it will burn (like you can do with conventional fuels).

Anyway that is just my guess.

LLH


Those were my thoughts (double-tank and combustibility), but I didn't want to commit them to print lest I overlooked some piece of information.

[Aitch]

There's always the bio-diesel bike - http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_bikes.html - which does actually work.

[COLONEL]

The hydrogen Is a reality ,but I want more proof on the water bike . Something just does not seem right .The U.S. Army is already using diesel / multi fuel motorcycles made by Kawasaki .

[Acleron]

About the second video.

If he is claiming that he is not using energy to alter the water in anyway it breaks the conservation of energy law.

He is very evasive about the mechanism.

He invokes the 'they are after me' scenario.

He wants money.

And finally, the probability of putting together a contraption with no education in science that works first time is infinitesimal, or did he ruin many motorbikes by trying to run them on water before he found a technique that worked?

All in all, a scam run by a fraud.

[JEROME DA GNOME]

So "not being educated" is the key to developing magical inventions. Sort of the "Roadrunner" theory of gravity.
The first, hydrogen powered bike seems plausible,but the second is woo.
The mechanic should have brought his exhaust analyzer.


I would recommend that you Educate yourself on Thomas Edison.

[fagin]

I would recommend that you Educate yourself on Thomas Edison.

Generalizing again?

Who needs education if lack of education = Edison.

[van_dutch]

I think the hydrogen powered bike is interesting. Only problem is the production, distribution and storage of hydrogen, as the reporter mentions at the very end. The water powered bike..... the inventor refers to it as "a water based fuel." To me, that it is not water strictly speaking. Has anyone been able to find the patent that they mentioned? I am curious to see what is actually going on. It seems to me like there may be a completely plausible explanation but the guy's irrational fear seems to be preventing proper analysis from taking place.

[van_dutch]

peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:BiosFuel

there is a video in the middle of the page on which the inventor of the "water" powered motorcycle runs a diesel vehicle on about 60% water with a catalyst and the rest various petroleum products, used engine oil and transmission fluid. Again, without further more detailed testing, can't say exactly what is going on, but it doesn't seem too far fetched. It isn't straight water. Dry gas will do the same thing, maybe not to the same extent but the idea doesn't seem too far off.

[luchog]

I would recommend that you Educate yourself on Thomas Edison.

Generalizing again?

Who needs education if lack of education = Edison.
It's also complete nonsense. Edison was not uneducated. In fact, he was better educated that the majority of his peers. The only difference is that he received most of his education at home, being taught by his mother, instead of in the poor quality and rather rigid schools available to him at the time. In fact, he very likely spent at least as much time, if not more, on actual studying; particularly since he was not being subjected to the unnecessary repetitiveness and religious indoctrination that formed a substantial portion of the schoolday for his contemporaries. Quite a difference from the lack of eductation exemplified here.

His later work involved systematic and exhaustive scientific inquiry and experimentation, and is well-documented; exactly the sort of thing that the conspiracy-theory-spouting nutjobs who promote nonsense like "water-powered" motorcycles seem to avoid pretty stridently.

(Of course, he did steal a lot of his stuff from others, most notably Nikolai Tesla; but that's a different issue. :) )

[DavidS]

For the layman, you can't measure current without a load, since the ammeter presents a very low resistance, and merely measures voltage drop across this low resistance "shunt" as current.
Really? I'd go along with saying you can't meaningfully measure power without a load, but what does a load bring that's essential to observing the rate of charge passage?

The typical non-solid-state ammeter actually does measure current by observing the magnetic field it induces around a coil through which the current passes; the voltage drop across that coil is irrelevant to the current measurement (though it might influence the circuit to change the current, so smaller is more "ideal"), and the current it measures is what does *not* bypass the meter through any shunt. Knowing the ratio of current through the shunt and meter (which is the ratio of resistances of the meter and shunt) permits determination of the total through both, so a shunt can be used to measure much larger currents than the un-shunted ammeter could handle. It's the voltmeter that "indirectly" measures voltage by using an ammeter to measure the current through a series resistance.

Solid-state devices could be configured otherwise.

[tsig]

Really? I'd go along with saying you can't meaningfully measure power without a load, but what does a load bring that's essential to observing the rate of charge passage?

The typical non-solid-state ammeter actually does measure current by observing the magnetic field it induces around a coil through which the current passes; the voltage drop across that coil is irrelevant to the current measurement (though it might influence the circuit to change the current, so smaller is more "ideal"), and the current it measures is what does *not* bypass the meter through any shunt. Knowing the ratio of current through the shunt and meter (which is the ratio of resistances of the meter and shunt) permits determination of the total through both, so a shunt can be used to measure much larger currents than the un-shunted ammeter could handle. It's the voltmeter that "indirectly" measures voltage by using an ammeter to measure the current through a series resistance.

Solid-state devices could be configured otherwise.

The load keeps you from blowing up your ammeter.

[Hellbound]

Just to add to what tsig said, what would be the point of measuring current without some sort of load? Your current is proportional to the voltage and inversely proportional to the resistence (load), so whatever current you measure is not going to be the current your actual circuit will push. It's not even going to be a good measure of the maximum current your power source will send.

Oh, and one other thing to point out:
the magnetic field it induces around a coil through which the current passes
^
|
That's a load :)

[ktesibios]

If you know the open-circuit voltage of a battery and the current it delivers into a short circuit, you can calculate its internal resistance (see Thevenin's theorem (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/Thevenin.html).

However, there's a way to measure thevenin equivalent resistance with less risk of exploding your multimeter:

Connect battery to resistive load R1. Measure battery terminal voltage V1 and load current I1.

Disconnect load. Connect a different resistive load R2. Measure battery terminal voltage V2 and load current I2.

Thevenin equivalent resistance = (V1-V2)/(I1-I2).

You can also do it by measuring the battery's no-load voltage and the voltage with a known resistive load, in which case the Thevenin equivalent resistance= (Vno load-Vload)/(Vload/Rload).

If you're designing circuitry to be powered by a battery, knowing the battery's internal impedance and how it changes with temperature, stage of charge and current drain is useful information. If you're a free-energy woo, doing dumbass things like connecting an ammeter directly across a battery (some types of which can deliver remarkably high currents into a short circuit) also produces useful information.

It proves conclusively and efficiently that you haven't got an inkling of a clue.

[DavidS]

The load keeps you from blowing up your ammeter.
But that need be no more a part of the current measurement than is the nozzle lever to measurement of the gasoline you pump into your car.
That's a load :)
Possibly in the same sense that your speedometer is a load on your car. Besides being a broader generalization of "load" than I care to use, the magnitude of that "load" is unrelated to the measured quantity and can be vanishingly small, and that particular implementation isn't fundamentally necessary. Much like the car's speed can be measured without carrying its own speedometer (e.g. radar), to measure current there's not even any real need for the current to run through the meter at all; that's just a convenient technique to ensure knowledge of the current's path well enough to quantify its relation to the magnetic field its passage generates.

Olowkow's point (if I may presume) is that a load-free current measurement isn't useful, but it's his choice of words suggesting it's not possible that I address. His declaration that current is measured by sensing a voltage drop through which it passes is simply incorrect for a broad and common class of current measuring devices. I'm not even asserting that he doesn't realize these points; they might just be a little too simplified (IMO) for the layman he addresses.

I think (presumptively again) ktesibios is making the points that a short-circuit current measurement is in fact loaded by resistance in the source itself and, along with open-circuit voltage measurement, can yield useful information about the source, but that same characterization could be had without resorting to closed-circuit or even open-circuit measurements. It's a little hard to tell who he's trying to hit with such a broad swing of his no-clue sword, though.