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What can be added to hydrogen gas to increase the minimum required ignition energy to ignite it?

Here's an interesting chemistry question...

When using hydrogen in an internal combustion engine, it has a tendency to pre-ignite due to a hot intake valve, and although there are things that can be done to the engine itself to fix that, such as ceramic coating the valves or adding sodium filled valves, I was wondering what could be added to the hydrogen gas itself to counteract the pre-ignition tendency? Possibly another gas mixed in? Would an alcohol spray have any effect if mixed in with it like it does with gasoline?

Update:

Ann, they tried this on mythbusters. A car battery doesn't have enough power to effectively perform electrolysis to split water molecules.

Update 2:

Also Ann, the idea is to use hydrogen as the dominant fuel source, not as a supplement to another primary fuel source.

3 Answers

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    gasoline is already being used by a company called http://www.water4gas.com/ their systems looks like it may work and they say that the hydrogen can be directly produced from distilled water, thus no need for a pressurized tank

  • fones
    Lv 4
    4 years ago

    Combustion is a chemical reaction, in many circumstances concerning oxygen. Hydrogen and oxygen combust to style water because of the fact's at a decrease power state. besides the undeniable fact that, as others have suggested there is very nearly no accessible oxygen in Jupiter's ecosystem. Hydrogen, like all different component, may well be a sturdy, liquid, gas, or a supercritical fluid. the bright tension interior Jupiter compresses the hydrogen and different fabric so that's somewhat warm and dense (plenty denser and heavier than something you will hit upon mendacity around your place or backyard). i'm not sure approximately Jupiter in particular, yet planets don't get plenty greater advantageous than Jupiter (even brown dwarves with 80 circumstances as plenty mass) because of the fact the atoms only gets further and extra overwhelmed. The hydrogen is named metallic because of the fact whilst it turns right into a supercritical fluid (the temperature and tension are too intense for it to be liquid or gaseous), the electrons pass freely between atoms as they do in a metallic.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    Carbon dioxide or nitrogen might work. Another possibility would be water injection, this was tried with high compression engines burning low octane fuels in the late 1950s. Alcohol or gasoline, or even kerosene might work too.

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