In article . com,
says...
Here's one I just read:

http://www.canada.com/montreal/montr...ry.html?id=cfe...

Some fellow is claiming he has a small device that will boost
combustion efficiency and save drivers lots of money, while reducing
emissions.

Obviously, plenty of claims have been made before, so I'm asking --
does this sound on the level?

It sounds reasonable that injecting H2 into your fuel stream can
improve the combustion. I assume that combusting the H2 in your
cylinders along with the regular fuel will boost temperature to give a
cleaner burn. Would the higher temperature harm your engine life at
all?

Since this device supposedly only holds a limited supply of distilled
H2O, KOH, etc which get periodically replaced, can I assume that it's
catalytically cracking some hydrogen from the hydrocarbon fuel stream
itself, so that hydrogen can improve the combustion of the remaining
fuel at the cylinder?
Separating out the hydrogen would probably take more energy than
it would add during the combustion process.

Is this somehow akin to a sort of turbocharger, but which uses hydrogen
instead of pressurized oxygen? Can it work for other things like
aircraft engines, in order to boost their operating ceiling?

If the invention is actually 'combusting' any hydrogen, the fuel/air
mixture in the engine computer would have to be altered to provide
enough extra oxygen. However, since the amount of air in each
cylinder is generally constant, it would actually require reducing
the fuel input. It doesn't sound too practical to me.

Hmm, I dunno, I feel a little puzzled or suspicious of how he's
achieving a net energy gain here. Can anyone debunk any obvious
fallacies here?

soaking up excess heat by turning water into steam is one obvious
way of increasing efficiency----but that's been done for decades.

Mark Borgerson