by OgreOwner » Sun Mar 26, 2006 1:52 pm
Howdy electrician:
That is one of the patents of Stanley Meyer.
Do a search at the patent office with Meyer as the inventor and Beeston as the assignee.
The search should reveal 5 patents. They start with 3,954,592 (May 4, 1976), then the 3,980,053 (Sept 14, 1976). Both of those were filed in the US on Nov. 25, 1974. Then comes 4,107,008 (Aug 15, 1978), 4,454850 (June 19, 1984), 4,490,349 (Dec 25 1984).
All are assigned to the Beeston Company Limited of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. That company faithfully made all the support payments to keep those patents out of the public domain, then stopped as soon as the first lapsed into the public domain due to the passage of time. As a result, all 5 are now in the public domain. The first two or three are the ones that interest me. The last one is off the wall. The '053 that you refer to shows a drawing of the device installed in a car. Fun! Interesting! True? I remain a bit unsure. You do not have to have a working prototype to file for and get a patent.
I am very sure that electrolysis works. I have a Hoffman Apparatus and bubbles stream off of the platinum electrodes when I give it 13.5 volts from an auto battery charger. Teensy, tiny, expensive platinum electrodes. You can buy a Hoffman Apparatus from a variety of scientific supply places for a few hundred dollars. It is an H arraingement of glass burets and can be used to test some claims since you can measure the time and volume of gas produced.
Mr. Horvath claims that 12 volts at 40 amps with a duty cycle of 0.5 ( '053 column 7 & 2) makes enough gas to power a 1974 V8 engine. He also gives Faradays Laws for you to chew on. How good is your Chemistry and your math? That is his claim. What is reality? I know that he does not sell the device and I cannot buy one or a kit.
I know that an automobile alternator consumes 5 hp. There are plans to build a home generator from a 5 HP gas engine and an auto alternator out there for the home preparedness fans. Todays alternators generate 13.5 volts at up to 120 amps, I like to use 90 amps as a pessimistic figure, that type is cheap at junk yards. Harbor Freight has a big generator head you can purchase that runs off a bigger engine. For the sake of argument, say that each alternator can drive two Horvath devices. A 1974 era V8 engine develops around 350 HP. A car needs 200 HP to motor down the road. (Lots of cars get by with 100 HP or so). This car will not be winning any races. That leaves 150 HP or 30 alternators - enough to power 60 Horvath devices. Hmmm. It may ahve to be a truck. Perhaps a stationary generator would be good for a first test. If there is any Net excess generation, I can drive my power meter backwards where I live...
He claims one device does the job. Would 10 Horvath devices hooked to the intake manifold keep a V8 engine running under load? I want to find out.
Mr. Horvath is alive and kicking down in Australia. He is currently seeking Big Bucks for his current project. If you have Big Bucks, he might talk to you.
He has a right to be a tad shy. He has been villified by the Australian press for his Hydrogen Car - this patent. I have yet to see any report of that 1974 car running down the road.
If a demonstration is needed, I envision a Dune buggy at an auto track. No chance to hid anything on a Dune buggy. Invite the press to bring a 5 gallon water jug. Show an empty tank. Drink from the jug, then put the water i the tank. Start up and do 200 miles. Pretty easy to prove it works in my opinion. Would Big Oil leave you alone after the demo? Not so sure. That is why you invite every TV station in town...
I have been gathering the parts he calls for, some are pretty hard to find or indeitfy if you do not know the industry that makes them. I have been developing or finding the expertise to build the invention described in the '053 patent for quite some time now. Once I have that one built and tested, I may go on to some of the others. The invention protection period has passed on all of them.
Despite the detail that the patent drawings, he leaves out critical details and there are few dimensions. The drawings in the various patents are drawn to different ratios. I guess that is what they mean by "skilled in the art" - you have to figure out those dimensions for yourself... I see the need for a lot of experimentation.
I put together a decent woodworking shop and a small metalworking shop, then had to move. I moved into my new house (600 ft squared built in 1922) just about 8 months ago. I am still unpacking and putting the shops together. Too much stuff. Need a place to put all the stuff that will not fit in the house. Once I get unpacked to the point that I can move around, I plan to start building the device.
Will it work? Yes, it is just another electrolysis cell. Will it meet Horvath's claims? That is the big question.
I want to build a number of the devices. A kit is not out of the question. Hopefully we can get it on CNC machinery so that copies are easy. The transformers are where most of the questions now exist. How many cells will it take to meet his claims? Unknown. I am not sure I will build it totally true to the patent - I see no need to keep the gasses separate if a flame arrestor is used.
One nagging question is: What motivated Beeston to pay all that money? Keeping patents out of the public doamin is expensive. Look at the first and ninth claim of the '053 patent. It claims the right to any electrolysis cell feeding gas to an internal combustion engine. Enforcable from 1976 to basically 1996. Supressed technology? Only time and experimentation will tell.
Ogre