There is increasing interest of the advantages of hydrogen as an automotive fuel, since studies have shown hydrogen additives to boost power and fuel economy. Several companies manufacture and sell hydrogen-generation engine add-ones, and these companies promote the used of hydrogen in combustion engines as a safe, environmentally-friendly technology. However, there may be a significant environmental and health risk to this practice, which has not been addressed by these companies.

In touting the safety of hydrogen generation in engines, the assumption is that the hydrogen reacts primarily with oxygen. However, air is about 78% nitrogen, and therefore the hydrogen-nitrogen reaction species need to be considered as well. The nitrogen molecule has an energy bond of 226,000 calories per mole. The hydrogen breaks this bond with an energy greater than the nitrogen energy bond which would effectively double the energy input from the hydrogen-nitrogen reaction. The output of these reactions includes nitric acid, and hydrogen cyanide gas.

Nitric acid is highly corrosive at combustive temperature, and can severely damage cylinders, pistons, valves and exhaust systems. Hydrogen cyanide is highly toxic to all living organisms. In addition, increase NOx combustion products can lead to increased tropospheric ozone pollution.

As hydrogen power and hydrogen additives receive increase use, a very heavy negative environmental and health effect may result.

David Wofsey,
Chief Agent
Sonic Spark, LLC

For over a 100 years the Automotive Industry has been building engines, and only recently have engineers begun to understand the oxidization processes in the automotive cylinder.  The basic principle is that energy is added to the O2 (oxygen molecule) which advances it to a configuration with a higher reaction energy, that of O3 (ozone).

Several years ago, the industry-wide decision was made adopt the the so-called “Lean Burn”, which increases power, fuel economy, and reduce Carbon monoxide. but the immediately apprarent downside of flooding the cylinder with more air than is needed for stoichiometric combustion is that undesirable compounds are produced, including NOx(  (nitrogen oxygen compounds) which react with VOCs in the atmosphere to produce O3 through the Leighton Cycle. In addition, some O3 is produced directly in the cylinder.

The energy for combustion is contained in the hydrocarbon fuel droplet.  However, the available fuel is only on the periphery of the droplet.  Also, the fuel droplet is a little ball in the bigger air charge volume.

The effectiveness of combustion is dependent on the mating of oxygen molecules to  hydrocarbon molecules.  The spark flame developed by standard-configuration spark plugs progresses randomly to lower the electric potential between emitter and groun. However when the spark creates a coupled ultrasonic vibration, the flame is collated with spin accoustic pressure.  Therefore, the cylinder air/fuel charge is homogenized to enhance combustion.  But importantly, the ultrasonic action changes rapidly when accrued flame pressure shatters the fuel droplets.  This provides a greater availability of active fuel molecules for combustion.  While the total fuel mass is identical in both systems, the ultrasonic flam increases the mass action in the cylinder.

As the ultrasonic flame progresses through the cylinder, it forms a flame front with the non combusted air/fuel.  Along the line of the flame front, the vibration intensity of the flame is amplified, and on a fuel droplet, the vibration pressure rapidly changes from a very high pressure, (2000 psi ) to zero, and back strongly increasing the mass action.

The spark strike is always a series of quick single burts which generally strikes at an edge of the ground.  The strike always develops a negative space charge which prevents the following strike to hit at that same point. In the case of the side electrodes, the following strike will be at another ground tip.  In the case of the ring electrode, the strikes will rotate. For the case of the single eletrode strap, the successive strikes will be random as a result of the charge on the ground electrode strap.  In the case of the short ground over the center electrode, the strikes will follow along the edge.  The concept is to produce forward flame.

This is an important concept to understand. There can only be one spark at a time, and the resulting potential increase at strike point requires the spark to move to another location … lighting really doesn’t strike in the same place twice, at least not for a little while. So multiple ground configurations do not get two sparks, they simply get a spark that vibrates between forks or between electrodes. Is this an improvement or a gimmick?

The Sonic Spark Plug is unique in its strike patern.  The strikes target to the center hole in the ground, and rotates along the inner edge of the hole.  The ground hole is  an ultra high frequency whistle which puts a spin on the flame which is projected frontally in vibration.

Ideally, the air-fuel charge in the cylinder is stoichiometric.  That is a ratio of 14 parts air and one part fuel. In practice, the air charge will be greater than14 parts to favor more complete combustion to limit carbon monoxide, CO, air pollution. With today’s fuel injection system, the fuel hydrocarbon, is in a droplet form, and the droplets combust in the outer edge which diminishes the available fuel for quick combustion. And, the time period available for effective combustion is limited to the time of spark strike to piston to top center. Figuratively, the cylinder is in the power charge state. which is effectively the compression of a spring, and exhibits reverse torque. Forward torque develops after the piston goes over top center as the compressed gas spring releases pushing the piston down.

Resistance in spark plugs was originally added to control electromagnetic interferance, EMI.  With the introduction of television, there was a continual disturbance of television reception with vehicles producing EMI from the sparking of the spark plugs.   To reduce EMI, spark plug wires went resistive, and resistance was inserted in the spark plug construction.  To the automotive connoiseur, this was interpreted to produce a weaker spark, and a decrease in power.

However, being that the average person has not studied electrical theory, the spark plug resistance effect is not well understood.  Firstly, the current through the spark plug is small, in the order of micro amperes in today’s engines.  What must be considered is the effect of the spark plug ignition coil.  Spark Plug Ignition Coils are high voltage transformers which contain thousands of turns of wire with very high resistance coil wire. In its connection to a spark plug with no resistance, and low resistance in the connecting ignition wire, when the spark plug is sparked, the effective resistance across the spark plug gap is zero.  And the spark power is primarily lost in the high resistance of the coil.  Also, this can result in a burn out of the ignition coil. With resistance added to the spark plug, there is protection of the ignition coil from burn out.

For optimum power delivered to the spark plug, there should be a balance of resistance between the spark plug coil, and the spark plug resistance,  In practice, the resistance should be approximately 5,000 ohms.  The resistance is not super critical.  But, spark plug resistances will vary,  Greater than 10,000 ohms, the effect can result in effective power loss to the spark plug.  The point is that the power to the spark plug consists of two components namely voltage and current.  The voltage arrives first, and then is followed by the current.  Excessive resistance will delay the arival of the current.  Technically, this is a phase delay which decreases the effective spark power.

Sonic Spark Llc. has been addressing spark plug design for over twenty years.  The first patent of a Sonic Spark Plug was a spin off of an earler development that was derived from an invention of flame acoustics at Martin Marietta.  A welding nozzle whistle was designed to introduce ultra sonic vibration into the weld puddle for the fabrication of the Titan I Missle.  The addition of the welding arc added energy to the vibration which resulted in a plasma arc.  With the first energy crises, the principle was applied to fabricate an ultra sonic spark plug.  This unit worked, and exhibited significant increase of power and mileage.  However, this unit was difficult to make, and did not have any flexibility for vehicle applications.  The present Sonic Spark Plug US Patent No. 5,610,470 is universal in it applicaion.  Primarily, it is a sonic modification that is incorporated into most OEM Spark Plugs.  Thereby, it is applied to almost any gas engine type.

By using the OEM specified spark plug, Sonic Spark, Llc. stays within the design constraints of the OEM engine design.

The above diagram illustrates the interactive component system of the automotive engine.  In operation, the computer program is responsive to the Driver Control which optimizes the Air/Fuel quantity, and ratio for speed and load requirement.  Additionally, with the computor monitoring the engine RPM, the spark timing is advanced or retarded.  The spark plug is a dominant active link in the complex engine power system.  In consideration of the performance requirements, the Engine Design Engineers select the OEM spark plug that provides the optimum performance and reliability that is required by a range of tests of: power, efficiency, and air emision standards.  All of this, with final road test conditions.