Yesterday, I talked with Larry Jarboe about his quest for energy independence for this country. Jarboe is St. Mary’s County Commissioner in southern Maryland and has been a long time advocate for biodiesel and electric vehicles.
More recently, Mr. Jarboe has turned his attention to hydrogen boosters (see hydrogen generators for cars) and spearheaded the 2008 Hydrogen Booster Rally, the first of its kind in the world. The 2008 Hydrogen Booster Rally made a trip from St. Mary’s County to the Florida Keys this past weekend.
In this first ever rally, there were three participating vehicles (including a driver and co-driver for each) and the idea was to call attention to using the hydrogen booster devices as a here and now solution to increase gas mileage, reduce emissions and reduce dependence upon foreign energy.
According to Jarboe, there are three different kinds of hydrogen boosters that include parallel, series cell and a cross between the two. The parallel uses two plates and basic electrolysis and the series cell has each cell isolated. Dustin P., who Jarboe’s group calls ‘Electric’ was using the Smack’s booster (a cross between the parallel and series cell) on his car. Jarboe has stated that Electric, “… has so many orders for his booster he can’t keep up with demand.”
In the Hydrogen Booster Rally, Jarboe was driving a diesel VW Rabbit truck with a Boyce box on back. The hydrogen on demand was limited by the output of the alternator. The truck that Jarboe drives is geared down so it usually only goes 45 mph, but he was driving it around 55 mph and above for this trip. ‘Electric’ was in a 1987 Cutlass with the Smack’s Booster. And, B. Boyce drove a Toyota Prius with his Boyce booster in back. The Prius got 60 mpg, which is high since it usually gets its best mileage from non-highway driving.
I asked Mr. Jarboe how we are to get these devices into people’s hands and he replied that the Smack’s Booster is open source, so anyone can build one and if they don’t want to go to the trouble, they can buy one for a couple of hundred bucks online. I also noted that there appeared to be many scams concerning these devices.
Jarboe said, he’ll be the first to admit there are a lot of scams. That’s why one needs to see the schematics for the hydrogen boosters (such as with the open source units) or a cross-section view of it working to know if it’s legitimate or not.
In fact, this was one of the major points of the 2008 Hydrogen Booster Rally. According to Jarboe, “We’re trying to separate the hype from the hydrogen.”
There is also an informative 50-minute video about the rally that took place shortly before the event took place, that I highly recommend viewing. With gasoline and diesel prices skyrocketing and no end in site, the popularity of hydrogen boosters is sure to grow just as quickly.
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