Gary Carmichael does more than talk about cost of fuel

“Energy dude” touting device to boost power, save on diesel

By DOROTHY COX
THE TRUCKER STAFF

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Trucker Gary Carmichael is fascinated with energy and engines and how they work. If there’s a more cost-effective, fuel-efficient, cleaner energy source — for his home or his truck — he’s interested.

On a recent sunny summer day, Carmichael was at a Central Arkansas truck stop touting the benefits of hydrogen generators made by HHN Samson BT8 out of Fort Charles, Fla., to boost heavy-duty truck engine power and to help them run cleaner and save fuel.

“I was looking for a cheaper way to run my big truck,” he explained. “Biodiesel [made from scratch] is all right but on the road it won’t work; you would have to carry your own lye and methanol.. So that brought me to hydrogen generators, which are workable on gas and diesel [engines].”

“Hydrogen generators use electrolysis to produce nascent [in its purest form] oxygen and nascent hydrogen and injected into the fuel-air mix will cause a chain reaction that ignites all the primary fuel molecules simultaneously.” That in turn gives a faster, more complete burn, which is key to fuel efficiency in an internal combustion engines, including the diesel engine on a Class 8 truck, he noted. “Hydrogen adds more BTUs per burn and adds more power. The engine runs cleaner and makes the oil cleaner which makes the oil last longer.”

“The big thing that I can see [with the hydrogen generator] is the fuel economy,” he said.

FUEL-SAVER: Trucker Gary Carmichael showing off his hydrogen generator. Photo by The Trucker/Dorothy Cox

Loaded and without using the hydrogen generator it costs him 63 cents a mile to run; loaded and using the hydrogen generator it costs him 54 cents a mile. He runs a C15 Caterpillar engine on his Peterbilt. Dead-heading he was getting 7.2 miles to the gallon without the generator compared to 8.8 mpg with it.
“Right now as you know, fuel is at a point where a lot of us are getting to where we will have to get out [of trucking],” the 59-year-old driver said, “and there aren’t going to be a lot of jobs out there.”

The main deterrent he sees is “how people have been programmed to stick that nozzle in their tank. That’s how our society has been programmed.”

He would like to see the nation’s ports mandate hydrogen generators for trucks hauling in the ports. “For the Los Angeles Port, they say they are going to raise $1.6 billion to solve a problem [cutting truck pollution] that would only cost $23 million. With hydrogen generators the pollution could be cleaned up sooner..”

“I’m really into energy,” Carmichael proclaimed, as if it wasn’t obvious.

But unlike many, he puts his money where his mouth is, with energy and money-saving projects not only for his 18-wheeler, but for his home.
A resident of Cluster Springs, Va., near Raleigh-Durham, N.C., he has 35 acres and he’s working on making his own small dam to create hydro-electric power which he will use, himself, with the rest going to his local electricity provider.

He also has figured out a way to take cool water from his hand-dug well to be pumped up into a radiator in his window, acting as a condenser to give him and his wife nearly free air conditioning (the electricity to run the pump is nominal).

Carmichael has had to make his own way since his father died when he was 10 and doesn’t know how to take it easy. He’s always studying, tinkering, building and working on energy related projects and has been for the past 20 years, he said.

To talk about “gasification” and understand how it works is as natural as breathing to Carmichael, who was a marine science major in college but found he “couldn’t make a living” at it.

He got into mechanical repair after that but said the “need dwindled” for his talents in the ’70s, and that “trucking was one of the fields that was still fun” at the time. He started driving in 1973.

In the early ’80s he built a solar furnace and three years later built a gasifier using coal and wood to run an engine. (A gasifier converts wood chips, sawdust, sawgrass and other biomass mixtures into energy.)

He’s also built his own hydrogen generators and wind generators.

“My whole life has been an endeavor of self-learning. I’m not an inventor but I gather information and I put stuff to work,” he said.

“At one stage people said biodiesel wouldn’t work; this [hydrogen generator] could do just as well.”

As far as the hydrogen generators he’s promoting, he said he didn’t have enough time to do the research necessary to make his own that was efficient enough. Why reinvent the wheel? “I decided to find someone who was already making them,” he said.
For more information about the hydrogen generators or other energy-saving projects, Carmichael has a new Web site, theenergydude.com.