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Hello,
Stumbled on the site and this topic.
First I would like to say that I am a chemical engineer and a car nut. As such, I am the natural predator of bogus automobile technobabble.
As sold, 99.99999% of all the HHO generators sold are pure ripoff. Straight scam. Taking your money.
The scammers are aided and abetted by people (several here) that want there to be a magic fix and self blind or ignore logic, chemistry, physics and quantum mechanics.
One person posted that the refining process "adds energy" and "unless cars run on crude he was right". Sorry, but that's showing a level of chemistry understanding below a 4th graders. Not good. Crude oil is refined to separate it into distinct chemical constituents by boiling points. Lower boiling point fractions condense out at the top (physical top) of the tower and are called "light". Asphalt is from the sludge at the bottom and it heavy. Sweet crude has low sulfur content. So when you read about sweet light crude from Saudi, you should understand it will fraction out more light products like gasoline. Heavy crude from California is used to make asphalt and no gasoline. There is no energy added. In fact, energy is REMOVED because some is burned to boil it so that it can condense and be separated. The process is the same as alcohol distillation. You don't hear about energy being added to whiskey, do you?
Sorry, but the posting that sparked this was just so ignorant I could not stand it.
Now on to electrolysis.
First - you all have heard of Carl Sagan? One thing he said is that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs". Think about it. You do this naturally. I drive a Diesel pickup truck. If I said that I get 22 mpg on the freeway at 65 mph - you'd go "yeah sure no problem". In fact, I get between 21.5 and 22.5 at those speeds. If I was to say that I get 220 mpg in that same diesel engine powered truck - you'd instantly call BS on it. Right? I sure would. Why? It's an extraordinary claim so you naturally want to see some extraordinary proof. Typically, as hypermilers you will want to see more detailed proof because you have attempted to get to that mileage and know it's not a simple thing to get 10x better mpg's. Right?
When you read about this HHO scam on the web, think about the extraordinary claim of 20-50% better mpg's and think what extraordinary proofs should be presented and you will see there are none. I'd like to see independant dynomometer runs with fuel consumption, torque, HP and full tail pipe gas evaluation. I'd want to see results from 10-20 cars driven 10,000 miles each by 5 different drivers each with the system remotely turned on/off so the drivers didn't know and adjust driving style. Wouldn't you want to see that? After all we all know driving style impacts economy!
Here's where it gets sticky. You know there are fuel cell's powered by hydrogen. You can generate hydrogen by electrolysis at home and refuel your fuel cell. There is a presentation on the DOE web site evaluating this technology. The exact power requirements are 6300 watts for 8 hours to get enough hydrogen for a 70 mile round trip. That's 50 kWhr. The cars that use hydrogen fuel cells are very small and very light and usually very aero - right? It can only take more to power a normal full sized car or truck. In fact, my truck probably needs 4x the energy to run that same 70 miles. Sound about right? I bring that up as HHO scammers claim a 25% mpg improvement to my truck.
But let's say you wanted to generate that hydrogen while driving with no storage. Picture 70 miles an hour so you only have 1 hour to make it and it requires 50,400 watts of energy. Divide by the voltage to get the amps and that's 4200 amps. Typical ammeter generates 40 to 100 amps. Small cars are in the 40-50 amp range. So you would need to strap on 80-100 alternators to get the amps to do the electrolysis. Wow! at about 15 pounds per alternator, that's about the weight of a geo metro! (I know, I'
m exaggerating!)
There are some claims and links to prove hydrogen does help. It does, but at a concentration of about 10-15% in the air stream. These units are under 1% enrichment. Uh, the lower explosive limit is 4%. Any bells ringing out the BS song yet? There are also some posts that the flame propagation speed of hydrogen is faster than gasoline. WRONG! Hydrogen flame rate is about 1/70th of gasoline's. That's from the standard engineering handbooks. Look it up yourself and see.
What it does do is allows a far leaner fuel to air ratio to be ignited. The explosive limits of gasoline and air are such that it is VERY hard to ignite when over 20:1 air:fuel ratio. But, if you add enough hydrogen (10% --15% is better!), you can lean out the air/fuel ratio to 25:1 or 30:1 and still have it ignite.
But, you guys are called "eco" modders, right? Lean mixtures burn hotter and will produce much much much much more NOx's. That's the prime component in smog, brown haze and acid rain. You would put out more smog from a geo metro than 20 peterbuilts - Yuk! That's not "eco" in my book! At those lean mixtures, it also would burn hot enough to melt your pistons and that's typically a bad thing.
Sorry to be so long and wordy!
jb
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