Quote:
Originally Posted by P-hack
That being said, I did watch the video (that is how I know the compression is lossy and other limitations of the model!) and I didn't see where they "proved" HOOH.
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Never said they did - I posted that video because (a) it has some cool stuff in it, and (b) it shows the kind of complexity that's going on in a combustion process, exposing the sillyness of the "it can't work because <simplistic high school chemistry equation>" argument which always seems to be the first knee jerk slap-down when HHO is mentioned. Incidentally, the simulations in the video (which are not HHO related) may be lossy, but that "lossyness" allows billions of times more accuracy than a "non-lossy" simulation would.
As for my personal opinion on HHO - I think the "miracle marketers" and mason jar crowd have thoroughly trashed any possibility of assessing the question on the basis of "previous evidence". How many times would home experimenters have to fail to build a solar panel using alfoil, paper mache and a sharpie before you concluded that solar power was bunk and not worth investigating?
Bear in mind also that this stuff started out a long time ago, on generally old, small engines. Changes in compression ratios, timing etc. may mean a positive result may not even be applicable to modern car engines. And as RLN points out, ozone may be implicated and HHO itself may be a red herring.
To
actually investigate this, one would need, at a minimum, an experimental engine on a dyno, with adjustable compression ratio and timing. These engines exist, for octane testing and similar - getting hands on one may be a bit hard for most people of course, but that's life... Show no change in efficiency over a wide range of operating points, and no change in the operating envelope of the engine for a few different levels of HHO and ozone, and
then we have a good solid negative result. If anyone has or knows of such test results (or some decent subsets which have been systematically tested), it would be great to copy it, post it, and sticky it. I'd really like to see this, HHO discussions tend to consist of claims of success, anecdotes of failure and opinions about what is or isn't possible, some hard data would be real nice.
There may be a completely negative result - fine. At least there'd be some decent evidence (negative results are great). There may be a positive result but at operating points that a modern car engine can't use - which would put it to rest as a car mod but may open up other interesting possibilities. Or there may be a positive result we can use - I ain't holding my breath, but that would be cool. Whichever way it goes,
actual answers will be had from systematic investigation, not a historical survey of sketchy reports accepted or rejected on the basis of whether you agree with their results (that goes for both sides
).
In the meantime, ten thousand negative results from ten thousand ad hoc mason jars built from plans sold by ten thousand snake oil salesmen in ten thousand ford cortinas doesn't actually prove a great deal, except to show how repetition can be quite convincing even in the absence of decent evidence.