Originally Posted by RustyLugNut
It is of such a basic nature and the words are such I CANNOT make it any more simple!
A very small amount of HHO can affect combustion. That HHO may not be created in an efficient manner, but it can help contract the combustion curve and net more power than is lost in it's creation. There is nothing untoward in what I have said. Can you not see that the LOSSES in an engine is where the net "energy" is coming from?
You even stated that hydrocarbons are full of hydrogen! All thermochemistry tells us is, a small seeding amount of hydrogen and oxygen can cause a domino effect and release that hydrogen so that classic hydrogen research in the 4% range becomes viable. Go pull up numerous papers on the subject . They are all over the internet. Yes, they can be boring and very technical, but you can just go to the summaries. Hydrogen is fast burning because it does not get trapped in side reactions. It can't. Carbon can. Even the simplest fuel, CH4 is almost an order of magnitude slower in flame propagation because it starts to get sidetracked and produces compounds. Depending on your flame test, CH4 will burn at a rate of 30 cm per second while hydrogen does so at 300 cm per second. But, the minuscule amount H2 is not burning at an accelerated rate! It is chopping up the CH4 and preventing much of the compound formations that would sidetrack the thermodynamics of the combustion. The Carbon can oxidize and form CO2 more rapidly. It may only accelerate that flame front from 30 cm per second to 35 cm per sec, but it is enough to take a few degrees ignition lead away while producing more torque.
Look at a classic ignition/pressure curve. That pressure rise BEFORE top dead center (TDC) is lost work. Reducing that area by faster burn NETS you that lost work by moving it into the area AFTER TDC. This is a basic concept of internal combustion engines. Nothing is pseudoscience. Engine designers strive for this. Thus we have high swirl ports and squish and tumble. These all accelerate and move that flame front along reducing the need for ignition lead. This is why HHO will fail in most modern vehicles that already have accelerated combustion capable cylinder heads.
I introduced the idea of brake mean effective pressure (BMEP) and did a calculation that showed how just a few PSI gain can net several horsepower. The average passenger car engine cruises at peak pressures of a few hundred PSI with BMEP at a less than 100 PSI. Shifting any pressure losses from the negative to the positive nets you the few PSI gain needed to produce more power with the same amount of fuel. This is such a basic concept of mechanical engineering, I don't know how to make it even more understandable.
Well, now you say, the electrolysis efficiency is too low to net any gains. True, if you are just using gobs of electricity to produce that HHO gas. But, if you have an engine that already likes to knock ( older iron head, iron block with high compression ) a very small amount of HHO is needed. I used the number 230 cc per minute. That is not all gas as I explained as a large amount is also steam. But, 140 Watts using Coulombic calcs gives us enough hydrogen to start the domino effect going. The amount of gas needed to start the pre-combustion depolymerization of the hydrocarbon fuel is dependent on the energy of the combustion mix (temperature, pressure, kinetic energy - swirl and tumble). Some engines need a relatively small amount. Some engines are so insensitive, you cannot produce enough HHO without bogging the engine down with alternator load. I use 303/304 Stainless steel in my electrolyzer only because there is a ton of it in the scrap pile out back of the shop. It has a large over-voltage. That is the voltage needed to get any useful electrolysis going. It needs about 2.5v per cell to get my 230 cc/min. But, configuring the cells to have a water jacket with hot water running through it at 80 deg C, reduces the voltage to 1.7V to get the same volume of electrolytic gasses. That gain in efficiency comes from the heat lost in the engine coolant. This actually allows us to stack not 4, but 6 cells in the series. We could get 50% more gas output for the same power. But, that is not necessarily needed. Just play with your engine design and the parameters of operation. PfgPro's engine would have been ideal for this. He can add heat, and compression via a change in boost pressure at cruise as he showed he could do. He could reduce his ignition lead via a "leaky N2O2 injector". HHO will not have as large an effect but with some juggling of intake heat as well as cruise boost, you could see some measurable changes, I predict. Again, since the ignition lead in a lean burn engine is quite long, reducing this lead nets more torque for the same amount of fuel used.
Now the area of real interest to the DIY ecomodder is the lean burn range. Most of us can simply look to the threads of the Honda crowd and see they run at 22:1 AFR and with some tweaking they can run up to about 24:1 AFR. At that point, misfire and partial combustion become prevalent and torque drops. PgfPro could run at 28:1 AFR and above! With his "leaky N2O2" he had calculated AFRs in the 30:1 range with torque enough to drive on. Again, his leaky Nitrous valve provides an affect greater than HHO can, but it underlines the fact that classic studies support what he was doing by the introduction of compounds that easily form active radicals. HHO is one of those compounds since the energy of decomposition of the diatomic hydrogen molecule is relatively low and H+ and OH- radicals can be formed before ignition is started, not after.
So, where is the pseudoscience in all of the above? There is none! I dare you to take the above to ANY tech school or university. It violates none of the classic sciences.
Will we see 50% or 100% more fuel economy? Of course not! I've never said that and the science does not support it. In an engine running at stoichiometry, very little gain is expected - if any at all as the fast burn at stoichiometry for modern engines negates any effect HHO can have. In an older engine design, there may be a gain in the single digits. Lean burn is where gains of value can be made. We all know pumping losses at cruise can approach 15% because of throttling. By opening up the throttle and leaning out the mix, we can gain back some of that lost pumping efficiency. But, by using lean burn, we lose some efficiency back because of the exceedingly long lead times needed as mentioned above. The Honda lean burn can net 7-10% more thermal efficiency (TE). If you can extend the AFR while producing the same torque, you can net even more of that 15% and go beyond. At 30:1 AFR, will you net 50% thermal efficiency since you are using only half the fuel at 14.7:1 AFR? No, it's not that simple. But, you can probably see 15-20% increase in thermal efficiency. What does this mean in a practical sense? It just means your average 30% TE engine can climb up to 34.5% TE or so. About the same as the engine found in the Toyota Prius.
All the above is not pseudoscience. JrMichner posted briefly. I don't think he read the thread. He just posted the usual anti HHO answer. I challenge any of the engineering types to discuss the above. It is not without it's holes and opinions but it is real science.
Again, if you don't understand the above, don't post! You just junk up the thread. I'll answer questions if they are germane to the subject.
Chaz, the fact you didn't know that protons reside in your drinking water means you really need to think before posting.
I have to run. The CO2 laser isn't behaving. Yes, I have lasers! No sea bass, but I have lasers!
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