A gift for HHO Skeptics!

[Flakbadger]

What IS HHO anyway? I'm starting to assume it's an overly complex and unnecessarily fanciful spin on water injection...?

And does the first "H" stand for "Horse***t?"

[user removed]

Originally Posted by jakobnev

Any fancy links for us documenting your work tuning the car for best mileage before adding HHO?

You wouldn't want him to actually use something stupid like the scientific method to test his claims?
Oh the hipocrisy of not believing the "facts".

regards
Mech

[IamIan]

Bold Added:

Originally Posted by Gatech

I'm really happy reading that LOT of sceptics about HHO here!. It's cool, there are sceptics about all in this world!. Specially if you don't test something

HHO Really let you run leaner without losing power or getting higher engine temps!, but you are adding Oxigen!

A few clarification requests:

#1> Please post the dyno charts of your testing that shows no loss of power.
( Or have you not done the testing? )

#2> How are you differentiating between the Lean Burn effects and the HHO effects? ( clarification of request: Lean Burn effects can be had without HHO ... for HHO to be worthwhile it has to contribute more than just those Lean Burn effects. )

#3> What % mix of Hydrogen to Water vapor are you using in your HHO? ( if it just H2+O2 , than HHO is the wrong term to use. )

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by Flakbadger

What IS HHO anyway? I'm starting to assume it's an overly complex and unnecessarily fanciful spin on water injection...?

And does the first "H" stand for "Horse***t?"

Most of the time , when it gets described ... HHO means they are mixing water injection with hydrogen injection.

The hydrogen part could be a bottle of hydrogen ... but about ~90% of the time ... they get in the car by using electrolysis at less than 30% efficiency to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

HHO is just a short hand term to indicate the Hydrogen injection part difference with regular water injection.

[ron]

If I am not mistaken hydrogen is in gasoline ,diesel ,nat gas. all are (hydrocarbon). What does a fuel cell produce ya ask yourself . HHO could be a good direction Go Guys. I will finish mine, I will.

[Flakbadger]

Originally Posted by IamIan

[...]using electrolysis at less than 30% efficiency to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

THANK you, I understand now. I did some searching on here and found a lot of negative responses, but no reference to what it meant in the first place.

[RiceCake]

Having made hydrogen at home with a complicated generator designed and built by actual engineers, and having used said hydrogen to power a car (briefly) I can tell you this.

Does "HHO" work? Yeah. It actually does. It generates hydrogen, it can be burned, and it actually does do something.

Unfortunately all it does is a glorified science experiment. The losses in generating hydrogen are extremely high. The amount you get off a car alternator are very little. The energy to run the alternator comes from the cars engine. Burning hydrogen results in water...so even at %100 efficiency a "HHO" generator will only result in a complicated way of moving water down into the exhaust pipe...rendering -ZERO- power output. The laws of conservation of energy apply here.

The only science supporting this increases fuel economy? Efficiency boosting. Hydrogen effects the way gasoline burns since hydrogen itself is flammable. Its a lot like propane in diesel applications, it can cool an engine, increase flame front speed, and it can increase the amount of timing advance the engine can handle without causing pinging. Great!

So lets analyze this NASA paper you post as evidence. Its long and extremely technical so I'll break it down for people. Yes, NASA agrees, adding hydrogen in a piston engine increases efficiency. Perfect. But how much is also posted.

Page 14 (16 on the PDF), "Total Energy Consumption". It goes on to state that the engine they used experienced a %3 (three) increase in energy conversion efficiency. So, taking that for lent, it already means HHO doesn't work, because everyone running HHO claims improvements over ten times higher then that. This was a NASA test to find hydrogen's overall energy benefit and they got all of three percent in a controlled environment, which a car is not.

But just to make sure this horse is beat to death properly, how much hydrogen did they inject into this engine? Granted, the engine is in excess of a 7 liter engine, so I'll do some extrapolation, but NASA needed to inject 0.231 kilograms per hour into this engine to get that %3.

Lets divide that by seven for fun. 0.033 kilograms per hour. This is poor math and bad scientific application, but needless to say you need /at least/ that much hydrogen per hour to even approach the claims that NASA paper makes. 0.033 doesn't sound like a lot except for one problem.

To get 1 kilogram of hydrogen, it requires about 55kWh of energy. This is easily found online because many people ponder if we can use wind or solar to generate hydrogen from water for cars, and needless to say, the energy requirements are massive. Doing the math, 55000 watts / 1 kilogram translates to 1815 watts of power / 0.033 kilograms.

1815 watts an hour. /1815/. Per hour. That is how much energy we're talking you need to generate enough hydrogen to get a %3 increase in efficiency. Bearing in mind, NASA considers an increase in efficiency to be an increase in total usage of gasoline energy. That entire paper says nowhere that the engine, itself, is generating the hydrogen.

1815 / 13.4 = 135.4 amps of current. Awesome; your alternator is absolutely maxed out or way over its capacity at this point. Most cars don't even have an alternator capable of over 80 amps constant. This also eliminates everything else in your car operating. This is how much current is necessary to produce /less then/ enough hydrogen to match the NASA test. Bearing in mind, I divided the required figures /by seven/, meaning this extrapolates to something around the hydrogen required to increase the efficiency in a 1.1 liter engine a whopping %3.

And I could easily calculate the horsepower draw but needless to say, people disabling their alternator have already net more gains then %3 anyhow. According to Google, with a perfect (perfect) translation of energy, 1815 watts equates to 2.43395509. A 1.1 liter engine in a FIAT Panda as an example, generates about 50 horsepower. Using 2.5 horsepower to generate hydrogen to net a %3 gain means you're getting 1.5 horsepower in increased power output from more efficient fuel burn. 50 - 2.5 + 1.5 = 49. Not a lot, but that is a loss anyhow, with the added cost of ruining your alternator.

So, we done yet with HHO? I'd love to know why its so popular when nobody has any logical science behind it and nobody has any independent tests to prove it. There's a reason why. Its a fraud. And being so enthusiastic about it without any verified claims and quoting the amount of members on a forum as being evidence means you're either insane or buying into a fad because you want to be right.

[HydroJim]

Then can we find a reason why so many people have experienced benefits from HHO?

[RiceCake]

The same reasons placebos work, and the same reason why I've yet to see a fully independent study coincide with the claims made for HHO.

I did my homework, you do yours.

Edit: And money. %90 of HHO websites out there are pyramid schemes. The few who claim to be legit are vague at best about their research, goals and evidence.

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by HydroJim

Then can we find a reason why so many people have experienced benefits from HHO?

LOL Who might that be?