Any Experience With HHO as a Combustion Enhancer?

[dcb]

numerous sites debunking hho, 100% scammers selling hho, there is no sense in assuming it works. You are of course welcome to try it yourself, you might solicit some help designing a repeatable test if you want to be more scientific about it.

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[Floordford]

Well I dont want this to go into a heated he said he said. Yes it it true I havent personally made or bought one to run through the ringer. But I know there are many that put down this system without their own testing as well. There are also those that speak highly of these systems that do run them and of course those that tried them and it didn't work for them. So with that said, it seems that there is a 50/50 mix of lovers and haters of this. The supporters of which ever side you are on may seem greater.

Granted I can't answer your every question because with 1 answer comes 10 more questions. At some point its just an attack waiting for one of those answers to have fault. Not that some of those questions are bad its just searching for fault instead of useful info.

The most definitive thing that would prove good testing procedures is if the people that use these say what design of unit was used, what water mix, the supporting accessories, the engine its feeding, the output and draw of the unit, then repeatable MPG test with and without. Also idling and emissions testing.

To me the reason i back the idea of electrolysis in vehicles is because there are those that have had positive results. And I feel that just like the light bulb this will be refined and there will be many failures along the way. To me it seems that majority of the ones that fail are not doing any refinements. But they do debunk those that are spewing the instant claims of grandeur. And it would be nice to get the scammers out of the way.

[dcb]

Originally Posted by Floordford

But I know there are many that put down this system without their own testing as well.

Because the hho proposition doesn't make sense, there is no consistent theory and when disciplined folks who document what they do and how they measure things try it, it fails. You take it on heresay that it works. I haven't gone unicorn hunting either, life is too short.

Originally Posted by Floordford

...it seems that there is a 50/50 mix of lovers and haters of this...

I seriously doubt that, you can blame the scammers for the majority of the "lovers" of it.

Originally Posted by Floordford

Granted I can't answer your every question because with 1 answer comes 10 more questions.

If an answer creates more questions then it isn't much of an answer.

Originally Posted by Floordford

At some point its just an attack waiting for one of those answers to have fault. Not that some of those questions are bad its just searching for fault instead of useful info.

You don't have the answers anyway, despite your erroneous reasoning of why I ask questions. You are willfully choosing not to answer direct questions, you will not enjoy trying to persuade anyone you have done a proper job of testing your experiment if you cannot answer simple questions. You will have to answer MANY questions, or do an outstanding job documenting the process and controls and demonstrating how you eliminated experimenter bias.

Originally Posted by Floordford

The most definitive thing that would prove good testing procedures is if the people that use these say what design of unit was used, what water mix, the supporting accessories, the engine its feeding, the output and draw of the unit, then repeatable MPG test with and without. Also idling and emissions testing.

The ones that do all that fail, maybe the electrodes can't do their magic if anyone is watching too closely

Originally Posted by Floordford

To me the reason i back the idea of electrolysis in vehicles is because there are those that have had positive results. And I feel that just like the light bulb this will be refined and there will be many failures along the way.

That is irresponsible, you only wish to disprove the "naysayers" as far as I can tell, yet you have no clue how you are going to do that when this experiment is not repeatable and thus a huge failure. You ignore hard work that people had to do because of an idea from scammers like Stan Meyers took root, and now you are actively promoting it, what a tremendous waste of effort.

But enough talk, you are making excuses to not answer basic questions at this point, and are continuing Stan Meyers legacy. You have anectodal (non-existant) support for your position. You don't want your faith in hho questioned, or to have to research those questions.

As a reasonably person, if you can demonstrate something reproduce-able, where all questions are answered that demonstrates a predictable gain from hho, I will of course reconsider my position.

[dcb]

As far as I can tell though it takes some serious engine and electrical system mods to even have a prayer of working, so I will be extremely skeptical of any bolt-on solutions.

plus it depends on if gas + hydrogen makes more energy than their individual contributions, which would be the case if the gas was not burning completely.

So if I were you, I would try to get a handle on how much unburnt gas we are talking about (and under what conditions), as that is where the gains, if any, lie. It is obvious that there is some unburnt fuel in many conditions as we need catalytic converters, and they get hot.

Weigh these potential gains (where you rebuild your engine and mill the deck for a high compression ratio and install a super efficient alternator) compared to something like converting your engine to an atkinson cycle with a new cam, where you simply give the fuel more room/time to burn and expand.

[dcb]

fyi, this page says 1-2% of fuel is unburnt, consistently, before the converter. Take it for what it is worth. If you were able to reclaim that 1-2% you should see a 1-2% increase in efficiency at most (more likely %30 of %1-%2).

If you spend energy to make hydrogen inefficiently in the hopes of reclaiming that %1-%2, (by using %30 efficient combustion process and %60 efficient alternator and %50 efficient electrolosys) then you are bound to be worse off than where you started. Do you see a problem with this reasoning? The efficiency of creating the hydrogen is maybe %16 after all those losses, and you then pipe it into a %30 efficient engine, to help burn %1 of gasoline that didn't otherwise get burned.

What part of hho makes any sense? It simply doesn't add up. Calling me a naysayer is akin to calling someone who says 1+1 doesn't equal 3 a naysayer.

Fuel saving gadgets - a professional engineer's view

[Floordford]

So then lets say you take the cars electrical system out of the equation for some theoretical spit balling. Would an idling engine then see benefit from adding a low volume of hydrogen gas? My thought goes to a kit that is installed and is powered by a deep cell marine battery that is not replenished by the alternator. No doubt the electricity from a trickle charge from home could easily make this possible if someone wanted to keep that set up.

[UFO]

Originally Posted by Floordford

So then lets say you take the cars electrical system out of the equation for some theoretical spit balling. Would an idling engine then see benefit from adding a low volume of hydrogen gas? My thought goes to a kit that is installed and is powered by a deep cell marine battery that is not replenished by the alternator. No doubt the electricity from a trickle charge from home could easily make this possible if someone wanted to keep that set up.

That electricity from a home-charged battery would go to more efficient use by directly coupling it to the drivetrain with a motor. If you are dead-set on hydrogen (it sure seems likely), why not make your own at home and swap tanks on your car? Both are likely to improve your fuel mileage, but not by enough to justify the expense on a purely financial return basis.

[dcb]

1. I don't hardly ever idle, so it isn't a question I'm terribly interested in. You get zero mpg at a stop with the engine running, and it is on the least efficient end of throttle positions.

2. re: deep cycle, just for experiments sake, sure. if you are just trying to see what hydrogen by itself does then get a tank from airgas or something, not sure how you are going to log/measure the hydrogen though, but you must account for it. You also must account for fuel used somehow, and I would suggest monitoring the injector over monitoring the obd port for accuracy. But of course that means you have more stuff to calibrate/double check/validate.

But if you are leaving the car alone, including o2 sensor, except for adding hydrogen, the injectors should show a lower duty cycle as the hydrogen displaces some fuel in combustion. It is very easy to say something works, it is a lot harder to prove it. But in the end, if the energy content of the added hydrogen was less than the energy content of the fuel no longer being added, then you are at least closer to something reproducable.

If you can dial in a repeated ABA testing at idle on a warmed up car under reasonably identical atmospheric conditions (and reasonable cost), then you will have some reference point as to the potential gains at idle. The next test would be to figure out how to test it under load.

[Floordford]

At idle the fuel usage per minute could be calculated and it would take the human out of the equation. Granted this would need to be a take your car apart kind of experiment. Probably involving a 3 gallon gas tank with a window and a separate fuel pump powered by the cars fuel relay. The separate battery powering the hydrogen generator would take the alternator load away so that only engine benefits could be seen. With that there should be some kind of result. Even if the hydrogen is acting as a less powerful filler the engine should use less gasoline or fuel but might be ever so slightly down on horsepower. But no one really cares about horsepower at idle. The other result might be that the hydrogen makes the engine idle high being that its much more explosive. Some ignition timing may need to be adjusted.

To test an engine at load a gasoline engine driving a water pump could have a hydrogen generator incorporated. With a set throttle position the gasoline powered water pump should repeatedly use the same amount of fuel. By adding a hydrogen generator powered by a separate power supply it would produce solid repeatable results. Granted its not a car but as soon as a car has a load on the engine usually a person is in the seat. Im trying to take the person out of the experiment.

[dcb]

Sounds horribly overcomplicated. I'm not suggesting that you follow through with this experiment, but starting with a tank of hydrogen to quantify it's effects under different conditions makes the most sense to me, then figure out how to make that hydrogen efficiently if there are significant gains to be made (your assertion, not mine)