anybody tried hydrogen generation?
 

before anybody jumps on this thread who hooked up a hydrogen generation kit and says it doesnt work, was the timing adjusted properly to take advantage of the fuel? hydrogen burns at a different rate than gasoline, the timing must be adjusted. Sort of like setting up timing on regular fuel and then running high octane fuel that burns slower, and combustion is not complete untill well after TDC.

I know we are yet to see some conclusive evidence of it working, but the math seems sold. optimum air-fuel ratio for a gasoline engine is 12:1, being 12 parts air to 1 part gasoline. at 30 mpg -let me carry on in metric, I find it easier, 30 mpg is 7.8L/100kms. Alright, if you drive one hour at highway speed, youc car getting 30MPG or 7.8L/100 you would have used 2 gallons or 7.8L of fuel. at 12:1 air fuel ratio that should be 24 gallons of air, or 93.6L of air consumed with that fuel. It does not seem right, that amount of air does not sound right, but you cannot dispute the logic.

hydrogen, while I hear only has about half the energy of gasoline, has a perfect air fuel ratio of 2:1. do if the engine needed 48 gallons of air fuel mixture still only 24 gallons would need to be generated, or about 47L of hydrogen gas.

so how much energy would it take to generate that much hydrogen, while installing a second alternator to help increase the electrical demand would also decrease fuel economy the cost of free water would negate the increase in fuel economy, no?

Moved thread to the unicorn corral.

I will happily move the discussion elsewhere if we get that pesky "evidence" issue sorted out.

Also: this topic been discussed plenty here in the forum. You could spend hours reading.

The search tool on the top left of the page uses Google (familiar syntax) for user-friendliness. If you click the Advanced search link, you can use different search options & syntax via the forum's built-in search feature.)

You've confused mass ratios with volume ratios, hence your absurd results.

Yes, there are a couple of posts here on ecomodder that refer to this paper from 1977!
Hint:
Ideal A:F is closer to 14.7:1 and is mass. So 7.8 liters is 5.6 kg of gasoline (0.719 kg/l)
5.6 * 14.7 = 82.4 kg of air. Air weighs about 1.2g/l that's about 70,000 Liters of air... If the A:F for H2 is 2:1 you'd need 40 kg of H2 at 0.089 g/l that's about 449,438 liters. You might want to check your assumptions.
-mort

Wow. Just wow. The math has been gone over time and time again re: hydrogen produced vs hydrogen needed and also energy needed to get the hydrogen. "Timing" isn't the deal killer for this albatross.

cost of running a generator to produce electricity is 5 times that of electricity from a wall outlet and my figures to produce enough hydrogen to replace a gallon of gasoline, figuring that it takes 240 watts to produce a liter of hydrogen and that it takes 1352 liters or hydrogen to equal a gallon of gasoline and my electrical costs are $0.12 per KWH it would cost me $37.30 at home to produce enough hydrogen to replace a gallon of gasoline, or it would cost $186.50 if I was using my cars alternator to power a hydrogen generator, I've made hydrogen at home and I've made hydrogen using a small industrial fuel cell hydrogen generator and those figures look pretty accurate, that is why if you buy a bottle of hydrogen from a welding supply shop, it's extracted from natural gas, extracting it from water costs to much!

Oh, of course! In well over 40-odd years of various people tinkering with hydrogen for internal combustion engines, nobody at all had thought about messing with ignition timing! That is, up to now! You've stumbled onto the correct answer! OMG! Surely you're going to win the next Nobel prize in chemistry because of this!

</sarcasm>

This is what I have been saying since 2005. Your numbers are very, very close to what I came up with.

There are people who claim to have things working, but they lie low. I know someone who is working on an "HHO" for his vehicle, but has a couple grand invested in the components and it still isn't operational. He has to get some fancy electronic equipment custom built (fuel control) along with a few other things. It seems to be turning into a perpetual "need this need that". BUT this guy has lots of $$$ to spend and is convinced that HHO is the way to go.

Personally, I would steer clear. By the time all the stuff is bought and installed, I could have bought 6 or 7 years worth of gas. And even then I might find that I'd get worse fuel mileage (who knows?). Not really the direction I am going, nor the investment/risk I'd want to take.

The funny thing... with all the equipment, electronics, fluid storage, injection, etcetera... they buy, they could have already assembled and built a water injection system integrated with a piggyback ECU to lean out the fuel charge and they'd be saving gas, already.

Not that distilled water is free, but the numbers work out... somewhat. :p

I am amazed this topic still comes up.

...to paraphrase the old 'Peter Principle' business addage:

"...they rise to their level of idiocy..."

Then how did Stan Meyers do it?
If he wasn't using hydrogen and was duping everybody...how so?

You explain that to us.

It's already been shown, time and time again, how much it would cost to make enough hydrogen to be considered equivalent to a gallon of gas. The base figures are easily available on the internet.

It's up to the true believers to show how a single person was somehow able to make some hare-brained scheme work, when many thousands of others could not do so, given the same materials and information.

A cop out explanation, double talk...figures.
So I assume then that you and others take the position that your assertions are absolutes and anything else is absolutely impossible.
News flash...there are many possibilities and anyone who thinks they know it all is absolutely wrong.
Just because the popular method to produce hydrogen takes lots of energy does not PROVE that cheaper ways can still be found or have not been used by a few such as Stan perhaps.
Dead end thinking is not at all conducive to innovation....

All t_vago is gently trying to point out, I believe, is that Scientists (by which I mean all who follow the rational path from an idea[theory] to bench-testing[experiment] to data-gathering[measurement] to Proof) are following the principles of Empiricism that have served humankind pretty darn well for centuries ... Finding the proof has always lain on the side of the experimenter, design-engineer or backyard tinkerer, so get out of the dark ages.

And, no, there's nothing wrong with keeping an open mind, but that's no reason to turn it into an open sewer; ie. let any old s**t flow in there because it suits your, uhum, world view.


Site Mods, don't you have a tool to merge all this HHO BS into one easily avoidable pile?

People have been looking for more efficient ways to produce hydrogen for over 100 years, so when someone claims that they made a brake through that brakes the laws of physics it's common for it to be chalanged like was the case with Stan Meyers and in 1996, while it was still alive, he was found to be a fraud, but he also patented what he was doing, now patents are not proof that something works but are more so a copy right on an idea and a big part of patents is that they become part of public record and that they have to be clear enough that they can be reproduced by someone with an understanding in the area of the patented idea, in other words if you look up his patents you should be able to reproduce what he did, if of course you try to sell what you build then you are infringing on the patents, but you are free to build as many as you want for your self and your own use!
But the math says it doesn't work, reviews of what he did say it didn't work, laws of physics say it doesn't work and no one who has tried to reproduce what he did has been able to show proof that it does work.
Stanley Meyer's water fuel cell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You are knee-deep in it right now.

It comes up because people who can not understand the physics believe their is some way they can alter the laws of physics.

A liter pf pure hydrogen contains the same amount of energy (btus) as 1.5 wooden matches. How long do you think that amount of energy would keep a modern engine idling? Probably not even 1 second, but let the believers do the research.

Remember that Browns gas is mostly oxygen, which is not a fuel and contains no energy. The majority of your energy spent separating the hydrogen from the oxygen produces no energy whatsoever.

regards
Mech

supplemental?
 

has anyone on EM or any other place experimented with on vehicle (while driving) hydrogen generation simply to supplement the main fuel -gas, diesel, whatever? are there any numbers for such experiments?
secondly on the same vehicle(s) has pre-generated hydrogen been supplemented at the same rate. are there any numbers for that?

Where's the smack forehead smilie? :rolleyes:

At a cost of $186.50 per gallon energy equivalent to gasoline who in their right mind would bother? even splitting water at home is going to cost you the same as if you had spent $37 per gallon on gasoline.
No one is saying that hydrogen does not burn, it does, it burns great, but it also doesn't have a whole lot of energy in it, like Old Mechanic said, a liter of hydrogen is the same amount of energy as one and a half wood matches, enough to burn you and make a pretty flame but it's a fluffy fuel.
You can of course also make hydrogen chemically by dropping aluminum in Lye works well, but then you need a source of aluminum that is cheaper then the scrap price.

They also gobble up as gospel all that crap about miticlorions being able to give some scientifically unmeasureable form of telekinesis to the lucky guy who has it in his cells.

Three words for you:

Prove. Us. Wrong.

"Use the Force, Luke! Let go, Luke!"

...the subject "...floats back up..." because somebody new thinks they can re-invent physics and chemistry properties using "P.T.Barnum" advertising slights-o-hands.

HHO injection has nothing to do with the energy in itself. HHO interacts with the gasoline, unlocking its full potential.:p

Why do HHO threads continue to be so entertaining? That's the REAL question.

still no answer to my question. to answer yours - i would!
 

1.22V infinity will bubble oxy and hydro out of water. coincidentally same voltage as your standard PV cell. backyards frequently have sun. high pressure diaphragm pump will allow you to create a meaningful hydrogen charge.
using some of my engines waste heat for getting the hydrogen ready for combustion will bring it another step closer to adiabatic. spark engines seem to like a gaseous fuel addition - compression engines LOVE it!

cheap aluminun? my neighbors yard ;)

WOAH. New evidence.

PV panels cost money as well and it's widely known that 1.2v works well for separating water, my chemistry book from 1886 talks about splitting water this exact way! so it's new evidence! breaking news! just don't tell anyone 130 years ago that you just now figured this out or they might laugh at you!
But it takes a measurable amount of energy to split water how much energy though? 310,833 watt hours to produce a gallon of gasoline equivalent worth of hydrogen, If you want to do that with PV panels in a single day is going to cost you between $150,000 and $400,000 depending on the panels you can get your hands on, same number of panels would be able to power an Electric Car for 1,400 miles per day! or power ten houses for a day!

try more fiber in your diet!
 

PV panels cost money as well and it's widely known that 1.2v works well for separating water, my chemistry book from 1886 talks about splitting water this exact way! so it's new evidence! breaking news! just don't tell anyone 130 years ago that you just now figured this out or they might laugh at you!

not while i am doing discovery. where can i read about this: 310,833 watt hours figure? how much volume is it and at what pressure?

But it takes a measurable amount of energy to split water how much energy though? 310,833 watt hours to produce a gallon of gasoline equivalent worth of hydrogen, If you want to do that with PV panels in a single day is going to cost you between $150,000 and $400,000 depending on the panels you can get your hands on,

i dont want to do that with pv. the price of pv, due to mass production, was suggested to have come down decades ago but it didnt really. AC supposedly is the way to go and much easier to generate...yes, in my backyard as well.

same number of panels would be able to power an Electric Car for 1,400 miles per day! or power ten houses for a day!

i've got 2-3 weeks. no need to drive if bicycles can do the job - right?
govs, craporations, nearly all euro auto mfgs have been courting hydro for
what, 40 years or more now. for instance, the city bus fleet in my home town has been sucking hydro fumes for years. and here, just for you, is the press release:
http://www.hochbahn.de/wps/wcm/conne...61fb4606916656

and this: "Der zur Erzeugung des Wasserstoffs notwendige Strom wird dabei vollständig aus regenerativen Energieträgern gewonnen."
is the new evidence you asked for.
while i was simply stating for the sake of simplicity the most basic hydrogen production method, backyard stuff, you know.
is it breaking news? no, the coffee has cooled by now. the PR was dated 2007.

FYI, that is a society where decisions are made by MORE than one person.
aimlessly printing money when you run out is illegal and it if werent it still wouldnt be done. very much unlike a place where trillions of dollars are spent in a matter of a few years just to make a coupa' billion.
if it doesnt balance out fiscally or environmentally, it wont even be ATTEMPTED.
listening to led zeppelin is one thing, flying one is an entirely different matter. impossible to ppl in one place, almost identical ppl with only 1 head, 2 arms and 2 legs just a few thousand miles away draw inspiration from negative energy from naysayers and put it to good use.

is that a geographical limitation? not really. INDEPENDANT THINKERS, like smokey yunick who built super efficient vehicles in his small shop by the beach, and even GM who accidentally made a huge IMPACT building something efficient - quickly realized their mistake and erased it utilizing large industrial hydraulic presses. see the big 3 had battled the EPA since its inception insisting that it was and is not possible to build efficient vehicles.
if that kind of publicity goes on long enough the general public eventually
latches onto that way of thinking, case in point: people that scoot around in lil green triangular boxes.

Smokey used wit and ingenuity - Generic Motors used $$$$'s
both methods got the job done!

laughing matter? - dont think so. those busses run veeeeery clean and if you have ever cycled in traffic absorbing CO2 instead of expelling it, taking on who knows how much CO all while seeking bee lines through black clouds of soot, you will have developed a keen appreciation for that kinda thing.

now, where was i? oh, discovery. has any body one here made hydrogen as a supplemental fuel and burned it in their vehicle(s).

come to think of it at least a portion of this post should be moved out of the "corral". Darin?

here it is...
 

Smokey Yunick’s Hot Vapor Fiero; 51 mpg and 0-60 in less than 6 Seconds! See and hear it run in our exclusive VIDEO! : Legendary Collector Cars

in a POS Fiero of all cars! he also had a 100MPG project...

So nobody had a scangauge reading with and without hho?

in your original post your gas engine is consuming 24 gallons of air in ONE hour? hmmm?
is the virtual gallon of hydrogen you are burning liquid or gaseous? are you burning hydrogen as a standalone fuel?

The people who I've talked to who tried it said that the Scangauge didn't pick up their improvements because their input of hydrogen fooled the sensors or some such BS, a ScanGauge is counting how long the injectors are open and how fast the car is going to figure out MPG, so yes, it would work, it would be very simple proof, if it did work, but so far I haven't found a single person who can prove that it works.
My neighbor, a collage kid is insisting on trying a hydrogen generator on his car, he hasn't built one yet but I have loaned him my scangauge so he can get a baseline and also see how it works, I also pointed out to him that he will not see an improvement but he want's to try it anyway, just for the hell of it, so he will be doing so with instrumentation.
I think he's wasting his time.

That German bus company is not burning the hydrogen, they are using it in fuel cells to power electric motors in the electric bus instead of using a regular battery, they are also most likely getting that hydrogen from natural gas as that is how commercially produced and sold hydrogen is made.

Scanguage does not read injector pulse width to figure. It extrapolates mileage by reading iat, map, tps, and other sensors. That's why you have to calibrate when you first install it when you fill up. The only one that I know (that is reasonable) that does is MpGuino which I use. Great units. Every time you change anything (sensor modifying) when using a ScanGuage you have to recalibrate it.

no one suggested they were burning it.

Der zur Erzeugung des Wasserstoffs notwendige Strom wird dabei vollständig aus regenerativen Energieträgern gewonnen

trans: the GENERATION of the hydrogen is performed entirely using electricity from renewable sources.

btw, steam is the hip way of pulling hydrogen from natural gas,

also the busses are using diesels now.
perhaps they shoulda burned the hydrogen instead :-D
.................................................. .....................................
iveyjh: is there magic box that utilises an actual flow sensor instead of black magic to monitor fuel use (providing fuel is being looped and not sent back to the tank?)

Just snip the fuel line in two and install a flow gauge in there. If hydrogen works, it should show up as slightly less fuel needed to push the engine against a brake dyno held at a certain speed.

I've talked to many hydrogen proponents, and the only ones who have any halfway sensible numbers to show are those using aftermarket engine management to "tweak" the engine to "optimize" running on hydrogen. The challenge is to show that the engine can't work at the "tweaked" settings without hydrogen boost, and that the fuel savings aren't simply due to running the engine leaner... which can be done in most cases on typically conservative factory fuel maps.

All the doubletalk in the world can't cover up the fact that there is no dyno evidence and no scientific evidence for "HHO". On the other hand, there's plenty of evidence for meth-injection and water-injection (though water-injection benefits in terms of economy aren't really that big), which don't rely on hocus pocus to work.

I've got a dyno I can borrow, as well as AFR sensors and an OBD reader that can be hooked up for dyno-sessions. And I've got a car equipped with a stable aftermarket EMS for a test bed.

Every time I hear one of these outlandish claims locally (HHO, fuel line magnets, magic fuel additives), I tell them: Pay me for the dyno-time, and we'll test it. If your numbers work out, then I'll publish the results.

So far, no takers. Big surprise. Well... some of the additives do work, a little... but not as effectively as simply buying higher octane gas... :D

Hydrogen help the combustion.
http://juwel.fz-juelich.de:8080/dspa...A3_pp_1_Ji.pdf
The problem is how much energy you need to add 5% hydrogen and if it balances out.

What does it mean in consumption to go from 21% brake efficiency to 24%?

Apple? Meet orange!

While this is certainly true from a thermodynamics standpoint, the article neglects to mention the fuel savings due to not having to generate a strong intake vacuum. Nor does the article address partial load conditions, which is where an engine would be the vast majority of its operational time. Just because something is very efficiently using fuel, it doesn't mean that it's getting good fuel economy.

Furthermore, the article kind of buries the fact that NOx emissions increased over no hydrogen being added.