Conversion: 91 Honda Accord w/ HHO

[johnmyster]

The "perpetual motion" comments come from the fact that ideally, the splitting of water creates hydrogen. Then, the "burning" of hydrogen creates water. A bunch of stoopids.

I put gas in my tank, and after burning it, the combustion products are water, CO2, etc. The final product is different than the initial product. The oxidative decomposition of hydrocarbons into these lower state molecules releases energy. My engine harvests this energy by capturing the thermal expansion of gasses heated by the process. If you add up the total energy states of all of the products, it is lower than that of the products. (heats of formation, etc., etc.)

I eat hot dogs and I poop something else. The decomposition of the initial product into something else (with a lower energy state) allows my body to harvest the released energy of the decomposition.

Water flows from behind a dam, through a turbine, to a river below. The water moves from a high potential energy state to a low one. The difference between the two states is the maximum amount of energy that can be harvested.

See, the point is that these systems have a lower energy final state. You can only get energy by taking it away from your reactants and producing a lower energy product.

In the HHO system, your starting state is water. You create hydrogen. You pretend that the hydrogen does not recombine with the available hydroxide as soon as it forms. The hydrogen (supposedly) burns, activated by the heat of the combustion process, and releasing energy as it turns back into water. Problem is that the final state is the same as the initial state. Water. No energy can ever be released if the gross reaction has the same products as reactants.

That's the first law of thermodynamics. That's the reason people call this a "perpetual motion" process. If you gave me a tank of hydrogen, then sure, I could run it in my motor to increase mileage. Or, I could use electricity from my house (cheaper than gasoline) to create it, and burn it in my vehicle. IE, the hydrogen economy. However, I cannot use energy from my vehicle to create the hydrogen, and expect to get a return upon burning the hydrogen in the same vehicle.

[mavinwy]

I have been playing with the idea of making an HHO system for the neon to test it myself (I have 90% of the materials sitting around, so total cost would likely be less than $10.00) I have not seen anything where anyone actually hurt a motor by trying it out.

An intersting idea I saw in one of the posts was to run the system off of a solar cell. Maybe a golf cart battery or something depending on space/weight. Then it would eliminate the alternator factor and would likely work for short trips.

I have only had one person I actually know try it, and that was on a 4.0 jeep. He improved 2mpg (and still has the improvement). It does not sound like much until you figure that is 10%. If I could get 3-4 more mpg for $10.00 + consumables, I figure it is worth a shot. If it does not work, it would be easy to remove.

I am not willing to put several hundred dollars into something like this though.

I also see where this would not be for everyone, the maintenance and fiddle factor would be high. I also see an issue here running it in the winter and the water freezing up. Working on ideas for those issues.

Jim

[johnmyster]

This is really well written using electrochemical thermodynamics that a lay person can follow.

Enough already with water-4-gas, hydro-assist and PICC... - Topic Powered by eve community

[dentprone]

+1 homework...

Man, the HHO subject sure stirs things up. While I don't buy the story that cars can run on this, or even that they run partially on it, I don't see any reason why it can't promote a more complete burn. I am as skeptical as everyone else, but instead of berating others, I built one for my truck and will report whether it works or doesn't work.....if it doesn't work, I'm out 50 bucks. There are folks out there that don't wait for others to tell them how to think.......I support them. History shows that the dreamers are the ones who make the difference.

Please excuse the rant

[johnmyster]

Ah, the QUALITY of combustion argument. Well, since these systems employ no strategy to keep the H and HO from recombining after separation, I see little reason to believe that anything other than water injection is occuring. My dad used a water mist on his '84 S15 truck to improve quality of combustion. Water injection is known to help with knocking. However, he consumed a liter of water every 50 commuting miles or so.

The next canned arguement - but ICEs are really inefficient. Anything that improves quality of combustion will have big gains. After all, is there really a problem with the combustion 'quality' of our motors? I'm pretty sure they do a good job of burning the gas. The fact that the ICE is inefficient isn't because combustion is lacking. Rather, the ICE has difficulty extracting the realeased energy. Any second year mechanical engineer can tell you that the realized efficiency is a factor of two things. Compression ratio and pre-combustion charge temperature. Higher compression is better. Lower starting temperature is better. Unfortunately, in-chamber compression leads to higher temperatures pre-combustion. That's why turbo chargers have the potential for great process efficiency gains. Compress, then intercool, then combust.

The dreamers are those that have original thoughts that may or may not work. At this point, I see little original about this. It's a bunch of water filled coke bottles in the trunk that are supposed to help fuel mileage. Because the driver wants to see better mileage, he drives really easy to 'test' the effect. He gets better mileage (as a result of driving more easily) and there you have it.

Please excuse the rant.

[johnmyster]

Yet another resource for those wanting to gather info:

Schadewald, Robert J. (2008), Worlds of Their Own - A Brief History of Misguided Ideas: Creationism, Flat-Earthism, Energy Scams, and the Velikovsky Affair, Xlibris, ISBN 978-1-4636-0435-1

[dentprone]

I humbly bow to your superior intellect. I have sold all of my fabrication equipment and burned my sketchbooks.