Does HHO REALLY Work????
 

I know there are probably some other posts about this topic and I have already looked at a few. Some of them go way off topic and others just don't answer my question, so I'm asking it here. Do the "HHO" mods really give your car added MPG and/or power? I'm looking for "tried-and-died" or "tried-and-true" stories. I am also worried about damaging the engine.

No, it doesn't work.

Hydrogen is used for power generation but it typically comes from other sources. Hydrogen may end up being a car fuel (amongst other uses) of the future but that is purely because of convenience - unlike an EV for example you can refuel quickly. The argument is that you can use renewables to make the Hydrogen. The energy loss in making Hydrogen and then burning it is greater than using the same energy in an EV.

If you wish to try this out, I suggest you leave your car alone, try hypermiling for real results and if you are still interested get one of these.

http://www.daddoes.com/wp-content/up.../hydrocar1.jpg

HHO systems that rely on the power of your car to disassociate the hydrogen & oxygen by electrolysis are absolutely not efficient. It is essentially trying to create a perpetual motion machine with chemistry. It cannot work due to it defying the basic laws of physics. Also, the ridiculously small amounts of hydrogen produced cannot possibly contribute much to the equation of the fuel & air combustion. You might turn 1 pint of water into HHO gas over the course of 500 miles, in that time your engine will burn 15-20 gallons of gas, since H20 is part of the combustion byproduct due to gasoline being essentially Hydrogen, at a 1 to 1 ratio, the HHO fuel is only 1/80, or 1.2% of the added fuel over that 500 miles, so it couldn't possibly make a detectable difference. Just common sense & basic chemistry here. The people who try to sell these devices rely on pseudo-science (BS) to baffle you into thinking it just might work. It Can’t & Won’t.

Gonna move this thread over to the appropriate forum :thumbup:

This forum is more busy than the blog ;)

Is there an HHO blog?? Where, where? Maybe the laws of physics work differently there...?

Apparently the blog contains a worm hole and it leads directly to this blog! Or, maybe it exists in a parallel universe where everything that happens there is exactly the same as here, except there, hydrogen and oxygen must be kept together with special force fields, otherwise the combination of these 2 elements does not occur in nature. That's why they get such good MPG's because the hydrogen & oxygen release so much energy when they are recombined, and it is very easy to separate it.

:thumbup: Ah ha! I shoulda thunk of that m'self! :D

Hi smchristin,
The current theory, which would be easy to test but is not demonstrated in any real engine, is as follows.
First, the amount of hydrogen needed is substantial, like a few thousand watts of electrical power to hydrolyze water. In theory, the added hydrogen allows an extremely lean mixture of gasoline to burn. The normal air to fuel ratio for gasoline is 14.7:1 But if you could get a mixture of 200:1 to burn the cylinder would have 12 times as much air in it for the same amount of fuel. The thermodynamic efficiency of the engine is determined by the high temperature during combustion. If the cylinder has more air in it then there will be higher pre-combustion pressure and when the fuel is burned there will be a higher combustion temperature. So the efficiency will be higher.
The effect should be to get the engine to have the nearly the same efficiency at low power levels that it has at it's most efficient operating point. Maximum engine efficiency for modern cars is about 25% and at low power, as low as 10%

Consider a car that has an engine that can produce 250 HP and is 25% efficient there , but only needs 15 HP (6% of its maximum) to cruise at 55 MPH but is only 10% efficient at that power. It will get about 18 MPG at 55. If the efficiency at 15 HP could be raised from 10% to 20% then the fuel economy goes up to 36 MPG. If the hydrogen generator needs less than about 5 HP you are ahead. You might need to carry a lot of water.

-mort

I know logic normally has no place in this forum, but please explain how burning extra hydrogen and oxygen in the proportions generated via electrolysis will cause your engine to run lean? Or did you leave out the caveat of leaning your fuel system in addition to fumigation with "HHO"?

Or a much, much better and provably valid way to do this - that is, spread the peak load more over the driving cycle (of an resultantly scaled-down engine) is to use a hybrid drivetrain (batteries acting as the power reservoir when max power is required).

BTW - anyone know how leaned out an petrol engine can go when mixed with syn-gas (70% CO 30%H2)? ... I'm thinking that Charcoal could used to make Water-gas off the exhaust heat (say, on an artic)?

Q: does HHO work?

A: only in-the-minds of "Unicorn believers."

smchristin -

I couldn't get mine to work :

Hydrogen Booster Installed ...

CarloSW2

First off, a car that has an engine that produces 250 peek horse power is doing so at the top of it's revs, not the most efficient speed for it to be running at, at those speeds is where you will often find it to be 10% efficient or less, it is more common for a gasoline engine to be tuned for peek efficiency to be around 2,000 to 3,500rpm and depending on the engine might only be putting out 35hp to 50hp (if it's the 250hp example), now you want to put a 5hp electrical load on that engine? over 300 amps on the alternator, an alternator that has a peek output of 100-120 amps, so you put a 300 amp alternator on and that alternator puts closer to a 9hp load on the engine, based off what a gasoline generator takes to put out 300amps at 12 volts continually.
Why are we still talking about this again? if you are someone who really thinks this can work then go ahead and try it, but if you put a device like a vehicle that also has a scanguage on that tells you real time mpg, you will see your mileage go up when you turn the hydrogen device off, it's just that simple!

Oh, hi UFO,
Well, yeah I left quit a bit out. If your only problem is getting the lean mixture you only need a new engine controller and ignition system. These are available at the ecomodder shop. In the Unicorn Corral aisle.

-mort

I meant there are more unicorns than blog entries on Ecomodder.

Can we just agree HHO is pish ?

Although I fancy one of those science museum kits for A- Jnr this holiday :D

Hey Mort.

Answer me this...what is gasoline??? What chemicals make up Gasoline? What is the main element? What elements are in the air the engine uses?

What are the main elements of water?

Now, can you put these 2 things together in your mind? The main element in Gasoline is the same element in the water you wanna use for fuel. So in effect, all you are doing is adding a tiny bit more fuel to the engine with an HHO generator. You still need 14/1 fuel air. No magic bullet because the fuel used to be water instead of gasoline.

HHO IS 100% Unworkable. 100%. No if's, and’s, or but’s. The claims made by people, like the claims you made in your post, are all based on blithering facts that do not relate to the real facts involved in a combustion engine. To ignorant people who don't know better it sounds reasonable. But to those who do know better, it is like you’re saying, "I had 3 fish for dinner last night and my son is 6 years old, and since the water in the toilet goes down the drain in a clockwise direction, this HHO Generator can improve mileage by 100%!"

This is in the Unicorn Corrall. Is that not a message ?

...and genuine Unicorn "road apples" are pink, not the usual horse green, due to their rarity (rare, medium, and well-dunned).

You'd need a lot extra O2 to burn that mix (both for the H2 and the CO), so you're not leaning it out, but enriching it with fuel.

They work great in the garden. We get 120# cabbagesfrom unicorn fertilizer.

I was under the impression that adding syngas, in a similar way to adding H2 could extend the lean-burn limit (to beyond the 22:1 ratio) without the burn becoming unstable. That is, no more fuel overall is used compared with normal lean-burn operation, so there is still an excess of O2 at the end of the burn.

There is also evidence that having one of these gaseous fuels (H2, syngas, NG) in the burn will speed up the flame speed - so ensuring that a better portion of the mechanical work can be extracted by the piston, as well as keeping the exhaust valve cooler.

But how much extra energy did you use to make the gas ?

The key is here.

Air-Hybrid -

Yes, this has been done in the lab :

Fuzzy Pareto Frontiers in Multidisciplinary System - Architecture Analysis - Page 3
http://web.mit.edu/deweck/www/PDF_ar...-2004-4553.pdf
Back in 2004 this was being researched at MIT :

Green Car Congress: ArvinMeritor / MIT Plasma Fuel Reformer
However, in the years since, Arvin-Meritor sold this R&D off with it's other emissions products and I lost of track of it, so I think it became a dead-end.

This is a search at the Arvin-Meritor site :

Search Arvin-Meritor - Plasma Fuel Reformer

CarloSW2

maybe you haven't seen this then

MIT professor touts first 'practical' artificial leaf, signs deal with Tata to show up real plants -- Engadget

It's a fair point!
The issue with energy is not that we don't per sa have enough of it (commentators talk of the 'energy crisis', etc) - the issue is that the energy is not in the forms we find most useful - ie. 'high-value' forms of energy.

As such - electricity is a high-value energy source, as is liquid fuels like petrol & Diesel. But of course the value is ultimately defined by the application.

The idea behind asking about syn-gas is that it can be made from two low-value energy sources - waste heat & amorphous carbon (from coal or even better charcoal).

I'm not saying this can easily be utilised in a moving vehicle, as just like any other heat recovery device - it adds complexity & weight. But carbon (think of charcoal) is a pretty dense fuel source, but one that could not normally be easily and efficiently used to power an ICE.
But by some simple chemistry, the combination of waste heat (to superheat water) can be combined with carbon to produce syn-gas. Also, if the primary fuel is, for instance Natural Gas, then plenty of H2O can be recovered (condensed out) from the exhaust - reducing the need for carry a large water tank.

And, as 'CFG83' points out - hydrogen rich gases have the potential to improve both the octane rating of a fuel mix and the mean flame speed of the burn - both of which are advantageous for efficiency.

It's a fair point!
The issue with energy is not that we don't per sa have enough of it (commentators talk of the 'energy crisis', etc) - the issue is that the energy is not in the forms we find most useful - ie. 'high-value' forms of energy.

As such - electricity is a high-value energy source, as are liquid fuels like petrol & Diesel. But of course the value is ultimately defined by the application.

The idea behind asking about syn-gas is that it can be made from two low-value energy sources - waste heat & amorphous carbon (from coal or even better charcoal).

I'm not saying this can easily be utilised on-board a moving vehicle, as just like any other heat recovery device - it adds complexity & weight. But carbon (think of charcoal) is a pretty dense fuel source, but one that could not normally be easily and efficiently used to power an ICE.
But by some simple chemistry, the combination of waste heat (to superheat water) can be combined with carbon to produce syn-gas. Also, if the primary fuel is, for instance Natural Gas, then plenty of H2O can be recovered (condensed out) from the exhaust - reducing the need for carry a large water tank.

And, as 'CFG83' points out - hydrogen rich gases have the potential to improve both the octane rating of a fuel mix and the mean flame speed of the burn - both of which are advantageous for efficiency.