HHO discussion (split off from the BSFC thread)

[user removed]

Oh yes, Virginia passed a law that forces any for profit HHO installers to pass the same emissions testing that is required of auto manufacturers. I rode around with a couple of gents who were trying to sell systems, and they were only trying to sell to diesel operators who were driving rigs that were emission exempt.

regards
Mech

[Ken Fry]

Originally Posted by Olympiadis

Assuming you have at least average reading comprehension skills, you must have skipped over several of my points made earlier, and you have went on to waste your time trying to re-explain things like alternator efficiency, while continuing on what seems to be a tunnel-visioned crusade of yours to brow-beat anyone who even brings up the term "HHO", even when just citing for example.

Stunningly long reply, and it is hard to follow just what technical points you are attempting to address. It comes across as a long, emotional ad hominem attack on me, academia, on “big names” and who knows what else. Sorry to have driven you to apoplexy. (But of course, as you may know, we drive ourselves to emotional responses. No one “makes me mad.” I make myself mad. [The other major, besides Chem E, was psych. I can spout this psychobabble 'til the cows come home.] )

If you quote a sentence or two of mine and then respond with a sentence or a paragraph or two, then the dialogue is easier to follow. Otherwise, it comes across as a rambling abrasive rant, at least to me.

You have taken on a condescending attitude here and elsewhere. "Average reading comprehension skills" "skipped over several of my points" "went on to waste your time" "a tunnel-visioned crusade" are all emotionally laden words and phrases. It is as if you are on the attack. I was hoping for simple answers, such as:

• "It appears that you are off by an order of magnitude. I have done tests that indicate that HHO units can produce 50 liters per minute from a 150 watt input."

or

• "No, what I meant when I wrote that ignition and fuel control are completely independent was this: ... "

In our brief dialogue, I don't think you have directly addressed any significant point. You seem to be relying on innuendo and subtle attacks on academics, physicists, the EPA, me, etc.

We may have gotten off on the wrong foot because I have so little respect for those who dis the EPA and who happily violate the spirit of the emission control laws. I have scarred lungs from asbestos exposure of the sort that could not happen these days because we now have the EPA and OSHA (Sadly, both have been weakened). The plant where I worked is now a Super Fund site, and many acres around what was the plant site are contaminated from high levels of asbestos. We need more oversight, not less.

One would have to be profoundly naive to believe that the EPA (and the NHTSA) are not essentially in the the back pocket of the auto industry.

We do not agree politically, but that is of little consequence, at least here. Political discussions do not belong in this thread, but given that you have introduced them I feel compelled to voice that other side. This post itself is certainly off topic, but when one is attacked, one often replies, if for no other reason than to clear the air, and set straight the most profound misconceptions. My apologies to suspectnumber961 and others for adding to the noise. My intent was to reduce that noise, by pointing out the things that make little-to-no sense regarding BSFC, and to permit you to make the necessary corrections or clarifications. You have not clarified the points brought up, however.

No problem, though.

I want to clarify for others that your assumptions and judgements about me are incorrect.

You surely must be misusing the term "closed system" when referencing a type of test measuring energy conversion improvement by way of an added oxidizer.

No. See Laws of thermodynamics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Your "parlor trick" of running a small engine completely from HHO was in fact closer to a closed system in that context of how you do you energy accounting.

No.

Clearly the enhancement of a gasoline engine by the addition of an oxidizer is no longer a closed system in the same context.

The oxidizer can be included in the closed system, just as the energy content of both ethanol and gasoline are included in the input energy to an engine burning E85. Neverthless, "adding an oxidizer" is not equivalent to using fuel to create oxyhdrogen, and then running that oxyhydrogen into an engine, displacing a portion of the normal air intake.

If there is a point you are trying to make, I've missed it. No need to reply though, it's off topic as far as I can see.

It would take into account the proportion of the total chemical energy contained in all of the gasoline involved, and all of the chemical energy contained in additive involved vs the energy actually converted into movement.

This makes sense! However it has little to do with the HHO issue. HHO is not an additive. It is simply an energy carrier. You burn fuel to turn an alternator, to feed an electroyser, and out of that electrolyzer you get an energy carrier. That energy carrier has an energy value of no more than 20% of the input fuel energy. Whether you imagine that the oxyhydrogen is an oxidizer or a catalyst, or an accelerant or a fuel makes no difference. You can think of it as a black box with an unknown operating mechanism. Although you may enjoy imagining meaningful amounts of oxyhydrogen being generated, that is not what happens. Even if the alternator were driven by magic, the energy value of HHO generated from, for instance, 15 amps over the course of a minute cannot be more than 15 x 14.5 watt minutes = 217.5 watt minutes. Many engines produce 1000 times that. But of course real HHO units don't put out anything close to even that tiny energy value (217.5 watt minutes) of oxyhydrogen in a minute.

The irony is stunning. You have never done any HHO experimentation, yet claim that the "academics" who have done the experiments, and actually get their hands dirty, are wrong.

Show me your dyno results.

A clue that signals a change in energy conversion rate would be a measured change in EGT when adding the oxidizer of your choice. This change in EGT has been observed in many engine tests, to include those with only tuning changes and not the addition of an oxidizer. There's nothing fictional about it.

Gosh golly, yes. Do you have a point you are trying to make? Assuming the other inputs (ignition timing, fuel load, etc) are constant, EGT changes with combustion conditions and with exhaust valve timing.

Did you not observe a change in EGT when you were doing your test with HHO, or magic fairy dust, - you know, back before I was born?

Yes, I did not observe a change. It would have been a freakishly strange coincidence to see the same EGT when running on hydrogen vs gasoline. EGT had nothing to do with my experiment. The experiment was not to show that EGT changes with fuel or all the other things that it is known to change with.

If for some strange reason you lacked the proper experience or testing equipment back then to obtain any useful data besides "it doesn't work", then there is the opportunity to observe similar experiments today, even on youtube.

You misread. It worked. Oxyhydrogen is a useful fuel. It is poorly suited to routine use in internal combustion engines, but it is a fun experiment to run a lawnmower engine on the stuff. This has nothing at all to do with the HHO scams perpetrated on the web and elsewhere, however. I didn't observe the backfiring you mentioned, by the way.

What I have observed on the youtube videos is that when gasoline is completely substituted with HHO for a small engine test, with no other changes, the engine runs, but then develops a high rate of backfires where the gasoline did not backfire. For myself and other experienced engine tuners, this is proof enough that the burn rate and thermal conversion rate has changed significantly.

You and other experienced tuners would be wrong, and jumping to conclusions. Given different fuels and lack of optimization for the second fuel, there could be backfires and increased, decreased or unchanged conversion rates. Hydrogen fuel engines can be made to run smoothly -- the BMW dual fuel car works fine, albeit at astoundingly high cost and low efficiency. These you tube HHO "experiments" are best ignored for the most part. Most of the HHO experimenters no even less than some "experienced tuners".

I'm not trying to qualify a backyard youtube video as a true controlled scientific analysis. No, but an observation is an observation and does have some worth.

But has no bearing on the dialogue I've tried to establish with you. Of course engines can be made to run on hydrogen. So what?

When the burn rate of a fuel is changed, it then requires a change in the tune and/or mechanical changes in the engine design in order to optimize whatever aspect you want to improve, to include BSFC. This is no more or less than common knowledge, at least in the engine tuning community.

It is also common knowledge among plenty of 12-year-olds and common knowledge among automotive engineers, too. But what's your point? This has nothing to do with the efficacy of HHO as an oxidizer or means to otherwise improve fuel efficiency. You might just as well be saying "See, the sun does appear to rise in the east!"

You seem to again be arguing in favor of HHO "working." But you have never tried it. It's purely academic for you, but you don't have the theoretical basis of someone who has actually studied this stuff. Turn on an HHO unit and nothing happens, even at idle. Turn it off. nothing happens. Look at the Scan Gauge, nothing changes. Look at rpm, MAP, throttle position, etc, etc. Nothing changes. Make a unit and put it on your car. You can do this in a day. Get out of your ivory tower. Prove all the detractors wrong.

Now for a bit of wild speculation on my part about your extreme perspective in this area.

My position seems extreme to you but is a perspective I share with most ecomodders and every automotive engineer I know. There is a reason why HHO discussions appear in the Unicorn Corral. My position does not seem extreme to people who actually know how engines work.

If there is merit to your claim that oxyhydrogen acts and "formidable oxidizer", then instead of attacking those who don't support your point, show us we are wrong with real data. Build a unit and have a third party do the tests. You'll make history. Try Popular Mechanics. They've already done the testing on a unit. Is Popular Mechanics part of the EPA conspiracy too?

Perhaps when you did your first HHO type experiment as a youngster you were actually still a student and intended to use this experiment as something grade-able by your professor.

No. My high school physics teacher, chemistry teacher, and I chuckled, though.

The point would be that... [through] ...self-correcting process.

All that reflects a rather simplistic view of science, and again, has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Last I checked you were still ranting about HHO.

Science is only self-correcting when you can put arrogance and self-assuredness to the side and remain open to experiment and observation, even for sake of merely collecting data, and no matter the source.

Science is not self-correcting. Accepting info no matter the source is Bad Practice. Huge waste of time. No amount of watching YouTube videos that put forth the proposition that F is not equal to MA will make that proposition reasonable. Not one of the numerous perpetual motion machines on the web (Bedini motors, Dennis Lee's Sundance/Hummingbird, etc, etc,etc,) work as advertised. Why waste your time? Is it coincidence that the promoters of HHO devices are also promoters of perpetual motion machines?

I know that a big part of the job is verification, repeatability, and proper qualification of methods and sources.

Precisely. You "know" this but don't live it. So where are your dyno test results showing that any of this stuff you propose works? I built several dynos. You can too. Show that your "tuning" is a better compromise than factory tuning, and that you do not adversly effect emissions. Any high school harry can tune for either performance or fuel economy, if he throws emissions out the window. Prove that you are better than that.

Then show that HHO works as you claim.

Simple.

I get that, but here's where it gets personal. The attitude that I get from your posts is that of being knowledgeable, but not really scientific.

You'd be wrong. Although my work is generally engineering, I do pure science as a hobby. Science is not about doing random poorly-controlled experiments. Science is not about ditching the EPA so engineers no longer have to think. Real science is not about personal attacks. It is, at the most basic, about showing the money: real valid data. Then it is about replicating. Where YouTube "science" goes awry, is mainly in the first step. Ill-informed people then move to "replications" without have a clue what they are trying to replicate. Thus you have hundreds of YouTube videos on Bedini motors called "replications"... but the first demonstration, the first real experiment was never done. The same happens with HHO. Hundreds of videos demonstrate .8 Lpm or .9 Lpm or 1 Lpm. Or people light bubbles and say, "There... see it works." They answer "questions" never asked. Of course you can make small quantities of HHO. Of course it burns. Endless repetitions of such stuff in not remotely related to real science.

Your active discouragement of pure science... ...or rediscovery.

You are projecting. I encourage pure science. I discourage gibberish masquerading as science and platitudes voiced as if they should be accepted as truths. Point out a quote in which I have dissed pure science. Voicing an implausible theory as "science" does not make the theory somehow noble. John Heywood, who I admire, has practiced a lot of (relatively) pure science. I've had several "real" scientists as advisors and mentors.

After reading over your posts and noticing you throwing around terms like: "nobel prize", "best known authority", high dollars amount spent, fact validation due to age or authority, and not the least of which an overwhelming tone of elitism.

This isn't a sentence so it is hard to parse, but I think your intent is to name call, as you have been doing pretty consistently. You seem to hold many groups in low regard: government workers, young physicists, academics, etc. There is little in this thread that suggests to me that you are an expert in tuning. Perhaps you are great at tuning cars, but that does not show up here in what you write. The fact that you dis the EPA and flaunt the law makes me think you are no different than most of the other tuners out there who sacrifice emissions for one particular aspect of performance, which is a no-brainer.

So, given that you have no authority, (nor do I) then I must rely on other authorities who have direct experience with the subject matter. You clearly don't believe me, so perhaps you will believe recognized experts instead.

Your sophomoric view that using recognized experts to support an argument is somehow wrong carries no weight with me. It is routine in the legal system, as you must realize. I am not John Heywood. I will happily admit that John Heywood knows far more about engine combustion theory than I do (and infinitely more than you do, from my limited perspective). I suspect that he has not modified as many engines as I have and he certainly has not rebuilt as many as I have, but for the issues we have been discussing he's unimpeachable. That has nothing to do with elitism.

I have demonstrated to my own satisfaction that HHO does not work in the way that you claim it does, and the science suggests that it should not work as you claim. It is you that have made the extraordinary claim, but you offer no poof at all, let alone extraordinary proof. I say one thing, you say another. This is not a peer-reviewed forum, so we at some point have to resort to authority. Every combustion engineer in the country and most of the world knows the work of John Heywood. His tests of HHO were well-publicized and generally known to anyone with a clue regarding engines. If he says that HHO does not work in the way that you think it does, than perhaps that will jolt you out of your smugness.

Or not. I gather you think that your ideas on combustion are much better than those of the engineers who used John Heywood's texts.

At this point it would seem to me that you are a legend in your own mind, and there's nothing wrong with that. It is discouraging to think of you as a teacher and propagating a similar attitude by example.

More name calling? You will be relieved to learn that I no longer do much teaching, although they do let me out occasionally to teach robotics to kids.

I am all too familiar with this sort of elitist attitude in academia.
The response or rebuttal is quite predictable in the spirit of:
"facts are facts", and "correcting ignorance with fact is not bullying", etc...
Yes indeed.

More name calling. I am not in academia, other than to have served on a review committee or two. Endless name calling constitutes bullying. You have not presented anything related to my initial concern that HHO does not work according to the mechanism you have suggested. Yes, facts are facts, and simply conjuring wild theories out of the blue does not constitute science.

In this particular case I have to say that you are far too sure of yourself in some areas. You may be a very competent in some area, but it is absolutely not engine tuning or engine management systems.

Instead of using innuendo, precisely define the areas in which I am "too sure" of myself. Provide the facts. Show that your thinking is not off by orders of magnitude. Provide some evidence here.

I have tuned race engines that have won races at the national level. I've restored exotic cars worth more than half a million, began working as professional mechanic before I was of driving age, and was buying basket cases at age 13 and reselling them after fixing them. I've built many motorcycles essentially from scratch and several cars from scratch. I've cast and machined my own cylinders and pistons. Engine management systems were a large part of my life for years.

So rather than heaping on the name calling, how about a fact or two? My concerns were simply and technically presented (prior to these long defenses against your innuendos and incorrect assumptions) but you have not addressed those concerns, at all. You claim that ignition and fuel management are completely independent. There was a time when that was the case, but that time has, for the most part, passed. Instead of name calling, show me the data that proves me wrong. Show me that you have a clue.

Based on what you have posted above, you are talking completely out of your ass once you stepped into the area of electronic engine management.

Name calling again. Provide data, not emotional outbursts. Here is something really simple you can do to develop credibility: Provide an article from an authoratative source that indicates that integrated fuel and ignition management systems are not common.

Legend, authority, or not, I would say without a doubt that I would never ask you to tune an engine of mine, nor could I in good faith recommend you as a tuner, or even to speak competently on the specifics of electronic engine management. Whatever your age, you clearly lack the proper experience in this area, and are apparently loath to admit that.

Name calling... again. And once again without a shred of evidence.

I can only hope that this characteristic of you has not spilled over into other areas, such as the whole HHO discussion that you have seemingly taken on as a vendetta of sorts. I base that concern on the fact that the majority of your posts in this thread are tied to the "debunking" of the mysterious "HHO promoter" that I have yet to see surface in this thread.

Let's see... that promoter would be you. It is you who wrote: "I'm pretty sure that HHO is around 88% Oxygen by weight, making it a very formidable oxidizer, and theoretically very little HHO mass would be required to effect a change in burn rate at a low engine RPM and VE."

This is a technical forum. What mass flow rate is required? What mass flow rate is produced by an HHO unit. You have offered no input here, just name calling. Postulate precisely the chemistry and energy balance you envision. Put numbers to this idea of yours and spell out the theory you are using when you say "theoretically very little." Are you getting my drift yet? No name calling. Data instead.

As it stands the only other person in this thread who has presented any credible evidence that they have the combination of a good workable understanding of engine tuning, electronic engine management, and the experience as well has been Robert (E4ODnut) with the Megasquirt systems.

More name calling. Now everyone else is wrong. I know some of these people (in an online sense). Many of them know what they are talking about. I've used Mega Squirt. Works OK. So using Mega Squirt makes one a famous tuner, along with the other 10,000 high school Harry's that use them? The data from Mega squirt says, in big red letters: MegaSquirt® and MicroSquirt® controllers are experimental devices intended for educational and research purposes. MegaSquirt® and MicroSquirt® controllers are not for sale or use on pollution controlled vehicles. Check the laws that apply in your locality to determine if using a MegaSquirt® or MicroSquirt® controller is legal for your application.

They are fine for racing, because they are easy to play with. They are no better than factory units in processing times or precision. Racing does not require much precision. Even in endurance racing, overfueling is the norm.

It seems to me that academia could offer more in terms of useful information, support, and encouragement to those who are actually out there doing things. However, it is human nature for elitism in many forms, to be both polarizing and self-perpetuating.

Sure blame academia for you inability to engage. I'm out here doing things, designing and building cars, boats, and airplanes, and acedemia has provided all sorts of support for free. All it takes is asking. Which universities have you asked for support? For the most part, my experience has been that anyone can speak with the world's leading expert in almost any branch of science just by asking a few people and doing really simple networking. All it takes, as far as I can tell, is a little humility and politeness. Go to John Heywood and call him a dumbass academic who screwed up his tests of the HHO units, and perhaps he will not be so helpful.

You agree that I'm wrong, and I agree that you're wrong. My guess is that a stalemate will not be good enough for you, and that you will try to bring in more outside unrelated sources for backup, throw in some more logical fallacies, and exert your own style of verbal dominance to the discussion at hand.

Sorry to dissappoint. No unrelated sources, no logical fallacies.

Calling names time and time again does not constitute a stalemate. You have not presented any facts yet. Once you show me that integrated engine management systems do not exist, and once you show me that HHO units produce measurable gains per your "theory," then, if I cannot offer sound eveidence and rationale to the contrary, we will have reached a stalemate.

This is going to boil down to the fact that I do not trust either your testing methods, or your assessments/conclusions, and you do not trust mine.

No, it will not boil down to that. You need not trust my test methods. Did you not get why I brought up John Heywood? He did the testing with the sort of $25,000/day dyno that I cannot afford. You have not produced any evidence whatsoever, so how could I possibly challenge your test methods. You have done no testing, and no experimentation.

Given that, I can think of no better resolution than to encourage more individual experimentation. Why do you seem to be against this?

[/QUOTE]

How did you possibly conclude that I am against individual experimentation? I am the guy who did the experimentation. You are the guy that has done none.

Please consider this a win for you. I will happily ignore your future posts.

WHOOAA! That was a long one!

[drmiller100]

Where is the moderator?

I'm going to take some credit for keeping my replies civil, and of course Ken has kept his civil as he is a more mature person then I.

But a moderator should move the HHO stuff over to the Unicorn Corral.


Theory on life, and politics. I differ from Ken. I believe acedemia ruins creativity, and in particular Engineers are trained and indocrinated to follow industry standards and copy pre existing solutions with slight variations.

Think about bridges - no one wants a new and creative way to design a bridge. Everyone wants a proven design which is guaranteed to work with a huge adversity to risk.

People like Old Mech, and I believe myself, come up with new solutions. Old Mech has not been trained by acedemics to follow the norms, and I refuse because I am weird. I think Ken is like me - he tries new things in new ways to just to do it.

People like us will come up with new and radical ideas, most of which will fail, but a very few will revolutionize the solutions available.

We will do this by TRYING things out, not by parroting other dreams not based on Unicorn Farts and false physics.

So to the other dreamers out there, step up. TRY THINGS. You learn so much more by TRYING

[user removed]

Hey Miller, my weirdness is longer than YOUR weirdness.

Not sure about Ken's weirdness, it might be longer than both of us put together.

.

Just a joke.

I know it's much more pleasant trying to read through threads when the content is actually relevant, unlike the first part of this reply by myself.

I'm sure the mods are watching, so lets just make their job easier, or they might demand a raise and union benefits.

regards
Mech

[user removed]

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

...sniff, sniff -- do I smell Unicorn "dung" in the air here?

Didn't I send you some UD repellant old man.

Oh yeah I forgot, I don't have a paypal account.

regards
Mech

[Ken Fry]

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

...sniff, sniff -- do I smell Unicorn "dung" in the air here?

Yes, we need a bigger exhaust fan.

About 2 years ago, I pretty well gave up the HHO debunking hobby, because I got tired of saying the same things over and over, and because it is hard to tell, online, who the real frauds are and who is just misinformed. I have no problem with slicing and dicing the real frauds, but have always been patient with the misinformed people.

So I started this thread at CR4, addressing most of the common proposed reasons for why HHO "works". After the FTC suit against Dennis Lee, the number of HHO posts on CR4 fell to almost nothing. But the enthusiasts seem to show up here periodically.

Every now and then, some self-styled genius shows up with more of the same old, same old, same old, thinking his take is "the answer" for how the magic of how these units "work". Every time, without exception, they cannot produce an independent test that shows that the unit has a beneficial effect. Every time. Then, inevitably, they blame problems on academia, the EPA, big government, big oil, science, the messenger, etc etc. Invariably, the promoter makes personal attacks and fails to come up with a single number or test result.

Just get the EPA off our backs and we could all be driving around in cars fueled by magic.

[Olympiadis]

(99.9% relevance when the term HHO is used on the ecomodder forum)

Saul Alinsky’s 12 Rules for Radicals
RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.


The radical progressives always out themselves with this tactic when they are unable to functionally engage in a truly scientific discussion, due to their being unable to back their claims by the correct use of unbiased reason, their unwillingness to embrace the traditional scientific method, and their profuse use of claims/counter-claims without verifiable and reproducible factual support.

It always breaks down to the use of logical fallacies, diversions from the issues, and ridicule of both subject matter and those involved who are in disagreement, and polarizing gang mentality.

Interestingly, the pursuit of true science is often rudely interrupted by the input from radicals who are ultimately more comfortable with the idea of handing more control over to an oppressive government entity than they are with true scientific discovery, especially where it involves the freedom of individual pursuits.
Interesting, but sadly not surprising.

What would be better is to withhold the use of tactics like ridicule, and stick to this:

[UFO]

Originally Posted by Olympiadis

(
What would be better is to withhold the use of tactics like ridicule, and stick to this:

I agree. Let's see it.

[Ken Fry]

Originally Posted by Olympiadis

What would be better is to withhold the use of tactics like ridicule, and stick to this:

I agree wholeheartedly. I am anxious to see what you come up with.

A chassis dyno capable of steady state load would be adequate, I think, for preliminary tests. (You could do fine tuning and later tests using an engine lab dyno.) I'd think that many people would accept fuel pressure logging and pulse width logging as adequate for preliminary studies. You will want to monitor the volume of gases produced and the wattage consumed by the electrolyzer.

I appreciate your stepping up.

[Ken Fry]

Originally Posted by Olympiadis

The radical progressives always out themselves with this tactic when they are unable to functionally engage in a truly scientific discussion, due to their being unable to back their claims by the correct use of unbiased reason, their unwillingness to embrace the traditional scientific method, and their profuse use of claims/counter-claims without verifiable and reproducible factual support.

I imagine that are many radical progressives who do not "out themselves" with this tactic. Ghandi was a radical progressive, and was not known for ridiculing others. Perhaps "always" is not the word you'd intended?

This whole exposition on your views of the use of ridicule seems out of place here, in that it is hard to find radical progressives on this forum: you are preaching to the choir. Several studies have suggested that liberals and progressives tend to be more interested in science and the scientific method than conservatives are. This tendency goes back many centuries. Do you have articles or studies that support your case that progressives are less likely than others to support scientific method?

And what is the connection between your attack on radical progressives and the efficacy of HHO?