HHO-only Diesel car

[me and my metro]

I can't believe I just read through it.

[teoman]

Seriously, what did you expect when the title had HHO in it?


That is like opening an email that says "gain 12 inches with these miracle pills" and the saying I cant believe it was not true.

[RedDevil]

I know a guy who flies a sled through the air, pulled by 8 unicorns, yelling "HHO HHO HHO"!
He claims he uses no fuel at all.

[elhigh]

The Nissan Leaf, with 30 kW-h of energy aboard, already covers more than twice the 50m range of the 50 kW-h battery in the HHO concept you're wildly flailing at, and it avoids all the BS of the HHO stuff. Wouldn't that be the better choice? Skip a bunch of snake oil steps, no snake oil squeezing hardware aboard your vehicle, go farther? I think that's the way to go.

[elhigh]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

I know a guy who flies a sled through the air, pulled by 8 unicorns, yelling "HHO HHO HHO"!
He claims he uses no fuel at all.

That was genius

[smallscaleH2]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

A Hyundai Ioniq electric has a 28 kWh battery and a range of over 200 km.
So it has 5 times the range from less than 3/5 of the capacity.
The running costs on electricity alone would be just 12% of your setup.
In other words, yours is 8 times as expensive to run.

If you have a battery the best way to transfer the power within to motion is by using an electric motor and motor controller. The efficiency of that is typically way above 50%.

The thought you would have a big battery on board and just use that to make a diesel engine tick over goes against logic. Like if in the time of the first real cars you'd build a mechanical horse to pull carts instead.

You're looking at it from an energy-efficiency perspective.
This project idea was never about energy-efficiency.
Instead, I was looking at it considering these design criteria:
* the fuel needs to be usable in a Diesel engine
* the fuel should (when burned) not emit any carbon or toxic gases
* conversion needs to be relatively cheap to do

Regarding the cost, I don't agree. I agree the fuel costs would be higher, but if you look at the whole thing (so including conversion costs), it would be cheaper -electric motor, battery and motor controller tend to cost a lot-.

Originally Posted by teoman

Seriously, what did you expect when the title had HHO in it? That is like opening an email that says "gain 12 inches with these miracle pills" and the saying I cant believe it was not true.

I did know about the negative perspective most people have on HHO. What I did never read anywhere however were scientifically based arguments (so including energy calculations, ...). That's why I made the post and did the calculations. What I actually found was that it was a much better fuel than I initially thought. Seifrob and ar5boosted mentioned alternatives like compressed air and steam I could use. Well, compared to that I think HHO is a better energy carrier (if it wasn't for the damage it inflicts on the engine, but for say overbuild Wankels -found in construction equipment-, this might not be the case)

Anyway, it doesn't matter any more as despite meeting my initial criteria, it does damage regular Diesel engines. So it's useless.

A more interesting question to ask now however is: is hydrogen usable in Diesel engines (so not gasoline engines, but Diesel engines) ? If not, what's the reason why it doesn't work in them, and are there any workarounds to fix that problem (like using fuel or combustion chamber pre-heating, adding of a spark-plug inside the combustion chamber, ...) ?
If I find that I can just use hydrogen in Diesel engines, then that would even be better than if I were able to use HHO.

[teoman]

in modern diesel engines, the compression does not ignite the diesel that is in the cylinders. Rather the cylinder compresses and heats up the air and diesel that is injected in to the cylinder combusts because it enters a very hot environment.

Diesel engines achieve this by compressing the diesel to 1000-2000 bars. So you would also have to compress your hydrogen to similar pressures.

As far as i know the old tech uses a pre combustion chamber ehere the diesel is ignited and sucked in to the chlinder while still burning. I have a feeling that your hydrogen would very rapidly all combust and not make it inside the cylinder.


I do not think that you can get the timing right if you just let the engine suck in hydrogen and have the compression ignite it.

I am no expert but you may have to use a spark.

[ar5boosted]

Originally Posted by smallscaleH2

A more interesting question to ask now however is: is hydrogen usable in Diesel engines (so not gasoline engines, but Diesel engines) ? If not, what's the reason why it doesn't work in them, and are there any workarounds to fix that problem (like using fuel or combustion chamber pre-heating, adding of a spark-plug inside the combustion chamber, ...) ?
If I find that I can just use hydrogen in Diesel engines, then that would even be better than if I were able to use HHO.

HHO seems like it was used to supplement Diesel and extend the range of British Tanks in WWII. So it does work alongside diesel fuel.

However, HHO all by itself when burnt gives you a metal cutting torch.



When burnt / ignited / oxidised whatever it will melt the Iron in the engine.

How do you propose getting around that ?

But, more seriously, talking about these things in a theoretical sense won't get you anywhere. HHO has been proven to be in the same category of fuels as Hydrogen-Peroxide. Highly unstable and dangerous.

Sure there may be ways of making it work, but you haven't proposed any yet that haven't been already tried by mainstream Science, Corporations or talented hackers.

If you want a Hydrogen car, you can buy one today:

- https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/fcv.html

Just $57,500 MSRP

Most people would be skeptical if you can make something better than what Toyota have with their multi-billion investments in the field.

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by smallscaleH2

You're looking at it from an energy-efficiency perspective.
This project idea was never about energy-efficiency.

You describe HHO as a good fuel - what makes it good, then, if not its fuel efficiency?
Emissions maybe - but you start off with electric power, and from that point on a regular EV has no emissions at all. Diesel engines typically run lean under light loads, and you need to do the same (e.g. mix in air) to have a chance to make it work. But then you'd produce nitrous oxides - unlike the EV.
With efficiency and the environment out of the room, practicality and safety never in view, what remains?

Originally Posted by smallscaleH2

Regarding the cost, I don't agree. I agree the fuel costs would be higher, but if you look at the whole thing (so including conversion costs), it would be cheaper -electric motor, battery and motor controller tend to cost a lot-

Hey, there is a battery in your setup too. You actually need a big one to get anywhere.
If we just look at the differences:
EV conversion: + motor, motor controller;
HHO-Diesel: + Diesel engine, cooling system, tranny, exhaust system, electrolyser, power regulator...
I'm not sure your setup would be cheaper. (that's an euphemism)
You could buy a nice used Leaf for the cost of a 50 kWh battery alone.

Originally Posted by smallscaleH2

If I find that I can just use hydrogen in Diesel engines, then that would even be better than if I were able to use HHO.

Yes, definitely. But you might find that a very light fuel like hydrogen works better in a gasoline engine than a diesel engine. Lower compression ratio to prevent detonation, spark ignition, throttle valve - all gasoline engine territory.
Still, if it has to be a diesel engine for whatever reason, chances to get it to work at all are higher with hydrogen than when using Brown's gas.

[seifrob]

Have you seen this video HaroldinCR found for you? (permalink) This one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbvwvZtCeIU

I will not discuss it it is fake or not, let's take it as canon.
- Now, when you know that it can be done (leave aside that we do not see the car in action). From the youtube video we can figure:
- whole boot of that corvette is filled with hydrogen tanks
- he used gasoline engine, not diesel
- the tanks give around 400 miles range (as he claims)
- to fill these tanks it takes industry-grade electrolyser overnight, and the process cannot be sped up significantly
- you need a hydride (Lithium-6 deuteride) to store hydrogen in safely under pressure around 7 bar (pressure in waterline)
- it is neither easy, nor cheap (and surely not "for free")

Now it depends what do you want to do.
- Personally use eco friendly car? Than sell yours and buy (second hand) electric car. You use electricity anyway and conversion rate in electromobiles is way better

- build yourself eco friendly car? Do an EV conversion, there are plenty of examples here on Ecomodder, even Top Gear guys made one ;-), (see here) and

here

.

- build yourself hydrogen powered car, just for sake of doing it?, OK, but be prepared it takes much higher skills in theory of combustion and motor engineering, and do not try to reinvent wheel. If I would be in your boots, I would firstly search every successful attempt in literature (printed, as there is less chance to let print false positives. See your local university library). As getting hydride is out of question for backyard engineer, CNG conversion kits would be a good start, study them, see how they do it and why (no one here discussed preheating gas after expansion, for instance). But do not expect to come with easy, safe and cheap solution. There is none. As I already told you, cheapest LPG conversion kit costs around € 800 in my country, CNG conversion kits around € 1400 and they will be more similar to your case due pressures used. So that is your base price. And remember that CNG tanks do not suffer hydrogene embrittlement you need to overcome. I could continue, but I do not see a reason why.

You can make it done, but seems to be extremly difficult, close to impossible, and nowadays, with current state of the technology it simply is not practical to do it. Electromobiles seem to be much better alternative.

- was this enough data for you?
here you acused me to make idle comments. Sometimes it takes more complicated calculation that working with fractions, trust me. My time is too valuable to type all equations on my smartphone. Where I do back-of-the-envelope calculation, I announce it. Where i cite other sources, I announce it. We collectively provided evidence of others people work and these also did the actual number crunching. You came for answers, we provided them. But, do you really listen to what we provided? Than, how can you be so stubborn?
- did you just google HHO powered car before you entered this forum ? Isn't it weird that serious links (BBC, CNN, popular mechanics etc.) only list topics that it cannot be done? yeah, there is world-wide conspiracy for sure.

I am not going to visit this thread again.
howgh