Hydrogen Generator Experiment

[PA32R]

Originally Posted by ttoyoda

We all have to die of something, eventually.

Au contraire. 100% of the people alive at this moment have not died. I'd say that's a pretty significant sample size and a conclusive result.

[Formula413]

But those people comprise only a minute fraction of a percent of all people that have ever existed, so the odds are overwhelming that everyone will, in fact, die eventually.

[PA32R]

Originally Posted by Formula413

But those people comprise only a minute fraction of a percent of all people that have ever existed, so the odds are overwhelming that everyone will, in fact, die eventually.

I disagree. In fact, in an experiment, I interviewed a large number of people about this issue. Without fail, they had not died.

On a more serious note (still wholly unrelated to the thread), according to the article at Fact or Fiction?: Living People Outnumber the Dead: Scientific American, about 6% of the homo sapiens who ever were born are currently alive.

[Formula413]

Originally Posted by Formula413

But those people comprise only 6% of all people that have ever existed, so the odds are overwhelming that everyone will, in fact, die eventually.

Fixed.

[PA32R]

Originally Posted by Formula413

Fixed.

Upon further reflection, you may be right. But to quote Woody Allen, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve immortality by not dying."

Unfortunately, it looks like a long shot.

[jman]

on the hho subject i have read that the distance between the plates in the generator effects the amount of electrolyte required in the water mixture, and the more electrolyte the more amperage the generator draws. what i do not know is what happy medium there is between electrolyte and production. found a lot of videos on youtube and saw many different designs of generators, some they claimed to have a draw of 6 amps and others had a draw of 20 amps. anyways some designs looked to be more efficient than others has anybody tried building a generator or had any luck?

[Nerys]

Well I have been researching these HHO generators quite a bit lately.

Here are my conclusions so far.

WILL an HHO give you better gas mileage? In theory the answer is a 100% yes.

Its simply logic and physics if you put something combustable in an engine its going to combust it. If you are adding something besides fuel you now need less fuel.

Thats not up for discussion though (its a fact afterall) whats up for discussion is primarily CAN You make enough to make a MEANINGFUL improvement in fuel economy. If it gains me 1-2mpg that figure is statistically irrelevant. Why? well its hard to MEASURE fuel economy accurately enough to ignore statistical or measurement error at only 1-2mpg and its impossible to seperate road/weather/driver alterations between runs at that low a gain.

IE I need a gain that can not be explained by weather driving habits or road conditions.

In my minivan I have never gotten better than 28.6mpg. Ever since ETHANOL was added to our fuel I have never once gotten over 24mpg.

SO my initial "cap" is 24mpg my ultimate cap is 29mpg.

If I can get better than 29mpg then there is no meaningful question that the generator is having a measurable positive impact since NO amount of eco driving hypermiling road conditions driver conditions or weather conditions that I have yet to encounter have yet to get me more than 29mpg Period.

SO that my "bar" for measurement.

Next leaning it out. You don't need to lean it out really. Think of it this way. Do you need to lean it out when going down hill? off course not you just "let off" the gas.

IN THEORY this is what will happen with hydrogen injection. you will have MORE OMPH out of the car and so you will just instinctual "use less pedal" to make the car go and maintain speed IE less gas. Not the greatest efficiency but it has the advantage of being EASY and CHEAP.

NOW this does bring us to a bit of a chemistry and computer logic problem.

Roughly Water is 11% hydrogen and 89% Oxygen. Now before people say wait wait there is twice as much Hydrogen.

Well thats only true in PHYSICAL ATOMIC QUANTITY which for any reactions WE are conducting are largely irrelevant.

Once they are GASES all that matters is VOLUME. by volume its 11% hydrogen and 89% oxygen.

WORSE (this is where it gets tricky) its PURE oxygen. not "air" as we know it which is only what ?? 21% oxygen?

So now while YES you are injecting more "fuel" so you need less gas your also injecting COPIOUS quantities or PURE O2 into the engine.

this is going to screw around with your Oxygen sensors. its going to be TRICKED into thinking your running LEAN since its reading a LOT more O2 than it should be coming out the tailpipe. SO the computer does exactly what its supposed to do it INJECTS more fuel to richen up the mixture back to what its programmed for.

There are all kinds of issues and fixes and hacks to be worked on for this but I don't really care about that part.

Cars without O2 sensors will not have this problem Cars with only and upstream O2 sensor will not have a problem with this (if you inject after the sensor)

Now liters per hour? no thats for just H2 generators. HHO generators can do many liters a MINUTE. but again its 11% H2 and 89% O2 (remember H and O do not exist in nature by themselves they will immediately combine with surrounding H and O to form H2 and O2)

Thats why H2 generators have such low numbers. your venting off the O2 and JUST injecting the H2 ie only 11% of what your producing.

This solves the "excess" O2 problem but creates problems of its own.

Now. I am almost finished building my first HHO generator. First its not lightening my wallet.

These things are CHEAP. Really really cheap. Cheaper than a couple gallons of gasoline. Lets look at what I have here.

$3 bucket $3 in Stainless Steel Plates. $4 for a stainless threaded rod $2 in misc hardware (nuts washers nylon spacers etc..) and $6 for some Drain Cleaner to make electrolyte (and thats enough to make close to 100 generators)

I also am making mine more expensive than most since I am using the stainless rod which most do not but it seemed a better idea to me this way NOTHING but nylon and stainless will ever touch the bath.

Will it work? I have NO idea. but take it from MY perspective.

ITs DIRT CHEAP.
ITS FUN
I have other fun uses for a hydrogen generator

it can't hurt me or my car. SO why not?

It it fails I am out less than $20 and I still have a neato HHO generator to screw around with and have fun with.

If it works I will save a ton of money.

My goal is 45mpg out of my minivan by any means. If the HHO does that great if not maybe an electric motor on an AWD rear axle will. I can't afford 2 grand for a motor so I will try the $20 HHO generator.

Now some things that come to mind.

WHY do people plug it into the cars electrical. I bet most of the people seeing a null result is in fact a result of this.

THEY ARE getting a mpg boost but they are LOOSING it by making there alternator draw 10 more amps or much more.

SO I an going to run it off of batteries. a 40 amp generator will run for 2 hours off a 165amp deep cycle battery run to 50% DOD.

thats more than enough for my 90minute commute. I get to work plug it in and its recharged by the time I leave. Some say well now your paying for electricity. Well its going to cost me MAYBE a DIME in electricity to recharge it. Woopee :-) How much gas can I get for a dime even with $2.04 a gallon gas. Not much. If it saves me even 4-5mpg it will MORE than pay for itself hundreds of times over.

NOW what about running a car off water? no dice. the only way to make water power the car is by breaking it up into hydrogen which means its actually an ELECTRIC car not a WATER CAR the water is just storing the medium your going to inject into the ICE the BATTERY is doing the real work here :-)

Here is the problem. by the time you have enough battery power to generate enough REAL TIME hydrogen to power a car you already now have a battery pack to power it as a PURE electric with twice the range :-) IE the problem is you can not get enough BATTERIES in the car to make it work.

I don't need to run it off of hydrogen. I just need enough hydrogen to reduce how much Gasoline I need :-)

But again. Its cheap. Its fun and if it does not work I lost nothing except enough money to goto the movies. SO

WHY NOT :-)

as I manage to time to get it working I WILL report my results and I will do on and off tests to confirm the results.

So thats my take on it so far.

I am just about done building a generator. just need to get a nipple for the hose (forgot that bit) and build a bubbler (the bubbler does not make anything its just a safety device IE to prevent any possible flashback from getting to your CONTAINER of electrolyte and blowing it to pieces :-) Since my generator will be INSIDE the cabin this is critical for me especially :-)

You see I am not making some dinky generator. I am using a 5 gallon pail and plan to eventually run this think to 80 amps with 5-6 "cells" inside to generate the gas.

Hey I say go big :-) Total cost will PROBABLY run me around $40-50 total to build it (I already have the batteries) Once I nail down the design I will nail down the cost to replicate one. but my initial cost for a double cell unit will be under $20. I will only go more cells if things appear promising.

If it works I stop there and enjoy if not but it shows promise I will try to build a pure H2 generator. IE separate the H2 and O2 so I only inject the H2.

I KNOW that will work but its a lot harder to do and again the GAINS are unknown. SO I will start with the easy cheap unit. I am almost done the generator and with nothing but a pair of plyers a hack saw and my cordless drill I built it in less than 30 minutes. (while watching a movie)

so its not hard and not expensive. TRY IT have fun be safe and see what happens. if it fails SO what you had fun learned some stuff and have a nifty HHO generator to play around with now.

[Frank Lee]

Say, there's a flurry of activity over on gassavers with HHO. There must be TONS of knowledge to be tapped there!

[PA32R]

Originally Posted by Nerys

<snip>

SO I an going to run it off of batteries. a 40 amp generator will run for 2 hours off a 165amp deep cycle battery run to 50% DOD.

thats more than enough for my 90minute commute. I get to work plug it in and its recharged by the time I leave. Some say well now your paying for electricity. Well its going to cost me MAYBE a DIME in electricity to recharge it. Woopee :-) How much gas can I get for a dime even with $2.04 a gallon gas. Not much. If it saves me even 4-5mpg it will MORE than pay for itself hundreds of times over.

<snip>

Let's see if this is plausible. 40 amps at 12 volts is 480 watts, about one third the power of a hair dryer. Now, let's assume that we can do the electrolysis and the oxidation of the hydrogen at 100% efficiency, that is, that all 480 joules of energy from the generator each second can be converted to heat in the cylinders.

I'll assume he's getting an average speed of 35 m.p.h. over a tank full and that his 24 m.p.g. is over a tank full. A gallon will thus take him 24 miles in 2,469 seconds. To achieve 29 m.p.g, a gallon plus the "HHO" input (it pains me to type that) would take him 29 miles in 2,983 seconds. To simplify, without loss of generality, we can say that the HHO would take him 4 miles in 514 seconds. I'll assume 25% efficiency in converting liquid fuel to motion. I don't know what percentage of ethanol is in his fuel, so I'll assume pure ethanol since it makes the calculation more favorable for the possibility of achieving the hoped-for increase.

A gallon of ethanol, when oxidized, releases about 80,180,000 joules of thermal energy. Of that, 25% or 20,045,000 joules are available to overcome resisting force (i.e., move the car). Thus, to go four miles takes (4/24) * 20,045,000 joules, or 3,340,833 joules. We're doing this in 514 seconds. As shown above, the maximum energy available in 514 seconds from the work done by the battery in electrolyzing the water, even assuming both the electrolysis and the oxidation could be done with 100% efficiency, is 514*480 or 246,720 joules. Then, the engine can only use this at 25% efficiency, so 61,680 joules are available to turn the wheels. This is about 1.8% of the energy needed to accomplish the desired increase.

Sorry.

[Nerys]

No need to be sorry the assumption is yours and therefore your mistake

40amps is what the Initial build will consume. Once I have confirmed that I do indeed get any kind of measurable gain I will "ramp up" the number of cells until I have the gains I desire if its possible. I also made it clear I will do what I can to get these gains. NOT all of it need come from hydrogen. Just because its fun to discuss one of my other ideas is to install an AWD rear axle connect an electric motor to it and use that to "assist" the gas engine during acceleration further reducing the amout of gasoline.

I also plan to aero mod the van.

I hope with all these things combined and then some I can get 45mpg.

I will install as many cells and as many batteries as is needed within reason. While I can not afford an electric motor I CAN afford batteries since I don't have to buy them all at once. I just keep adding them.

Your figures are also a bit odd sounding to me. I know 10 batteries can take me over 30 miles. Unless electrolysis is just that inefficient.? Who knows. Either way its costing me very little so I do not care. :-)

Your Joule values are also bogus since your only getting a FRACTION of that energy to actually do work for you. SO the actual energy needed to go say a mile is a LOT LOWER than the amount you use and WASTE in gasoline.

I believe its converting 25% of gasoline into energy BUT we are WASTING most of that as heat. The amount we actually use is around 10% IIRC (I would have to look it up again)

Either way electricity is cheap.