Myth Busters SUCKS! (HHO mod, does it work?)

[cfg83]

Christ -

Originally Posted by Christ

Great article find, Carlos!

I am positive I got it from someone else here on EM, but I can't remember who/where. Once you know the title, it's super easy to google.

dwtaylorpdx -

I included the description of the engine so that someone could make that very point. I think the goal of the research was to satisfy 1977 emissions standards while employing lean-burn. Just as you say, a carburetor implies (to me) that there is no ECU/PCM + 02 Sensor needing to be spoofed.

CarloSW2

[pgfpro]

So the new title of this thread should be...

Myth Busters Sucks and the HHO mod doesn't work at any level!!!

[Nerys]

So according to this article hydrogen injection might even decrease mpg since it will increase the flame front speed to greater than the actual piston speed we typically see being careful in little cars? ie it would be more suited for performance cars?

[cfg83]

Nerys -

Originally Posted by Nerys

So according to this article hydrogen injection might even decrease mpg since it will increase the flame front speed to greater than the actual piston speed we typically see being careful in little cars? ie it would be more suited for performance cars?

That agrees with what I quoted back in post #130 :

http://ecomodder.com/forum/137151-post130.html

Diesel Dynamometer Testing Analysis
Hydrogen-Boost

CarloSW2

[pgfpro]

Originally Posted by Nerys

So according to this article hydrogen injection might even decrease mpg since it will increase the flame front speed to greater than the actual piston speed we typically see being careful in little cars? ie it would be more suited for performance cars?

According to the article it could decrease mpg at light load when the flame speed needs to be more around what the "petrol ICE" was design for at light load low rpm.

But I don't believe the article is true. From other Hydrogen data sources, Hydrogen has a flame speed of only 13.2ft/second in a petrol ICE. Around 9ft/sec at one atm.

[pgfpro]

Originally Posted by cfg83

Nerys -



That agrees with what I quoted back in post #130 :

http://ecomodder.com/forum/137151-post130.html



CarloSW2

I do believe that Hydrogen can help in a diesel application. I have seen this first hand with the company I work for. (ABA testing long haul vehicles).

But I will be honest and say I don't understand diesel engines like I should and feel I can't add anything helpfull in this area.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by Christ

Phil -

The oxygen. I've asked a few times of all those HHO marketers why it simply gets wasted en passant, and noone has ever been able to give me an answer.

That's part of the reason that I don't believe in the whole HHO 'ghost marketing' scam that goes on. If the Oxygen is there, and the HHO increases the combustion rate of the fuel, it also needs to increase the combustion intensity, creating a resultant stronger pressure wave over a shorter period of time (exactly the opposite of how a diesel engine works, for those who care), that should be converting the H, H, and O back into water, leaving the normal combustion gasses unaltered, no?

As potentially misinformed about the chemical reaction in the combustion chamber as I very well may be (not a chemistry major), I just don't see the "extra" oxygen being in the exhaust stream to begin with, so no further modifications should be necessary to "see a gain" from HHO, correct?

Ok, so the math may be there to support the enhanced combustion theorem (source, please?), but I still can't warp my intelligence enough to figure out where this "extra" oxygen gas comes from.

Christ,from what I gather from the greencar papers,in only one instance is the oxygen inducted.And there is no claim as to the significance of this.So that is a dead end without more data.
With respect to flame speed and peak pressures,etc.,the flame propagates at a higher velocity,it burns over a longer time period,with complete oxidation of the charge,with a flatter pressure peak plateau ( no spikes which could cause destruction ),little time for Nitrogen to react,and lower exhaust gas temp.
The complete combustion allows for less fuel for same power output.
The fast burning hydrogen may act as a catalyst might,cracking the long hydrocarbon chain molecules,exposing them better to the combustion dynamics as the "swirl" does in Widmer's,or "homogenizer" with Yunick.
Would like to see more science on it all.

[aerohead]

From Professor Vosper's work I get the impression that the hydrogen is of value during "highway" operation.
He's from Canada.When I was last there,the speed limit was 100-Km/h.Would I be free to presume that he did his highway testing at this speed?
If a net 21% mpg improvement is realized,that sounds pretty good.
Widmer's high-swirl designs were netting 0.37 lbs/hp-hour BSFC.
Would hydrogen injection on top of 0.37 lb BSFC show even lower consumption? Or is the benefit from hydrogen achieved with the high-swirl,lean-burn engine,with no further room for improvement?
In a camshaft comparison published by HOT ROD,their Chevy 350 V-8 never performed better than 0.49 lb/hp-hr.That's with optimized cam degreeing,fuel mixture,and ignition timing,and typically at rpm's around 3,000 or below.

[Christ]

I've been trying to find more information on Larry Widmer's high swirl designs, actually. I have all the archives on his site copied, but I can't find anything else on it, other than a few sparse forum posts.

I'd love to see what Larry has to say about Singh's Grooves... LOL.

21% on my van would be another 5MPG... that would shoot me into mid 30's, and sure, that would be great.

[electronFarmer]

OK, I have read the entire thread... I agree Mythbusters Suck. I have seen some, but not every episode. Some were good but some were awful science. The 200 MPG episode truly sucked with them simply buying a carb off the internet. They made no mention whatsoever of Charles Pogue and his work (US patents # 1,750,354, # 1,997,497, and the most often cited # 2,026,798) nor did they make use of exhaust or radiator heat to preheat the gasoline. You can not bust a myth unless you build it the way it was claimed to work, try it and then find it does not work.
Then they played around with a hydrogen generator, using electrolysis, that is electricity from the car's 12 volt system through plates submerged in water. This breaks the water into it's constituents of hydrogen and oxygen, 2 to 1. This did not show any gain to the mythbusters crew so they acquired a bottle of pure hydrogen and fed it directly into the carb. Yes the engine ran on that. Oh but then they had a fire. Doesn't that make for good video footage to tell Joe Sixpack not to try this at home...
A friend of mine, Mike Campbell (since passed away) and I also played with hydrogen. The electrolyte we chose was NaSO4, that's Sodium Sulfate. It is neither acid nor alkaline. We did not use table salt, sodium chloride, because we did not want to generate chlorine gas. We did not use sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide as these are strong alkalines. We did not use hydrochloric acid again because of the chlorine gas generation, even though this would also generate more hydrogen. Nor did we use sulfuric acid. We did not want the acids to "eat" our metal plates. Our plates were eaten anyway, but more on that later. We "made" our electrolyte by combining, slowly, sulfuric acid with sodium hydroxide (lye) until our pH meter gave a neutral reading. This MUST be done in a plastic container, the type that sulfuric acid comes in. Even then this mixing evolves heat and altered the shape our our plastic container. Later I found out that you can just buy Sodium sulfate as a powder. I have a bottle of it now. This electrolyte is not consumed in the reaction. The hydroxide of the sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide IS consumed. The chloride of sodium chloride or hydrochloric acid IS consumed.
We kept a notebook but I do not have it. But if my memory serves me correctly we started with 1/2 gram of the (powder equivalent) sodium sulfate to 1.5 liters of pure water. We built several different electrolysis "chambers" but each of them held about 1.5 liters. The electrolyte serves as the charge carrier between the plates and, as I mentioned, is not, or should not be consumed by the reaction.
We tried several different metals in our plates, aluminum, titanium (very high electrical resistance and expensive), settling on stainless steel, 318, but not switch plate covers. Only much later did I hear about the problem with the chromium, part of the stainless "recipe" showing up as a problem in the water solution.
No attempt was made to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen. That means the gas produce in the chamber is VERY explosive. Separating the gasses would be made in the design, by separating the positive and negative plates by some distance and placing a physical barrier from the top of the chamber down into the water level for some distance. The bubbles off of one set of plates would then be kept separate from the bubbles off the other set of plates. But then the electricity would have to travel further through the electrolyte charge carriers and increase the resistance.
We used a lawn mower engine, vertical shaft Briggs and Stratton, mounted on a test stand. We mounted a fairly heavy, for it's size of 5 inch, cast iron pulley to act as a flywheel and drive an automobile alternator with a belt. The electricity output of the alternator was fed into the chamber.
The first run showed a draw of 5 amps into the chamber and about 6 pounds per square inch (psi), valve closed, in the chamber after 1 minute. Now the psi should be clarified here. The water in the chamber must be high enough to completly submerge the plates with enough extra to allow for the water to be consumed. A final version would have a float valve to allow fresh water to enter and maintain this level. My point here is that the "air" space above the water level, including the pipe leading to the valve, was about 1/2 liter. So the 6 psi was on a volume of 1/2 liter after 1 minute. I know I am mixing english and metric units here but I think you get the idea.
My friend Mike was excited but I pointed out that the piston motor consumes many liters per hour, although not all of it is fuel. So we added another 1/2 gram of electrolyte to the solution. This doubled the amp draw to 10 amps, and nearly doubled the output of HHO gas to 10 psi, again in 1 minute.
So we open the valve and fed the HHO gas, via a hose, into the throat of the carb. Yes the motor sound changed pitch, a slight increase in rpm's. No we did not have a tachometer on it, sorry.
A problem showed up. The water in the chamber was turning brown, well yellow at first then brown. The iron in the stainless steel plates was being driven, electrically, into the solution. The plates were being "eaten". This we called the brown sludge. Some of it was at the bottom of the chamber and some at the top, on the bubbles like foam on beer. That's why we tried other plate materials, each showed it's own drawback.
We melted connections getting the electricity into the chamber. We had three small explosions, well one was just a hose bursting, but very exciting nonetheless.
We played with this for a couple of months. We wanted more amperage than the alternator wanted to give us. We looked up alternator tricks. We unhooked the electrical output of the alternator and used a large battery charger instead. 90 amps, about 45 psi in 1 minute. We even hooked up a large 3 phase Lincoln welder I have capable of 400 amps. It showed 140 amps into the chamber at 28 volts. The water was bubbling so furiously and we were laughing equally hard. Then we realized that the water was boiling!!!
OK, bottom line. A 1 liter measured amount of gasoline was put in the tank, the engine ran with no load for 22 minutes, quitting on it's own. Another 1 liter of gasoline was added to the tank. HHO gas from the chamber was fed into the carb, using the battery charger at about 70 amps (don't remember the exact amps on this run) not the alternator, so engine not under load. The engine ran 44 minutes.
So there you have it. If you can supply the amps... If you can solve the brown sludge... If you can provide for cooling the solution... If you can contain the psi...