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

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by pgfpro

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

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

That sounds good to me.
Why even bother waisting time with HHO?
Everything I see says you have to mess with it, clean it, replace parts, fill it with water constantly.
Why not just stick on some aero mods and forget it?

Why should be believe the huge gains reported by HHO modders when NASA reported a 3% gain when bottle feeding an engine hydrogen?

[Arragonis]

OK

So Mythbusters is cr@p a lot of the time but is entertaining (to some) TV, like Downton Abbey or Top Gear or Dallas or Cricket or Baseball or any other soap opera.

HHO is "out there" but at the moment it has to be filed under the "cr@p" label as it is unproven and the basic physics (energy in vs energy out) means it is nonsense.

Does this seem a reasonable summary ?

[TheEnemy]

You are putting 840 watts of energy into it, and not accounting for it? How big was your engine, what was the load on it etc..? 1L in 22 minutes its either a large motor at idle or a small one at power. How exactly was the test done?

[electronFarmer]

OOPS, I mis-typed... the 2 runs were on 100 ml of gasoline, that is 1/10 of a liter, for a run of 22 minutes and then with HHO of 44 minutes. That 70 amps would develop about 35 psi, valve closed condition, in 1 minute. With VERY rough math here, with a volume of ½ liter space above the the water, would yield about 17 ½ liters of HHO gas, without going through the PV=nRt chemistry equation. About 1/3 would be Oxygen and 2/3 Hydrogen. But the test was run valve open, obviously. Sorry about that... and as I wrote, a lawn mower engine, not under load although it was still belted to the alternator, at idle. I can not attest to the health of the motor, I picked up the mower second hand and did nothing to it as far as tune nor even an oil change. It was simply a running motor. This was several years ago. And I am NOT promoting nor denying the use of HHO.
I am instead converting another vehicle, a chevy S10 to electric motor and battery pack. This will be my third conversion. I am considering "hybriding" it by adding a gasoline powered generator, simply to extend the range. I landed in this thread because I may enhance the gas generator with GEET, PICC, and / or HHO, all of which showed up in this thread upon Google search within the ecomodder forum.
Electric is the path I have chosen. If you had asked me about electric automobiles 6 years ago, I would have said 'what's the difference, you can pay the oil companies or you can pay the electric companies, who burn oil, coal, natural gas or nukey pooh to make electricity.' But now I know that electric motors are better than 90% efficient compared to internal combustion engines that are AT BEST 30% efficient. There is also something to be said about CENTRALIZED GENERATION OF POLLUTION. That is, the power plants are stationary and can be fitted with pollution capture devices and more easily maintained, rather than fitting 1 billion automobiles (see Number Of Cars Worldwide Surpasses 1 Billion; Can The World Handle This Many Wheels?) with platinum catalytic converters and other pollution capture devices, all of which fall into various states of disrepair.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by electronFarmer

I may enhance the gas generator with GEET, PICC, and / or HHO.

I have a 3 cylinder diesel generator that can kick the crap out of any gas generator you mod with GEET, PICC HHO or what ever in the fuel economy and power production department.

Its been tested thousands of hours and is able run a 2kw load (not even half load) and consumes about 1/3 gallon of fuel per hour.
And I haven't even done any mods to it, I would like to delete the belt driven fan and put a larger radaitor on it with a thermo switch controled 110v fan and delete the battery charging alternator and replace it with one of my 110v battery chargers or a salvaged 12v wall plug in power converts.
I think just those 2 mods would drop fuel economy to about .25gal/hr at 2kw.
It will still fit in the back of a S-10 sized pickup with plenty of room to spare even with mods.
Also the external regulator will allow the generator to be run at 50Hz, which means better fuel economy for light loads.

The diesel engine is a kabota 3cylinder 0.9L non-turbo, the generator is an externally regulated 4-pole (1800rpm) 6kw single phase kohler. Nothing to hid or anything magical here.

If I ever started using it a lot more again I would put a K03 turbo charger (have 2 on hand), with intercooler (have a few that would work), 3 phase 9 to 10kw generator and water injection on it.
No black magic vodoo fringe science. Just improving widely used systems in well known conventional ways.

[Hal]

Unfortunately, we live in a universe where energy is conserved. In the real world the inefficiencies involved in producing the electricity to break down the water, in the electrolysis process itself and in the use of the hydrogen as fuel mean that you can't run your car on water, and that adding hydrogen generated in this way to your gasoline will not improve your fuel economy. A better way to spend your time and energy would be to develop ways to improve the aerodynamics of your vehicle, reduce its weight and in improving your driving techniques. Those things would be much more productive that trying to use some kind of magical technique that violates the realities of matter and energy.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by Hal

A better way to spend your time and energy would be to develop ways to.... reduce its weight.

Dont spend too much time and money on weight reduction beyond simple deletes.
On a large vehicle like my suburban on paper, driving at 65mph a 100lb change should effect fuel economy by 0.1mpg.
In the real world, hauling loads and logging fuel milage shows that as little as 400 to 500lb can effect fuel economy by 1 full MPG.
A smaller vehicle would be more effected by weight, but not that much more to where you should lay out $100s for light weight seats and carbon fiber hood/trunk lids.

[RustyLugNut]

Originally Posted by Hal

Unfortunately, we live in a universe where energy is conserved. In the real world the inefficiencies involved in producing the electricity to break down the water, in the electrolysis process itself and in the use of the hydrogen as fuel mean that you can't run your car on water, and that adding hydrogen generated in this way to your gasoline will not improve your fuel economy. A better way to spend your time and energy would be to develop ways to improve the aerodynamics of your vehicle, reduce its weight and in improving your driving techniques. Those things would be much more productive that trying to use some kind of magical technique that violates the realities of matter and energy.

If I don't want to spend time and money to drive funny, in a funny looking car - why not fool with HHO?

Spend some time looking at how hydrogen works in the combustion chamber and you will see that a small amount of it generated by electrolysis could provide a net gain.

[wungun]

[QUOTE=SVOboy;37609]

Originally Posted by Jigsaw

Yeah, exactly. GM and Honda and Toyota and others all knew electric cars worked, and built them. They didn't try to suppress the information or kill anyone involved in the project, they admitted it worked and spent millions of dollars doing it.

I haven't seen anything like that come of these HHO kits.

They spent more than millions!!
And it wasn't even their money...it was Uncle Sams.
And what ultimately killed it, wasn't so much demand...it was the petroleum lobbyist in Washington.
They aren't going to give up their billions in annual profits and let everyone buy electric vehicles any time soon!

Once the government money dried up, THEN they weren't going to spend their own r&d money developing something nobody wanted. Killed...

[oil pan 4]

Feel free to waste your time on HHO.
One of the long gone HHO advocates posted a link showing a test where NASA bottle fed hydrogen at a volume unobtainable with HHO generators into a piston engine and it only saw a 3% FE gain.

So no one killed it.

If running HHO makes you feel any better than go for it.

There are plenty of people who show up on here and claim they will build a HHO machine and prove that it works and we never hear back from them so:
The hho generator blew up and killed them
Or
It didn't work
Or
They never had to motivation to ever even start building it