Why don't you demand courtesy from any and all topics?

[mcrews]

I could really care less about HHHH.
But I am bothered by your tone...
"And thanks for that good post. Posts such as this is all I ask."

Explain to me why you have a right to ask for anything? No one else here does!
If we want to be narrow minded ....we can!
THe mods are clear on what can be posted and what can't.
you seem to want to create rules that apply to you and your 'needs'.
I have a GREAT idea.....start your own forum!!!
see how many people you attract with your rules.
What you seem to be missing in your myopic focus on "HHHH and OUR behavior", is the notion of "FORUMS". The tend to be a living breathing organism with a life of their own. Each one is different, based on the subject matter, advertising, design, composition and members.
I have seen some with a 8th grade vocabulary and others, (like ecomodder) with a much higher vocabulary. I have seen very aggressive and very passive. Over Modded and under Modded.
the point is....your constant 'requsts' for us to alter our behavior are falling on deaf ears.

[RedDevil]

About flame speed...

From wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_speed

The flame speeds are not the actual engine flame speeds, A 12:1 compression ratio gasoline engine at 1500 rpm would have a flame speed of about 16.5 m/s, and a similar hydrogen engine yields 48.3 m/s, but such engine flame speeds are also very dependent on stoichiometry[2]

That has to do with turbulent versus laminar flame speed, as you can imagine in a cylinder head with swirling air and a spray of gas from the injectors the flame front won't be laminar for long.
The flame speed you described was based on laminar burn.
Even so, hydrogen does burn considerably faster.

When the pressure builds up the mixture starts to explode or even detonate, propagating the explosion front at speeds close to or surpassing the speed of sound.
In that too hydrogen will increase the speed.

I see no reason why a tiny amount of hydrogen should increase the flame speed by much, but it may lower the explosion treshold somewhat, which can be troublesome.

In water one in ten million hydrogen atom will be a loose ion because of the polar properties of water molecules but in a gaseous state almost all hydrogen will be in molecular form; H2. These need to be broken up in the burn before anything happens. Protons in water are irrelevant for the burn process.

When you heat up the electrolytic cells to 80°C and you feed it to the intake it will contain a large amount of water vapour. If you feed it in behind the throttle plate and the engine is at low load the vacuum may be strong enough to make the water in your cells boil by itself.
Adding steam may reduce pumping losses and therefore help the engine tick over, improving efficiency.

I'm running out of time here but you see, there are some loose ends in your story. Science is about tying them all together, proving that every step inevitably leads to the next. Scepticism is the tool to look for weak points in a theory; if there are viable alternate explanations then the theory loses credibility.
Scientists will first try to falsificate their own theories before they put them out in the open; such a shame to put your name on it if it can be blown away, a simple oversight maybe.

If you do science you should have your answers ready for proper criticism.
This is no science lab so there will be criticism that is not properly formulated or reasonable.
That unfortunately is a given. Take it with dignity, explain it away once and link to the explanation whenever the same point comes up again.

But most of all, stick to the topic. This explanation of yours is your best yet. It should be in its own thread instead of a discussion about etiquette. Now it sidelines that discussion.

[elhigh]

Without digging into the question of whether HHO is a valid technology to discuss on this forum, let alone pursue, I do have one question:

Obviously the topic is met with serious skepticism at the very least on this forum. The discussion generally devolves into a pie fight challenging testing methods, the inefficiencies surrounding the generation of HHO, etc. With these facts in mind, why do you even bother discussing the topic in this venue where it is so clearly unwelcome?

When the topic automatically lands in a category that cannot but call out obvious prejudice - "The Unicorn Corral" - why do you insist on sowing seed on such inhospitable ground? Do you really enjoy the fight that much?

There are other forums out there that are, no doubt, much more receptive to your discussion. I'm not telling you to go away, that's completely beyond my purview and in fact we are all here at the forbearance of the moderators. But I am asking, without calling you names or questioning your methods and ideas: why do you stay?

[ChazInMT]

Highlighted are the pseudoscience sorta things I'm talking about.

Provide definitions of these things....

Originally Posted by RustyLugNut

It is of such a basic nature and the words are such I CANNOT make it any more simple!

A very small amount of HHO can affect combustion. That HHO may not be created in an efficient manner, but it can help contract the combustion curve and net more power than is lost in it's creation. There is nothing untoward in what I have said. Can you not see that the LOSSES in an engine is where the net "energy" is coming from?

You even stated that hydrocarbons are full of hydrogen! All thermochemistry tells us is, a small seeding amount of hydrogen and oxygen can cause a domino effect and release that hydrogen so that classic hydrogen research in the 4% range becomes viable. Go pull up numerous papers on the subject . They are all over the internet. Yes, they can be boring and very technical, but you can just go to the summaries. Hydrogen is fast burning because it does not get trapped in side reactions. It can't. Carbon can. Even the simplest fuel, CH4 is almost an order of magnitude slower in flame propagation because it starts to get sidetracked and produces compounds. Depending on your flame test, CH4 will burn at a rate of 30 cm per second while hydrogen does so at 300 cm per second. But, the minuscule amount H2 is not burning at an accelerated rate! It is chopping up the CH4 and preventing much of the compound formations that would sidetrack the thermodynamics of the combustion. The Carbon can oxidize and form CO2 more rapidly. It may only accelerate that flame front from 30 cm per second to 35 cm per sec, but it is enough to take a few degrees ignition lead away while producing more torque.

Look at a classic ignition/pressure curve. That pressure rise BEFORE top dead center (TDC) is lost work. Reducing that area by faster burn NETS you that lost work by moving it into the area AFTER TDC. This is a basic concept of internal combustion engines. Nothing is pseudoscience. Engine designers strive for this. Thus we have high swirl ports and squish and tumble. These all accelerate and move that flame front along reducing the need for ignition lead. This is why HHO will fail in most modern vehicles that already have accelerated combustion capable cylinder heads.

I introduced the idea of brake mean effective pressure (BMEP) and did a calculation that showed how just a few PSI gain can net several horsepower. The average passenger car engine cruises at peak pressures of a few hundred PSI with BMEP at a less than 100 PSI. Shifting any pressure losses from the negative to the positive nets you the few PSI gain needed to produce more power with the same amount of fuel. This is such a basic concept of mechanical engineering, I don't know how to make it even more understandable.

Well, now you say, the electrolysis efficiency is too low to net any gains. True, if you are just using gobs of electricity to produce that HHO gas. But, if you have an engine that already likes to knock ( older iron head, iron block with high compression ) a very small amount of HHO is needed. I used the number 230 cc per minute. That is not all gas as I explained as a large amount is also steam. But, 140 Watts using Coulombic calcs gives us enough hydrogen to start the domino effect going. The amount of gas needed to start the pre-combustion depolymerization of the hydrocarbon fuel is dependent on the energy of the combustion mix (temperature, pressure, kinetic energy - swirl and tumble). Some engines need a relatively small amount. Some engines are so insensitive, you cannot produce enough HHO without bogging the engine down with alternator load. I use 303/304 Stainless steel in my electrolyzer only because there is a ton of it in the scrap pile out back of the shop. It has a large over-voltage. That is the voltage needed to get any useful electrolysis going. It needs about 2.5v per cell to get my 230 cc/min. But, configuring the cells to have a water jacket with hot water running through it at 80 deg C, reduces the voltage to 1.7V to get the same volume of electrolytic gasses. That gain in efficiency comes from the heat lost in the engine coolant. This actually allows us to stack not 4, but 6 cells in the series. We could get 50% more gas output for the same power. But, that is not necessarily needed. Just play with your engine design and the parameters of operation. PfgPro's engine would have been ideal for this. He can add heat, and compression via a change in boost pressure at cruise as he showed he could do. He could reduce his ignition lead via a "leaky N2O2 injector". HHO will not have as large an effect but with some juggling of intake heat as well as cruise boost, you could see some measurable changes, I predict. Again, since the ignition lead in a lean burn engine is quite long, reducing this lead nets more torque for the same amount of fuel used.

Now the area of real interest to the DIY ecomodder is the lean burn range. Most of us can simply look to the threads of the Honda crowd and see they run at 22:1 AFR and with some tweaking they can run up to about 24:1 AFR. At that point, misfire and partial combustion become prevalent and torque drops. PgfPro could run at 28:1 AFR and above! With his "leaky N2O2" he had calculated AFRs in the 30:1 range with torque enough to drive on. Again, his leaky Nitrous valve provides an affect greater than HHO can, but it underlines the fact that classic studies support what he was doing by the introduction of compounds that easily form active radicals. HHO is one of those compounds since the energy of decomposition of the diatomic hydrogen molecule is relatively low and H+ and OH- radicals can be formed before ignition is started, not after.

So, where is the pseudoscience in all of the above? There is none! I dare you to take the above to ANY tech school or university. It violates none of the classic sciences.

Will we see 50% or 100% more fuel economy? Of course not! I've never said that and the science does not support it. In an engine running at stoichiometry, very little gain is expected - if any at all as the fast burn at stoichiometry for modern engines negates any effect HHO can have. In an older engine design, there may be a gain in the single digits. Lean burn is where gains of value can be made. We all know pumping losses at cruise can approach 15% because of throttling. By opening up the throttle and leaning out the mix, we can gain back some of that lost pumping efficiency. But, by using lean burn, we lose some efficiency back because of the exceedingly long lead times needed as mentioned above. The Honda lean burn can net 7-10% more thermal efficiency (TE). If you can extend the AFR while producing the same torque, you can net even more of that 15% and go beyond. At 30:1 AFR, will you net 50% thermal efficiency since you are using only half the fuel at 14.7:1 AFR? No, it's not that simple. But, you can probably see 15-20% increase in thermal efficiency. What does this mean in a practical sense? It just means your average 30% TE engine can climb up to 34.5% TE or so. About the same as the engine found in the Toyota Prius.

All the above is not pseudoscience. JrMichner posted briefly. I don't think he read the thread. He just posted the usual anti HHO answer. I challenge any of the engineering types to discuss the above. It is not without it's holes and opinions but it is real science.

Again, if you don't understand the above, don't post! You just junk up the thread. I'll answer questions if they are germane to the subject.

Chaz, the fact you didn't know that protons reside in your drinking water means you really need to think before posting.

I have to run. The CO2 laser isn't behaving. Yes, I have lasers! No sea bass, but I have lasers!

The blue highlight is where I really see an issue. You are correlating the effects of 4% H2 enrichment to something which I figure is .143% HHO Enrichment. I'm figuring 230CC per minute in an engine inhaling what I roughly figure is 2,400 Liters per minute of air and at 15:1, 160 Liters of Fuel Vapor per minute. So when I divide the 160L by 230CC I get about 700. When I divide 1 by 700, I get .143% HHO enrichment.

I Just can't in my head figure out how a 700:1 ratio of something is going to be able to do much "Domino Effecting" and make an engine 10% more efficient.

And sorry, but in the Non Lug World, a proton with its electron attached is called Hydrogen, if it has a neutron stuck on there, we call it Deuterium which is an isotope of Hydrogen. If there happen to be 2 neutrons stuck to the proton, well that's Tritium. A proton zipping about is called radiation. You are the one choosing to call Hydrogen a proton. What's Oxygen? Octproton? Link for ya

[RustyLugNut]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

About flame speed...

From wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_speed

That has to do with turbulent versus laminar flame speed, as you can imagine in a cylinder head with swirling air and a spray of gas from the injectors the flame front won't be laminar for long.
The flame speed you described was based on laminar burn.
Even so, hydrogen does burn considerably faster.

When the pressure builds up the mixture starts to explode or even detonate, propagating the explosion front at speeds close to or surpassing the speed of sound.
In that too hydrogen will increase the speed.

When you heat up the electrolytic cells to 80°C and you feed it to the intake it will contain a large amount of water vapour. If you feed it in behind the throttle plate and the engine is at low load the vacuum may be strong enough to make the water in your cells boil by itself.
Adding steam may reduce pumping losses and therefore help the engine tick over, improving efficiency.

I'm running out of time here but you see, there are some loose ends in your story. Science is about tying them all together, proving that every step inevitably leads to the next. Scepticism is the tool to look for weak points in a theory; if there are viable alternate explanations then the theory loses credibility.
Scientists will first try to falsificate their own theories before they put them out in the open; such a shame to put your name on it if it can be blown away, a simple oversight maybe.

If you do science you should have your answers ready for proper criticism.
This is no science lab so there will be criticism that is not properly formulated or reasonable.
That unfortunately is a given. Take it with dignity, explain it away once and link to the explanation whenever the same point comes up again.

But most of all, stick to the topic. This explanation of yours is your best yet. It should be in its own thread instead of a discussion about etiquette. Now it sidelines that discussion.

I have always welcomed discussion, not this demand to keep proving to people that I am not a "true believer" or a snake oil salesman. Asking me to show them calculations about electrolytic hydrogen as a fuel is missing the point of my discussion but was ignored. Thus the calls to make calculations that I did not need to make.



I understand what you said. I do not try to falsify my thoughts or science. I am open to discussion.

I fully understand the difference between the flame speed of a combustion chamber and that of a flame tube at standard temperature and pressure, end capped or open ended. It was used as an illustration of the difference in flame speeds not an indication of the actual.

And my electrolysis generator runs under 1 atm. of pressure. It is released through a solenoid valve much like a digital injector ( it is a modified injector as found in natural gas applications). Also, the volumes of gasses we are talking about are so small as to be insignificant to the overall volumetric efficiency of the engine. Think 1 part in hundreds or even thousands. 230 cc per minute in an engine ingesting 750 L of air in that time span for the 2.4 L engine I had used as an example. The displacement of the air by the steam is exceedingly small.

And remember, at these small additional volumes, hydrogen cannot burn. It needs to be at 4% by volume or above to ignite. So why does it affect and accelerate combustion if it is in a sub combustible mix? Glassman & Yetter, in Combustion, 4th edition, say it is because of radical interaction.

You ask for links. I often don't have links. I have white papers and textbooks that are worn and dog eared and a lifetime of experience between my ears. Sorry if I am old enough to get a discount at the local buffet without getting carded. But my education is not an internet degree.

And I will attempt to start a thread that will have more structure. I have in the past but family needs intervened and so did the usual characters. I will learn how to post pictures and charts and calculations from MathCad or from my hand notes. I know, I can program MicroPic controllers in machine code and I can't do the internet. I have my failures and I admit it.

I have to redo and extend the work I did almost two decades ago without the money and resources ( dynamometer ). I cannot reveal the data collected at that time. It is owned by those who paid for it. I was allowed to reveal the results and I have. They are not exciting. They are what would be expected for vehicles 1996 and earlier as that is what was tested. I am working on someway to make the addition of HHO visual.

I was hoping to drag my old smokey Mercedes diesel over to Ogden, but my wife refuses to go if that is the case as the car is stripped down to two seats, is slow and uncomfortable. That car is a visual indicator of HHO at work as simply turning the generator on and off is followed by the smoke from the tail pipe going off and on in response. She won't let me tow it either because it means she must ride in the big bouncy Dodge Cummins 3500 which I tow the flatbed with. It looks like I'll be doing something to one of the gasoline cars in the stable. But, how to make it a visual test? I have some ideas.

[RustyLugNut]

Originally Posted by ChazInMT

Highlighted are the pseudoscience sorta things I'm talking about.

Provide definitions of these things....



The blue highlight is where I really see an issue. You are correlating the effects of 4% H2 enrichment to something which I figure is .143% HHO Enrichment. I'm figuring 230CC per minute in an engine inhaling what I roughly figure is 2,400 Liters per minute of air and at 15:1, 160 Liters of Fuel Vapor per minute. So when I divide the 160L by 230CC I get about 700. When I divide 1 by 700, I get .143% HHO enrichment.

I Just can't in my head figure out how a 700:1 ratio of something is going to be able to do much "Domino Effecting" and make an engine 10% more efficient.

And sorry, but in the Non Lug World, a proton with its electron attached is called Hydrogen, if it has a neutron stuck on there, we call it Deuterium which is an isotope of Hydrogen. If there happen to be 2 neutrons stuck to the proton, well that's Tritium. A proton zipping about is called radiation. You are the one choosing to call Hydrogen a proton. What's Oxygen? Octproton? Link for ya

Why don't you go ask a chemist? I have chemists on staff. They call the H+ a proton because, by definition, it is. Hydrogen is just a proton and an electron. In an aqueous solution that electron is often lost and the H+ ion is formed. I know you have a background in the nuclear field, but if chemists use proton as a slang, I can't help them. I just communicate with them.

And the exceedingly small amount of HHO can be effective ( note the word "can") if the conditions are in place to dissociate that hydrogen and cause it to run amok . The H+ ion is called a radical. Other radicals are formed if water is present. Which it is if there is some steam and EGR. That allows the formation of OH- radicals and others such as the famed (in combustion science at least) HOOH radical which was postulated decades ago and has only been detected in recent years using modern detection techniques. These radicals can crash into a carbon chain causing the release of other smaller compounds and more free radicals from the loosed hydrogen. If you look at the Arrhenius rate equation that is used to predict rates of reactions of aqueous solutions ( acid/base reactions) you see a parallel to what is happening in a combustion chamber. The hotter the mix gets, the faster reactions become. If you have certain compounds in the mix, these compounds act as accelerators. Much the same occurs in the engines combustion chamber. It is an INTERACTION. It is not hydrogen as a fuel. You can never make enough hydrogen via on-board electrolysis to fuel a vehicle. But, you can knock off enough hydrogen from the fuel source and start your combustion primed with enough to accelerate said combustion. If conditions are right, these reaction happen in billionths of a second. Repeatedly. Over and over.

Again, the hydrogen to accelerate the combustion comes from the fuel. But, that H is not available until combustion starts. By adding some H2 ahead of time, and in such a conditions that it dissociates and starts reacting, we can be way ahead and see the accelerated combustion we seek.

[ksa8907]

I stumbled upon this and related threads last night. I'll offer my 2 cents. Why is hho blending not held in the same regard as ethanol blending? Isn't the effect relatively similar?

[RustyLugNut]

Originally Posted by elhigh

Without digging into the question of whether HHO is a valid technology to discuss on this forum, let alone pursue, I do have one question:

Obviously the topic is met with serious skepticism at the very least on this forum. The discussion generally devolves into a pie fight challenging testing methods, the inefficiencies surrounding the generation of HHO, etc. With these facts in mind, why do you even bother discussing the topic in this venue where it is so clearly unwelcome?

When the topic automatically lands in a category that cannot but call out obvious prejudice - "The Unicorn Corral" - why do you insist on sowing seed on such inhospitable ground? Do you really enjoy the fight that much?

There are other forums out there that are, no doubt, much more receptive to your discussion. I'm not telling you to go away, that's completely beyond my purview and in fact we are all here at the forbearance of the moderators. But I am asking, without calling you names or questioning your methods and ideas: why do you stay?

And I have seen value in this forum.

And you miss the mark when you invite me to join other forums. I have been invited by people scared off from this forum to join them. Most are forums that you would call "weird science". I am not that.

I am also part of more educated forums and they agree on the plausibility of the ideas I have but they are not "hands on" and see no need to forward research. The Higgs Bosun was far more exciting to them.

And I do have a dark side. I do want to sell a real product to everyone and anyone based on the theories I have learned from playing with HHO devices and extending them. Not really. But there is real possibilities here that are being ignored by both the highly educated and the DIY types found on this forum. I find it easier to get a DIY guy to see an idea and run with it than get a physicist to use a chop saw ( trust me, they are a dangerous mix ).

HHO as a fuel in itself is a dead end. I don't have to tell you that. But, it can lead to some interesting applications that I haven't even thought of yet. I get pms and emails from those that stumble upon this forum. They come up with some crazy ideas, and some are worth while!

The fact is, only a handful of people on this forum find my presence offensive. I have no issue with the rest. Do they not deserve an answer to the HHO question?

[oldtamiyaphile]

The solar panel on my van roof does nothing when once the battery is charged, so I do wonder about using HHO generation as a form of chemical battery. If the HHO is free, then any gain is a bonus.

I also realise I'd be better of killing the alt before parking, but with CANBUS and no shop manual, that might be problematic without wrecking something.

[RustyLugNut]

Originally Posted by ksa8907

I stumbled upon this and related threads last night. I'll offer my 2 cents. Why is hho blending not held in the same regard as ethanol blending? Isn't the effect relatively similar?

With ethanol, you are blending a fuel with a fuel. As a hydrocarbon fuel, it poses the same limitations as the octane it is blended with. It will not de-polymerize ( break apart ) under conditions found pre-ignition. It can change the octane. It can change vapor pressure, but it will not cause the possible creation of active radicals before ignition. There has been research in the past to use ethanol in very high ( think diesel like ) compression engines. The possibility to thermally decompose exists there. I am not sure if there was a contraction of the combustion curve.

Again, the ethanol blended at percentages is a fuel mix.

There is far too little HHO produced by on board electrolysis generators to be effective as a fuel mixer. Thus it must be applied only under specific conditions.