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water for fuel

7K views 63 replies 17 participants last post by  mattymx 
#1 ·
#2 ·
I have spend countless hour working on this... Really more like 10 hours per week for about 10 weeks but most have been research... I had a cell producing 1.2 LPM which is not bad but for a 7.3L like ours you would need about 4-6 lpm... I think it could work but not to the extreme some people make it to be. Maybe a 15-20% increase but I have no data to back this up... to make it efficient it would have to be a big unit.

It will take power to generate the HHO but hopefully the increase in combustion efficiency plus the added combustible would make up for the energy it take to make the HHO and then spare some to contribute to MPG improvement. try www.hydrogengarage.com They have a bunch of free info.
 
#3 ·
are you going to make a bigger cell? Or do you feel it is not worth the time required to do it?
 
#4 ·
Snake oil. Pure and simple snake oil.

The problem with all these claims about running cars on water is that you must separate the hydrogen and the oxygen somehow. Doing so requires a certain amount of energy to be expended. In this case, they're using electricity to do that work for them. That means in order to get your fuel from water, you have to first process it with electricity, bringing a cost into the equation. Your fuel bill will just be paid to the power company instead.

Water is the least energetic combination of hydrogen and oxygen. You can think of water as the "ash" left over from burning hydrogen. Two hydrogen atoms at high temperatures in the presence of an oxygen atom will bond, creating flame in the process. You can't then burn this molecule called water. Try it some time. Light a match and stick it in some water. Doesn't burn. You can think of it like trying to light up the wood ash in the bottom of your fire place. It simply won't catch because it's in an ash state. You need fresh wood to supply the atoms and molecules that will bond with the oxygen in the air in order to create flame. Once it's bonded, it's used up and you'll have to expend a lot of energy to break those bonds. The amount of energy that must be expended to do this is greater than the amount of energy that will be released when you burn them again. The laws of thermodynamics will not be denied.
 
#5 ·
so you tried it and can attest from experience that you get no gains from the systems they offer? I took chemistry too, I do understand your points. What I also learnd from all the science was experimintation. Sure there were no scientific journal refernces on it to be found...but how about using solar to fuel the elctrolisis. Pretty clean
Do a search for solar produced hydrogen.
 
#8 ·
so you tried it and can attest from experience that you get no gains from the systems they offer? I took chemistry too, I do understand your points.
No I have not personally tested it, and I actually failed chemistry. However, I aced physics and understand thermodynamics much better than many mechanical engineers.

What I also learnd from all the science was experimintation. Sure there were no scientific journal refernces on it to be found...but how about using solar to fuel the elctrolisis. Pretty clean
Do a search for solar produced hydrogen.
Currently solar energy is limited in the amount of wattage it can produce to the point that it's simply not economical. Your up front investment in solar tech would never be recovered by using that energy to split water in electrolysis. Even if solar power was much much cheaper, it would be more practical to outfit your car with batteries and an electric motor than to waste energy in the electrolysis process.
 
#6 ·
check this guy out.
Stan Meyer - hydrogen oxygen ( HHO ) - Zero Point Energy

His electrolisis process is baffling even scienists, no joke.
 
#10 ·
Wow! where in the hell have I been:doh: Can we run a setup like this in a diesel engine?
 
#11 ·
Hydrogen is a great fuel to run vehicles on, ask yourself why bmw and the others just finished developing cars to run on the stuff.

Also there are stations in one country in europe that allow you to refill with hydrogen. The conversion is done at the roadside stations off city tap water. Works great.

Now back to whats being discussed here...

Nope it isn't working out so hot and yes most are what Id call snake oil.

It takes a bunch more than just squirting hydrogen in a gasser or diesel to run the stuff. Mixing some in with the current setup already on the vehicle takes far to much hydrogen to be effective. The reason is that to produce an amount that actually will show up in a mpg change or a power output increase is WAY beyond what the electrosis methods available are capable of.

Also even if it worked you consuming extra power from the alternator to produce the stuff in the first place. A cell conversion tank large enough to produce a usable amount of fuel would take up the entire bed of a long wheelbase truck. This size cell could work to produce a usable amount of hydrogen.... in a week :D

Thats the clincher. The simple conversion systems people are playing with take to long to yield anything worth while. They are looking at it as an on the fly system and its not efficient enough of a conversion to do that at all.
 
#12 ·
Yeah I think the youtube video is a crock. If his method worked so much better than all other current methods of electrolysis he would have already patented it.

The thing that really sells it for me is the "scientist" (whoever he is) talking about how this man splits water into its component atoms without any increase in heat of the water even over a long period of time so clearly "something must be different". Total crock. The water will increase in temperature unless it is subsequently cooled. This only transfers the heat to something else.

In other words, this man would have had to have created a system that looses absolutely no work to heat. There's no friction, no resistance, no background heat radiation, no nothing of the sort. In other words, he's doing work without adding entropy to the system, and the laws of thermodynamics state that this is simply impossible.
 
#13 ·
I do understand the laws of thermodynamics (maybe not as good as you but enough to know a perpetual motion system is imposible...) so I don't think you can run purely on Hydrogen created from this electrolicis proccess. Although a high school did one with HUGE solar panels... don't have a link. This high school I believe used the Hydrogen to run a gen that runs a electric motor. The truck is a S-10 droped to the ground with weird stuff going on the bed...

Back to HHO on Diesels. In theory it would work as Propane does on our engines... Inject it and it is just another source of combustible but just as propane their is a price involved with it. The price paid for just the raw energy is not worth it... It probably takes about 1 HP from the engine to create .5 hp wourth of hydrogen (been optimistic) but then again you must remember engines are very inefficient machines which just spit raw fuel out the exhaust (that is why we have cats) and if hydrogen can tap into that unused fuel and make a more efficient burn it would not only help the MPG with its own energy but also with the energy of the unburnt fuel that now is being burned...

Now this is in theory... I don't have math done to prove it Nor have I done experimentation yet. I have plans of doing a bigger cell but as said above... to even feel a change we need to produce a lot of gas for an engine like ours (7.3L).

LETS SEE HOW IT GOES...
 
#14 ·
So no matter how a water molecule is broke it will always take more energy to split it than the hydrogen can produce? That's the law?
 
#17 ·
Well, not exactly. You could produce a heap more energy by fusing the hydrogen atoms together into helium for example. After all, that's how the sun works.

The trouble is that water (H2O) is the lowest energy state of hydrogen and oxygen. Splitting them apart requires an infusion of energy that is then returned when the atoms join back together into water. If we were able to do this at 100% efficiency (loosing no energy to heat), we would essentially break even.

Energy is basically a negative-sum game. Without 100% efficiency, some energy is always lost to heat. Thankfully, we have this gigantic ball of energy called the Sun that bombards us with solar energy every day (until it eventually runs out). It's that solar energy that basically gives us everything we have. The dino oil you burn is the result of plant life that lived millions of years ago and trapped that solar energy and used it to create sugars. That energy was converted into oil millions of years ago by pressure after the plants died. Our wonderful oil, coal, and other fossil fuels are really nothing more than sunlight trapped into organic proteins when you think about it.

I've rambled off the topic here though. If you harnessed solar energy to make HHO from H2O and burned it in your vehicle, you would see a net increase in the amount of energy only if you discount the solar energy used because it is free. We get a net increase in energy from burning oil because it is simply free sunlight trapped and condensed into organic proteins. When you boil it down to its base form, all of our energy comes from hydrogen fusion in the core of the sun. Unless you figure out a more economical way to benefit from this "free" energy, you're just blowing smoke (literally).
 
#15 ·
Yeah I think the youtube video is a crock. If his method worked so much better than all other current methods of electrolysis he would have already patented it.
did I miss something I thought the video said he has it patented?
 
#16 ·
It may have said that, but I think it may only be "patent pending". Once a patent is approved, the full schematics and documentation on it is filed in the patent office and is now "public knowledge". Any scientist could go there and pull up the patent to understand how it works. Since the supposed scientists in the film didn't know how it worked, I find it difficult to believe that the invention is actually patented.

Also, the guy says that he is very concerned about people stealing his inventions and that he has had patented inventions stolen from him, another thing that leads me to believe it is not patented.
 
#18 ·
And again I will add....what happens when you have hydrogen and oxygen under pressure in a container together rattling around. ???? Even IF there is a solution where you could make your own, is it really something ya want flopping around under your hood? Look at the designs of these new hydrogen powered cars. Fuel cells, with hydrogen specially contained. If these gadjets produced the amounts of hydrogen and oxygen necessary to run even a briggs and stratton for any amount of time, the pressurized container with these gasses floating around is basically a bomb. All it would need is an ignition source. Not much of one either. Whats tha flash point of hydrogen? Now add in the fact that it would have pretty much pure oxygen in there with it. Theres a reason they build those specail fuel cells. Its called staying alive.
 
#22 ·
And again I will add....what happens when you have hydrogen and oxygen under pressure in a container together rattling around. ???? Even IF there is a solution where you could make your own, is it really something ya want flopping around under your hood? Look at the designs of these new hydrogen powered cars. Fuel cells, with hydrogen specially contained. If these gadjets produced the amounts of hydrogen and oxygen necessary to run even a briggs and stratton for any amount of time, the pressurized container with these gasses floating around is basically a bomb. All it would need is an ignition source. Not much of one either. Whats tha flash point of hydrogen? Now add in the fact that it would have pretty much pure oxygen in there with it. Theres a reason they build those specail fuel cells. Its called staying alive.
Agreed , that it is very powerful, and is a good source of fuel. These are the points I was making about the homemade e-bay type stuff. Not the factory produced fuel cell tech. Also, I still believe that until they figure a way to produce it , that does not require more fossil fuel, than it would take to produce the same amount of power if you simply burned that fuel in the vehicle to start with....well....you get the idea. Burn one gallon of fuel to go twenty miles in your gas powered car, or burn one and a half gallons to produce enough hydrogen to make that same car go half the distance. Which is better? I feel the same about this as I do electric cars. Gotta pay to play. Either burn the fuel direct, or burn it indirectly to produce some other form of energy that directly powers it, plus the problem of dealing with the waste products that result from producing batteries, handling the waste from used batteries, the energy required to make the batteries, and finally, the hazards of crashing one of these "safer, greener" vehicles. I say bicycles are the answer! No wait, I gave those up cause I bout killed myself on one years ago....:doh:

Someone , will come up with a good alternative, someday. But not yet!
 
#19 ·
btw recently their has been a more economical form of solar panel which is not really a panel anymore... It is like a foil and can be produced inexpensively and because of its lightweight and foil thickness it has many applications. The drawback is that it will produce less power per area but that is compensated with its more versatile and can be installed in more places so you could install more area that you would be able to with the panels.

BTW Alan Hicks you seem very knowledgeable. My hat is off for you, but I still think this could work... NO proof yet...
 
#20 · (Edited)
Thank you!

I'll admit I'm no guru when it comes to performance mods for the PSD (I'll probably never join the 400HP club), but I love learning new things and try to keep abreast of technology and physics.

I believe I know the solar "foil" you are talking about. NASA has been experimenting with it for some time. The idea is to have a huge solar panel that can be folded up to take up very little space in the shuttle, then unfurled once up in space to cover a very large area. Basically like an umbrella solar panel. Very neat stuff.

On edit: My posts above were simply to explain that all energy is essentially coming from the sun (with few exceptions such as geothermic energy generated by gravity induced friction deep in the Earth's core), so if you're going to find an alternative fuel to oil, it'll basically have to come from the sun. Ethanol is basically solar power generated by plants, then turned into a condensed liquid form. Oil and coal are basically the same thing. So if you're going to generate HHO by harnessing solar energy, you'd be better off just directly harnessing that solar energy if you can.
 
#21 ·
Ignorance is bliss. :rolleyes:
I can't believe all the negative input in these HHO threads, from people who obviously don't know anything about Hydrogen as fuel. :blah:

Yes, I've experimented quite a bit with HHO, but I'm no expert. From what I have seen it is quite powerful and REAL.

Snake oil?
Bullcr@p?
Only the ones you see for sale on ebay are a joke. But the HHO idea is a total reality. Once you establish a well operating cell, just repeat it over and over to get the outcome you want.

Safety?
If I read one more comparison to the Hindenburg I will beat my head against the wall. You obviously don't know the shortcomings of that zepplin, and obviously don't know how Hydrogen is handled as vehicular fuel.

I suggest those of you slamming the HHO idea as fuel to spend some time and do some research and learn about it. Then go experiment a little and maybe even discover something new and contribute something useful to the cause.

It's the fuel of the future. Accept it or go buy your horse and buggy now...
 
#23 ·
A correctly installed system isn't any more dangerous than a nitrous or propane system... A save way of installing a system like this is using a bubbler which will seperate the Cell from a direct back fire in the intake... If installed close to the engine a back fire would produce a small bang pretty much like it would in a nitrous or propane system when you get a intake backfire. (I have seen intake boxes been blown open) For increased safety their could be some kind of plug in the bubbler so that in case of an explosion the plug is released and so would the pressure of the explotion.
 
#24 ·
WOW!
Someone that's done some reasearch and knows what he's talking about...
;)
I use a rubber plumbing cap on the end of a pvc pipe on my bubbler, just pops off if it back fires and builds too much pressure. HHO 'fumes' are non volitle when released, so the worst that that could happen is I loose a $1 rubber cap and spill some water. :D
 
#25 ·
Hey DZLJIM how about some ideas for your fellow PSN members:ford:
Ive been searching the web and have found alot of info, but im going into information overload. I want to build a bubbler! ;)
 
#28 ·
I've been working on this for over 2 months and I'd say I'm at the same point you are.:D
About all I can say is research, research, research. Every cell design is totally different and takes a lot of experimenting to get optimized. Every bubbler is different and must be sized to the cell. Until someone establishes a set/given productive design for both, then gives EXACT specs on every component of it, your only choice is trial and error. I'm not there yet, but when I can find the time and come up with something, it'll become public info for sure.
;)
 
#26 ·
Have you ever heard of Nuclear Energy? It's the incredible amount of energy that can be released when an atom has been split. The Nucleus of an atom is stuffed full of positively charged Protons that are repelling each other yet are cramped into a very tight space. The energy that allows this to happen is called Nuclear Energy and is hugely powerful when released. This energy does not come from the Sun.

I truly know nothing about Hydrogen cars but there is a large reserve of energy available within a molecule.

Furthermore, electricity costs less in the US than an equivalent amount of oil so even if it's just a transferance of energy this could still work out well.
 
#27 ·
Have you ever heard of Nuclear Energy? It's the incredible amount of energy that can be released when an atom has been split. The Nucleus of an atom is stuffed full of positively charged Protons that are repelling each other yet are cramped into a very tight space. The energy that allows this to happen is called Nuclear Energy and is hugely powerful when released. This energy does not come from the Sun.
Yes of course, but fission isn't exactly an easy thing to power a car with! Of course, nuclear energy plants could produce plenty enough electricity to power an electric motor in your car or truck and do so at a reasonable expense.

Fusion (where small atoms are bonded to release more energy than fission is capable of) is even more appealing, but no one has yet figured out an economical way to harness this energy. Combine that with the fact that the government isn't allowing anyone to build more nuclear plants and that pretty much takes nuclear power off the table as a significant alternative.

Furthermore, electricity costs less in the US than an equivalent amount of oil so even if it's just a transferance of energy this could still work out well.
I would like to see the numbers here. While what you say may be true, I'm skeptical. Measuring the cost of electricity versus the cost of oil is difficult at best because we use different means of measuring them. Electricity is measured in watts or kilowatts, essentially power. Oil is measured in gallons, essentially mass. A given mass of oil, gas, or diesel fuel contains enough energy to do a given amount of work measured in BTUs or joules. Electricity is measured in watts which are joules consumed over a period of time.

In order to compare the two, you would have to figure out a price per joule for electricity, not a price per watt, and I don't know of anyone that sells joules of electricity.
 
#29 ·
Don't know a thing about it other than what I'm told. I do have a friend that bought a cd and tried this. He did have someone with more electrical background help him. The car increased highway mileage to 61mpg. In town increased but no where near the highway.
 
#30 ·
Well I have actually done some preliminary experimentation but again the limiting factor has been time to work on the project...

Hey Alan it seems like you could be great help if you join the cause... What do you say?
 
#32 ·
I appreciate the sentiment, but at the moment I'm not interested in sinking a lot of time into this. My current belief (which I admit may be wrong) is that you won't see any benefit monetarily. The amount of mileage increase, if there is even one at all, should be negligable once you count the up front expenditure in parts and the constant expenditure of electricity to generate the fuel.

I think a more economical (but infeasible with our trucks) way would be to use an electric motor if you're going to use electricity as a fuel source.
 
#33 ·
I think a more economical (but infeasible with our trucks) way would be to use an electric motor if you're going to use electricity as a fuel source.
Their are IN SERIES hybrid diesel engines for marine use. Not totally sure how it works but seems cool and similar to what we would want. I think it had some good power too (anything marine really must have bunch of power because how hard it is to move pushing water...)
 
#34 ·
I have a few questions? What does the introduction of Hydrogen do to help the engines burning efficiency ? What reaction will the computer and stuff like o2 sensers have to the introduction of Hydrogen? Will timing have to be "retarded" to allow it to be burned? TAter
 
#35 ·
Well I may have some pretty valid info for this thread real soon. The guy we bought the mercedes 190D turbo from for the wife is flat out going for the hydrogen stuff. He's ordered all the parts to build the system for his 2000 jetta diesel car. The reason I say valid info is he's nuts for this idea and I think its a waste of time and a bad idea. I got dragged into this to help him. Since Im going in with the "It aint gonna work" attitude and its a waste of time and money and he's gun ho for it that should provide a more realistic and valid prospective on how much it really does work. Trust me Im not going to doctor the results to make it look good. But at the same time Im not going to lie if it does work either, though I seriously doubt it has a prayer.

As soon as we get his system going and do some test results I'll post what the findings are.

Were doing it in stages as he wants to try different sized cells. We will be using the drain and fill method on his diesel fuel to know exact mpg with and without the cell and under city, highway and even a set of idle test.

Should be fun no matter what the outcome.
 
#36 ·
Let me start by saying I am a fan of HHO technology and generation of H and O. In the past I have done a considerable amount of fuel cell research. Currently, I have been primarily looking at HHO for cutting applications and heat treatment, but have a handle on the technology. The thing that I worry about is injection of H into a compression combustion engine. I have seen too many folks blow up their diesels by injecting too much propane. Folks that are going to try this are going to seriously need to get custom tunes written. While minimal amounts of propane will increase mileage and power, too much will window a block. The same will apply to Hydrogen or an HHO mix. I think it has more application to a gasser engine as a replacement for gasoline and in moderate use for a diesel. But that's just my opinion and I may be full of horse cr*p - only time will tell.
 
#37 ·
While I don't doubt that this can work as a replacement for gasoline or diesel (or as an additive), I don't believe it will be an acceptable alternative. Too much has to be done to generate it IMHO so that it won't be an economical alternative. If it were, Europeans (who are paying around $18 USD per gallon of gas) would have been using it in all their cars for years now. After all, Iceland has already begun to do this with their buses, but generating the hydrogen fuel requires them to burn more oil than they would by just running the buses on diesel fuel to begin with.
 
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