Increase gas milage

[Matheusilla]

I never said "self sustaining" or "perpetual motion", just to be clear. Yes it is an energy conversion. Electricity is being used to make more fuel for the engine plus an added oxidizer. Gasoline is not as cheap as water (water's free where I live).

[psycix]

The point is, that it takes extra gasoline to split that water.
You are using fuel to make fuel...

[Matheusilla]

fuel and oxidizer....

I'm not ready to say that it's a completely useless idea.

[joestue]

Last i heard about this, the hydrogen increases the burn rate, so by delaying the combustion via modifying the timing, you increase engine efficiency enough to recover the alternator load.

[jimmy101]

Last i heard about this, the hydrogen increases the burn rate, so by delaying the combustion via modifying the timing, you increase engine efficiency enough to recover the alternator load.

But you not only have to recover the alternator load you also need to recover the inefficiency of the electrolysis process. Nothing goes 100%. Electrolysis cells create heat. If the cell is producing a lot of "HHO" then it is also generating a lot of heat, which is wasted energy.

I really can't see any way that this can work. All you are doing is using some of the energy from an ICE to create a gaseous fuel that is then burned in an ICE. An efficient ICE is what 30%? So, for 100 units of chemical energy the first ICE gets 30 units of power. You then use some of that power to run the electrolysis system, say 1/3 of the useable ICE output power, 10% of the total input chemical power. The alternator is pretty efficient, figure 90%. The electrolysis isn't all that efficient since it wastes some energy as heat but we'll be optimistic and say the electrolysis is also pretty darn good at 90% efficient. But here is where you get bit in the but, ICEs, pretty much regardless of what the fuel is, are only ~30% efficient. So when you burn the "HHO" you only get 30% of the chemical energy converted to useable mechanical energy.

To summarize the math; 1/3rd of the original useable mechanical energy is used to create "HHO" in a process that is about 80% efficient. When then burn the "HHO" in a 30% efficient process meaning of our original 10% we get (10%)(0.80)(0.3) = 2.4% of the energy back as useable work. All you've done is throw away 7.6% of the chemical energy in the gasoline (~25% of the useable mechanical energy of the initial combustion process).

Sounds like snake oil to me.

[joestue]

The alternator is not 90% efficient. at a good load of say 50 amps on a 90 amp rated alternator, at cruising speeds of 4000rpm (2:1 off the engine) figure about 50% overall efficiency into a 12 volt load.

HHO is about 40% efficient at 2.6 volts across each cell.

The engine is horrendously inefficient, the 28% efficiency you hear spoken about quite frequently is only achieved by small, well engineered foreign motors.
and to top it all off, that 28% max is at 3/4 rated load, at the optimum rpm of about 3-6k, depending on the design.

engine efficiency at 30mph @1500rpm on a flat road is about 7% or less.
this is why you get better gas millage traveling faster, the specific fuel consumption decreases faster than the load increases, up to the design peak efficiency of about 25% in real life, at 60-80miles per hour.

anything you do to increase low end efficiency has a BIG effect on gas mileage. things like electric variable oil and water pumps, variable valve timing, hho, acetone, etc. a 1% increase, which can be interpreted differently, but lets say its from 7-8%, is in reality a few more miles per gallon.

[jimmy101]

So based on joestrue's efficency numbers there isn't a chance in hell that an "HHO" system will increase efficiency of an ICE. For each useable Joule of energy from the gasoline combustion you loose 0.8 joules in the inefficiency of the alternator and the electrolysis cell.

Factor in the 7~30% efficency of the "HHO" combustion and you're down to much less than 1 joule of mechanical energy from the 10J of chemical energy in the gasoline. You would have been much better off just using the original useable mechanical energy instead of sending that useable energy through another process that looses ~90% of the energy you put in.

The energy budget just donesn't work out as being anything but a big waste of energy.

[c19o]

Well at least your getting something. I highly doubt that someone's going to come out the same mileage as they had before. It's like using a little energy to release all the energy in an atomic bomb. Or lighting a fire..

EDIT: Oh and I think that if HHO is mixed in with the air intake the car's O2 sensor makes the engine inject more gasoline. So a device to trick the O2 sensor is needed.

http://hubpages.com/hub/HHO-o2-sensor-enhancer
Some random page I found with info about the O2 sensor.

Right now I'm just attempting to make a big HHO generator to power some mini's.

[TurboSuper]

I was cruising Google and found this: http://www.hydrorunner.com/data/atds.pdf

Of course that's with a diesel engine, but mabye all those testimonials aren't full of crap?

It makes sense, you're effectively using your battery to supplement your engine's power, albeit less efficiently.

[jon_89]

Any idea how to wire the o2 sensor and the enhancer? Would this alone improve mileage?

[sandman]

i just saw a video about it on youtube, so search it, and ill search my history if you dont find it

[psycix]

If you really want to drive cheaper, use a solar panel on the roof, and use that to power an electrolysis cell.
Sunlight -> engine fuel.

[sandman]

can solar cells put out enough current to run a electrolysis cell?, well, can solar cells that would fit on the roof do that.

[iknowmy3tables]

OMG the HHO scam, quacks like these people made up the idea that gas companies are evil and are censoring technology,

HHO is just another way to say H2O
so far all claims on this technology is of water power are fraudulent water is a very stable compound it has no stored energy, I've seen these quacks to butcher science I read one site that compared burning hydrogen to the H-bomb, and you know HHO thing and the blow torch, well of course the machine is connected to a plug, possibly a high voltage one to produce the hydrogen quick enough, hydrogen is oxygen is sort of like acetylene and oxygen, but it takes as much energy and usually more energy to the create the hydrogen and oxygen, and when combusting hydrogen it's even worse, the percent of the mechanical energy that results is way less because so much energy is wasted in the form of heat

by the way hydrogen is bad for your engine because it reacts with the metal, we have had this discussion before on hydrogen spudguns

and solar panel on a car, I'm sorry but that's absolutely retarded, the output per a square inch of solar panel is soooooo low , the beat you can do is charge your low power portable electronics:cell phone, ipod, etc
even worse you have to protect the delicate solar panel from derbies on the highway, and you have to clean it most cars have really dirty roofs. but really wimpy little solar pannel, transforms solar energy into electric, then electric into chemical, and chemical into mechanical (you know a lot of energy is lost every time you change energy type

[TurboSuper]

A roof solar panel would be useful for extending the life of a battery-powered car. At least there over 90% of it's energy output is converted directly into kinetic energy.