The latest “scientific breakthrough” scam — water gas
The gullibility of the scientifically challenged media and buying public never ceases to amaze. Spurred perhaps by sharply higher gasoline prices, backyard inventors and shady promoters are pushing the latest wonder technology, “HHO gas,” otherwise known as water gas, Brown’s gas or Klein’s gas.
For a tidy investment of a few hundred dollars, one can adapt a car to run on HHO, or for a few thousand, one can buy a device to produce HHO at home for transportation or for welding. Cars apparently can run for miles on mere puffs of HHO, and torches can burn holes in seconds through most metals.
I would encourage anyone buying such devices to first watch videos of the Graf Hindenburg accident in 1937 or the Shuttle Challenger accident in 1986, to get an idea of the Promethean power of HHO gas.
Wait, 1937? Isn’t HHO supposed to be a new technology? you ask. Nope. In fact, the principles behind the production of HHO have been known and used for close to 200 years. If you were lucky, you might have even made some in middle school science class.
If you run electric current through water, you break water down into its constituent parts, hydrogen and oxygen, both gases at standard temperature (20 C) and pressure (1 atmosphere). Very little current is required; a 6-volt lantern battery does the trick nicely, although quite slowly.
The science class experiment generally involves upending two test tubes over the positive and negative electrodes submerged in the water. Hydrogen collects over one electrode, and oxygen over the other one. (Hydrogen ions are positively charged; oxygen ions negatively.) Since there are twice as many H atoms in water as O atoms, the volume of the hydrogen (H2) gas is twice that of the oxygen (O2) gas.
Frequently the experiment also involves pulling the H2 test tube out of the water and placing a burning wooden splint near its mouth to ignite the H2, producing a characteristic whooping sound and some water vapor that condenses on the glass tube.
Placing a glowing wooden splint into the O2 tube will result in the splint bursting into flame, as the oxygen-rich environment accelerates the combustion process.
As well as being less dense than air, hydrogen is a highly flammable gas. H2 mixed in air is a “weaker” form of HHO gas, since air is a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. A spark or a flame will immediately ignite any H2 around by providing just enough energy for the H2 and O2 present to recombine into water.
Test tube amounts of H2 produce whooping noises. An airship the size of the Hindenburg (at right) can produce a much more dramatic effect, as it did on the fateful day in 1937 when the airship burst into flame as it came in for a landing.
Mixing pure H2 and pure O2 increases both the temperature and the speed of the reaction, which is the key to HHO’s success as a welding gas, automobile fuel, and rocket propellant.
The space shuttles use “HHO” in their main engines. At launch, each shuttle is attached to a huge external fuel tank containing cryogenic vessels filled with liquid H2 and liquid O2. Igniting the H2/O2 mix produces a lot of thrust for the money, and the byproduct is just water.
The downside is the explosive danger of a pure H2/O2 mix, as the Challenger accident so tragically demonstrated. Flames from a leaky solid-rocket booster on that day burned a hole through the external fuel tank, which then exploded just minutes after launch (at left), killing the seven astronauts on board.
So, I would I think twice about running around town with a tank of HHO in the trunk of my car, or producing HHO in my basement for storage. Gasoline is safe and stable in comparison.
HHO gas is not the cure-all that its promoters say it is. Sure, it is a clean-burning fuel. It can be an effective welding gas. And cars can in fact burn HHO either mixed with gasoline vapor or by itself. But HHO gas will not end our dependence on foreign oil or substantially reduce pollution, no matter what anyone says.
You need electricity to produce HHO. To produce large quantities of HHO is a reasonable time, say a few hours, you need a lot of current, which does not come cheap. Your power company supplies current to your home and office by burning, for most communities, fossil fuels like coal or oil. If you’re drawing a lot current to fill your bomb-like container of HHO gas, the power company has to burn more oil or coal to supply the electricity. You can’t get something from nothing.
Now, if the power company used hydroelectric generators or a nuclear power plant to provide the current, you might be able to justify pulling all those amperes to electrolyze your water into HHO. You are still gong to have to pay the light bill, though, so the economics of producing HHO at home might not be any better than just filling up at the local gas station for $3 a gallon.
In short, dear reader, caveat emptor. HHO gas is a scam. It is not a miracle technology or a cure for our gasoline dependence. At best, it is a deception, a way for clever promoters to make money, and endanger the unwary consumer.
July 16th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
SLOW MOTION HYDROGEN BOMB! REBUT IT, IF YOU CAN.
Otherwise, start watching for headlines that are more optimistic, such as these:
GLOBAL WARMING REVERSED!
DIASTER AVERTED… EARTH SAVED!
MAN-MADE CLIMATE CHANGES… PERMANENTLY NULLIFIED!
Albert Einstein provided the perfect scientific answer to Global Warming in 1905 with his paradigm, mass-to-energy equation, which is the key to unlocking all of the clean, cheap, environmentally friendly energy the inhabitants of Earth will ever need, without any pollution or waste stream, and with no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse emissions.
Even the super-powerful Energy Cartel will be unable to prevent millions of individuals around the World from freely switching to this abundant and everlasting Einsteinian cornucopia of “home-made energy,” which will automatically reestablish Mother Nature as the exclusive controller of climate change.
http://slow-motion-Thermonuclear.blogspot.com/2006/06/invention-for-sale-slow-motion.html
July 19th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
Isn’t this called “fusion?” AFAIK, there is no viable fusion powerplant in operation anywhere yet. Have you been able to extract useful energy from your device, and is the amount of this energy markedly greater than the amount of energy put into it?
Your device, from what I can tell, looks like a variation of a “cold fusion” apparatus. As you are probably aware, the first announcement of “cold fusion” in 1989 by two Utah researchers turned out to be premature. No one was able to replicate their results. Research continues in some places, but no one has provided hard evidence that cold fusion actually occurs.
So, I’m skeptical of your claims. Good luck with your patent application, however.
January 18th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
ok so why is everyone who seems to pioneer in this old technology, one example (stan meyer) seem to either be paid of or killed, i think theres more to this technology then big oil companies want us to know about, conspericy or not it makes me wonder…..
January 19th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
What’s your point? That there is a conspiracy by Big Oil to kill the developers of these technologies? Hogwash. I don’t know if you have paid attention, but Big Oil knows that their gravy train has a finite lifetime. We will run out of oil, whether it’s in 50 years or 150 years, and they know it. So the smart oil companies are investing in other technologies. Small scale projects run by garage mechanics by HHO are the least of their worries.
Besides, as I try to explain here, HHO is not going to solve our energy crisis. Sure, you can run a car on a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen gas, but to get those gases you have to run electricity through water. Where’s the energy savings? You might as well by a hybrid or wait until electric and fuel-cell cars are viable. Without proper precautions, running a car on hydrogen + oxygen is dangerous, too. One stray spark or flame and BLOOEY! — no car, no driver.
Cars run on gasoline and diesel because these liquid fuels are relatively safe to carry on board. Even LNG is safe, if you keep the tank away from potential collision spots. I would not want to be anywhere near an HHO-powered car.
February 21st, 2008 at 11:18 am
You are right, well mostly. The fact is that no process where energy
is changed from one form to another can result in a net gain. (2nd Law of Thermodynamics)When we view something and think we see a net gain it only means we aren’t seeing the whole picture (or are deluding ourselves, something humans are expert at); unfortunately all this allows us to keep our heads in the sand a little longer.
Ciao youall
May 30th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
[...] cure for our gasoline dependence. At best, it is a deception, a way for clever promoters to make …http://www.computernewbie.info/wheatdogg/2006/07/14/the-latest-scientific-breakthrough-scam-water-ga…YouTube – Stan Meyer – hydrogen oxygen HHO – Zero Point EnergyGood God, there are still those on [...]
May 30th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Congratulations for speaking up and pointing out how much of a scam this whole “run your car on water” HHO scam really is.
I’ve also written an article on the fraud that is HHO and it’s online at http://aardvark.co.nz/hho.shtml
In an attempt to show people just how ludicrous it is, I came up with some very simple math to prove it. That proof is at http://aardvark.co.nz/hho_scam.shtml
But isn’t it amazing how many people think that *they* have broken the first law of thermodynamics with a jam-jar, a few bits of wire and some water. I guess PT Barnum *was* right.
June 8th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
I get real frustrated with the experts/critics/naysayers who “have all the answers”, when in reality they don’t even know the question. For the record, Hydrogen fuel enhancement was first researched by the Jet Propulsion Labs of the California Institute of Technology in 1974. John Houseman and D.J. Cerini investigated the use of hydrogen technology showing interesting results in emissions and gas mileage. The S. Korean government has mandated that over 100,000 transport trucks be fitted with HHO generators to cut down on pollution. The U. S. Department of Energy lists an HHO generator manufacturer on its website. Another manufacturer has its application in with the California Air Resources Board (CARB). And, the provincial Canadian government is funding the hydrogen fuel injection units that will be placed in the school buses to increase fuel mileage.
Feel free to e-mail at Fuel_Mizer@mail.com and I’ll send you about 150 more SPECIFIC references.
Jerry L. Casebolt
June 17th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
After seeing a hho welder in operation how can you say that this tech is a scam. Electrolysis is on demand and not stored. Perfectly safe. It uses very little electricity to make hho on a car from what I understand. This is going to be way big!
June 19th, 2008 at 9:32 am
[...] like a scam, after a couple minutes of googling, i found this article: Wheat-dogg’s worldBlog Archive The latest “scientific breakthrough” scam — water gas I’m not much of science guy, but it sounds like it could be [...]
June 19th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Funny how this post lay dormant for ages, then all of sudden ($4+ gas prices maybe?) it gets an influx of commentary.
Let me reiterate my main points here.
Yes, HHO gas (also known more scientifically as a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen gases, H2 + O2) is a successful fuel and welding gas. No argument.
There are safety issues to consider when storing any amount of H2 + O2. Ideally, the component gases should be kept in separate vessels, since the mixture is potentially explosive. Having H2 around plain air is none too safe either, since it is highly flammable. Having O2 around creates some danger, too, since pure oxygen is a great accelerant.
In automobile use, yes, “HHO” is usually created on demand, by using electricity from the car’s generating system to electrolyze water stored on board, then piping the resulting gases to the intake system. There is still a danger of the mixture combusting before it reaches the cylinders, as there is with gasoline + air (think car fires here). If home mechanic is not careful, any “HHO” passing by a hot engine component could explode. H2 and O2 love each other very much, being on opposite sides of the periodic table. It doesn’t take much to nudge them into combining into water, explosively.
Finally, TANSTAAFL. It may seem like you’re getting something from nothing, extracting energy from water to run your car, but in order to obtain that stored energy you had to use some of your car’s energy output to break apart the water molecules. All you have done is divert some electrical energy from charging your battery or running the radio into energy to move the car, in a very roundabout way. That electrical energy comes from the engine! Your car uses fuel (gasoline most likely) to rotate the alternator to keep the battery charged and run the electricals, and therefore electrolyze the water. Not much of a net energy gain there.
Hydrogen is not a cure-all. Whether it be HHO technology or hydrogen fuel cells, somewhere somehow you have to have the energy available to electrolyze water to obtain the H2 gas. Right now that energy mostly comes from fossil fuels, gasoline, oil, natural gas or coal. If the aim of all this HHO/hydrogen fuel mania is to “free” us from fossil fuels, right now it ain’t working.
June 21st, 2008 at 12:54 am
You think that its a zero effect just because the current is coming from the battery which is being charged by the alternator? That’s just silly, your Alternator is going to run regardless because you started the car. The fact is, the alternator can recharge the battery quicker than the battery can discharge itself. Your not causing extra energy to spent from the engine because the alternator is run by the engine belt which is constantly turning! So you are losing energy to alternator anyway, in the HHO Gas situation you merely making the alternator more efficient by having it charge and power more car devices off of the same inevitable rotation via the belt and RPM. System works just fine as long as you are not drawing more power than the alternator can recharge.
June 21st, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Sure, the alternator rotates whenever the engine does, but the alternator does not always do work, that is, charge the battery. Typically, the alt does a lot of work right after you have started the engine, since the starter motor draws quite a bit of current from the battery. So, the engine has to work the hardest just after you start the engine, because the electrical energy from the alt has to come from somewhere.
If you have a lot of electrical devices running at once (lights, blower motor, stereo, inverter, etc.), they draw current and thus energy from the battery. The alt serves to keep the battery fully charged, and that electrical energy comes from the rotation of the engine, which has to work a little bit harder to provide it. RPMs drop a little, so the driver has to give the engine a bit more fuel to maintain the RPMs. In other words, running all that electrical stuff burns fuel.
Air conditioning compressors also put a load on the engine. If you listen carefully to your engine, whenever the AC compressor kicks in, the engine slows down a bit. If you have a small car as I do, the effect is more noticeable than if your car has a big V8.
You cannot make the alternator “more efficient” by burning HHO. That efficiency is in the design of the alternator (probably in the 90% range, as a guess). Nor can you make the engine significantly more efficient by burning HHO. That mechanical efficiency is in the 30% range, since all internal combustion engines — no matter what fuel they burn — inevitably produce heat, which has to dissipated into the environment or the engine becomes a useless lump of metal.
Maybe you can increase your mileage with HHO by some percentage, but my point still is that the energy required to separate H2 and O2 from water has to come from somewhere. If you’re using the engine to produce that energy, you are not getting something from nothing. You are just diverting some of the engine’s energy (probably not a lot, I’ll grant) to electrolyze the water and then recovering some of that energy by burning the resulting gas mixture.
I would be a lot more convinced if I could see a car that runs totally off HHO, with no other fuel present. Even then, if it is an internal combustion engine its efficiency is going to be less than 50%, because of the heat problem.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:00 am
Nice blog you have here. I found an interesting article here that some may want to read http://www.chevrolet.com/fuelcell
This may be the way to go.
July 13th, 2008 at 9:28 am
I think Wheat-dogg makes some lucid points here and puts the whole “run your car on water” into its fundamental scientific perspective. As well as point out the potential dangers of installing such a system. However, he does seem to miss the point of all of this in relation to energy. This issue is not so much about how much energy is used to produce the HHO. Particularly, in a car where the electrical system which has already been paid for by the vehicle’s owner is doing the work.
The issue is about a much cheaper source of energy than petrol. Especially, when you consider how much tax is included in the price of 1 litre of petrol (AU$1.70). The next thing the populace is going to be slugged with eventually even the U.S. is another tax with a ‘green’ title. Something like Carbon Emissions Levy. This will be applied not only to fuels but all goods & services based on the carbon footprint of those goods & services. For petrol probably in the vicinity of an additional 10%.
The issue then is really one of economics, politics and to a lesser extent for most of us an environmental issue. The whole issue of spiralling petrol prices on the economy is very complex. It effects not only domestic transportation, but freight, manufacturing and industry as well. This has a net add on effect to prices for all consumables. As such we are all effected economically, so when we are next at the ballot box, the votes will be swinging to the party with most relief in this department, rightly or wrongly.
The way I see it then, is as Wheat-dogg has confirmed HHO can be an effective welding gas. And cars can in fact burn HHO either mixed with gasoline vapour or by itself. Therefore it’s not a scam in or of itself. Therefore for me there remains a few pertinent questions to be answered.
1. Can it be made relatively safe to use? It appears so!
2. Does it have any detrimental effects to the vehicle engine and if so can those effects be mitigated?
3. Can you realistically achieve a minimum reduction in petrol consumption of say 25%.
If the answer to all of these questions is yes and can be substantiated, then I reckon it has to be worth a try. It would reduce fuel costs and consumption by somewhere in the order of 25%. It would as a by product have a positive environmental impact that cannot be denied. Remember the HHO gas is helping to run that alternator now, not just petrol. That is using less fossil fuels means less carbon into the atmosphere, less pollution and greenhouse gasses. It would also mean reducing the tax we pay on fuel and carbon emissions levy when it arrives. At least on petrol anyway.
With China, India and the U.S. consuming the vast amounts of oil they are, I would not expect the price of petrol to reduce significantly if at all. But if I could reduce my petrol costs by using less and not having to change my transport methods and usage. That has to be beneficial. Petrol AU$1.70/litre vs. Water $0.85/kilolitre. It really is a no brainer if the others questions stack up.
July 15th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
There are some technical terms to show how HHO can be used as a fuel “suppliment”, and by using it as that, mileage increases can be seen.
Lets explore them:
Its a know scientific fact that you cant get more energy out of something than you put in. For example, a 1.5v battery cannot produce more than 1.5v.
Correct? Good.
Same goes for anything.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, however, it CAN be converted from one form to another, ie, from chemical to mechanical, to kinectic.(as an automobile
does).
The automobile takes the stored energy in the form of gasoline, diesel, natural gas, etc and converts that stored energy to mechanical energy via the engine.
Part of that mechanical energy is converted to electrical energy via the alternator, and part of that energy is converted to kinectic energy via the
transmission to move the car forward, and part of that energy is converted to heat (wasted energy).
So, the stored energy potential in a tank of gas is converted to several other forms of energy to move your car.
This is an automobile in its energy form.
Now the automobiles alternator(generator) doesnt just charge the battery, it produces all the electricity to run the car and all electronics contained. For
example, you can start your car, and completly remove the battery and the engine will still run until it runs out of fuel.
(I dont recommend this though; todays cars electronics are very sensitive and *could* be damaged.)
The battery’s job is to start the car, and run lights and other stuff only if the engine is not running. Your battery will die if you leave your lights on
after your turn your engine off, but it will not die while the car is running with the lights on.
Now the alternator only produces what the car and its electronics demand at any given moment. It is CAPABLE of producing in the range of 80A on some vehicles
and heavy duty ones can produce up to 120A. Putting an extra load on the alternator by running an HHO generator @ 20A will have almost NO negative effect of
reduced gas mileage. Have you noticed any decrease in mileage just because you run with your headlights on? They draw 20-30A when on. The air conditioner
doesnt draw power from the alternator. It creates “drag” on the engine by engaging a mechanical clutch connected to a pump. Yes, the ac compressor is just a
pump, it siphons mechanical enery, not electrical. Only the fan that blows the air out of your ducts draws any electrical energy. Try this. Start your car.
Turn on your lights. No RPM change. Now turn on the wipers. Still no change. Turn on the radio. No change. Turn on the fan(not the AC, just the fan). Again
no change in engine load that would require the engine to work harder. Turn on every electrical thing in your car and all you are doing is drawing on a
RESERVE of electrical energy already being produced by the alternator.
OK, on to the next point.
An HHO generator “mostly” draws 20A (yes, some do draw more, others less) but from what I’ve seen the average is 20A. This 20A draw on the alternator is
almost like turning on your headlights, fan and radio at once.
Now the 20A that the generator is using will produce varying amounts of HHO, some claiming up to 4 Litres per minute. Lets be reasonalble and call it more
like it really is and say *most* will produce only about 1.5 ltrs/min. Thats 1500ml/min. Divide that by 60sec. and you get a rate of 25ml/sec.
Electrical energy is measured by WATTS. To get watts, you multiply the Amps by the volts, ie, the alternator is wired to output around 13 to 14 volts.
so the mathematical equation for this is 20A x 14v = 280Watts. Thats the energy output of the *standard* HHO generator. Lets be generous by saying that the
cell will be 90% efficient, losing only 10% in heat. Yes they do heat up.
But really, how efficient is an HHO Cell.
there is a formula, and that formula is this:
MMW = ML per minute per watt
ml per min / Watts = MMW
Let take a *standard* cell and run the numbers.
1500 ml / 280w = 5.35714285714(MMW)
Now we have a solid number ( this is for you math geeks, like me ). We can round it out to 5.4 MMW
Now we have to calculate amount of air/fuel that the engine uses. Most modern cars ( 1996 to present) has a preset Air/Fuel ratio programmed into their
computers. That is 14.7 parts of air to 1 part of fuel. 14.7:1
To figure out how much air/fuel per minute the engine uses, use this formula:
RPM x Engine displacement. I’ll use mine. A 2.2L engine that idles at 600 RPM. So 2.2 x 600 = 1320 litres of a/f per minute. In seconds that is this number:
2.2 x (600/60) = 22 litres of a/f mix per second. then divide that number by 4 (cylinders) = 5.5L a/f mix. Breaking it down more: 5.5l(or 5500ml) / 14.7(air
to fuel ratio) = 374.5ml of air and 1ml of gas for a total of 375.5ml total a/f mix.
Now take your ml/min and break it down to ml/sec: 1500/60=25ml/sec
We now have our math worked out.
So we have in our (one) combustion chamber 25ml of HHO and 375ml of a/f mix
Will these numbers help burn the a/f mix more efficiently? Probably. With the addition of an electronic fuel injection device, and the more effiecient burn
of the a/f mix, i can see the potential increase in mpg.
Why?
Lets look at the electronic fuel injection device:
The concept is that a more effiecient burn in the cylinder will result in less unburned gas passing thru the exhaust. The exhaust system has a sensor in it
to measure the amount of oxygen in the exhaust stream and compare it to the ambient(outside) air. There will always be a difference in the two and that
difference causes the 02 sensor to generate a voltage that ranges from 0.1v to 1.0v. That voltage is sent to the computer to be compared to a set value. The
computer then uses that voltage to adjust the fuel injectors “injector pulse width” ( the time the injector stay open) and try to maintain a 14.7:1 a/f
ratio.
Since the 02 content is constantly changing due to varying conditions ( driver demand ), the 02 sensor generates a varying voltage: the higher the voltage
the computer sees that as a “rich” condition, meaning less 0xygen and too much gas, so it leans out the mix. On the other end of the scale, the computer
interprets the low voltage as a “lean” condition and it adjusts the injector pulse width to put more gas into the mix.
The Efie adds voltage to the existing voltage the 02 sensor generated and sends the total to the computer, in effect, fooling the computer into see a “rich”
condition, so the computer “leans” out the fuel mix by shortening the injector pulse width.
So now you have a “leaner” air/fuel ratio in the cylinder. For example, the normal idle will bring in 375 ml a/f mix/sec but with the computer leaning out
the mix, that number drops. The HHO now has a better chance to increase the burn characteristics of the a/f mix.
So this suggest the mpg WILL increase.
How much? It will vary greatly due to so many factors. Altitude, load(weight), speed, and driver demand.
But the net effect would seem to substantiate an mpg increase.
So there you have it in very technical terms as to why I think this is a viable thing to explore.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
hi!!!
Has anyone tried other kit?
this is not spam but i want many people to see other choice.it’s has review many sites like water4gas,runyourcaronwater etc.
Is it really a scam? if you don’t satisfy you can asked for refund..no more pain
You can truly get better mileage…… Check out many sites;carwaterguide.blogspot.com
September 18th, 2008 at 3:12 am
Run Your Car on Water Scam…
It’ s a shame that we rely on forein oil so much. Everyone is dependent on the middle east oil nowadays…
September 19th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
NO ones been killed
All the patents are public knowledge available to ANYONE
Patents are in force for 20 YEARS
If no one can make money from it THAT should give you a CLUE
September 19th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
This is so wrong I wouldn’t quit my day job if I were you
Now the alternator only produces what the car and its electronics demand at any given moment. It is CAPABLE of producing in the range of 80A on some vehicles and heavy duty ones can produce up to 120A. Putting an extra load on the alternator by running an HHO generator @ 20A will have almost NO negative effect of reduced gas mileage. Have you noticed any decrease in mileage just because you run with your headlights on? They draw 20-30A when on. The air conditioner doesnt draw power from the alternator. It creates “drag” on the engine by engaging a mechanical clutch connected to a pump. Yes, the ac compressor is just a pump, it siphons mechanical enery, not electrical. Only the fan that blows the air out of your ducts draws any electrical energy. Try this. Start your car. Turn on your lights. No RPM change. Now turn on the wipers. Still no change. Turn on the radio. No change. Turn on the fan(not the AC, just the fan). Again
no change in engine load that would require the engine to work harder. Turn on every electrical thing in your car and all you are doing is drawing on a
RESERVE of electrical energy already being produced by the alternator.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
“After seeing a hho welder in operation how can you say that this tech is a scam. Electrolysis is on demand and not stored. Perfectly safe. It uses very little electricity to make hho on a car from what I understand. This is going to be way big!”
BECAUSE it actually produces a CRAPPY brittle weld
http://www.phact.org/e/bgas.htm
September 21st, 2008 at 3:11 am
My point, SpeedTrap47, is you can’t get something for nothing. Sure, running your lights has a negligible effect on your RPMs. The alternator-battery combination provides plenty of power to run all the electrics without slowing the engine down hardly at all. But, the energy to light the lights, etc., has to come ultimately from the engine and its fuel supply. The alternator produces no power unless it’s rotating. The pulley system provides enough mechanical advantage that turning the alternator is a piece of cake for the engine, as you point out. Still, the energy required to do that work comes from the engine burning fuel.
Ditto creating your hydrogen to squirt into the combustion mixture. That energy ultimately comes from the engine. Now I confess I do not know the answer to this question: is the energy loss offset by an increase in gas mileage? In other words, if the engine needs to burn a little bit more fuel to electrolyse the water, in the end does the car actually go farther on a gallon of gas? At this point, I am not entirely convinced that using hydrogen (or “HHO,” which is the actual topic of this post) makes that dramatic a difference in mileage. There are plenty of scams out there, and my post was to caution people expecting HHO or hydrogen to be some sort of miracle “free” energy source. TANSTAAFL.
For my money, I’d switch to a diesel car and burn used vegetable frying oil. That seems to be a more reliable, and safer, technology than messing around with hydrogen and oxygen mixtures.
September 22nd, 2008 at 12:10 am
I can see all the angles being discussed. My question is, if HHO gas is in the chamber making it burn the gas that is being injected more completely, isnt the O2 sensor see a leaner exhaust and case more fuel to be injected? There are also plans and devices sold to “trick” the the computer in a vehical by working with the O2 sensor to prevent the extra gas being injected. The real question is: wha are the effects on the valves and the plugs from the engine being ran lean because of the burn off of more gas in the cylinder?
October 5th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
I am a professional car mechanic and had installed three different HHO Cell for my customers.
Cars that run gas (HHO or Natural Gas) has cleaner piston and cylinder comparing to cars that run petro! And easier to service when it comes to TUNE UPS!
October 8th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Allen makes a good point here. One drawback to burning liquid fuel is the carbon deposits left behind. You know, all those Amoco ads touting their cleaner burning gas are not all snake oil. LNG cars have practically no carbon buildup, since the gas burns more completely than vaporized gasoline or diesel. (Gas and vapor are not the same thing, folks.) A car running solely on hydrogen or “HHO” would have no carbon buildup, since there’s no carbon to begin with.
That said, we are far from having a national hydrogen infrastructure that would enable a hydrogen-burning car to travel much further than southern California, and I have yet to read or hear of anyone who has driven an HHO car cross-country solely on the gas mixture. If someone has, then let me know.
October 13th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
There is only one explanation for this phenomenon that made sense to me….if it is true!
The claim by some HHO enthusiasts is that HHO allows a more efficient burn and the extra enegy comes not from some mysterious new law of physics but from unburned fuel that would in a unmodified Automobile not be converted to usable energy, ie. it goes out the tail pipe.
October 19th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
As a physicist, I can say that the HHO claims are hogwash that only enrich the devious and fleecs the ignorant. What is being claimed here is that using electrical energy derived from a car’s alternator, one can electrolyze water into HHO and then burn it. What those interested in this method do not understand is that it takes a huge amount of electricty to make HHO; the engine must work harder, i.e. use more gasoline to make HHO. The HHO burning produces less energy than the gasoline that was used to make it. Think of it t his way: why can’t you use an electric motor to power an electric generator that will power the electric motor and get perpetual motion? It is because there are losses at each stage of the process. Just because one cannot see the electrical energy and one can see gasoline does not mean that splitting H2O into HHO is free. It is a question of thermodynamics, not a question of how hot HHO burns. Scams like this are a tax on the scientifically illiterate. Anyone who thinks that they are getting better mileage is making a mistake in long division. Save your $$$ and get a more efficient car.
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Water to energy
What everyone seems to forget when quoting thermal theory is that the H2O-HHO process is not creating energy, but using an existing source…water. Just as gasoline is converted to heat in a gasoline engine using less than 5 amp@12VDC, H2O is converted to HHO at 50amps@12VDC resulting in 3 ltrs/min of HHO which is injected into the engine as a supplement, not a primary source. I have a 2007 Dodge 3500 with a Commings 5.9 diesel engine that averaged 16.7 mpg over a 6 tank (100 gal)of fuel. After installing the fuel cell the Dodge and doing nothing more,it now average 24.2 mpg. You can do all the chalk board and theoretic mental masterbation you want, but the proof is in actual application.
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Any internal combustion engine is a very poor way to supply energy to run a vehicle. All of these engines develope power at various rates of RPM. Therefore the internal combustion engine is very wasteful. I beleive what is happening here is energy that would simply go out the tail pipe as waste heat is being recaptured by the alternator and stored in the temporary form of the so-called HHO which is simply a two to one mixture of Hydrogen to Oxygen. When injected or co-burned the oxygen is enriching the fuel/air mix producing more heat and therefore better combustion. The hydrogen, also being a fuel, helps to better utilize the fuel by probably increassing the combustion chamber temperature. The only caveat is whether the engine can withstand the higher combustion temperatures over a long period of time. Look at the Prious car. All that car is doing is recovering wasted energy already there. The hydrid uses an electric motor which is efficient at all speeds until the batteries run down to 50 %. Then the computer decides if and when it is most efficient to turn on the internal combustion engine. Therfore using the engine thoughout its most efficient speeds. When on the highway the MPG drop to the actual efficiency of the engine since you are running hot straight and normal.
March 17th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
It is funny how this argument surfaces every time the price of fuel goes up. I have seen this in the 70’s embargo era, then we did not have the internet and a lot of people were taken by “Run your car on water” schemes. Now we have the internet and the hoax is exposed but it seems a large amount of folks are still falling for the something for nothing swindle. My back ground is in engineering, we test, retest and test again when we invent or re-invent. The way you can tell that the “Increase your mileage on HHO” is a scam is there are no tests out there. I have not seen one curve produce and witnessed, showing before and after test curves on an engine before and after running an HHO device. You see a lot of claims but no proof. GM just might go bankrupt, but if HHO really worked like the people clamed it did, GM could add one of these devices on every single vehicle and have a full fleet, trucks and all that would instantly comply with the CAFÉ standards and out sell all the manufactures in no time at all. There will always be snake oil sales men out there and there will always be people out there that will be easy to be pried free on their hard earned money.
March 23rd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I oversee a fleet of approximately 2,400 vehicles. As a government entity, we are very interested in saving taxpayer dollars. I have read all of these blogs along with doing some non-scientific research of this “HHO” technology. I agree with Mikflo on this topic. I challenge any HHO generator manufacturer to prove to me that their product works. I am contacted everyday by vendors that want to test their products in my fleet to prove to me that their products work. Once they can show me that their product works, then they will have the endorsement of my agency and sell many more of their units. I contacted 2 manufacturers of HHO generators and neither of them were willing to put their product on one of my cars to prove that it worked. I agreed to purchase their product AFTER I could validate their MPG savings claims, but I was denied. Both manufacturers told me that I would have to purchase their product on their word only!
Please e-mail me at chris.baron@dps.la.gov if you can put an HHO generator on one of my cars and prove to me that this technology, in its current form, works.
I admit that I am skeptical, but hopeful that someone will respond to my challenge!
April 29th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Hi All,
Not sure if this is being followed any more or not but here’s my take. You can’t add 2+2 and get 6. Energy taken from battery has to be replaced by the engine at a cost in gas mileage. The true breakthrough is coming, but not from a these HHO scamming dingbats. There have been recent breakthroughs by folks at MIT in the field of cheap water to HHO conversion. This will enable folks to use SOLAR to do the splitting at home, and store the H and O at home to power their entire lives. NO MORE POWER GRID. You store solar energy captured during the day as HHO, and use a fuel cell to power home during the night. This new breakthrough from MIT allows more O2 capture than was previously achieved by any HHO system. They say an entire house and a car could be powered on 5 liters of water a day, and with a smaller solar array than are currently being used just to power the house alone, and only during daylight hours. This new catalyst discovered “almost accidentally” by MIT scientists is FAR more efficient than platinum and FAR FAR cheaper. Its main ingredients are cobalt and phosphate, two of the most abundant substances on the earth. THIS IS REAL SCIENCE. Check out the press release from MIT here: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html You can’t turn your old gas guzzling car or truck into a HHO hybrid folks! Unless you want to spend $$$ to drop the guts from a modern hydrogen fuel cell car into it. IT’S A SCAM. This tech from MIT is not. It’s not fully understood yet but its working. Daniel G. Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT is behind this. This is not magic claims of power from nowhere! It’s just storage of power from the sun. More efficient solar collection and storage is coming up fast. In 10 to 20 years we may all have hydrogen storage in our basements along with fuel cell to use it at night. BE PATIENT FOLKS!! AND DON’T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON CRAP!!!
May 18th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
YOU’RE A DAMNED FOOL. HYDROGEN CAN BLOW UP THE SPACE SHUTTLE AND IT IS FLAMMABLE, BUT IT WAS THE ERRORS OF THE HUMAN BEINGS THAT WERE USING IT IN BOTH CASES THAT WWERE RESPONSIBLE, NOT THE HYDROGEN. HYDROGEN SENDS THE SPACE SHUTTLE INTO ORBIT AND IT CAN SPEED A CAR ON ITS WAY DOWN THE ROAD. IT DELIVERS POWER, BETTER PERFORMANCE AND MUCH GREATER FUEL MILEAGE. MY OWN VEHICLE GOT A 73% IMPROVEMENT WHEN I HAD A KIT PUT ON. THE NEW KITS WITH TITANIUM PLATES AND HIGH SURFACE AREA COATINGS ARE EVEN BETTER. GET YOUR FACTS TOGETHER BEFORE YOU TELL PEOPLE NOT TO PUT BILLIONS OF BUCKS BACK IN THEIR POCKETS – THE SAVINGS FROM FREE FUEL IN THE FORM OF HHO. GO SEE HHOGAMES.COM.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Joe, turn off CAPS LOCK unless you want to look like you are yelling at us. If you are yelling, then calm down, for god’s sake.
I would love to see proof that your car got a 73% improvement … in what? If it’s gas mileage, then you want me to believe that a car that was getting, say, 30 mpg can now get 52 mpg?
Then, another question: when do these high-grade kits start paying for themselves? Titanium plates and special coatings are not cheap, after all.
For the record, only one Shuttle was destroyed by a H2 + O2 explosion, the Challenger. The other fatal accident (Columbia) happened on re-entry, because of damaged heat tiles.
HHO (or, more scientifically, a mixture of hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) gases) is NOT FREE. (I am yelling, on purpose.) This point I and others keep repeating, but to deaf ears apparently. It takes energy to separate the H2 from the O in water, and that energy has to come from somewhere. If you have a tank of hydrogen in your car (danger, Will Robinson!), then you had to pay the electrical company to get that hydrogen. If you’re making in the car, then energy has to come from the car’s own fuel. So, again you’re still paying money to create the gas. It may be cheaper than gasoline, but it is not free!
If you have a system on your car that really works as well as you say, then contact LSP (#31) and talk to him. He’s willing to test it for his fleet. If he says it works as well as you say, then I will write about it.
May 22nd, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I agree with all of Eljefe’s arguments concerning the something-for-nothing myth about water cars (although some things, like solar power for example, really do provide energy for nothing, but that’s beside the subject).
I would like to examine the Economical arguments presented by proponents of water power. Now, I may not be a physicist, but I do know one thing about Economics in general; it is a study of the management of resources. Thermodynamics, therefore, plays a role in the pricing of fuel. If it’s less efficient to use a car’s battery to break up water into a combustible mixture only to burn it for mechanical energy, as opposed to just burning gasoline for mechanical energy off the tap, then it will be necessarily more expensive to run such a car overall. Likewise, if it turns out that it is more efficient to do the former process, then it should be cheaper to run. At least, it should be, if we lived in a truly free-market.
But we don’t live in a free-market. Since we live in a system where taxes and subsidies have warping effects on free-market Economics, it may be the case that a less efficient car system may actually be more economical for the consumer. And if that’s the case, then water-cars may benefit the overall economy as people save more to improve factors of production and to spend on consumables (although chances are that water will shoot up the roof in value).
Of course, the “benefit” is being able to avoid the debilitating and unfair tax policies to begin with. Overall though, the entire economy becomes less efficient when governments, intentionally or unintentionally, favor less efficient industries. There’s nothing green about that.
Sorry for the rant, but I felt it was pertinent to bring this up.
June 5th, 2009 at 11:31 am
both sides have a valid argument and i believe the supporters point outways the doubts cast by this article. The article cites two major events that arose from accidents involving HHO gas, most notably the Hindenberg and the Space Shuttle Challenger. While these events where tragic it should be noted that they occured 49 years appart. Valid points but not a reason to discontinue its use. I can name two instances (chernoble and three mile island) where nuclear power plants had accidents but i don’t preach that nuclear power is worthless. As for gasoline it may not be as volatile but gasoline is by no means a stable compound. The very reason gasoline is used as a fuel is because it ignites easily. Another argument raised is that it takes electricity to create electrolysis and thus fosill fuels are used in the process when electricity is generated. This point is fickle at best, many other sources of producing energy exist and could easily be intergrated. over 20% of the power in the United States is produced by nuclear power. Wind, solar, and water-turbine power are also valid forms of energy. A truely sucessful investment is where the risk outways the reward. A clean burning fuel that may explode and kill you or an unclean burning fuel that….. may explode and kill you; i think HHO gas wins in my book. but thats just my opinion