Gas Saver HHO generator... ever use one?

PaulS,

Where did you get the 270W from? Also, slight correction, 270W is actually slightly above 0.36 mechanical horsepower (1 HP = 745.69987158227022 W exactly, see wikipedia:horsepower for conversion), it's also about the same electrical horsepower.

Finally, where do you get that it requires 0.25HP from the engine to produce 0.2HP from the alternator?

I'm just curious because I'm interested in getting some hard numbers down because I see this topic come up so often it would be nice to have a nice little toy problem with real numbers to explain exactly why this doesn't work.

Jason

 

well theres one on ebay, actually the first one that comes up when I type in HHO and they claim it produces 1 liter/minute...
14 gallons in the tank
14:1 air/fuel
196 gallons of combustion mix

1 liter a minute produced
1 liter = .26 gallons of gas a minute

typical expansion from water to hho
1:2
based on a 12"x3.5" container = ~1 cubic foot of volume
1 cu/ft = ~7.48 us gallons
x2 = 14.96 us gallons of gas produced by a 12"x3.5" (cylindrical container)

.0701
.0714
15.6 liter/hour = 4.056 gallons

for referance sake;
16mpg @ 60mph
224gallons of comustion mix at a 14:1 air/fuel ratio
+ 4.056 gallons of hho a hour
16.29mpg...
I'm sure I'm off somewhere(or everywhere) in here
this is just a quick batch of equations I wipped up while being bored at work...

 

here is one article on the guy that made the hybrid escort. I think this article exagerated the amount of water used by a lot but I watched the TV special on the thing and it appeared that it was real

http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/354/C8115/

 

David74Maverick,

Air/fuel is a ratio of mass, not volume (gallons). The volume of 1kg of air is different than the volume of 1kg of gasoline so I'm not sure that a 14:1 air/fuel ratio would still be 14:1 when talking gallons. It would be easy to figure out what the ratio would be if you knew 1kg of air = X gallons, and the same for fuel, if you feel like looking it up.

By contrast there is a direct relationship between mass and weight so 1kg = 2.2lbs approximately. So the 14:1 air/fuel ratio is maintained when talking weight. Although the optimal ratio I think is actually more like 14.7:1.

Jason

 

okay...how bout the doble steam car??

 

Here is an interesting observation I came up with...

The volumetric density of gasoline is about 9000 watt hours per liter. That is 9 kWh/l or 34.07 kilowatt hours per US Gallon ( 34.07 kWh/Gal ).

I don't know what gas costs where you all live, but around here it's about $4/Gal. So let's define a new metric, I will call it Dollarmetric Energy Density. This is the amount of energy you get for every dollar spent.

At $4/Gal gasoline has a dollarmetric energy density of:

( 34.07 kWh/Gal ) / ( 4 USD/Gal ) = 8.52 kWh/USD

So for every buck you spend at the pump you get 8.52 kWh of energy.

Retail electricity on the other hand costs about 10 cents per kWh, or 0.10 USD/kWh. Which has a dollarmetric energy density of 10 kWh / USD, which is of course greater than gasoline at 4 USD/gal.

The other factor is that these are only energies, which means potential. They are independent of the motor/engine you use to realize your mechanical power. So the resultant power you get is a function of the efficiency of the engine/motor. It is well known that flywheel-based internal combustion engines are very low efficiency ( I believe that the typical number is about 1% efficient but I'd have to look it up ).

Electrical motors on the other hand, I believe, have a much higher efficiency (citation needed). So, with an electric motor, not only do you get about 1.5 kWh of energy extra for every buck you spend, you then get more power from each kWh of energy because your motor is much more efficient.

P.S.
I don't know if this has already been stated, but pure hydrogen under combustion has a volumetric energy density of 2.7 Wh. That is Watts, in otherwords 0.0027 kWh of energy, compared to 9 kWh in gasoline. That's a big difference. I think hydrogen can go up to 3.3 Wh under combution in pure oxygene or something like that but I forget offhand. Also, HHO is not pure hydrogene and i can't find a measurement of its volumetric efficiency, but I suspect that it is much lower than 2.7 Wh.

 

Jason,
the 270 watts is derived:
13.5 volts (what the alternator and battery has) x 20 amps - the advertised power that is used by the unit.
Take the Kwatts x .7457 (I rounded it off) .270 x .7457 = .201339

There is 10% loss in the alternator (electrical losses) and 10% loss in the drive system when using a belt. (standard variables in engineering) (the losses are converted to heat)
so you have to use .22 hp in the alternator to get .20 out. The engine has to put .25 hp to drive the alternator to get .22 hp into it in order to get .20 out. (the gas engine has more losses but I didn't want to get into the efficiency of the gas engine as most would never believe that it is at best 30% efficient so i just added the .08 hp)

Does that help you?

 

David,
you are comparing the volume of a gas to the volume of a liquid. It doesn't work that way. The gallon of gasoline makes about 100 gallons of gasoline fumes as it goes into your car. You are also adding the Hydrogen and the oxygen together as "fuel" and you would have to add in the 14 parts of air for each part of gasoline. So for each gallon of HHO you would have to compare it to the 1500 gallons of vaporized gas/air mix.
(this is not chemically accurate because it would have to be calculated on atomic weights but it is a reasonable facsimile)

 

I find it interesting that nowhere does he talk about the amount of amps that are necessary to operate that torch - and an engine would require a lot more fuel than that torch - the guy is a fraud in my opinion you cannot get more power out of a machine than you put into it. That is what he is claiming.

 

Pajechoj,
Electric motors can be up to 90% efficient BUT the problem is weight. In order to get the torque required to move a car is on the upper end for an electric motor. The lower the speed of a motor the more power it consumes so until you are at cruising speed your efficiency is quite a bit lower than 90%.
If you were to use a separately excited field motor (electric) that produced 1/10 the required torque and ran it through a 10:1 reducer then you could spin the motor faster and get the torque needed to run the car. The problem is that it would require a complex system to control the motor(s) and they would be the size and weight of the motor in your washer or dryer. You would need at least 48 volts to get the speed high enough and 72 volts would be more efficient. You also need about 600 amp hours per motor to run for 6 hours. 600 amp hour 48V batteries weigh in the neighborhood of 3000 pounds each.
(check with Exide Commercial for info)
Having said all that - controllers are made that employ independently excited fields and regenerative braking as well as dual motor control. If a lightweight, two passenger car were designed for electric use only then I believe it is doable. Using a specially constructed fully rechargeable battery at 48 volts and two or even four small motors (one at each wheel) that are designed for 20000 rpm and an appropriate reduction to 13 inch wheels and very hard tires one should be able to travel 300 miles at 70 mph (depending on terrain). An on-board high frquency charger can charge the battery in 6 hours with no need to cool or de-gas and all you would need is a 220v 20 -30 amp circuit to plug into. (clothes dryer outlet)
Anyone want to help with this project? We could incorporate and get funding and start a new business!

 

PaulS,

That is exactly what Ferdinand Porsche did with his Elektromobil which was introduced in 1900. It had 4 electric hub motors, ran on 44-cell 80V, 2-ton lead-acid batteries and could travel 38 miles.

It's been 108 years since Porsche introduced the Elektromobil and where are we today? Well, GM has a concept vehicle, the Volt. It is capable (in theory) of traveling 40 miles on electricity alone (see Wikipedia:Chevrolet_Volt). It's been 108 years and we've managed to surpass the design of a 21-year old engineer by 2 miles. Worse than that because it's only a concept, so we don't even actually have a real vehicle. At least Porsche produced 300 of his Elektromobils.

In addition Porsche released a hybrid car a year later in 1901 called the "Mixt". It only took us another 100 years to get the Prius.

Jason

 

Don Lancaster, inventor, engineer, and credible source on most things engineering, has a lot to say on HHO (a.k.a. Brown's Gas) and psuedoscience in general.

The following is a quick and interesting read for anybody pulled into the mystique and psuedoscience of HHO:
http://www.tinaja.com/glib/muse120.pdf

The section on Brown's gas begins on the 3rd page, so you can skip ahead until there.

He also has a humerous article titled "How to Bash Psuedoscience" which I like:
http://www.tinaja.com/glib/bashpseu.pdf

Jason

 

Thank you every body for totaly tearing this apart. when i first saw this i was wondering how it was metered in to the engine. they are all just hooked up in to the intake track before the throttle blades. So if you still buy into this, i dont see how anybody could then consider that there is no controle or metering system for this flamable gas that is being vented in to the intake of your engine.