HHO Generator - Save Gas

Seems a lot of people around here are making these do-it-yourself HHO generators and installing them on their vehicles. I've remained skepitcal, but FAR too many people seem to be having success with it. If I ever get a floor back in my Mav and have some money left over I plan on trying it out. What do yall think?


Here's an example, and a set of plans on how to do it:

http://www.smacksboosters.110mb.com/

 

Have you ever actually met someone who's had measurable success with it? I mean aside from the people who are trying to sell it...

With current tech, it's just not possible to get more energy from the hydrogen and oxygen in water than it takes to actually break down the water. And certainly not with a car's electrical system. Sure you'll burn the hydrogen and oxygen, and you might even get a little more power from it, but it will be canceled out entirely by the electrical load.

I found a pretty sane article about it here. I wish this type of thing worked. Maybe one day it will, but until I see one of these that doesn't completely ignore the first law of thermodynamics I'll just stick to my pyramid healing crystals and magnetic longevity bracelets.

 

Yes! Half the cars at work have them now.

I keep tellin 'em for that to work you'd need to have more than 100% efficiency, which isn't possible... However, milage gains are milage gains.

While that site I linked to does sell his "kits", he also freely puts the plans (and even part numbers and places to purchase the parts) out on the internet.

I'm going tomorrow to see a freind's in action. We'll see...

EDIT:

I have a feeling the load on the alternator is quite insignificant. In which case, if you can produce enough hydrogen, you *could* have milage gains. Key word, could...

 

OK, the reality of it is this:
You have a container that is filled with water (and an electrolyte).
Let's say it holds a quart of water (1.75 Lbs) and it lasts you through a tank of gas.
You burn 15 gallons of gas (90 Lbs) and 1260 Lbs of air (14:1 air to fuel ratio).
In addition to that you burn your 1.75 Lbs of HHO.
So you are getting 1.75 Lbs of "new fuel/air to supplement your 1350 pounds of fuel and air from the gasoline. 0.13% or 13 ten-thousandths of your total fuel usage is obtained from the HHO system. IF you got 100% power from the HHO it would only increase your mileage by less than 1% (0.97%). If you get (as I do) 21MPG a 1% increase would only be 21.0021 MPG.
The actual physics goes like this:
It takes 12VDC at 20 amps to make the HHO generator work. That is 240 watts consumed. Since there is a 10% loss in the alternator and regulator that means that you have to produce 267 watts to get the 240 watts through the generator (if it is 100% efficient (which it isn't). The engine has to use .358 HP to generate the 267 watts but there are losses in the belt drive to the alternator so it actually takes .397 HP to drive the alternator. It takes about 11 HP to go 30 mph (in a 3300 lb car - not taking into account rolling resistance or air resistance) so when you add the HHO it now takes 11.397 hp to do the same speed. Of that 11.397 HP the HHO is only producing .0148 HP (0.13%) if the converter is operating at 100% (which it doesn't)
It is physically impossible to get an increase in MPG from the HHO generator.
What can happen is the same thing that happened when people installed fuel line heater assemblies on their cars and the old alcohol and water "injection systems" on their cars the last time fuel prices went up. You pay more attention to how you drive your car and that is where the increased fuel economy comes from. You can do more to get better mileage by installing a vacuum gauge on your car and watch it while you drive. If you try to keep the vacuum above 10 inches of mercury your mileage will increase - a lot! Keep your tires inflated so that you just have a full tread in contact with the pavement. Get your distributor re-curved to speed up and limit your mechanical advance to 10 degrees (starting at 1300 rpm and complete at 2500 crank RPM) and run 14 degrees initial advance. Get the vacuum advance tuned so that it starts at 12" Hg and completely tops out at 16 crankshaft degrees by 16" Hg. Make sure your warm air intake valve is functioning and that your choke is set to the minimum needed for your climate. All of this will increase your economy without sacrificing a lot of power.
The torches that use HHO converters use kilowatts to produce enough Hydrogen and Oxygen to light up the torch. That 0.0148 HP won't even idle your engine. You can prove this by disconnecting the fuel line and try to run the engine on the HHO itself. When the carb runs dry the car dies.

I really don't expect this essay to convince anyone. I would recommend that you try idling the engine on the HHO converter just to prove to yourself the reality of the workability of the system on your car. I do applaud the effort to make your car more efficient. I also advise you to make the recommended adjustments to make the car more fuel efficient - especially the vacuum gauge because the driver has more to do with fuel economy than any other adjustment you can make.

 

... and your source for this info?

i did an internet search on...HHO...and found none of this mentioned.
i did find a lot of info. on how to build this and people telling how well it works.

...:Handshake...

 

Im just subscribing to this, but Pauls statement makes sense to me, rather than the system working... its most likely users driving better.

Anyways... no input on this subject, just subscribing to learn

 

I went and checked it out. The person had just built a 6 "jar" system that he's going to be putting in a motorhome w/ the Ford Triton V10. He built the whole thing for under $100. It consists of mostly items you can find at a hardware store, and pet supply. (small valves from fish tanks, etc)


It seemed very simple. Ill be building one when I get done with this latest Maverick project. Ive got a couple years worth of gas milage logs for my truck, so that seems like a great test vehicle. No matter how well i drive, Ive NEVER broken 12.5mpg city. If it beats that, it works.

PaulS - The numbers make my head spin, but I do agree with what you're saying. I really dont expect this to work.

I will touch on a couple things though:

HHO has three times the energy over gas.

A six pack design set up in parrallel is usually pulling about 5 amps, 9 amps at the most.



Also, here are the complete instructions:

http://smacksboosters.110mb.com/Smack.pdf

 

PaulS I found something similar to what you stated and I think it is just as valid a point as you have made.

"Using Ohms law, 5A x 12V = 60W.

60W is less than ONE TENTH of a horsepower.

So, even assuming that your electrolysis process was 100% efficient (which it isn't) and that your car's engine ran at its theoretical maximum efficiency (which it doesn't), you'd actually only be able to generate an extra 0.025 HP from that amount of gas.

Do you really think that's going to halve your fuel consumption?

If we assume that the average modern vehicle requires about 20HP to cruise at 65mph (http://zfacts.com/p/821.html) then we can calculate that this is equal to almost 15KW of power.

15KW at 12V requires a current of 1,250 amps -- far more than *any* car's alternator can provide (most are rated at 80A or so).

So right there and then we have proven you can't convert a regular car to run on water using electrolysis, it's alternator is an order of magnitude too weak.

But what about that "halve your fuel consumption" claim?
Well if we were to half our fuel consumption, we'd need to get the other half from the hydrogen/oxygen liberated through electrolysis.

That means (even assuming 100% efficiency of the electrolysis cell) we'd still need an astonishing 625A from our alternator -- still almost EIGHT times more than it can actually deliver.

But it's far worse than that...

The amount of energy required to split the water may be 7.5KW and therefore the theoretical maximum energy we can recover is 7.5KW but the average otto-cycle (car) engine is only about 25% efficient. That means to make it work, we'd need to generate four times as much gas as you'd think.

Now we actually need 30KW of energy (2,500A @ 12V) to halve our fuel consumption. And let's not forget that the 30KW of energy would be over and above that the engine normally has to put out (because now it's got to not only push the car along but also generate all that electricity). So we find we actually need yet *more* hydrogen/oxygen gas and thus we'll burn more gasoline. "

taken from Bruce Simpson here http://aardvarkforums.co.nz/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1960

there are alot of claims on it and I think Bruce Simpson said it best here

"If our friend in the Philippines can run his car solely on water, why doesn't he just connect his device up to a small industrial motor, have that drive an alternator and the draw the excess power (that, in the case of his car is being used to provide the propulsion) to create an electricity source which runs on water?

What's more, if he collected the exhaust (which is just water vapor) and condensed it, he could put that back in the electrolysis cell and it would run *forever* -- constantly churning out a surplus of power.

Why isn't he a billionaire, having an invention like that in his hands?"

There are alot of claims and alot of believers....(kind of sounds like religeon but we won't get into that here)...But unfortunitely the truth is this, if it worked they would be selling the s**t out of it making more money then they knew what to do with, isn't that what this is all about saving money if it only cost 100 something bucks to double their fuel economy . Someone would have gotten it on Hot Rod TV on a dyno saying he got x ammount of fuel economy becaues of his more efficent engine, one of the by products of making your engine more efficent is more power...hmmm...
And wouldn't you think that Ford and GM and Dodge who are loosing money hand over fist due to the poor fuel economy of their bigger vehicles wouldn't use it...I mean if you follow what they say
"Typical mileage gain results have been averaging around 20% using this design. "..taken from smaksboosters.com
"DOUBLE YOUR GAS MILEAGE!!! "...water4gas.com
why wouldn't they use it. When you could take a Ford focus that has an average fuel economy of 29.5 mpg..(24 city/ 35 highway) calculate 20% of that and it equals 35.4 mpg. that is getting into hybrid range there...
When they could make a simple claim that the F150 now gets an average of 20.4 mpg instead of 17 mpg for less then 100 bucks in odds and end parts..Heck that would put their trucks almost into the fuel economy range of the Toyota Camry (23.5 average mpg) and doubling it would put you in the 34mpg range.....hmmm
Unfortunitely there is not tangible evidence across the board that it works. If you read the forums on it people have mixed results, as PaulS stated you do something like that to your motor you drive different to prove it works if to just prove it to yourself. There are many different variables ranging from driving conditions to heat to whatever that effect fuel economy.
Look at the forums of these people..ecomodder.com, enn.com (the environmental news network)...ect..ect.. these people also promote hypermiling, which is a totally different nutball thing in itself...(drafting within 5-6 feet of semi's, coasting on the freeway ect...)
If you want to try it Please prove me wrong, if it is beneficial to all of us then do it. But come back with tangeble proof, not just testimonials...come on this is not a Ronco infomercial...we want dyno results, we want all driving conditions, including sitting in rush hour traffic, we want multiple vehicle tests and then we might consider it. So be beneficial to society and prove all of us naysayers wrong....
Of course while you are doing that I will convert my Ford explorer, and possibly my Maverick over to natural gas in the near future http://www.cngoutfitters.com/ it is still $0.85 per cubic foot here and there is a filling station within 5 miles of my house.

 

if you are going to do it go here and atleast get the explosive proof stuff

http://www.gulsbyfamily.com/

 

markso125, I beleive you've done gone and bumped your head?

I have not said one time I think this will work. You seem to think Im pushing this like spam pushing viagra! The numbers say it can't work, but dammit I've got a dozen airframe mechanics and avionic techs saying it DOES work! These aren't stupid people by any means!

If it were random internet results Id say someone doesn't know how to calculate gas milage figures. However, I think these folks are way past that stage.

You want proof? That's exactly what Ive offered! In the next month or so I plan to have one of these built. As ive said before, Ive got a vehicle with MANY hand calculated fill ups spanning a good time frame. If it works, GREAT! If it doesn't, oh well. I will easily be able to sell it for a profit and call it a day.

 

do you have a link where they did these test and it..."didn't work"?....

all i am reading are #s with "if this and thats" mixed in to say it want or can't work...

...:Handshake...

 

Well said...

Lots of things have been discovered because of accident, that otherwise were said to not work.

I am very skeptical of this situation, however, I'd like to see some definate answers.... Mythbusters? lol

 

Mythbusters did this back in 2006 episode 53
http://mythbusters-wiki.discovery.com/page/Episode+53:+Exploding+Pants,+Great+Gas+Conspiracy

it failed....

I have not or will not say the "dozen airframe mechanics and avionic techs saying it DOES work! " are stupid people by any means nor did I imply it. I am using someones quote as noted here

"taken from Bruce Simpson here http://aardvarkforums.co.nz/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1960"

I take it you have not read the context of his statements.

The one thing I did point out was this people tend to drive different when they are trying something out just to prove they are right......How many people put disk brakes on the front of their maverick from the old drum brakes race up and down the road a couple of times and slam on their brakes proving that they work better, (something you hopefully would not do on a regular basis).....the difference is there is tangable evidence across the board that disk brakes work better then drums, but there is not much more than internet talk and peoples opinions be it right or wrong that this works efficently enough to be beneficial..

oh and please don't believe everything you read on the internet
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2000/4/MS_Buys_Evil.html

I figured a little levity was needed

 

Your correct, I didn't read the statements from Bruce Simpson.

And your also correct that people to tend to change their way of driving when trying out something new. "It's all in your head" comes to mind when changing things that could increase power/mpg/etc ever so much.

Thanks for the info on the mythbusters

 

Yes, Mythbusters did try it. And yes it failed. However, here's another page from the link that has been posted that should be read:

http://mythbusters-wiki.discovery.com/page/Great+Gas+Conspiracy

Or, here's a direct quote:

A more in depth explantion of how they screwed the experiment up is in the link.