Ecomike, according to what you said in this thread back in January (when I was following this thread before and read most of it), no one has posted credible long term gains along with a cost / benefit analysis. I am not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying no one has proven it yet. You've jumped to a lot of conclusions here.
Curtis, hope things start looking up for you. These are some tough times for many of us.
Curtis (and other recent naysayers here),
If you will read the entire thread here, and Goodburbon's thread in the Mod section, you will find links to US DOE research from 1978 that showed small amounts of Hydrogen supplementation to a diesel engine yielding about a +20% increase in fuel economy, about 20% above and beyond a 100% yield from just the hydrogen feed alone, and a publicly traded Canadian company that has been building and selling heavy duty industrial versions of this HHO tech (Mix of hydrogen and oxygen gas generated from electrolysis of water) to major 18 wheeler trucking firms for use on diesel engines for quite some time now (several years). The links and details are in this thread already.
Unfortunately there are about 100 scam artists making a fast buck selling junk in the HHO market for every one out there that sells a working system. The Canadian company's truck diesel version retails for about $10,000.
I also linked to a post a while back to a diesel Jeep guy who has a working one on his diesel Jeep. He has a Nissan SD22 diesel engine (like mine), but also has a custom turbo charger on his. Note that he uses Carbon graphite plates (IIRC), and NaOH for the electrolyte (not NaHCO3) as I suggested some time ago before I ran across him. He has other refinements as well. His is on a naturally aspirated Nissan SD22 diesel engine from an 82 Nissan 720 pick up truck transplanted to his XJ jeep. There is no oxygen sensor, no mass flow rate sensor, or computer on his! He does however have an electronic ratio controller on his that matches power input to the HHO generator to the air and diesel fuel flow, so that he gets a constant, optimal ratio of HHO to Diesel to Air, and it is all tied into his Boost from the turbo charger he added.
The MFS, O2 sensors, etc on newer cars can present operation control problems to adding an HHO generator. Control and design issues like these are not the same as a this can not work as it violates the three laws of thermodynamics argument.
While there are design concerns I have, such as hardware selection issues, and frequency of adding DI water issues, cost of DI water, flash back check valve issues, where to connect the HHO gas feed to the intake issues, vessel seal design issues that need to be addressed to handle engine vacuum at 22 inches, while still being able to open the vessel to refill it or to clean the electrodes, NaOH versus NaHCO3 electrolyte choice issues, carbon plates versus platinum coated Titanium (everyone keeps using stainless steel and NaHCO3 which has rapid scale forming issues on the plates which reduces HHO production and efficiency), consumption of NaCO3 and in some cases, like where the HHO generator has an air intake port on purpose, or a vacuum leak, the NaOH gets converted to NaHCO3 as NaOH reacts with CO2 in the air to form NaHCO3, and then the C gets lost as CO gas to the engine (fuel) or precipitates as a metal carbonate sludge like FeCO3), thus reducing electrolyte concentration and the electric current, thus reducing HHO production until the electrolyte is replaced and the elctrodes get manually cleaned, but back to my point, while there are design concerns I have (just listed above) the H2 or HHO feed in small quantities has been proven by the US DOE to increase engine power output by more than just the 100% theoretical yield of the hydrogen fuel being added. The increase is due to improvements in combustion of the main fuel and an increase in the typically extremely poor efficiency of the current engines we use. A few percent of added hydrogen speeds up the burn of the hydrocarbon fuel, and thus increases the power output efficiency. It also reduces carbon formation and fouling, and reduces pre-ignition.
The problems are not with the HHO concept, but are due to a lack of adequite hardware design and overall systems understanding, especially from the fast buck artists.
My question is not does it work, because I know when properly done that it does work, the US DOE proved it works in 1978 but my question is what is the ROI (return on my time and materials cost needed to build one several times until I solve the hardware issues, and get it designed to operate relatively trouble free). Right now Gas and diesel are cheap again, so I am not running out to build myself one.
Goodburbon's problems were mostly caused by leaks, sealing problems, cheap materials choices (It was only designed for a quick test, not for longevity), etc. He also only tried cheap stainless plates and NaHO3 for the electrolyte, as they were easy to locate, and cheap. Platinum coated titanium, or Carbon graphite are the preferred choices for the plates (But are expensive), and pure NaOH, while extremely hazardous to use, is the better long term electrolyte. Also a square wave DC pulse output board, about 20 KHz, increases the HHO generation efficiency substantially (in the +100% range IRRC), which Goodburbon did not try. Yet he did get a measurable improved mileage on his test.
