HHO Gas...this is worth a look into.

Some of you might remember me posting this a few weeks ago but I've been doing lots of research and talking to some engineers about the Idea of HHO gas. This concept relies on adding hydrogen gas into your air/fuel mixture and reducing your fuel consumption greatly. What you do is have a Jar of water with coils from your Jeeps battery running into it, add baking soda to the water, and a vacum to your intake and viola!! youve just made hydrogen gas. I heard somebody ask the Guys on NPR's Car talk and they said this sounded very possible but would probably just work on older cars because the 02 sensor would trip on newer cars and actually add more fuel. however, on ebay Ive seen map sensor over rides, and even 02 sensor extenders that make this technology capable for newer cars. I nkow it sounds too good to be true but I cant find anybody at all that can prove this doesn't work. MYTHBUSTERS DOESN'T COUNT!! ---they tried to run a car on Hydrogen alone, not as a gas additive. They sell complete kits for this on ebay, and Ive seen nothing but positive feedback from the buyers of these kits. Somebody PROVE me right or wrong.

Try it and let us know... I have seen them on there too as low as 50 bucks so what are you waiting for.

Somebody else to say it fu**ed up THEIR motor!!:spin1:

Why would the o2 sensor even know it's happening? 2h and 1 o enter the engine and combine to leave as h2o, and the o2 sensor doesn't even know. Ok, there will be a tiny bit left over because it isn't perfect, but h2 and o2 are going to burn more completely than any liquid. I don't see it messing with the o2 sensor.

Farm show magazine just did a bunch of articles of people doing this and how they did it. The most innovative piece I saw was from a guy that made a little contraption out of PVC that fit inline with his intake. The heart of the device was a small computer chip that controlled the amount of O2 and H2 produced and thus released into the system. There is a "sweet spot" for each engine displacement that needed to produced to maxamize economy. Too much or too little and no gains would occur. There was a simple formula to figure the needed amount. I'll look and see if I can find the article, although most of the articles in Farm Show apply to older carbuerated trucks.

Getting more energy out of the combustion of Hydrogen than it takes to seperate hydrogen from oxygen violates the law of thermodynamics. Nevermind the efficiency loss of a combustion engine.

Simply put, it would put more of a load on your engine to generate the stuff than you would get out of it, giving you less MPG and perhaps problems down the road. (water in your combustion chambers all the time isn't good.

Unless you also have a bunch of batteries seperate from the charging system on your jeep that powers the electrolysis, you're wasting your money.

mattbred said:

Getting more energy out of the combustion of Hydrogen than it takes to seperate hydrogen from oxygen violates the law of thermodynamics. Nevermind the efficiency loss of a combustion engine.

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That's not the claim here, at least w/ this incarnation. The idea is more along the lines of giving the engine a hotter spark: the h2 and o2 gas is very easy to ignite and burns hot, so that it promotes better combustion of the gasoline. Yes, you spend more splitting the water than you get back burning it, but you end up with a net gain because you get more of the energy out of the gasoline.

That's the idea anyway, I can't say if it works or not.

mattbred said:

Getting more energy out of the combustion of Hydrogen than it takes to seperate hydrogen from oxygen violates the law of thermodynamics. Nevermind the efficiency loss of a combustion engine.

Simply put, it would put more of a load on your engine to generate the stuff than you would get out of it, giving you less MPG and perhaps problems down the road. (water in your combustion chambers all the time isn't good.

Unless you also have a bunch of batteries seperate from the charging system on your jeep that powers the electrolysis, you're wasting your money.

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The ALT is throwing out power either way, this system isn't drawing any crazy amount that is killing either the battery or ALT.
From the results of my friends tests (going on 2 months now) he is not wasting his money at all. City driving his milege is up about 50%, however hiway driving the CEL comes on after a while and milege drops. If he stops and resets the computer than it goes back to higher milege again.
The only thing I didn't understand that he explained to me, is the computer reads the difference in temps/air/fuel/oxygen and then compensates the ratio mixture accordingly. However this HHO system works best when the fuel mixture is left alone. It, simply put, ups the octane significantly so you get more bang out of every spark. In a carb'd engine you would see marked improvements, but computer controlled engines will change the ratio as needed, which than affects the performance.

I still don't fully understand the system, but I can't refute the fact that he has increased his milege.

I used the same technology to remove some rust from a seized adjustable control arm last fall. it took a small trickle charger 24 hours to remove the rust and break the threads free. The amount of draw used to 'split' the water is really very small, I guess you could monitor it with a gauge or even temporarily with a multimeter, but I can't see if being much considering the kit is shipped with 14g wire I believe (that what my buddies kit was sent with). On the flip side, seeing what it was he received, you can easily build your own, the design is very simple.

beakie said:

The ALT is throwing out power either way, this system isn't drawing any crazy amount that is killing either the battery or ALT.

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It doesn't work that way.
It takes energy from the engine and converts it to electricity. You increase the demand on the alternator, it will increase the load on the engine. No free ride.
Older cars with carburetors used to drop rpms when the headlights were turned on at idle.
I think that improving the combustion could improve mileage. Even better spark plugs or cleaner injectors can do that. Worth looking in to IMHO.

Mattbred,

That is the typical proper analysis, but I ran into some interesting links and followed them one day and discovered some real intersting stuff.

Turns out the US DOE did some real intersting research studies on hydrogen fuel supplementation (think of it as a fuel blend B15 bio-disel or E10 ethanol) back in 1978 during the last arab oil embargo in the late 70's. I have not ordered and read the paper itself, but I found the citations and abstract that claim that hydrogen fuel suplementation to diesel (and I think gas) engines makes the diesel fuel burn cleaner during heavy engine loads, and the dyno yields go up by something like 35% for just a small amount of hydrogen (maybe 5% of the increased energy yield, so a net yield of 30% increased fuel mileage oout the diesel). Don't quote as me I going from memory of what I read once about 8 weeks ago. The bad diesel emmisions dropped by like 95%, and the net power (read as increased mpgs) increased by like 30%.

I also found a Canadian company, currently going public (stock exchange) that is marketing these rigs to 18 wheel freight haulers for $30,000 to $50,000 ea., and showing a 6 monh RTO (Return on investment). Supposedly they have sold thousands of them to major trucking firms up north in the last 2 years already.

The third thing I ran into was in a thread here, I think, a few weeks ago, where someone mentioned using thermo electric generators to produce the DC power to run the electrolysis cells. I researched that and found that a reversed solid state device ( it has a name, but I forgot what it is called, just Google "peltier effect" and "thermo electric generator" ) , ( Peltier effect solid state refrigerator run back wards) can turn waste heat into DC power. They have been too costly in the past to get much use, but that seems to have changed. So you take the waste heat from the cat converter and muffler and flow it through one of these devices and the heat flow generates enough DC power to run the electrolysis cell. You use waste heat to generate the electricity.

I would avoid sodium carbonate for the electrolyte, I would use potssium hydroxide in a stainless steel (min), or platinum coated titanium vessel and rod if I was seriously going to build one.

I think some of them use a small vent inlet on the electrolysis vessel to draw fresh air into and through the electrolysis cell on the way to the throttle body inlet. This dilutes the HHO gas with additional O2, which is the source of their O2 sensor problem. The excess purge O2 is seen in the newer cars, and the ECU / PCM calls for more fuel to balance the A/F ratio. I would be a little worried about running pure HHO gas in the supply line, and it would take a while to just to fill the line before the engine saw any HHO gas, which not be any good for short local trips.

I have thought about buying the old DOE paper (probably out of print, which means a trip to the Rice library some odd year for me) and playing with just H2 gas from a small lab bottle.

Lastly, the extra water gas produced during combustion seems to be beneficial like a water mister in the intake, it cools the combustion (acts like a thermal regulator to keep it from overheating), it generates more combustion pressure, but the HHO combustion initially helps the other fuels burn hotter and more completely without any lean combustion overheating problems.

Not sure I got the whole picture down here, but so far it is the first time since I first heard of HHO, Browns gas 25 years ago, that I think I see a real possible future for it in our world. If it truely cuts diesel fuel costs by 35% just running off the alternator and cleans up the emissions with out all the new emissions crap they are hanging on the new diesels, I have no doubt they will be all over the place real soon.

I am real interested in the solid state thermo generators myself.

mattbred said:

Getting more energy out of the combustion of Hydrogen than it takes to seperate hydrogen from oxygen violates the law of thermodynamics. Nevermind the efficiency loss of a combustion engine.

Simply put, it would put more of a load on your engine to generate the stuff than you would get out of it, giving you less MPG and perhaps problems down the road. (water in your combustion chambers all the time isn't good.

Unless you also have a bunch of batteries seperate from the charging system on your jeep that powers the electrolysis, you're wasting your money.

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Ive been reading on how ro do this. I will definitly try this in my jeep. I dont have the money to buy the kit.

The last kit I saw advertised had $25 in parts and a $950 instruction manual with video!

:laugh2::roflmao:

88xjchief said:

Ive been reading on how ro do this. I will definitly try this in my jeep. I dont have the money to buy the kit.

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Yeah its screwed. $30 for parts but $500 for the books. If anyone knows how to do it and wants to tell me how I will do it to my jeep and report my mileage changes.

I see, so basically it's not the burning of the hydrogen that increases fuel mileage, but the chemical and physical effect it has on the primary fuel (gasoline, diesel, etc). It could be interesting.

However, wouldn't spraying water around in your cylinders be bad for the long term? I'm sure I heard something about causing bad things to happen, but I don't have any source or proof, just going off my shady memory.

subscribing...
I wonder if the baking sodium companies will start having a monopoly on their product like big oil has if everyone starts buying mass quantities of baking sodium to fuel their hydrogen generators....

And the whole thing about the alternator working harder to produce hydrogen whouldn't be an issue if you made the hydrogen at home and captured the gas in a storage tank that you hook up to the intake with some kind a metering valve....no?

falcon556 said:

It doesn't work that way.
It takes energy from the engine and converts it to electricity. You increase the demand on the alternator, it will increase the load on the engine. No free ride.
Older cars with carburetors used to drop rpms when the headlights were turned on at idle.
I think that improving the combustion could improve mileage. Even better spark plugs or cleaner injectors can do that. Worth looking in to IMHO.

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oh I understand how an ALT works, what I am saying is there is a constant need for power while driving. whether the alt is creating power, or its coming from the battery. what I mean is that this kit doesn't drain a large amount of power like a winch, amp, or even an upgraded headlight wiring kit (I am assuming having never measured) so this kit wouldn't be putting much if any extra draw on the ALT. Otherwise you could in fact look into the increase of mpg over the draw on the engine to offset any added gains, than advertise a more efficient alt along side this product... so on and so on.

mattbred; However, wouldn't spraying water around in your cylinders be bad for the long term? I'm sure I heard something about causing bad things to happen, but I don't have any source or proof, just going off my shady memory.

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from the design of my buddies kit, there is no water sucked in to be sprayed. the elec current splits the water into oxygen and hydrogen, both rather combustable. the gases are sucked into the intact and added to the fuel/air mixture.
end result is a fuel with an octane rating of about 125 as opposed to 87, again this is what the paperwork that came with the friends kit advertises. I have no knowledge or know-how of the way this stuff works.

someone needs to test one of these things on an xj....my dad is working on one for his van as we speak.I think I'll let him do all the leg work and rip off his design if it works:clap:

But.. you're wrong. ANY electric load on the alternator will make it push against what's driving it - the rotor, which in turn is connected to the belt, and eventually the engine. When my electric fans turn on, my RPM drops. Any sort of electric current will cause a load on the drive.

Also, oxygen (O) plus two Hydrogen's (H2) = H2O = water. When you combust hydrogen in your engine, it turns into water.

beakie said:

oh I understand how an ALT works, what I am saying is there is a constant need for power while driving. whether the alt is creating power, or its coming from the battery. what I mean is that this kit doesn't drain a large amount of power like a winch, amp, or even an upgraded headlight wiring kit (I am assuming having never measured) so this kit wouldn't be putting much if any extra draw on the ALT. Otherwise you could in fact look into the increase of mpg over the draw on the engine to offset any added gains, than advertise a more efficient alt along side this product... so on and so on.



from the design of my buddies kit, there is no water sucked in to be sprayed. the elec current splits the water into oxygen and hydrogen, both rather combustable. the gases are sucked into the intact and added to the fuel/air mixture.
end result is a fuel with an octane rating of about 125 as opposed to 87, again this is what the paperwork that came with the friends kit advertises. I have no knowledge or know-how of the way this stuff works.

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Just thought I would add that although yes energy is used to free the hydrogen and oxygen, more energy is available from the released elements than is needed to release them. Just like in your fuel system where a pump and spark plugs are used to access the energy in gasoline, where more energy is released than used to release it, likewise a small amount of energy is needed to make a lot of energy available. The break in the system is you the user constantly adding either gasoline or water which allows no laws of physics to be broken. I think.

Not to worry mate!

At combustion temperatures the water is a gas, steam.

In case you forgot, gasoline, (2)C8H10 (as an example) + (37)O2 gives you (16) CO2 and (10) H2O (alias Water!). Burning gas also makes water!!!! (gas, steam).

Somebody mentioned baking sodium, :banghead:, it is Baking soda, other wise known as sodium bicarbonate, Arm and Hammer, odor neutralizer. And which ever one you use, NaHCO2 or potssium hydroxide (KOH), it won't matter on the oil Pirate cost side as it is not consumed, and never needs replacing. The only consumable is DC power and DI (deionized water) water, and eventually maybe some electrodes.

mattbred said:

Also, oxygen (O) plus two Hydrogen's (H2) = H2O = water. When you combust hydrogen in your engine, it turns into water.

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