HHO Uruguayan style

    • Official Post

    seven_of_twenty _


    While I agree with you about the folly of storing stoichiometric oxy-hydrogen in anything bigger than a party balloon I don't really agree with your remark about fuel consumption, especially with Diesel engines that are past their prime. Hydrogen is explosive at very low concentration (2% from memory) and adding oxy hydrogen can lean out the mixture to the point where fuel consumption drops by up 40%. But you do need to remap the engine control software to do it with any chance of success. In those old Diesels it will also improve combustion problems caused by worn injectors losing their swirl patterns.


    But overall, nothing is for nothing of course, and you certainly compromise generator output, but considering that modern alternators are 90+ efficient and that good electrolysis is 60% efficient the 55% efficiency of the HHO system couples with the fact that you can run the fuel mixture very much leaner (I know, i have done it) means you produce a cleaner running system with lower emissions and lower 'store-bought' fuel consumption. If you do it right you might lose as little as 5% overall, but it takes skill and time to get there.

    • Official Post
    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    In the data I saw a couple of years back, adding on board electrolysis to make hydrogen using on board generated electricity always reduced the overall efficiency of an engine and increased fuel consumption. I have never seen a good study in which fuel economy was increased by injecting hydrogen made from engine power back into the engine. And it makes sense. Electrolysis is an inefficient power hog. Why should using it improve economy? I have also seen no data suggesting anything magic about HHO. That seems to be just another hype for very dangerous mixes of stored hydrogen and oxygen. Storing those two gases together in mixtures which are explosive is a terrible idea.


    An example of what can happen and there are many: https://blog.fuelcellnation.co…osions-in-california.html


    Well, a month ago or so I started to make a library of all published research on HHO and Internal combustion engines. I had done regular check at google Scholar every year, but this year there was a explosion of new publications that were not listed before, and I downloaded so many papers (I set the bar at publications after 2015) that I had to quit after a few hours. Most of the papers found positive effects on efficiency and reduced emission, if proper measures were taken for the differences in air intake and timing required are taken in account.


    I appreciate your concern for security, tho, and I am sure most of us agree with you on that regard. The Uruguayan fellow is a mechanical engineer, though, and has been doing this at least since 2007, somehow managing to survive and thrive economically selling HHO heaters to happy customers.

    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    In the data I saw a couple of years back, adding on board electrolysis to make hydrogen using on board generated electricity always reduced the overall efficiency of an engine and increased fuel consumption. I have never seen a good study in which fuel economy was increased by injecting hydrogen made from engine power back into the engine. And it makes sense. Electrolysis is an inefficient power hog. Why should using it improve economy? I have also seen no data suggesting anything magic about HHO. That seems to be just another hype for very dangerous mixes of stored hydrogen and oxygen. Storing those two gases together in mixtures which are explosive is a terrible idea.


    An example of what can happen and there are many: https://blog.fuelcellnation.co…osions-in-california.html


    Do your research. Obviously, you have not.


    If you add hydrogen to a modern gasoline powered vehicle without making any adjustments to the fuel-air ratio and other factors, the fuel efficiency can go down. However, if you adjust them appropriately, the fuel efficiency will go up - even if only modestly. However, the gains are very significant if you add hydrogen to diesel engines. There was a government study (can't remember what country) that reported on this. The fuel efficiency went up by I want to say 20 or 30 percent if I remember correctly.


    I spent months studying this topic years ago, and although I don't remember the links offhand I can vouch that what I'm saying above is correct.

    It is the on-board production of Hydrogen that causes the inefficiency. Any engine can be optimized to a specific fuel type. However the efficiency of electricity production from an internal combustion engine is about 20%, from combustion efficiency of typically 40% and typically 55% alternator efficiency. This means the gain from the combustion of oxyhydrogen must be 5 times the cost of producing it just to make up the losses in making the electricity to run the electrolysis system, and that inefficiency itself is not yet included.

    Alan Smith

    Quote

    If you do it right you might lose as little as 5% overall,

    I want to be sure I understand. You lose as little as 5% of what? Doing what?


    I did not question that one can get better mileage from gasoline or diesel fuel in a motor vehicle if you inject hydrogen from a tank. Or from electrolysis powered by a battery or a generator. I have never seen a system where the hydrogen is made by the main engine where the mileage improves. Claiming so, however, is a very common scam, these days. The scammers sell very expensive systems to do it but they do not work. Worse yet, some schemes sold involve changing a chip or a software setting in the car's or truck's computer to lean out the mixture and change the timing. Sometimes, these changes will void any existing engine warranty and also may damage the engine. The changes, however, make it seem as if the mileage is better-- I mean it is a little better for a little while, until some internal parts end up with holes burned in them, gaskets are damaged, parts warp and so on.


    Curbina @Director

    What Paradigmnoia wrote is what I wrote less elegantly. Research obviously I have. Done. Some time ago but I doubt it has changed. So if you stalwarts have seen a single, peer reviewed, properly blanked and calibrated experiment reported in a major main line journal (please leave out the usual suspects) that purports to show that using the vehicle's own internal combustion engine to generate hydrogen in any form raises the fuel mileage (decreases per mile fuel consumption), please cite and link. This would have to be a commercially made stock vehicle when you begin (before adding the HHO or whatever rig). Of course, there are out of tune engines that are such that anything you do would improve efficiency.


    Alan Smith One last thing. Many if not all the usual scams simply electrolyse water to make hydrogen and make no effort to separate it from the oxygen so that their so-called HHO is indeed a stoichiometric mixture which can go boom and as in the article I linked, has injured and killed experimenters.

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