Step 7: Results
I have a 2003 Cavalier. The worst mpg I ever calculated was 28. I was purposfully flooring it every where I went just to see what the worst case scenario was. The best I have ever calculated was 45 while following closley behind truckers(they sure hate that). On average I fill my tank up and go 400 to 420 miles before my "pull over and get gas" light comes on. When my light comes on I am able to put 13 gallons in the tank.
400/13=about 31
The electrodes lasted for half a tank and I got 500 miles out of it. Assuming I got 200 miles out of the other half as usual: 500-200=300 300miles/6.5gallons=46mpg
46/31=1.48 thats a 48% increase in fuel economy!
-updates-
-With the graphite I got 510 miles out of a tank. 510/13=39
39/31=1.25 a 25% increase in fuel economy. I'm sure that if I increased the size of the electrode the mpg would increase. The pencil lead is just so small. I will update again.
P.S. My wife ran off with the camera to a florida vacation in the middle of my build. Thats why there are no pictures of the graphite electrodes. When she came back the camera wasn't working.
400/13=about 31
The electrodes lasted for half a tank and I got 500 miles out of it. Assuming I got 200 miles out of the other half as usual: 500-200=300 300miles/6.5gallons=46mpg
46/31=1.48 thats a 48% increase in fuel economy!
-updates-
-With the graphite I got 510 miles out of a tank. 510/13=39
39/31=1.25 a 25% increase in fuel economy. I'm sure that if I increased the size of the electrode the mpg would increase. The pencil lead is just so small. I will update again.
P.S. My wife ran off with the camera to a florida vacation in the middle of my build. Thats why there are no pictures of the graphite electrodes. When she came back the camera wasn't working.
Remove these ads by
Signing Up
Visit Our Store »
Go Pro Today »
Hydrogen will still combust sufficiently to run an engine, at ratios higher than stoichiometric. Far lhigher, which is good, because apparently NOx is much higher at that ratio.
I thought that was full throttle under load, not just high load.
On top of that, given the losses in converting mechanical energy to hydrogen (which I've covered so many times that I'm not going to cover them again), these systems will always, always, always produce a drop in fuel economy.
...and if you can't produce a catalytic effect from hydrogen 'in a test tube' you're never going to produce one in a 4-stroke engine.
You can fool yourself if you like- but don't try to fool anyone else, mkay?
Hydrogen has no catalytic effect. It does not improve the combustion of anything, petrol included.
Modern piston engines with fuel injection and computerised engine management systems manage to burn 99% of the fuel introduced into the engine. However, piston engines are only about 30% efficient in converting the energy in petrol into mechanical energy. This inefficiency is not due to failure to combust the fuel efficiently, it's due to friction and a requirement to limit the combustion temperatures, both to preserve the integrity of the metals the engine is made of and prevent the formation of nitrogen oxides (atmospheric air is about 73% nitrogen- extremely high combustion temps form NOx). Quite a lot of the heat produced by burning petrol in a piston engine is removed by the cooling system instead of being used to move pistons. Adding more fuel (and that's all hydrogen is in this application) or replacing some petrol with hydrogen does nothing at all to reduce the losses in a piston engine.
Last time: 'HHO' is a HHOAX. There's no way to generate hydrogen using an automobile charging system that will not reduce fuel economy nor will hydrogen reduce the losses in a piston engine. Any technique which removes mechanical energy from a drive system and converts it into other forms of energy will always reduce the efficiency of the drive system, due to the laws of thermodynamics and entropy. There's losses in every conversion.
If you want to improve the efficiency of a piston engine, you must find a way to make use of thermal energy which is wasted and/or exhaust pressure or reduce friction losses.
Engine Losses - 62.4 percent
Idling Losses - 17.2 percent
Accessories - 2.2 percent
Driveline Losses - 5.6 percent
Aerodynamic Drag - 2.6 percent
Rolling Resistance - 4.2 percent
Overcoming Inertia; Braking Losses - 5.8 percent
www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml
But you are the scientist right? If your day job consists of facts and science Please resign before you kill someone or yourself!
Every single thing you have painstakingly enumerated has nothing at all to do with the efficiency of an internal combustion engine, which "HHO" toys are supposed to improve- but don't.
While HHOaxers really don't deserve any more attention and Mythbusters' producer says this myth will not be revisited, it's worth noting that the HHOaxers' claim that it would have worked if employed not as a primary supply of fuel and oxygen for the engine but rather as a 'booster' is also false.
I've broken down the science into bite-sized pieces several times in the thread below, comprehensible by anyone who wants to understand the science without any preconceived notions about automaker-oil company conspiracy theories.
Hydrogen doesn't have any catalytic effect and jam-jar electrolysers can't make enough hydrogen to replace any significant amount of petrol. Moreover, any load put on the car's electrical system will cause it to burn more petrol. The amount of hydrogen produced, when burned in the engine, will not even 'pay back' the amount of petrol used to produce it.
The worst part about experimenters' "HHO" installations is that they normally omit a flashback arrester. A backfire will ignite the mix of hydrogen and oxygen and follow it through the supply tube back to the jam jar. If one was foolish enough to use a glass jar for the electrolyser, the flying glass shards present a clear and obvious hazard.
Indeed, if this system could return more energy than it consumes, which it would have to do for it to have any beneficial effect whatsoever, every car built since the discovery of electrolysing hydrogen from water (c.1800, meaning ALL cars) would have one.
"HHO," 'water-4-gas' and anything similar are at best nonsense and at worst, outright scams.
1. Even if the hydrogen isn't useful to the engine, wouldn't the extra oxygen molecule help the engine by enriching the fuel mix? Don't racing fuels have extra oxygen "built into" them, and nitrous systems exist to pump more oxygen into the engine.
2. Could the hydrogen interact with the hot parts of the engine to cool it off? (IIRC, heat is the enemy of performance in cars, just like in computers.)
3. Have you heard of air independent propulsion? It's used by diesel electric submarines to extend their dive time by taking over the hotel services (lights, etc.). It sounds very similar to what the HHO engine is trying to do.
4. Could a fuel cell be recharged by using one of these systems if it runs out of hydrogen?
Thanks again!
False!
NO alternator produces 'excess electricity'! Ever!
If there's no electrical load on the alternator, the friction drag from the bearings remains. If there is a load put on the alternator, by an electrolyser or anything else, more force is required to spin it... and that means more petrol consumption.
Anyone messing with one of these things who claims better fuel economy is simply mistaken. It's a physical and scientific impossibility to get more energy out of a system than you put in- you will always get less, every time.
Yes, you can generate hydrogen by several chemical methods, but all of them involve breaking down materials made by energy-intensive processes, all of which are impractical for generation of hydrogen in any amount sufficient to make any difference to an automobile's fuel economy.
Alternators do produce more than 13.8 VOLTS when being spun above idle RPM, but that voltage is then limited down to the 13.8V system voltage by the voltage regulator. However, if there's no CURRENT (I) being drawn, there's no POWER being generated. P=E*I, so if E=13.8 & I=0 then P=0.
If you're dumb enough to touch your tongue to the output post of an alternator and complete the ckt by touching some other part of yourself to the alternator's chassis, your (mostly water) body is acting as a resistive LOAD (about 15-20k ohms from tongue to fingertip). Your tongue will most definitely tingle. However, if you break the circuit, for example by taking your fingertip off the alternator's body, the tingling stops, does it not? You've then removed the human body resistive load from the ckt.
My points are that there's no 'excess electricity' just waiting to be harvested from an alternator and that any electrical load connected to the alternator will increase the amount of mechanical force required to spin it, meaning more petrol consumption, just by connecting the electrolyser to the electrical system. .
HHOax generators will not increase the fuel economy of any sized engine. Remember, the alternator drive belt loses 30% of the energy taken from the crankshaft before it gets to the alternator, the alternator wastes 40% of the mechanical energy used to spin it compared to the electric power output and an electrolyser wastes 50% of the electrical energy put into it compared to the thermal energy that can be recovered by combusting the hydrogen.
...now let's just leave it at that. ;)
Second, there's no benefit to water injection unless you're using very low octane fuel in an engine of ordinary compression ratio (c.7:1) or running an extremely high compression ratio or are getting the same effect from using an intake compressor like a supercharger or turbocharger. Water (or methanol) injection will lower the combustion chamber air temp somewhat and so prevent preignition (pinging, detonation).
Water injection systems pump much much more water than would inadvertently leak out of an electrolyser- we're talking water in the quantity of 10-15% of the volume of petrol, 100-150ml (grams) per litre of petrol. A (500ml) jam jar electrolyser would be empty in about 80-100km if enough water were sucked out to have an anti-detonation effect.
However, the Mother Earth News story, which claims 20-50% greater fuel economy is just bunkum. Water injection allows extreme compression ratios which do produce more power output, but more fuel is required to make that output, too.
Thus, I'm pretty confident "true believers" are not seeing any improvement on the basis of water being accidentally inducted from their electrolyser. They're either altering their driving habits (consciously or not) after installing the electrolyser, committing errors in measuring fuel economy or, most commonly, just lying through their collective teeth.
You are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own fact. The great thing about facts is that you don't have to believe them for them to be true. No amount of prevarication and obfuscation will change the laws of physics.
HHO is a HHOAX. If you sell it, you're a scammer. If you believe it, you're a sucker or you simply do not understand physics.
The people who are trying to sell these things are certainly being “economical with the truth,” to say the least. They are of no interest to me. My concern is for those innocents who might fall for these ridiculous claims and wonder why “nothing is being done” to bring them to the market and save us from ourselves. When I read their earnest assertions I can hear the clip clop of Clever Hans doing his multiplication tables.
(For those readers who have never heard of Clever Hans, look him up. He’s just one of the many reasons the Scientific Method is so strict.)
I disagree with you on only one point -- I don’t believe for a moment these sincere souls are lying, just as there is no evidence the owner of Clever Hans was deliberately trying to deceive the public. He “truly believed” his horse could solve mathematical equations. You are correct. They are almost certainly altering their driving habits, taking better care of their cars, measuring crudely and including any number of other unaccounted for variables influencing the outcome of these “experiments.” (I use the term loosely.) But I believe the liars are the exception, not the rule. Most are just innocently wrong, forgetting to assume nothing and measure everything.
“Let the experiment be made.” -- Benjamin Franklin
P.S. I don't know why the third link didn't register. The text should read...
http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/1665125_oqewg/Chapter10_July_2008.pdf
Duuuude... go to YouTube and search 'HHO'. You find throngs of 'true believers' who absolutely insist that they're getting a million MPG. You tell them that there's no way in the realm of physical science that they can be getting the results they claim and they yowl like a chastened child, 'How would yoooou know, you haven't built one, waaaaaaaaaaah!!' and they do so because they don't understand the science- but they don't want to be wrong or worse, caught out lying. Most of these asshats are trying to turn a buck off these things, so they have every motivation to lie- and so they do.
The people you don't hear from are the ones who were silly enough to get sucked in and, when they can't get the results promised, quietly remove them and throw the things in the rubbish. Very few people who get sucked in to a scam will surmount their own embarrassment at being fooled and warn off others.
"HHO" nonsense has gone from a simple bad idea with no supporting science to a full-on scam of million-dollar proportions.
Yes, I do understand that there's some people who subconsciously change driving habits or measure poorly and get results indicating fuel economy increases. Those folks are excused- and that's what I said.
The people I have no patience for are the ones who bloody well know this rubbish doesn't work but yet persist promoting it, either to make themselves look like they know something or to turn a buck off the underinformed. You can most easily spot these people by their claims that 'auto companies couldn't work it out but a backyard inventor did' or 'big oil is suppressing this fabulous technology.' They refuse to discuss the science, only the conspiracy. These folks are outright con artists and deserve every bit of my opprobrium.
But Instructables is a do-it-yourself site and my comments should be understood in the context of “makers” looking for insight here. I am not as gullible as your “Duuuude” suggests. Everyone knows the internet is awash with scams of every description, but as I clearly stated before they are of no interest to me. Griping about the scammers brings grief only to the griper, not to the scammers.
Fortunately, while members of Instructables might buy the tall tales of the scammers, they are not likely to buy the products. They would rather build their own, genuinely imagining they will achieve results rivaling the preposterous claims of “miracle mileage.” Obviously, these are the “true believers” I referred to as “sincere souls.”
They are wrong, of course, but they are not liars. Jalakahops, the author of the instructable giving rise to this forum, does not seem to be trying to sell anything other than the sincere belief this device might work. You and I both know very well the electrolyzer depicted here, no matter how enthusiastically constructed and presented, is less than worthless, but the author apparently does not. I have no objective proof or even a trace of evidence to convince me “true believers” such as Jalakahops are, as you declared, ”...most commonly, just lying through their collective teeth.” Such a libel is personally (and potentially legally) offensive.
Do-it-yourself means not just build-it-yourself, but also learn-it-yourself. My hope is that this forum will enlighten these tinkerers, not insult them, or worse, discourage them from sincere inquiry. Just as they should not “believe in” the scammers, neither should they “believe in” you or me just because we say so. “Miracle” fixes will always be tantalizing to home hobbyists. I emphatically encourage these earnest (and honest) amateurs to educate themselves through careful practical scientific investigation.
“Let the experiment be made.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Exactly, though some people choose to commit that exact sort of discouragement, all in the name of perceived scientific purity.
While the OP may not personally have been selling the devices, even selling the mere plausibility of the idea perpetuates the hoax and thus the profitability of those who ARE selling them.
'Belief' itself is acceptance of an idea without any supporting evidence. A 'true believer' in general parlance is a person who is convinced, absent fact, and defends to the death not with fact but with false suppositions and conspiracy theories- and that description fits the OP.
I have never asked anyone in this discussion to 'believe' in anything, most certainly not me. You'll note I have studiously avoided discussing myself, my qualifications or lack thereof. To do otherwise is to commit the fallacy of authority. I'm fully immaterial. I could be an engineer or a sewer cleaner and what I've said about this device & technique would still be true.
Anyone who builds before they learn has put the cart before the horse. While a project may be whimsical and fun, that's fine as long as entertainment is the primary goal of the exercise.
However, if the goal is to attempt to do something which is physically impossible, such as improving fuel economy in a petrol engined vehicle with an onboard hydrogen electrolyser, one should understand as much beforehand.
Scientific investigation involves understanding of basic principles of physics. Why build something which you can know with absolute certainty will not work? Constructing an apparatus which is intended to accomplish something which defies physical laws is pointless.
but the hydrogen generator from aluminum... yeah, I know about the energy thing. I never said energy for free... I just meant energy for "free". But in terms of generating enough, check this out: http://www.instructables.com/id/Run-Your-Car-on-Hydrogen-from-Aluminum-Soda-Cans-a/
yeah, it takes alot, but who knows? Maybe you can fit enough stuff on the back of a pickup truck to power it.
Your comment brought this to mind, I was curious to know introducing if introducing acetylene would improve things but i believe that the pressures in a cars engine would combust the acy before it could be used. Also what about the O2 concentrators that i have seen for medical use? A spark arrestor would have to be used i understand but I was just pondering and you appear to be pretty good at explaining the faults with different ideas. Thanks and happy holidays.
Most of the wasted thermal energy leaves the engine through the cooling system and the exhaust. Adding more fuel i.e. acetylene won't solve the problem. Turbochargers do recover some lost energy, but not much out of the ~70% which is wasted.
Adding more oxygen won't help, unfortunately. Adding more oxygen than is needed to burn the petrol will result in higher combustion temps- the excessive heat will have to be removed by the cooling system and also will form nitrogen oxides (NOx), which is a large component of photochemical smog.
There's plenty of oxygen in atmospheric air to efficiently combust the petrol. The correct stoichometric ratio (the amount of oxygen molecules required to combine with the hydrocarbons) for petrol to atmospheric air, which is 14.7:1, is easily maintained with electronic fuel injection. EFI systems have an oxygen sensor in the exhaust flow. If there's too much or too little oxygen in the exhaust, the computer adjusts the amount of fuel being injected to correct the mixture.
The nut is that piston type internal combustion engines are just not very efficient. There's not much one can do to improve efficiency that is practical from a cost effectiveness standpoint.
One thing is certain; adding a tiny amount of hydrogen and oxygen from an onboard "HHO" electrolysis system (tiny compared to the airflow through a piston ICE) will do a whole lot of nothing- and this is the precise result arrived at by numerous researchers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage#Metal_hydrides
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_borohydride
I'm not saying that hydrogen is the way to go, I'm just saying that it is definitely possible.
In fact, I believe that if commercial cars were to run on hydrogen, it would eventually lead to a disaster. Think of all the misplaced water and released hydrogen.
Metal hydride storage of hydrogen is a major improvement toward making it a practical vehicle fuel, but then one must consider the energy inputs required to produce the stuff. There's laws of physics involved there that will never change, not in your lifetime or anyone's else.
I'm not too worried about the quantities of hydrogen or water involved, though. Hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements on the planet and in the universe in general.
While it's certainly not my favourite idea, I think that the eventual solution to powering vehicles will wind up being breeder or thorium-based nuclear reactors generating power for electric cars.
Photovoltaic or solar thermal methods may one day become practical for powering the numbers of vehicles presently in service worldwide, but there's that pesky problem of power storage for night-time consumption to get around.
Energy density for vehicles' traction batteries has got to improve, too.
Solar cells have been traditionally made on silicon substrates, not a real availability problem as silicon is the primary component of sand. New techniques can produce PV cells on thin polymer (plastic) films, bit of a step backward as polymers are generally sourced from petroleum. However, thin-film cells are less energy intensive to make, cheaper and are flexible, allowing new mounting configurations. They're somewhat less efficient than Si based cells, but there may be some efficiency improvements yet to be found in that technology.
Nuclear reactors employing thorium operate similarly to uranium based sorts. Big upside is the spent fuel can't be used for weapons and it also has a MUCH shorter decay time post-use as a reactor fuel.
Breeder reactors use uranium much more efficiently; in fact, they'll be able to run on the spent fuel from present-tech reactors and will further reduce the decay time for that nuclear waste to about 300 years from the 240,000 required for plutonium to decay to background radiation levels.
There's little doubt that mass transit will play a big part in reducing global energy expenditures on transportation. it's much more efficient to move 100 people in a large vehicle with a single large engine than it is to move them 1-6 people at a time with 33-100 smaller engines/motors.
Pod-type (4-6 person) mass transit systems which have linear electric maglev motors built into the track give economies of scale yet are more flexible than trains composed of 50-80 person rail cars. A recent example is SkyTran (http://www.skytran.net/). The electric power will probably come from wind, solar or nuclear generation.
I'm afraid that eventually, personal vehicles are going to be seen as a luxury of the past in urban areas. It's already impractical to keep a car in places like London, NYC, Paris, etc. Los Angeles is going to have a rude awakening one of these days, given its very poor public transport infrastructure and reliance on private cars. In the future, I strongly suspect that only people who live outside of cities will use private vehicles- and those will be very, very expensive. It'll simply never be practical to put even pod-type transport rail systems everywhere you find people living. However, the private vehicles of the future are almost assured to be electric powered, from the same grid that runs the mass transport systems.