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YES, you can melt rock, fuse glass and even boost an I.C.E. ... no Cyril not the ice in a fridge, an Internal Combustion Engine.
But first you'll have to toss out the schoolboy experiments with carbon rods and paper clips dipped in saline or baking soda solutions.
That was fine to demonstrate a concept with lighting the soapy bubbles, but thats pretty much all you're going to do.
If you want to move into the future, then....
Its time to build a better electrolyser.
Better than what you ask?.... well better than all the glass pickle jar and tupperware container contraptions out there.
But first you'll have to toss out the schoolboy experiments with carbon rods and paper clips dipped in saline or baking soda solutions.
That was fine to demonstrate a concept with lighting the soapy bubbles, but thats pretty much all you're going to do.
If you want to move into the future, then....
Its time to build a better electrolyser.
Better than what you ask?.... well better than all the glass pickle jar and tupperware container contraptions out there.
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Signing UpStep 1Safety First and Procedures
Firstly, whether you call it HHO, Electrolytic Gas, Browns Gas or my personal choice Hydroxy * is irrelevant, the bottom line is that its very flammable and therefore suitable precautions must be taken.
I cant stress strongly enough that pickle jars or glass jars of any type are not suitable containers to generate hydroxy gas. The slightest accident is going to turn that glass jar into a glass grenade with the unpleasant side effects that usually accompany such events.
To prevent flashbacks you will need a water trap otherwise known as a bubbler, which also has the added benefit of scrubbing the gas clean of caustic vapours. Dont rely on existing arrestors as used on oxy/acet gas welders, the flame front speed of hydroxy is way too fast for them to contain the flame.
The electrolyte I will be using is NaOh a.k.a. Caustic Soda a.k.a. Sodium Hydroxide. Not baking soda, it creates carbon monoxide and erodes the stainless steel electrodes.
I get mine as caustic soda flake from the hardware store, but it is also possible to get decent quality from other places in drain cleaner form. Make sure if going the drain cleaner route that it doesnt have additives or aluminium shavings added.
Caustic soda is as its name implies very caustic, and rubber gloves will be the order of the day if you dont want to see your skin start peeling away. Its probably also wise to add eye protection too.
Initially I start a cleansing cycle with very dilute 5% caustic soda in distilled water, and then the conditioning phase with full strength 23% NaOh in distilled water which is then the time to keep your wits about you.
Note, I dont use river water or tap water or melted Italian snow water or something sucked out of a rock layer far below the surface. I dont want spiders, bugs and chemicals in my 'lyzer, so its less hassle if I start with the good and clean and fresh stuff...trraaalala.
Dont use baking soda, it creates carbon monoxide and erodes the stainless steel electrodes.
Dont use salt, it gives off chlorine gas, very nasty stuff.
I cant stress strongly enough that pickle jars or glass jars of any type are not suitable containers to generate hydroxy gas. The slightest accident is going to turn that glass jar into a glass grenade with the unpleasant side effects that usually accompany such events.
To prevent flashbacks you will need a water trap otherwise known as a bubbler, which also has the added benefit of scrubbing the gas clean of caustic vapours. Dont rely on existing arrestors as used on oxy/acet gas welders, the flame front speed of hydroxy is way too fast for them to contain the flame.
The electrolyte I will be using is NaOh a.k.a. Caustic Soda a.k.a. Sodium Hydroxide. Not baking soda, it creates carbon monoxide and erodes the stainless steel electrodes.
I get mine as caustic soda flake from the hardware store, but it is also possible to get decent quality from other places in drain cleaner form. Make sure if going the drain cleaner route that it doesnt have additives or aluminium shavings added.
Caustic soda is as its name implies very caustic, and rubber gloves will be the order of the day if you dont want to see your skin start peeling away. Its probably also wise to add eye protection too.
Initially I start a cleansing cycle with very dilute 5% caustic soda in distilled water, and then the conditioning phase with full strength 23% NaOh in distilled water which is then the time to keep your wits about you.
Note, I dont use river water or tap water or melted Italian snow water or something sucked out of a rock layer far below the surface. I dont want spiders, bugs and chemicals in my 'lyzer, so its less hassle if I start with the good and clean and fresh stuff...trraaalala.
Dont use baking soda, it creates carbon monoxide and erodes the stainless steel electrodes.
Dont use salt, it gives off chlorine gas, very nasty stuff.
- I use the term Hydroxy in the loosest sense in that I infer it to mean a stoichiometric (2:1) mix of Hydrogen and Oxygen in a common duct electrolyzer, and not a gas consisting of mono-atomic Hydrogen.
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IT DOES NOT MAKE ANYTHING SPECIAL. HHO, BROWN'S GAS, HYDROXY and KLEIN'S GAS ARE ALL SCAMS
All you are making is plain old molecular hydrogen and molecular oxygen. H2 and O2. Nothing else.
There's nothing special about burning underwater - it's a stoichiometric mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, of course it's going to burn, underwater or not.
So many experts without experience - books are great until reality steps in.
I do not know if this specific unit works or not - but some of these do result in better mileage - yes - I have hands on experience since 1998. The average is around 33% increase in mpg.
You are not making energy out of nothing - there is potential energy in the nature of the product. Just as a small yell from someone can make a tremendous release of energy from an avalanche (oh no - more energy produced than what you started with!), producing flammable gases from an electric current, and then burning taking advantage of the gas' flammable nature (which also interact with the gasoline and improve its flammability) is not magic and "free energy".
You obviously have never tried one and probably never will.
Statements made without hands-on experience are as reliable as Obama making a promise.
... 'nuff said - until after you have tried it personally. Heresy is how mistakes like Obama end up plaguing us.
(so off subject)
If your units *genuinely* increase efficiency by 33%, then why are they not in massive production, earning you millions of dolars a year in licenses?
And, FYI, if you bother to read what I posted, I did not claim electrolysis produces free energy. That was the project author.
The author makes grand claims for simple electrolysis, and claims that the general public know nothing about it, even though most children do it as a basic school lab experiment.
Independent tests (by a variety of scientific bodies, plus Mythbusters and BBC TV) have shown that water electrolysis units (often incorrectly called "HHO generators", "Brown's gas generators", "hydroxy generators" etc) contribute, at best, absolutely nothing to fuel efficiency, and some designs actually make cars use more fuel, thanks to drains on the car's electrical system.
although would you agree that this system would be good for things such as microtorches due to the extremely high heat hydrogen gas burns at?
2. Increased *efficiency* is possible - an IC engine is only around 35% efficient, so changing the way the fuel burns is a feasible method of increasing mileage.
3. Hydrogen is fairly useless as a heat-producing fuel. Larger-molecule gases are much better.
Also "No" is a little strong, you just have to look deep and have a good set of people and other sources, so basically mythbusters did it right.
One last thing, who doesn't like to talk about how many Liters per Minute they make. ha ha
2. you know more than me :P
3.hmm... I didn't know that either...
so you are saying other than for science experiments this kind of technology is essentially pointless?
The problem is the expectations of those using the idea, and the advertised advantages from those currently selling it.
It *could* bring benefits in terms of fuel efficiency, but it cannot be used to get more energy from the gasoline than was originally stored there. Using a gsoline engine, for instance, purely to run an electrolytic plant so that the car could run entirely on the gases produced could work, but at a hugely-reduced milage.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V3F-498MBG5-103&_user=10&_coverDate=07%2F31%2F1994&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1628676173&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0f281d5587ee900759f8f1841012ee44&searchtype=a
They got good results using vaporising water and splicing it into H2 - O using an electric arc, which arc is alimented by the car alternator. Those guys got fuel economy going from 20 to 30% and 80% less nitrous oxydes.
By the way, it's a study from the MIT... so there's no doubt about it's credibility...
> Hydrogen as an alternative to gasoline.
> Hydrogen made from gasoline.
It also says that there is a possibility that hydrogen could increase the efficiency of the gasoline burn, something I said here on Sept 8th, 2010.
What you propose (splitting water with an electric arc run from an alternator driven by burning the split water) is *not* feasible - it runs counter to all the laws of thermodynamics.
What I meant was, while there is nothing "special" about the mixture of hydrogen and oxygen generated by this, to most people it's very exciting and fun to have a homemade cheap electric torch that burns underwater. And there is nothing "special" about a torch that burns underwater, it's just because it supplies oxygen to the hydrogen. But most people don't have anything that can burn underwater like this, so to them it is exciting.
Yes, many people think it improves efficiency of engines which it does NOT, and some people even think up crazier things about it. It is just hydrogen and oxygen, nothing special, but this can be quite an exciting project for fun.
I respect your effort to correct the pseudosciences of the world, it's just that sometimes you have to see what people are actually claiming before you correct them. All of those names like hydroxy that he used, he was simply using them to refer to the mixture of hydrogen and oxygen (at least I hope so), not some "special" gas. Although he does say you can "boost an I.C.E" right at the beginning, everything else seems valid to me.
Hydroxy my preffered label for essentially "electrolytic gas" means a Hydrogen and Oxygen gas combined. Some used to call it oxyhydrogen...rather clumsy in my opinion.
Therefore as you pointed out in a rather blasé manner ...
it's a stoichiometric mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, of course it's going to burn
WELL YES Its Hydroxy and it carries its own oxygen to combust rather differently from ordinary hydrogen. Its plain to the eye that its NO SCAM.
What is a SCAM, is the fact that in todays day and age people should have to pay decent money for info that is free, well if this instructable ends "that" scam, then mission accomplished.
"There's nothing special about burning underwater"
Well excuse me Spongebob Fancypants ready at a moments notice to whip out your "Thermal-lance" and weld something in your pineapple house under the sea.
For the benefit of normal everyday folk similar to myself who have never seen a gas flame burning underwater, an extract from a dive welder's related site....
"An underwater torch must therefore have a separate means for sustaining a bubble around the work location. This is accomplished by separate jets of compressed air introduced around the tip of the torch to protect the flame from the surrounding water by forming a rather large bubble enclosing the flame and the region directly adjacent to the work location.
As you might imagine, a great deal of skill is required for divers who perform this kind of work"
A little more appropriate, though. Like how a torch that uses acetylene and oxygen is called an oxyacetylene torch.
"Its plain to the eye that its NO SCAM."
Selling people on the idea that the reaction chain somehow conjures free energy out of nowhere is a scam.
"What is a SCAM, is the fact that in todays day and age people should have to pay decent money for info that is free, well if this instructable ends "that" scam, then mission accomplished."
Empty rhetoric.
our oceans or salt water would have a gold mine here.
but, for simple and basic carb type engines. lawn mowers, garden tractors,
etc. and also for pre 1970 automobiles that were built without those nasty
devices called 'oxygen sensors'.
but hey! if you could expand yet 1 more section to this. see what happens, is
both the H and O gases are pointed into the engine. the sensors sense more
oxygen coming in than normal. and the results is the computer pumps in
more gas. it'll work fine for about a week. but after that, hmmm! yes, no.
but, if you could seperate the H gas from the O gas, pipe the H gas into the
engine. and discard the O. this could work.
you can purchase plans, etc. for a device to trick the sensors. but, in most
states if not all, it is again illegal to tamper with these sensors. go figure.
haha!
I have also designed my life such that I don't need to flog these devices to make money, actually I can afford to build to my hearts desire without taking food out of my children's mouths.
Bottom line, its safe to say I will never be selling these devices.
Just for info, I didn't take an ache over your comment :)
and hints on changes that could be made to improve it.
nothing more, nothing less.
thank you,
aware what they will work on and what they won't. I'm just throwing out hints.
Peter;
OK, maybe the shouting was OTT (in my defence the first thing I said was that the instructable was nice), but this came after a lot of woo-woo bather on the forums about HHO being a wonder material etc. Call it bad timing.
Unfortunately, it does not make HHO, Brown's Gas et al. because the concepts of Brown's Gas, monatomic hydrogen being generated, more energy being available from this gas than H2 etc are all false. That is the scam I was meaning, and I apologise if anybody thought I was accusing you of being a scam artist.
What this is making is a simple 2:1 mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. Nothing else.
I am not denying the potential as an additive to internal combustion, and I have never done so. The results reported to me so far have been very variable, but if nothing else, it seems to provide a cleaner exhaust for those vehicles still running without a catalytic converter.
It is the loons who think that the products of electrolysis of water are somehow different when they make it - they claim that "their" method produces a gas that burns hotter, hot enough to cut titanium, yet will not damage flesh. Or their method produces more gas for the same energy input. That is the scam, and that is perpetuated by people who produce perfectly-functioning electrolysis units (like this one) and then using the wrong terms.
Regarding "hydroxy", the term is also used by the free-energy crowd to mean a gas that is made up of free hydroxyl ions (OH-) and free monatomic hydrogen ions (H+), which is patently nonsense. I assumed that is the meaning you were implying when you used the term in the same list as the woo-woo terms.
Regarding divers, I have seen a mechanic shove an ordinary oxy-acetylene torch into a bucket of water when already lit and it continued to burn. The divers, though, are burning the acetylene under far greater pressure, and they also have to keep the surface being cut clear of water. That is the skill, coping with the extreme conditions.
Time to accuse other people:
The fault lies in the "facts" presented by other people, specifically the "International Hydroxy" website. A quick analysis:
1- It is made in perfect stoichiometric ratio two hydrogen atoms to one oxygen atom.
It's two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen.
2- It has a flame speed of 8160 ft/per second Mach 7.5 (H2 is only 680 ft/per second).
Utterly, utterly wrong - if this was the case, you would have to pump the gas out at the same speed just to stop the flame burning all the way back up the tube. If you want hyper-sonic burn-rates, try C4.
3- It will combust with an air fuel ratio of up to 95:1 (95 parts air to 1 part hydrogen).
True. It won't be complete combustion, but it will combust.
4- It has catalytic characteristics, adjusting its flame temperature based on the substance contact.
False. No flame can have catalytic properties, and no flame can adjust it's own temperature. The apparent differences in heating are entirely due to the thermal properties of the substance.
5- It when combusted recombines into a tiny water molecule, creating no pollution.
Since I'm being picky, there is the pollution generated by the original electrolysis of the water, but other wise fine.
6- When combusted in the absence of any other gases, it creates a perfect vacuum.
Utterly false. If this was the case, the molecules of water would be disappearing into nothingness. What is actually produced is water vapour. And I'd be very impressed if anybody managed to maintain a flame in vacuum...
- There we go - that's the problem. The source of the "facts" is the scam artist. Read the claims he makes for "HOH" (yes, he believes gas is the free-ion nonsense) - that simply lighting it generates electricity, that
So I'd just like to repeat, for clarity:I did feel it necessary to defend myself, as scammer was implied by association.
I guess I'm partly to blame for my enthusiastic "copy and paste" from Hydroxy sites, which are mostly unsubstantiated claims.
I used the term Hydroxy in the loosest sense, as some "web surfing" revealed that oxyhydrogen would have been more applicable.
I now understand that straight DC electrolysis alone will not produce monoatomic gas, but rather diatomic gas that contains hydrogen in the ratio of about 70% orthohydrogen to 30% parahydrogen...and some steam.
Needless to say I dont have any equipment to check and compare the energy content vs H2, so I can neither agree or disagree with you on that front.
I can agree with you regarding the "not damage flesh" myth.
Any carelessness with the flame will very quickly prove that we are carbon based lifeforms with charring and the smell to go with it, especially if you happen to contact the "sweet" spot about 1mm away from the needle tip.
In my personal opinion it does sound like the Brown's Santilli's Kleins of the world are trying to outdo each other regarding their "discovered gas" with its unique properties which they then promptly name.
Perhaps I insinuated that the gas has unique properties when I actually should have said it has unique abillities, well underwater burning, glaze pebbles, melt and fuse glass etc were unique to me.
Re divers, what they said about maintaining the air bubble on the weld zone and skill required, my point was that I needed no such skills or expensive high pressure equipment to do a similar feat.
On the points 1 - 6, I haven't the means to prove or disprove them, although I recall similar notions about point 4 , specifically that it was the substance's inability to release heat that created the illusion of a catalytic flame.
Re point 2, flame speed, logic dictates that to maintain gas velocity through the torch nozzle at or above the flame front speed of the gas mix you are burning, then the torch flame will stay lit with no flashback.
The only info I have found regarding this is that hydroxy is significantly faster than hydrogen but nowhere is a number given.
Already Google has found me with my hydroxy flame speed of 8160 ft/per second, so some editing will be in order to prevent the continuation of possible "urban legends"
The energy required to split water exceeds the energy achieved from the combustion of H2 and O2.
Electrolysis of water will produce H2 and O2, AC or DC current is irrelevant.
The amount of hydrogen and oxygen gases produced by onboard electrolysis will be less than meaningful.
The hydrogen gas does not "carry" its own oxygen, that is absurd. Hydrogen and oxygen are diatomic. When you split water you get H2 and O2 not some convenient silly threesome.
The existence of ortho and para hydrogen in this case is irrelevant. If you do not know the difference or why it matters why say anything.
I highly suggest that you read the automotive section here for starters.
And, before you manage to change gears and SHOVE your other foot in your mouth, I am a chemist, you'll have to provide more than scams and anecdotal nonsense.