I just got a little 93 Subaru Loyale wagon (for the WHOPPING sum of $250!!) so I don't have to drive my truck all the time. One of the guys at work was telling me about these kits you can get/put together yourself that take water and electricity and come up with hydrogen, which you then introduce to your intake air, and this is supposed to boost your gas mileage some.

Now I'm kinda pessimistic about these sorts of things (ya know...too good to be true), but in this day and age of outrageous gas prices, I figured what the hey I'll look into it.

So I been doin some research on it, including searching here on DTR cuz it seems alot of you folks on here have really got your heads on straight when it comes to tinkering with machines. Found some interesting stuff, but it is all directed towards applying these gadgets to a Cummins (naturally, I guess). And there was alot of speculation as to whether those smallish amounts of hydrogen could have any noticeable effects on the fuel consumption of a 5.9 liter turbocharged diesel.

I'm curious if anybody here has ever tried this on a small gasoline engine? Something along the lines of, say, a 1.8 liter 4 banger like whats in my Soobie. If so, was there any real increase in MPG? Was it like all the kit makers claim, or was it so small it may just be wishful thinking?

I'm toying with going ahead and giving it a shot (making my own gadget, of course). Just wondering what kind of luck others have had...

Ed

 

It's called browns gas. You need stainless steel submerged in water inside another stainless steel container. You have to insulate the 2 from each other and hook a positive and a negative. You have to add baking soda to the water depending on the size of your container. The amount of baking soda controls the charge. The more you add, the the more hydrogen it makes, but it raises your amps, so you have to add a resistor. This does create heat, so you have to mount the unit carefully. Plumb the hydrogen hose to another container, like a capped off pvc tube, feeding the line almost to the bottom. This catches any "suds" that bubble so they don't get onto your intake. Run another hose from the top of your collection tank to your air intake. Your electricity should be wired from the ignition so it can only be on while the vehicle is running. You should also add a kill switch after the ignition so you can run the vehicle without it cooking. I heard of one that was wired without a kill switch and they had the ignition on to work on something under the hood, forgetting about the hydrogen being wired and recived a little "flash". Only because it was building up in concentration under the hood because the engine wasn't scavenging it off. It wouldn't normally be dangerous, because it's never under pressure. The engine takes it as fast as it's being produced. I have a preliminary set up a mechanic friend designed,that I plan to get hooked up soon. He's refined it in his vehicle and plans on putiing multiple units in a circuit for longer turn around time on keeping the water and soda mixture right after so much driving.

 

Its bull.!!!!!!!!!!!Take this challenge http://www.aardvark.co.nz/hho_challenge.shtml put up or go home. You can't change the laws of Physics and Chemistry.

 

Don't mean to rip you MR-Ed. Just all the idiots that claim it works. The challenge I posted is worth a million dollars......bet we have no takers......let the excuses begin.

 

they run one of these on myth busters.

basically, consider it this way.
How do you ionize water into hydrogen and oxygen? electrical power.
Where does the electrical power come from? The battery
What keeps the battery charged? The alternator
What turns the alternator? The engine
What powers the engine? fuel
At the very minimum, its a zero net gain as you will only derive as much power out of the hydrogen as the hydrogen can provide in power to the engine. More realistically, due to parasitic losses in electrical transmission, generation, and useage, your at a net loss.

 

There is a guy at work that has a Chevy Astro van that looks like something a terrorist would have is in the back. He has 6 very large hydrogen generators that he made and tries to get some added economy out of it. We all picked on him saying he was wasting his time etc. He actually lost MPG because of the added weight. He insisted it was the o2 sensor so he got one of those MAF/o2 foolers and has got back what he lost by adding the weight.

If you want added economy one good way to do it is to reflash the ECM to add timing at low/part throttle. I have done this with EFI Live on my Chevy Cobalt by running it and graphing engine knock. Add timing until there is knock and back it down until there is none then subtract 1 just for safety. I have added as much as 12* timing at part throttle and picked up 6 MPG. It already averaged 31.6 so almost 38 MPG is pretty good. It costs 100$ for the credits to unlock the ECM but the fuel savings pay for that quick.

 

I too know someone who is trying this, and they are not gaining anything.

 

Well, the kit was given to me so for free, I'm gonna give it a shot. He says he got some results, which is why he refined it to another set up. The initial concern was the PCM not compensating for the richer mixture. Figured only a non electronic diesel or carburated gasser would be easier to tune, but his is fuel injected and didn't require a tinkering, so we'll see hopefully.

 

Well I'm glad it's not costing you any money. Watch out for the positive effect caused by you changing your driving habits. That can cause an increase of MPG which you may falsely attribute to the contraption. It can't give you any positive results as it takes more units of energy to produce 1 unit of energy.

 

Driving habits were figured out a long time a go. I drive about 80 miles each way to work. I'm figuring any benefit would be on the highway when already up to cruising speed. OBTW, I'm also one of the guys that feels Obama owes me for a new set of tires, spark plugs, air filter and oil change, because he promised it would do more to help my fuel consumption and there was no change....

 

What is not to understand that there is no possible way (laws of nature)that it can not provide any increase in MPG's? Your CTD has plugs?

 

yeah ya'll are right. It's gotta be a crock. I was doing some searching on a Land Rover forum I used to be on back when I owned a Discovery and found a thread where one of the guys on there had actually broke it all down like this:

"OK, back to thermodynamics. Let's see how much energy is released when gas is burned and how much hydrogen and oxygen need to be "burned" to equal gas. Here, I am assuming that the energy needed to drive the engine (piston) is the same for gas or hydrogen/oxygen. I'm also assuming that the heat efficiency (Otto/Carnot cycle - Carnot is the idealized version of the Otto cycle; Carnot came first ) is the same.

The heat of combustion (amount of heat released) for gasoline is about 47 KJ/g (kilojoules per gram, source: Wikipedia). 1 gallon of gas is about 6 pounds or 2.73 Kg (2730 g). When a gallon of gas is burned, we have released 128,300 KJ (= 2730 g * 47 KJ/g). This is how much energy we need to replace by the formation of water through the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen.

The heat of formation of water (the amount of heat released when hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water) is 285.8 KJ/mole. Since a mole of water is 18 g, we get 15.9 KJ/g ( = 285.8 KJ/mol / 18 g/mol). Dividing 128,300 KJ by the heat of formation of water (15.9 KJ/g) we find that to replace a gallon of gas, we need to form 8,070 g (= 128,300 KJ/15.9 KJ/g) of water.

Converting the amount of water to gallons (8 Kg / 2.2 Kg/lb = 17.6 lbs water / 8.33 lbs/gal) we get 2.1 gallons of water formed. And since, the formed water is coming from water that we split into hydrogen and water, that's how much water is needed.

The manufacturer's claim upto 50% increase in mpg, which means your burning 25% less gas. Since the container is a gallon size, you should need to fill it about once for every two gallons of gas consumed (not considering the lost effectiveness when the water drops below the top of the electrodes). So you are filling up your tank about every 50 miles (assuming mpg = 25)?

Want more? Taking that 2.1 gallons (8 Kg) of water and converting it to moles (444 moles) and considering that 1 mole of water makes 1.5 moles of gas (1 hydrogen (H2), 0.5 oxygen (O2)) we get 667 moles for 2.1 gal of water. Since the tank is 1 gal, we'll use 310 moles (~667/2.1). Using the ideal gas law, we find that 310 moles of gas occupies 7,711 L at 30C, 1 atm.

Thats alot of volume to move through that little tube at the top of the gizmo they are selling. Assuming you are driving 50 miles an hour, that means you are pushing 128 L/min.

The reality is, this gizmo isn't going to put out enough hydrogen/oxygen gas to do anything. This has been disproven in court (Google Water Fuel Cell Wikipedia) and even the guys on Mythbusters showed it doesn't work (they even hooked up a tank of hydrogen to their intake manifold)."

I do like Matego's timing trick...may have to mess around with that (after I figure out a little fueling issue I found yesterday with the Subaru).

Thanks for all the input guys!

Ed

 

fuel mileage can be improved with timing tweaks (just like on a diesel)
the draw back is increased heat in the engine and increased emissions.

 

Same story different day.
http://www.rmi.org/images/Energy/E03...rogenMyths.pdf
Just some more information.

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, afraid of something called the truth?