Comments on: Run your car on water? Nonsense! It is a Scam!

By: Walt

Walt — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:02:19 +0000

Here it is 3 years since the original post and not a single bit of evidence that HHO generators help with anything.. Still a Total SCAM!! If any of it were true the major automakers wouldn’t be spending millions to produce a battery that could be used in an electric vehicle when all thy would need is a mason jar and some water. This whole thing needs to be filed with the perpetual motion machine and the magnets that energize your fuel and soften your water. AS to all the other comments let them remember the famous statement “there is a sucker born every minute”

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 05:25:17 +0000

Thanks for youur comment Ian. I have added a link to the paper into your post. I’ll have a read of it tomorrow / when I get a moment. I have sa post on this blog about what I assume is a similar paper here. There is a little something in this “technology”, but only a little something and definitely not a significant fuel saving. From a brief look at the Lyn McWilliams paper you cite I think the hydrogen is not being produced on board, it is from a bottle… so it is a quite different animal… but I have not red it properly yet.
I’d loke to see a more comprehensive study that took the entire system into account, comparing possible emission reduction to the increase in fuel consumption.

By: ian Jackson

ian Jackson — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 04:25:41 +0000

May I recommend googling Lyn mcwilliams phd thesis pdf. adding small amounts of hydrogen to a diesel combustion engine- certainly there is a notable improvement in emissions,and could be a way of meeting emissions standards without the need for cleaning up Co since this can be reduced to next to nothing. Certainly adding hydrogen warrants more research and an engine designed and mapped to run with hydrogen on demand could be a good thing. Definitely there is a notable reduction in unburnt hydrocarbons and lets face it modern engines have improved by taking energy from the engine too: to better atomise the fuel and push more air in, these achievements came by managing to burn more of the available fuel at the right time in the cycle. The 2008 ford engine used in the phd study was already pretty efficent with common rail hpi, good injectors and an interesting piezo electric glow plug. It appears the downside is a marginal increase in Nox, but this could be easily cleaned up,a lot cheaper than Co which needs an expensive catalyst. When I have concluded my research on the possibilities for on demand hydrogen I will submit an article to Positive News.

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:30:33 +0000

Dear Paul,
Why on earth would the (quite correctly named) dynamometer supply energy to the to the datalogger, it is obvious that that line represents data from the output of the dynamometer going to the datalogger. And why do you think the datalogger supplies energy to the electronics supplying the hydroxy generator? Clearly this is the data stream going to the datalogger. Dataloggers collect data, they don’t supply electricity. Dynamometers creata data, which is then sent to the datalogger.
This combined with you non understanding of my comment about the battery (the battery is kept topped up by the engine burning more fuel, if the battery were not getting charged and became flattened then there it would become an extra energy source driving the engine which was not included in the data analysis and could explain the increase in efficiency), and with your saying that it is clearly ridiculous to say you can get more than 100% out of the fuel (what do you think 100% means? It means all of it, everything, there is nothing more. How can you get more than everything from something?) leads me to believe that there is no point in continuing this conversation, you have no idea what “conservation of energy” means and this makes any further conversation pointless.
I understand the paper, you do not. I strongly recommend that you contact its authors to check whether it is me that is misreading it or you. I just don’t have time to argue about what a datalogger is and explain elementary physics. Sorry to be so blunt.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 12:40:07 +0000

Fig 2 clearly shows the output of the (curiously named) dynamometer being fed (via Data Logger, Electronic Circuit and Direct Current Device to the +/- of the electrolysis. It is very unlikely that the battery would not remain charged (as it does in a car with headlights and a/c on), but I agree that charge loss is a (remote) possibility not explicitly ruled out in the paper. So I’m almost sure this was a closed system.

In any case the power used by the electrolysis is 120w (>1750rpm), 45w (<1750rpm). This is for an engine with full power output 80kw, and probably generating around 40kw at 1750rpm. Somewhere around 3% at just above 1750 rpm, less at other speeds. Much less than the average 14% gain. So even if it were an open system with the electrolysis energy being fed from the outside, this still give a significant net gain of around 10%.

‘Burning more efficiently’ was ambiguous. If there is 99% combustion, the energy must go into mechanical power, heat, noise, … The changed parameters may mean that more is going into mechanical power, and less into heat and noise; maybe I should have said ‘running more efficiently’ to avoid this ambiguity. The paper explicitly mentions noise (but does not measure it, and in any case noise is likely to be trivial compared to heat). It does not mention waste heat (temperature of engine, temperature and volume of exhaust gasses).

By the way: I don’t have such a system, and probably won’t get one. I have a low annual mileage (<5000), and (like you) I am suspicious of the overall effect on the complete system. Like you, I’d like to see a controlled experiment on a available commercial system. In particular, I’m not sure how the engine management system will effect the timing; and it seems clear from this experiment and others that modified timing is necessary to reap the benefit. Also, it looks as if a more continuous (rather than binary) HECU control of the amount of hydrogen generated by rpm would be beneficial.

However, to say it can’t work beyond a couple of percent improvement is as clearly ridiculous as to say you can get more than 100% out of the fuel. There is every reason to believe that we will eventually find a way to get better than the typical 40%, best 75% mechanical efficiency I find cited in Wikipedia etc. Best gains will almost certainly require new engine designs and management systems (just as I need a new condensing boiler to increase my central heating efficiency over my 15 year old boiler). However, there is reason to believe that properly implemented HHO addons can provide small but significant gains (and probably worthwhile gains in at least some situations).

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 21:57:36 +0000

I agree that Figure 2 is not clear, but I think it shows an external power supply. If it is running off the engine there there is a glaring error in the experiment in that they make no effort to check the state of charge of the engine’s battery which would make the experiment,s results void anyway (the improvement could be due to the battery becoming discharged, we don’t know because they did not control for this), but I think you will find that they did not make this mistake, it is an external power supply.

Modern engines burn well over 99% of their fuel, not 40% as many HHO enthusiasts want you to think. Their inefficiencies mainly come from the noise and heat produced, nothing to do with un-burnt fuel. This experiential, and the Oxford one, show that the addition of hydrogen can improve the burn by a few percent but that there is a limit to this where it stop being an improvement and actually degrades the burn. Any advantage from the hydrogen is vastly outweighed by the electrical load placed on the engine by bringing the hydrogen generator on board.

If you are getting anything beyond a couple of percent improvement (and I seriously doubt you are getting any improvement) then you have to be getting more than 100% out of the fuel you are using which is clearly ridiculous.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 21:28:22 +0000

I agree with your point about attacks, and aplogize. However …

“In their system the electrolyser is not getting its energy from the engine, it uses an external source, it is not a closed system.” If you look at their figure 2 you will see that the experiment does have a closed system.

If the extra power came from just burning the hydrogen, then I agree that they would be claiming a perpetual motion machine. However, the claimed reason for the benefit is that the burning hydrogen causes the petrol/diesel to burn more efficiently. Given the low efficiency of engines, this is a thoroughly reasonable scientific possibility which could work ~~~ and indeed according to controlled scientific experiment does work.

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:50:24 +0000

Stephen,
Ad Hominem attacks are not cool and I’m not rising to it.
Your understanding of this paper is incorrect because you make the false assumption that their system is like your system. They are testing the effect of hydroxy (HHO) gas addition on performance and exhaust emissions, this is nothing new, to a certain degree it does enhance things, this is discussed at length here – http://www.eco-scams.com/archives/737
In their system the electrolyser is not getting its energy from the engine, it uses an external source, it is not a closed system.
Your system is a closed system, the energy to run your electrolyser does come from the engine. You are claiming that your system extracts more energy from the fuel than is in the fuel in the first place, clearly this is ridiculous. Your non-understand this fundamental concept is key to why you believe that your engine is magic.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 16:47:54 +0000

Paper I cite below appears to me to be a proper experiment: certainly more balanced than the absurd claims of some manufacturers/distributors, or the hysterical anti statements by Jon. My reading of this paper is that there are substantial benefits to be gained; but that this requires at least the HHO generation rate to be properly managed depending on rpm, and possibly to be integrated with the engine management system. This still leaves open the question as to whether any of the currently available systems is effective.

Best energy savings are still to be had by not driving at all ~ ride your bike instead.

Stephen

http://dpenergy.us/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Effect-of-hydroxy-HHO-gas-addition-on-performance.pdf

Please cite this article in press as: Ali Can Yilmaz, et al., Effect of hydroxy (HHO) gas addition on performance and exhaust
emissions in compression ignition engines, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (2010).

By: Euan

Euan — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 19:19:03 +0000

Hi Jon,

I found your website specifically HHO scam very informative. It has certainly saved me from being seduced by this local company – http://hydroeco.co.uk/

I was about to get a quote when I came across your site, thanks again.

All the best Euan.