brokeandugly21

hydroxy or whatever its called...anyone here try it? ive seen vehicles that ran completely off h20 but im just now seing hybrid kits. i looked into them and they seem awesome but i cant find any people who have actually tried them
for those who have no idea what im talking about ill try to find a link but basicly the cars i seen that ran totally on h20 had a big science lab tank sticking out of the radiator and looked like some kind of nuclear bomb these kits look like a fat pipe bomb you attach to your battery and the air intake
anyone heard of this? its like 350 for the kit but they tell you how to make one yourself on the website if you dont want to buy it or just know how it works. ...i watched the video but building a hydrogen generator is a little over my head

Dapapadon

Hydrogen to me means bomb. I'll stick to gasoline, flammable but safer.

Don

brokeandugly21

heres the website...it sounds like an infomercial but seems legit...they need a review forum or something. i found it because i was looking into those firestorm sparkplugs that you STILL cant get...its been over 10 years people! someone needs to make those damn plugs allready....i seen videos on youtube where people have made there own....but thats another thing i dont think i could do.
http://www.h2ofueltechnology.com/

brokeandugly21

heres the crudest hydrogen generator ive seen and it seems to work...allthough i think he said it was a diesel
http://www.youtube.com/user/WaterCar.../2/gqRcpSOEGHg

Allan R

I love the idea. Don't you think that if this was a serious contender, there would be cars being built today with that technology? Much as I'd like to hope it's for real, it makes my BS meter go off big time. How many times I've been told "If it sounds too good to be true, it is". For now I'll take a wait and see on this. If you decided to do this, please let us know if it works. No offence intended but I'm not going to hold my breath.

brokeandugly21

well the car running on hydrogen is the part that has been around for a while
but the hybrid kit is what im wondering about..i found a mythbusters episode but they diddnt realy take it seriously and hooked it up wrong...they were trying to make the car run totally off the kit and its just meant to help....heres a link to it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydEkV...eature=related
its funny there trying it out on a olds too! but they do prove your car can run on hydrogen

brokeandugly21

heres a guy showing you the most basic generator you can make
not very technical just a mason jar and some spatulas and a hose clamp...thats more my style anyway
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3LVh...eature=related

brokeandugly21

well unless i find out some horrible things about this im going to try it out and ill try to be thorough with pictures and keep everyone posted about it. if nobody tried anything new how would any of us find out about it?

MDchanic

Okay. It's late, I just got home from work, and I've got to get up early and do it all again tomorrow, so I'll be brief. I skimmed the home page, but didn't read every word.

Part 1:
The page says,
"Our H2O FT4000 and easy conversion guide will show you how to use electricity from your car's battery to separate water into a gas called HHO (2 Hydrogen+1 Oxygen) HHO, also called Brown's Gas or Hydroxy, burns smoothly and provides significant energy."

What is water? Water is a molecule comprised of two elements, Hydrogen (H) and Oxygen (O).
Because of electrostatic forces within the atoms, which have been understood for 100 years, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms arrange themselves in a V-shape at an angle of 104.45°, with the oxygen in the middle, and the H's on the ends, like this:


Those molecules of water have a positive half and a negative half, and tend to arrange themselves like this:

which accounts for the tendency of water to "stick" to itself (why it won't pour through a small hole, and why bugs can walk on its surface, for instance.)

Why do I mention this? Because the forces inherent in the atoms comprising the water molecule (caused by the structure of their electron valences) are extremely specific and consistent. When you combine two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms, you get a water molecule, and it always looks like this (there are vastly more complex molecules that can assume different shapes under varying circumstances).

Now look back at the quote from the web site.
"a gas called HHO"???
"burns smoothly"???
If it's got two H's and one O, it can only go together in one way, and that's H20, also called water. And, in case you haven't noticed, water doesn't burn.

Part 2:
Hydrogen is a great fuel.
I mean really great.
It combines perfectly with oxygen, creates nothing but pure water as a waste product, and releases a hell of a lot of energy in doing it.

Let that sink in.

Why does the combination of Hydrogen and Oxygen (the oxidation of Hydrogen) release so much energy?

Because that is how much energy is contained in the bonds between the naturally-occurring O2 molecules that are broken up by combining Oxygen with Hydrogen.

How did that energy get there?

Energy had to be expended to form those bonds.

Let that sink in.

So, you get energy by combining O2 and H, and you need to use energy to turn H2O into O2 and H.

You can actually do this all day - that's how Hydrogen gas is made. You run an electric current (energy) through water and you can turn it into Hydrogen and Oxygen. It's really hard to do right, because it's hard to put energy into the system in just the right way, but it's an industrial process. You can then turn it back into water just by lighting a match - it's very easy because the Hydrogen and Oxygen want to get to a lower energy state - you've just got to start the reaction and it will go on all by itself.

So, do you think you can make water into Hydrogen and Oxygen (requiring a lot of energy), and then turn the hydrogen and oxygen back into water again (by burning them, and releasing the energy as heat) and get more energy out than you put in? I didn't think so, because you can't.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

And don't bring the car battery into it. Where does the energy in the battery come from? The air? Magic? No, it comes from the engine, which turns the alternator (requiring energy, that is, horsepower and gasoline) and puts into the battery.

Good luck with the Hydrogen, and good night.

- Eric

2blu442

Go for it, and let us know what you think! I remember back in the 1980's there was a fad of using water injection to increase power. From what I remember the point was water evaporating expands much more than air. That was suppose to drive the piston down with more energy than just the air expanding from the heat of combustion thus more power. I ran one made by Holly for a few years. The only thing I noticed was it kept carbon build up from forming on the pistions.

I've read some articles on burning hydrogen in internal combustion engines. I think Mercedes built a prototype but found it didn't have enough power for normal driving conditions. Hydrogen burns at a much lower temperature than gasoline, so driving up hills required lots of downshifting to try and keep the engine running near the peak power rpm's

I've seen kits for sale on ebay and wondered if they would make measureable difference. I just haven't had the time to tinker with it myself. Keep us posted on your results! John

Nilsson

Fuel cell powered cars run off hydrogen. It ain't going to happen with an internal combustion engine.

Aceshigh

Hydrogen powered vehicles are not very efficient.
Most of the Hydrogen produced in the USA is made from Natural Gas.

So why waste BTU's converting NG to Hydrogen when you can just easily
convert to Natural Gas. I did have ALOT of hope for Hydrogen vehicles until
I found this out myself 4 years ago after Jay Leno bought that BMW with
Hydrogen power.

The nice thing is since our vehicles are not required to do emissions in MOST
states (not IL) we can ignore the EPA warnings about emissions tampering BS.
http://www.cleanvehicle.org/committe...ss_Release.pdf
http://www.ngvamerica.org/pdfs/FAQs_...ng_to_NGVs.pdf

Or you can just go buy a used Honda Civic GX which is CNG based, and get yourself
a home PHILL CNG fueling station. They say it's roughly $1.50 a gallon equivalent.

brokeandugly21

i was just refering to the product on the website not so much refering you there for info on it...to be honest like i said it sounded alot like a infomercial .....the people who actually sold me on it were the ones who were like i dont care if you want to use this or not ...here it is use it if you want. i thought that was cool. and like i said im just finding out about this and asking around. i get like 13 miles a gallon so its not going to make my mileage any worse. and did anyone see the vid of the cutlass running off pure hydrogenthrough the carb? yeah it cought fire bust that was because they were just spraying it directly into the carb with no fittings. but i mean it makes sense if it realy makes hydrogen gas...and you ad it to your intake..that gas will burn....
so what im going to find out is if it makes my engine burn hotter or not

MDchanic

Three words:

Perpetual. Motion. Machine.

That is all.

- Eric

brokeandugly21

and thank you mdchanic for actually taking time to look into it even if you dont think it works. im still on middle ground with this
but im open to any info on this good or bad...actually id rather hear all the why i shouldnt use it then weigh it with what i find and make my own decision. alot of that stuff is way over my head..i look at it like....here is this thing...i can build this thing...its supposed to work..might not....worse case senairo it dosent work and drains my battery..so i take it off and patch the hole on my intake and move on with my life. if it works then i might save a few bucks on gas..i figure its worth a try

2blu442

I agree Eric, that you can't get something from nothing. The question I don't know the answer to is related to the alternator. When the engine is running, would it take more energy to spin the alternator to get the additional power needed? Does the alternator create the same amount of drag all the time, or does the drag increase as the demand increases? John

MDchanic

Drag increases as demand increases.

More drain (current use) by the system is the same as saying that the resistance of the load decreases (each item being used: headlights, fan, wipers, coil, etc. presents a separate resistance in parallel, thus reducing the overall resistance of the circuit [1/R + 1/R + 1/R + 1/R... = 1/R total]).
If the resistance decreases, then using Ohm's Law (V=IR, or Voltage = Current x Resistance), we can see that for a given current flow, the voltage will decrease.
The regulator senses the decrease in Voltage, and increases current to the field coil of the Alternator, which increases its magnetism (electrical engineers: we'll hold off on talking about "back EMF" for now], which makes more current (and causes the Voltage to increase), and ALSO makes the Alternator harder for the engine to turn.
You can often hear this change in load if you stand in front of the car with the hood open and have someone inside turn the high beams and the heater fan at once. You can also see it if you loosen the fan belt a bit and do the same thing - the fan belt will visibly tighten on the "pulling" side and loosen on the "slack" side.

Also, remember that since there are losses in EVERY energy producing or transmitting system, all of the energy put into the alternator (or even all the energy put into the fan belt) does not come out of it - some is always lost as heat. That is to say, that the amount of increase in drag of the Alternator is MORE than the amount of increase in the electricity that comes out of it (because of resistance in the wires, friction in the bearings, etc.).

This is another way of saying that if you put energy into making Hydrogen (sort of like, ahem, putting energy into charging the battery), and then extract energy from that hydrogen, you will get less energy out than you put in, which is to say, you will lose energy.

I've. Got. To. Say. It.
"There is no free lunch."

- Eric

brokeandugly21

@mdchanic so basicly it boils down to not realy a discussion of if hydrogen will work in a car but if its possible to make hydrogen out of water and sodium hydroxide?
even mythbusters the tv show was very skecptical about it and tried to disproove it...they did not take it very serously though. but in the beginning they do show a Oldsmobile cutlass running totally on hydrogen...yeah its out of a huge tank but still it shows it can be done.....so if it realy makes hydrogen (thats the part thats iffy)
then it should work? like i said i dont know and im not for it or agenst it i just want to give it a fair shot...and that website was the only one i could find that was selling that product but most of what i find i how to make it yourself. so if it was a scam i dont understand how it would work because im not giving anyone any money? all it will do is waste my time if it dosnt work

InfoJunkie

A few years back when I had my shop I had two customers in the same week with a great idea. Power the alternator with an electric motor and free up some horsepower and clean up the engine bay by relocating the alternator. One I almost convinced one it wasn't possible the other was quite sure it would work with gear reduction pulleys. Give up now. Three times is enough.

Manny

MDchanic

They didn't say "sodium hydroxide" (Lye or NaOH), they said "Hydroxy," and say it's HHO. Combining Lye (sodium hydroxide) with water will make a Lye solution (Na- and H+ions in water).

You can run an internal combustion engine on anything that will burn and can be put into a gaseous or atomized liquid form.

It may or it may not - doesn't matter.
The question is whether the amount of hydrogen it makes can be made cheaper than the equivalent amount of gasoline, and it can't.

I didn't read it closely, as I said.
If they've got free info, and you want to mess with it, go ahead, but you won't be able to save any money by running your car with it.

I'm a glutton for punishment, Manny.

- Eric

brokeandugly21

hydroxy is just a term for the process someone made up...most people just call them hydrogen generators. and each place says something different on guys stresses use ONLY distilled water and sodium hydroxide and another guy says you can use tap water and baking soda...buit then i heard several people say that if you used the distilled method you dont get so much sludge or buildup on the electrodes. i allready posted this but this guy seems a little easyer to understand than that website
and realy that website could be a total scam i dont know they seem to try to get too technical to confuse you but this guys like ...here i dont care if you use it or not
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3LVh...eature=related
but your right it seems to good to be true...i dont understand how it would produce hydrogen but then again why would hundreds of people take there time to do this...film it...and make detailed plans on how to make it...if it was bs? what do t hey have to gain?...yeah the website charging 350...they have something to gain
but it just does not make sense why all these other people would waste all this time and energy...but then again im not going to believe something just because it dosnt make sense for them to lie...im sure there are crazy people on the internet telling you how to make toothpaste from cat feces that totally believe in there product(because there crazy) or things simmilar. but it makes me want to at least try it...it going to be a couple months till i get my car on the road but when i do ill try to keep everyone posted...but realy even if it worked you still wouldnt believe me. but ill post my findings anyway

MDchanic

Okay, here's a simple experiment you can do to test the practicality of this idea.

Make an electrolytic hydrogen generator. Use a container and stainless steel electrodes, like in the video. Use baking soda or Lye as an electrolyte (Lye will probably work a bit better, but don't splash yourself).

Connect a battery, hook up an ammeter and a volt meter (ammeter in series, volt meter in parallel). Be sure they read about the same throughout the experiment, and record the readings.

Set up the output tube of the generator so that it loops down, then up, like a sink trap, and fill the loop with clean water (use a clear tube so you can see the water). Hook up a metal fitting of some kind to the end of the tube (a hose barb fitting is fine). Set the tube underneath a small heat proof container, like a metal measuring cup, so it will stay there.

Turn on the generator and watch for bubbling in the water in the loop of the tubing. When you see it, use a lighter to light the gas coming out of the tube. The water in the loop will keep the flame from running back into the tubing, igniting the gas in the jar, and causing it to explode, showering you with broken glass and Lye.

Fill the measuring cup with water. Measure it out to be sure you have 100cc. Measure the temperature of the water. Set the cup over the burner you made out of the tubing. Set a stopwatch or clock to start timing. Let the measuring cup heat up.

You can decide how much to heat the water. Even numbers like 1°C or 10°C are easy to work with. When you have heated the water that amount (say 10°C), record the elapsed time from your timer.

Now multiply the average Amps and Volts readings to get Watts, and multiply that by the number of seconds you timed to get the total work required to heat the water in Joules.

If you multiply the volume of water in cc's by the number of degrees you raised its temperature, you will get the number of calories of energy that the hydrogen added to it.
(Say, 10°C x 100cc = 1,000cal). Each calorie is 4.2 joules, so if you multiply 1,000cal by 4.2, you get 4,200 joules required to raise the temperature of those 100cc of water by 10°C.

Now you can directly compare the energy input into the hydrogen generator (Volts x Amps x Seconds) with the energy output of the hydrogen generator (cc's of water x degrees raised), both expressed in joules.

If the energy that came out isn't more than the energy you put in, then you have not gained anything by doing this. If the energy out is less than the energy in, then you have lost energy (and gas mileage, and money). Note that this does not take into account the actual function of the unit in your car's engine, which will involve added energy losses, and which will probably be insignificant anyway, as you will realize as you wait seemingly forever for the tiny flame to heat up the water in the measuring cup.

- Eric

ps: I saw nothing free on any of those web sites. The closest it gets is to claim that you can get your money back in 30 days if not satisfied. Riiiiiiiight...

brokeandugly21

i regret ever mentioning the website.....i grabbed a random website that had the generator i was talking about pre made...none of my info came from that website so i cant speak for that i was refering to the youtube vids
but i do want to experiment with it before i put it in
and im still confused on where this breaks down to not working
and i realy am trying to figure this out im not being sarcastic or anything so im going to go through one by one so i under stand
1: cars run on hydrogen?
2: the generator produces hydrogen?
3:but in the end it makes hydrogen but uses up more energy to make it?

brokeandugly21

so if it does make hydrogen but uses up more power than it make couldnt i fix that by setting up a battery bank and some small powerfull solar panels?

MDchanic

Now you're looking in the right direction.
Energy from the sun is free.
Problem is, it's not always there (clouds, night) and using it requires a great deal of money.

You could use photovoltaic arrays to make the electricity to power a hydrogen generator. Trouble is, even if you covered your entire car with them, you still couldn't get enough energy for your purposes. Cars that look like this:
compete in an annual contest from Dallas to Calgary, and barely get up to 65mph, and that's converting solar energy directly to electricity and running the wheels with that. Converting to hydrogen and then using it to power an internal combustion engine would add huge losses.

They are working on cells that would convert water to hydrogen and oxygen directly using solar energy, but haven't perfected them yet.

The stuff in those videos and web sites is basically science fair experiments. If you could actually get enough hydrogen out of those generators to run a car, using them would completely screw up the air / fuel mixture of the engine. Try it yourself using LP gas from a barbecue tank - make a hole in your intake tract, put in a hose, seal it up, start the motor, and see how it runs. Put the tank in the trunk and drive it around.
WARNING - YOU WILL PROBABLY BE BLOWN UP BECAUSE OF UNBURNED GAS LEAKING OUT ALL OVER!!!
You would be blown up if the hydrogen generator was making enough hydrogen to matter, too.
What if you had an open hose dribbling raw gasoline into the intake at a constant rate?
Yup. Fiery death that way, too. See what I'm driving at?

- Eric

brokeandugly21

im not trying to totally power the car off of hydrogen
and the system i was looking at had a one way valve and a bubbler so i dont think it would blow up. and one again im just talking about getting slightly better gas milage not totally running the car on it

brokeandugly21

and its supposed to run on 12 volts so i dont see why it would draw any more power and if it did why not hook it up to its own battery. ive seen some fairly cheap 15 volt flexible aluminum solar panels i could put on the roof and hook it up to a trickle charger on cloudy days. im probibly going to do the solar panel thing anyway to power a reserve battery so i can hook up a inverter for a tv or something

MDchanic

You're missing my point - it's an open, unregulated hose going into your engine.

To save you 50% of your fuel, as some of those sources claimed, it would have to supply 50% of the energy needed to move your car.

An open hose supplying 50% of the energy needed to move the car, in combustible form (gasoline, LP gas, hydrogen, alcohol, diesel, whatever) would pour that substance out everywhere whenever that maximum amount wasn't called for, like when driving slowly, or stopped at traffic lights, and / or kill the engine by "flooding" it with gas.

See what I mean - it makes no sense.

The only reason these things are safe is that they make hardly any hydrogen. If they made enough to do what they claim, they'd be deadly.

- Eric

extreme1

Mythbusters already went through this one.

Busted.

Aceshigh

The only thing Mythbusters proved was a random internet hydrogen powered car plan didn't work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydEkV-E0mP8

They did prove that a vehicle can run exclusively on pure hydrogen at the 2:37 mark.
No brainer because hydrogen is a VERY powerful gas that will burn.

On a few sidenotes.....
All our backup generators at my communication hubs sites are V8 Chevy engines that run off CNG.
Chicago had an agreement with Canadian based Ballard Systems to test run 3 Hydrogen fuel cell buses
as our public transportation for Chicago residents. They ran for 3 years, 1997-1999 and the program was a success.
http://www.ballard.com/Motive_Power/...n_Overview.htm

As was stated though.....conversion of Hydrogen into a fuel cell from CNG is a waste of money and time.
Until they can put an infrastructure in place to produce hydrogen from H20 instead of CNG it's not worth it.
Just use CNG. Most of Chicago's NICOR gas utility trucks all run off CNG themselves as well as others.

MDchanic

Who needs Mythbusters when you can use high school science classes and plain old logic?

Yes, but fuel cells are a proven and expensive technology and not a scam masquerading as an urban myth.

And a huge number of vehicles in Europe use LP or CNG.
It's a common retrofit, even for cars like ours, and is worth the $1,500 cost (last time I checked) because gasoline prices are so high there.

A true hydrogen-powered vehicle would require a far more sophisticated metering system than a rubber hose.

A true "home-made" source of enough hydrogen to run a car would use more energy to make the hydrogen than the car itself used to run.
Think: an electric car needs all night to charge, then drives for 30 miles on that charge. You'd need more electricity than "all night charging" could provide to make the hydrogen to run an internal combustion engine for thirty miles (and half as much as that to get a 50% gasoline savings, so I am not accused of misrepresenting the OP's point).

- Eric