KW1252 wrote:It's easy to do the maths for on-board HHO generator systems;
Regular fuel is used to create the energy that turns water into HHO; alternator won't do anything for free. A good IC engine might achieve 25% efficiency (30 for diesel). Losses in the electric line (from crank pulley to electrolysis device) makes to about 95% efficiency. Electrolysis efficiency is around 90%.
Now you have HHO worth the energy of 1 * 0.25 * 0.95 * 0.9 = 0.21375 of the fuel used.
Then you put HHO into engine. 25% IC engine efficiency comes to bite you in the arse again. 0.21375 * 0.25 = 0.05
And there you have it. 5% net efficiency; still, you'd need to achieve over 100% to actually save any fuel.
Thats exactly what I was thinking, thanks for writing up the math.
I would be interested to see how the catalyst theory math works out.
Using a catalyst with UV radiation (sunlight etc) would obviously give "free" hydrogen. I still see another tiny problem though; while hydrogen contains about 3.5 times the energy gasoline has per mass unit, hydrogen takes almost ten thousand times larger volume for the same mass at normal conditions.
He means using the hydrogen AS a catalyst with the normal fuel. The title of this thread is misleading. The people who believe in this are not the same free energy types we've seen before. They claim the H2 acts as a catalyst and improves the combustion process so significantly that it produces more torque for the same fuel and therefore less fuel to accelerate the same amount and therefore less fuel used overall. It is still highly doubtful and more of a religious argument than the outright stupidity of perpetual motion.
I think someone found a dictionary of Big Words and revised his snake oil ad...
Agreed.
I wonder how much energy is lost from unburnt fuel (and maybe CO and NOx) in a well tuned engine. That's the only energy that could potentially be gained from this. The amount of energy present in the fuel won't change even with a "catalyst" so unless you're spewing raw fuel out your exhaust, I don't see how this would work.
I came across some plans for this and decided to take a look. $50 on a spoof credit card from work( I didnt even know it had any money left on it). I guess it looked feasable at the time but upon furthur research...IDK. I was going to post the link but its finally dead.
The conclusion though is that I would very well be wasting my time spending the $200-300 to give it a shot?
I guess I made the download and have hardly put any thought into it since. Trying to get MS going on my 88 626 has been the priority.
Fred wrote:
I think your priority is a good one, perhaps post a thread to motivate you in the user rides section
Motivation is not the problem. Finding the time to get my wife to let me work on it IS. Believe me if I had it my way I would work on it every night...(sigh, wimper)women.
