Wednesday, May 05, 2010
The long overdue fake hydrogen booster theories
A while ago, I blogged about hydrogen booster theories, creating a list of all the claims I've seen put forward by proponents of hydrogen boosters - then adding three claims I've made up out of whole cloth, and challenging readers to guess which ones I'd made up. I can't think of a sound theoretical reason why using the car's electrical system to power a hydrogen generator and feeding the resulting gas into the car's intake should improve mileage. But proponents have no shortage of unsound theories. From the reactions I had from readers, it seems it's pretty hard to distinguish their theories from patent nonsense. Here's the fake theories.
"6. The hydrogen and oxygen react with decane in the fuel, causing it to split into ethanol and iso-octane."
This was an effort to think like a scammer, making up a claim that tied into real research on flex-fuel cars (in truth, ethanol tends to hurt gas mileage). You can write a balanced chemical reaction based on that line. But I can't think of a good reason why this reaction would actually happen.
"3. The flow rate should be proportional to the engine size and RPM. To find the best flow rate in liters per minute, take the engine size, multiply by the RPM, and divide by 2."
For some reason, hydrogen generator proponents seldom try to size the generator to the engine. This line would also result in a far larger hydrogen generator than any I've seen tried on a car. On the other hand, if you feed an engine that much hydrogen, it'll definitely get some sort of results...
"8. Because hydrogen causes the air / fuel mixture to implode, the engine needs very different valve timing. The cam should be replaced by one with a much longer intake opening and a far shorter exhaust opening, and overlap absolutely must be cut to zero."
Believe it or not, I didn't make up the implosion theories. These theories also seem to be tied to orgone, although trying to figure out what orgone even is can give you a headache in a hurry. However, I haven't seen anyone try to make internal modifications to the engine to get better results with the hydrogen generator. Logically, changes to the fuel should call for changes in things like cam timing or compression ratio, but you don't see anyone trying it.
"6. The hydrogen and oxygen react with decane in the fuel, causing it to split into ethanol and iso-octane."
This was an effort to think like a scammer, making up a claim that tied into real research on flex-fuel cars (in truth, ethanol tends to hurt gas mileage). You can write a balanced chemical reaction based on that line. But I can't think of a good reason why this reaction would actually happen.
"3. The flow rate should be proportional to the engine size and RPM. To find the best flow rate in liters per minute, take the engine size, multiply by the RPM, and divide by 2."
For some reason, hydrogen generator proponents seldom try to size the generator to the engine. This line would also result in a far larger hydrogen generator than any I've seen tried on a car. On the other hand, if you feed an engine that much hydrogen, it'll definitely get some sort of results...
"8. Because hydrogen causes the air / fuel mixture to implode, the engine needs very different valve timing. The cam should be replaced by one with a much longer intake opening and a far shorter exhaust opening, and overlap absolutely must be cut to zero."
Believe it or not, I didn't make up the implosion theories. These theories also seem to be tied to orgone, although trying to figure out what orgone even is can give you a headache in a hurry. However, I haven't seen anyone try to make internal modifications to the engine to get better results with the hydrogen generator. Logically, changes to the fuel should call for changes in things like cam timing or compression ratio, but you don't see anyone trying it.
Labels: Hydrogen
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Spot the fake hydrogen booster theories!
Call them hydrogen boosters, HHO systems, Brown's Gas, or what you will, these things seem to be on the way out. Maybe it's been all the debunkings (some of which I've blogged about before), or maybe it's been the Ozzy Freedom types have moved on to other schemes. At least, I haven't run across as many discussions of these things recently. The way it's going, in another ten years, the hydrogen booster fans will be hanging out with the vapor carburetor crowd and commiserating over a few beers about how the government / auto industry / petroleum industry / Bavarian Illuminati have conspired to kill their technology of choice.
So, while these ideas are still getting kicked around, I thought I'd try gathering all the hydrogen booster theories in one place, as well as all the claims about how to tune the system. My first plan was to put that side by side with the theory that most of the claimed improvements are the results of bad experimentation, but where's the fun in that? Instead, I'm going to try something a little different - I'll post the theories without comment, although I will attempt to fill in gaps on occasion when a theory seemed incomplete. However, three of the items on these list are fake - theories or tuning methods that I've made up out of whole cloth. All the others are genuine claims that advocates of hydrogen booster systems have used to explain why it should work or how you should tune the engine after installing it.
Theories of operation:
So, while these ideas are still getting kicked around, I thought I'd try gathering all the hydrogen booster theories in one place, as well as all the claims about how to tune the system. My first plan was to put that side by side with the theory that most of the claimed improvements are the results of bad experimentation, but where's the fun in that? Instead, I'm going to try something a little different - I'll post the theories without comment, although I will attempt to fill in gaps on occasion when a theory seemed incomplete. However, three of the items on these list are fake - theories or tuning methods that I've made up out of whole cloth. All the others are genuine claims that advocates of hydrogen booster systems have used to explain why it should work or how you should tune the engine after installing it.
Theories of operation:
- The engine burns fuel to drive the alternator to power a hydrogen generator that makes more fuel to be burnt in the engine. Appears to be the oldest theory.
- The hydrogen generator doesn't create additional drag on the alternator because it is only taking up unused current that the alternator would be putting out anyway.
- The hydrogen isn't extra fuel so much as a combustion enhancer that speeds up the burn rate and increases knock resistance.
- It's not really the hydrogen that makes a difference, as much as that the generator also collects a mysterious sort of energy known as "orgone" that it feeds into the engine.
- The hydrogen generator produces monoatomic hydrogen - that is, the hydrogen atoms are all separate, instead of stuck together in pairs as in normal hydrogen. This is much more reactive, although somewhat tricky to keep it from reacting with other things (aluminum, plastic, oxygen, or even itself).
- The hydrogen and oxygen react with decane in the fuel, causing it to split into ethanol and iso-octane.
- The hydrogen doesn't burn or react with the gasoline, but instead reacts with a different gas in the air to produce a chemical that has an effect on combustion. What gas it reacts with was not specified, but presumably it would be reacting with nitrogen to form ammonia.
- There is an extra electron on each hydrogen molecule, forming an electric current from the hydrogen generator to the combustion chamber.
- Adding hydrogen to the air / fuel mixture causes it to implode instead of explode.
- A steady flow rate of 1 liter of hydrogen and oxygen per minute is best.
- A steady flow rate of 100 liters of hydrogen and oxygen per minute is best.
- The flow rate should be proportional to the engine size and RPM. To find the best flow rate in liters per minute, take the engine size, multiply by the RPM, and divide by 2.
- Because hydrogen speeds up the burn rate dramatically, timing should be retarded to a fixed timing rate in the vicinity of 10 to 12 degrees after top dead center.
- Because hydrogen causes the air / fuel mixture to implode, timing should be advanced to somewhere around 70 to 90 degrees before top dead center.
- Because hydrogen increase knock resistance, timing should be advanced 5 to 10 degrees ahead of the standard timing curve.
- The air/fuel mixture should be leaned out to somewhere between 16:1 and 20:1.
- Because hydrogen causes the air / fuel mixture to implode, the engine needs very different valve timing. The cam should be replaced by one with a much longer intake opening and a far shorter exhaust opening, and overlap absolutely must be cut to zero.
Labels: Hydrogen
Monday, April 06, 2009
A follow up to the Dateline special on the HAFC
One of the people that Dateline interviewed was Eric Kreig, a critic of these sorts of hydrogen generators who's even more vocal than I am. I had read his site in the past, and I'm pretty sure I've even quoted from it (Evidently it wasn't on this blog, though). But I couldn't find it in time for yesterday's post. Well, here's Eric Kreig's page on Dennis Lee and hydrogen generators. Check it out.
Labels: Gas Mileage, Hydrogen
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Chris Hansen goes after HHO scammer
Tonight's episode of Dateline caught my attention. This time, they were going after something I've often gone after on this blog, the claim that putting a hydrogen generator on a car can boost its gas mileage. Their target was the HAFC system, peddled by convicted felon Dennis Lee. His system sells for around $1,000, with installation being equally pricey - or even more expensive. That's a pretty high price for an HHO generator - someone like Ozzy Freedom can get you the same whole lot of nothing for a whole lot less something.
You can read the whole episode write-up here. What I found especially interesting was that they tested the system at an EPA certified lab using the federal mileage tests. This is the very first time I've seen anyone do this, and as far as I've been able to tell, it may even be the first time anyone's ever subject an HHO generator system to one of these, with surprisng results. No, the surprise wasn't that the generator improved things. It got the exact same results before and after the installation. But then they turned the system off and retested the car - and it got better mileage than before. It sounds like the guys who did the installation also made some sort of tweak to the car, most likely running a thinner grade of oil, that produced a real improvement. And then the hydrogen generator caused the car to run less efficiently and canceled out their real gains. Although I'm not sure if the gains were more than the test device's margin of error.
Their "What's in the kit?" video, which wasn't shown on the air, is one I found particularly interesting. One, he's combined the hydrogen generator with a gas mileage magnet - I doubt that would be any more effective than the one the EPA tested in that link. The electronic box caught my eye, since it's very similar looking to a MegaSquirt, but a closer look showed it seemed to just be something else that used an off the shelf aluminum case. One other thing about the kit seemed pretty telling - that appears to be a sort of cheap PVC-based hose that isn't rated for underhood temperatures. That might explain why he commented it was pretty leak prone...
You can read the whole episode write-up here. What I found especially interesting was that they tested the system at an EPA certified lab using the federal mileage tests. This is the very first time I've seen anyone do this, and as far as I've been able to tell, it may even be the first time anyone's ever subject an HHO generator system to one of these, with surprisng results. No, the surprise wasn't that the generator improved things. It got the exact same results before and after the installation. But then they turned the system off and retested the car - and it got better mileage than before. It sounds like the guys who did the installation also made some sort of tweak to the car, most likely running a thinner grade of oil, that produced a real improvement. And then the hydrogen generator caused the car to run less efficiently and canceled out their real gains. Although I'm not sure if the gains were more than the test device's margin of error.
Their "What's in the kit?" video, which wasn't shown on the air, is one I found particularly interesting. One, he's combined the hydrogen generator with a gas mileage magnet - I doubt that would be any more effective than the one the EPA tested in that link. The electronic box caught my eye, since it's very similar looking to a MegaSquirt, but a closer look showed it seemed to just be something else that used an off the shelf aluminum case. One other thing about the kit seemed pretty telling - that appears to be a sort of cheap PVC-based hose that isn't rated for underhood temperatures. That might explain why he commented it was pretty leak prone...
Labels: Gas Mileage, Hydrogen
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Make an HHO system actually work, win one million dollars!
Now here's an interesting site. A New Zealand engineer has thrown down a challenge to anyone who claims that he can get more miles per gallon from using an onboard hydrogen / HHO generator. If you can make such a thing actually work, he'll pay you one million dollars for showing your HHO generator can improve gas mileage. As they say, "Terms and conditions apply." Anyone entering the challenge would need to pay a testing fee to cover expenses, the device has to boost gas mileage by 25%, and it can't cause damage to the car. Like me, he's pretty sure nobody is going to claim that prize. The site is worth a read to anyone interested in hydrogen - or scams.
Labels: Hydrogen
Friday, September 12, 2008
Cecil Adams vs Brown's Gas
I've blogged about some of the dubious claims made by promoters of "Brown's Gas" or "HHO" before. Now it seems that master debunker Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope has gotten into the act, reaching a lot more people than I ever could. Check out the The Straight Dope about hydrogen generators here.
Labels: Hydrogen
Saturday, June 21, 2008
The plug-in hydrogen hybrid, part 4
I was pretty sure locating a hydrogen generator on the car would be a bad idea, even if you powered it with battery packs instead of trying to drive it from the car's electrical system (after all, an alternator that demands 50 hp is going to put a big dent in your gas mileage). But I wanted to find out just how bad an idea it was, whether it was something that you could build but would be inadvisable, or some sort of monstrosity that wouldn't be able to move under its own power. When I calculated what size battery pack the hydrogen generator would need, it came out as something that looks like it would be technically possible but definitely not practical. Because an internal combustion engine isn't as efficient as an electric motor, this thing would have worse battery issues than an electric car.
The problem is that you're trying to plug it in before the hydrogen generator instead of after. Put the hydrogen generator in your basement and you might have something. So here's a few calculations to find out what it is you might have.
Gasoline has an energy density of 34.8 MJ/liter, according to Wikipedia. Some math turns that into 132 MJ/gallon, to 36.6 kilowatt-hours per gallon. So if you were making the hydrogen at home from household current, your cost for the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline would work out to this:
Price of a "gas gallon equivalent" = (Cost per kilowatt-hour) * (36.6 kilowatt-hours per gallon)/(Generator Efficiency)
Don't forget to factor in the energy needed to compress the hydrogen into the generator efficiency. You'd want to generate the hydrogen and oxygen separately, since you'll need to compress it in order to carry enough hydrogen to make a difference. So if you're paying 12 cents per kilowatt-hour and your generator's total efficiency is 50% including the power needed to run the compressor, you'd be paying the equivalent of $8.78 for a gallon. By the way, you'd also be stuck with similar costs on the plug-in hydrogen hybrid, although your generator efficiency would be up because you wouldn't need to compress the hydrogen nearly as much.
Still not good, but bring the price of gas up and the efficiency up and you might have something...
The problem is that you're trying to plug it in before the hydrogen generator instead of after. Put the hydrogen generator in your basement and you might have something. So here's a few calculations to find out what it is you might have.
Gasoline has an energy density of 34.8 MJ/liter, according to Wikipedia. Some math turns that into 132 MJ/gallon, to 36.6 kilowatt-hours per gallon. So if you were making the hydrogen at home from household current, your cost for the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline would work out to this:
Price of a "gas gallon equivalent" = (Cost per kilowatt-hour) * (36.6 kilowatt-hours per gallon)/(Generator Efficiency)
Don't forget to factor in the energy needed to compress the hydrogen into the generator efficiency. You'd want to generate the hydrogen and oxygen separately, since you'll need to compress it in order to carry enough hydrogen to make a difference. So if you're paying 12 cents per kilowatt-hour and your generator's total efficiency is 50% including the power needed to run the compressor, you'd be paying the equivalent of $8.78 for a gallon. By the way, you'd also be stuck with similar costs on the plug-in hydrogen hybrid, although your generator efficiency would be up because you wouldn't need to compress the hydrogen nearly as much.
Still not good, but bring the price of gas up and the efficiency up and you might have something...
Labels: Gas Mileage, Hydrogen
Friday, June 20, 2008
The plug-in hydrogen hybrid, part 3
When I last blogged about the idea of a "plug in hydrogen hybrid" that had an onboard hydrogen generator powered by plug in batteries, things looked a bit crazy. The SUV needed 36.7 kilowatts to drive its hydrogen generator, and that assumes that it's a 100% efficient generator. I'd translated that to 2500 amps if the generator ran at 12 volts. In practice, it probably wouldn't - you'd use a higher input voltage and less current. But this figure helps because batteries are rated in amp-hours. Although these are over a 20 hour discharge period, we'll assume it can deliver the same number of amp-hours in a single hour. We need a total of 2500 amp-hours of battery.
Since these batteries are going to be drawn down very low and recharged, a good starting point might be to see what we'd need if we were buying Optima deep cycle batteries. From that chart, we see the D31A model puts out 75 amp hours. So we'd need 34 such batteries to run our generator for an hour. And 34 of these would cost $7818.30, and weigh 2033.2 pounds. Quite a lot of batteries to lug around.
Well, maybe our initial assumption, an SUV that got 20 miles to the gallon at a steady 60 mph, was a bit unrealistic. What if you have an economy car that got 50 mpg at the same speed? That's easy, multiply the number of amp hours you need by 0.4 and repeat the math. You come up with 1000 amp hours, 14 batteries, 837.2 pounds, and a tab of $3219.30.
And those assume that you're trying to get 50% better mileage with a 100% efficient generator, for just one hour. Realistically, you're not going to get a 100% efficient system. There's a good chance you may need a battery pack 50% to twice as heavy. Carrying around a a ton of batteries (literally) is going to drag that mileage back down, to say nothing for what it does to your acceleration.
At this point, it looks like the idea of a plug-in hydrogen hybrid can't be saved. Or can it? Here's a hint: This example is plugged in the wrong way.
Since these batteries are going to be drawn down very low and recharged, a good starting point might be to see what we'd need if we were buying Optima deep cycle batteries. From that chart, we see the D31A model puts out 75 amp hours. So we'd need 34 such batteries to run our generator for an hour. And 34 of these would cost $7818.30, and weigh 2033.2 pounds. Quite a lot of batteries to lug around.
Well, maybe our initial assumption, an SUV that got 20 miles to the gallon at a steady 60 mph, was a bit unrealistic. What if you have an economy car that got 50 mpg at the same speed? That's easy, multiply the number of amp hours you need by 0.4 and repeat the math. You come up with 1000 amp hours, 14 batteries, 837.2 pounds, and a tab of $3219.30.
And those assume that you're trying to get 50% better mileage with a 100% efficient generator, for just one hour. Realistically, you're not going to get a 100% efficient system. There's a good chance you may need a battery pack 50% to twice as heavy. Carrying around a a ton of batteries (literally) is going to drag that mileage back down, to say nothing for what it does to your acceleration.
At this point, it looks like the idea of a plug-in hydrogen hybrid can't be saved. Or can it? Here's a hint: This example is plugged in the wrong way.
Labels: Gas Mileage, Hydrogen
Friday, May 23, 2008
The plug-in hydrogen hybrid, part 2
I've been trying to do a few calculations to size a hydrogen generator for a car, mostly because it appears that nobody ever tries figuring out what size system they'd actually need. In my previous post, I tried sizing a hydrogen generator for a thirsty SUV. The calculation was that it needed to break down 2.2 gallons of water into hydrogen per hour, in order to replace a gallon of gas burned in an hour. If you've looked at some of the pages offering blueprints for a hydrogen generator, you may already suspect that this is going to end up being several hundred times larger than what you've seen advertised on the Internet - most of them claim you'd only fill a two liter tank every couple of months.
Now I'm going to consider the electrical requirements of this thing. You're making 0.93 kg of hydrogen in an hour. Remember when I noted hydrogen's energy density is 142 megajoules per kilogram? You'll need to feed this thing 132 megajoules of energy in an hour if it were 100% efficient. Since power is energy per unit time, this works out to needing 36.7 kilowatts to drive the generator. Converting that to horsepower, by the way, indicates it would take 49 horsepower to drive this hydrogen generator. See why this thing isn't driven off the alternator? You'd be wasting a lot of the engine's power, need a much larger alternator, and probably have to replace your serpentine belt with a chain drive to boot. If this thing were running off 12 volt batteries, you'd need to supply it with 2500 amps. Far more current than a starter draws.
It's obvious this design is starting to get into trouble. In further posts, I'll size up a battery pack for this thing (it's going to be huge) and see if there are, in fact, ways this hydrogen hybrid idea might be salvagable.
Now I'm going to consider the electrical requirements of this thing. You're making 0.93 kg of hydrogen in an hour. Remember when I noted hydrogen's energy density is 142 megajoules per kilogram? You'll need to feed this thing 132 megajoules of energy in an hour if it were 100% efficient. Since power is energy per unit time, this works out to needing 36.7 kilowatts to drive the generator. Converting that to horsepower, by the way, indicates it would take 49 horsepower to drive this hydrogen generator. See why this thing isn't driven off the alternator? You'd be wasting a lot of the engine's power, need a much larger alternator, and probably have to replace your serpentine belt with a chain drive to boot. If this thing were running off 12 volt batteries, you'd need to supply it with 2500 amps. Far more current than a starter draws.
It's obvious this design is starting to get into trouble. In further posts, I'll size up a battery pack for this thing (it's going to be huge) and see if there are, in fact, ways this hydrogen hybrid idea might be salvagable.
Labels: Gas Mileage, Hydrogen
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
The plug-in hydrogen hybrid, Part 1
This is a bit of a continuation of a discussion I had with a customer at work today. I've previously blogged about the trouble with powering a hydrogen generator from your alternator or the usual battery in a car. Short version is you're taking energy from the engine to make your fuel, and with inefficiencies along the way, you'd be very lucky to get 20% of that energy back.
But what if you powered it with a battery you'd charged from your home and recharged every night? Let's run a few calculations and spec out a system for a car. First, let's define what we want this system to accomplish. Suppose we are starting with a big SUV that gets 20 miles to the gallon when driven at a steady 60 miles per hour. And let's suppose we want it to get 50% better mileage, to 30 miles to the gallon of gas. Running a little bit of math shows that it would originally be burning 3 gallons per hour, and the improved version would be burning 2 gallons per hour. So this makes the math a bit easier to follow, at least up until this part. And let's add that this car will see 1 hour of use on a single battery charge.
The first question is, "How much hydrogen do we need?" Well, we'll need to supply the equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline in hydrogen, per hour. Now the math gets hard: We need to figure out how much hydrogen that is. And we'll also figure out the device's water consumption. We'll start with a couple key numbers pulled from around the Web.
Energy density of hydrogen: 142 MJ/kg (most optimistic value from this source)
Energy density of gasoline: 46.9 MJ/kg (from Wikipedia)
Ratio of hydrogen to gasoline energy by weight: Hydrogen has 3.03 time the energy of gas.
Fraction of water that is hydrogen, by weight: 1/9
Ratio of gasoline's density to that of water: 0.739 (source)
Using these ratios, we find that you'd have to break down 2.2 gallons of water to get enough hydrogen to replace one gallon of gas. The calculations for this are pretty long, so I'm taking a break now. Next up, we'll see how much energy is needed to do this, how much power this thing is going to consumer, and what you'd spend on batteries. And why you shouldn't call it an HHO generator...
But what if you powered it with a battery you'd charged from your home and recharged every night? Let's run a few calculations and spec out a system for a car. First, let's define what we want this system to accomplish. Suppose we are starting with a big SUV that gets 20 miles to the gallon when driven at a steady 60 miles per hour. And let's suppose we want it to get 50% better mileage, to 30 miles to the gallon of gas. Running a little bit of math shows that it would originally be burning 3 gallons per hour, and the improved version would be burning 2 gallons per hour. So this makes the math a bit easier to follow, at least up until this part. And let's add that this car will see 1 hour of use on a single battery charge.
The first question is, "How much hydrogen do we need?" Well, we'll need to supply the equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline in hydrogen, per hour. Now the math gets hard: We need to figure out how much hydrogen that is. And we'll also figure out the device's water consumption. We'll start with a couple key numbers pulled from around the Web.
Energy density of hydrogen: 142 MJ/kg (most optimistic value from this source)
Energy density of gasoline: 46.9 MJ/kg (from Wikipedia)
Ratio of hydrogen to gasoline energy by weight: Hydrogen has 3.03 time the energy of gas.
Fraction of water that is hydrogen, by weight: 1/9
Ratio of gasoline's density to that of water: 0.739 (source)
Using these ratios, we find that you'd have to break down 2.2 gallons of water to get enough hydrogen to replace one gallon of gas. The calculations for this are pretty long, so I'm taking a break now. Next up, we'll see how much energy is needed to do this, how much power this thing is going to consumer, and what you'd spend on batteries. And why you shouldn't call it an HHO generator...
Labels: Gas Mileage, Hydrogen
