There is no ‘free energy’ available. Every watt of electricity used by the HHO apparatus requires a watt of energy from the engine.
Therefore, you can’t get more work (mileage) out of an engine by taking some of the work, generate electricity, split water, then burn the hydrogen. You lose energy at every step.
Even worse: gasoline engines only get about 25% of the energy released by the burning of the gasoline back as mechanical energy (the energy that moves the car or turns the alternator). The other 75% is lost as heat (either out the exhaust or out the radiator) or friction. So it’s a 4 to 1 LOSING proposition! Las Vegas has better odds!!
I’m with you, MB. This isn’t brain surgery, it’s a science fair project. Irish22, choose any hypothesis you like. That’s not important. Test the hypothesis and report your results honestly - that’s important. If you can do that, you are a scientist. Save the great ideas for later. Learn how to state a goal, test it, and report your results. And don’t expect to be get the method down on your first try. Do your best, and learn something you can use for your next project.
While I don’t have proof that this device doesn’t work, I have one really good reason to be skeptical. Everyone who sells these devices online has one common trait that their web sites all share. There is no address or phone number on the “Contact me” web page. What kind of company is afraid to put its address and phone number on its web site? That should be the most basic requirement for a site if you are going to trust it with your credit card information. They make some pretty big claims and usually include some kind of testiimonials, but they won’t let you confirm the validity of such testimony or claims.
The web sites belonging to the folks who sell these Hydrogen kits don’t pass my most basic B.S. test. Rather than give these people your money, you should just withdraw it in cash and burn it. At least then you use it to heat your living room.
Texases, about your #3 point. If a car uses only 25% of the energy out of it's fuel, what has that to do with using a little hydrogen to increase the effeciency? Please, I'm not saying that a booster will work. I am just saying no one on here has proven a thing!
You are absolutely right. And for all the free-thinkers out there who are open to the idea of physics unconstrained by the first law of thermodynamics:
I am selling a windmill to put on top of your hybrid car. The windmill will charge your batteries as you drive down the road, thereby creating a perpetual motion car.
If you’re really interested in a neat science fair project on how to make an engine get better millage with water - make a simple Crower six cycle engine. That actually has some science behind it (capture some of the waste heat of the cylinder to make steam to drive the piston).
I’ve been sort of trying to stay out of these rousing HHO system debates, but there is one point I want to make. A lot of people say that it’s “basic physics” that these things don’t work and while you can figure out mathematically that these things don’t work, it’s not so simple that you should be chiding people for thinking that they might work. Like some of you have said, gasoline engines are very inefficient and it’s hardly a violation of the first law of thermodynamics if you could take a little bit of the energy to do something to make the engine more efficient-- think of a turbocharger for example, which basically makes the engine work a little harder but yields more power by increasing the efficiency of the engine. From an elementary understanding of physics, an HHO generator seems no more improbable than a turbocharger.
Now, I think it’s a good point that the fly-by night nature of the people selling them should be setting off people’s “baloney detectors” (as Carl Sagan would say), and of course a Turbocharger has been proven time and time again, unlike these things. But scoffing at the underlying concept of these things isn’t all that productive because from a high school/Physics 101 level of understanding, there’s no glaringly obvious reason why these won’t work and so we have to emphasize more that the numbers in this particular situation don’t work.
They’re unlike a turbocharger in that a turbocharger actually works. But it’s the same general idea in that you’re taking some of the energy being generated by the engine to create something that increases the overall efficiency of the engine. The only difference is that the turbocharger actually does it such a way that the increase in engine efficiency offsets the extra energy used to turn the turbocharger, wheras an HHO system doesn’t really increase the engine’s efficiency at all and therefore doesn’t offset the energy used to produce the hydrogen.
Dismissing their claim as a perpetual motion machine isn’t therefore strictly accurate because they’re not claiming to be able to generate enough hydrogen to actually run the car (well, at least most of them aren’t), they’re just claiming to have a gizmo that makes your car more efficient, which is the same thing that a turbocharger. It’s still a load of horsepucky but it’s unfortunately not quite as easy to dismiss as it would be if it did on the face violate a basic rule of physics.
These gerry-rigged contraptions have taken on quite a following in my area and some are certain that they are getting significant inceases in mpg. I tended to attribute that totally to wishfull thinking and exageration but have begun to wonder if the induction of 100%+ humidity could possibly increase mileage measureably. It is difficult to keep a straight face while being shown one under a hood and some of these ‘scientists’ appear to be quite intelligent and sincere.
I see what you mean. I was saying, if you ignore the bizarre claims about changing how combustion work, HHO could only work if it released more energy than it used, and since all the energy comes from the engine to begin with. Any time I see claims that energy output is greater than energy input, it reminds me of a perpetual motion machine claim.
Do my best, but the cynic in me wonders if we really dealing with a High School student,how about it Irish22 a little more info about the Science fair what project won last year,what is our speciallty? are you really so innocent to not know this subject has turned into a “Car Talk must prove it doesn’t work” situation.
As a scientist you must learn to develope reasearch skills,how long have you spent reading the posts from the not so distant past on this Forum?
Maybe these boosters work because of the large amount of energy released while a car engine is being used to slow it down. That surplus is used by all hybrid systems to charge batteries; perhaps in a booster system it is the energy source used to generate HHO.
If I am right, these systems would not help much on the highway. But in normal driving with hills and traffic, they would make sense. Does this correspond with the experience of any users here?
Texases and all the other replies are correct. No one is arguing that there are opportunities to improve MPG in a vehicle (only about 1/3 of the energy in a gallon of gas is used to propel the car forward).
The point we’re all trying to make is that electrolysis (converting water into hydrogen and oxygen with electricity) requires more energy for the conversion than the available energy in the resulting hydrogen and oxygen. Whether that electrolysis is done in a lab or in a car, the conversion still costs you more than what you get in the end.
To top it off, you’re sending that hydrogen and oxygen into a combustion chamber where only 1/3 of it will be used to propel the car forward. The rest of that energy is wasted in the exhaust, radiator, and radiant heat.
If you can go back to the lab and find a way to make electrolysis produce more output energy than the conversion costs you, then you’ll be onto something.
This forum is filled with an incredible depth and breadth of talent, skill, book smarts, and hands-on experience. If these HHO systems had any merit, you would see support for them, or even support for developing the idea further.
The only benefit these HHO systems have is to make a buck for the scam artists selling them.