I was searching for a small hydrogen gas generator on line, and stumbled onto this.
People on e-bay are advertising hydrogen generators that supposededly increase the fuel efficiency of your car. Unfortunately they work like this:
you place a small cylinder containing distilled water and a small amount of baking soda. The cylinder also houses two electrodes which hook to your car’s battery. The car splits the water into oxygen and hydrogen which then travel to your cars vacuum hose. People are actually claiming to see increased gas milage.
Yes, it works. You get one bubble of oxygen and two bubbles of hydrogen every couple of minutes. Your car’s engine hardly notices the input, and you must use more energy (in the form of electrical energy) than you can recover in the combustion chambers. Your mpg must drop, although the overall effect is too small to measure. Any claims to the contrary are not valid. Save your money, unless your kid needs a science project.
This is a scam.
Separating the hydrogen and the oxygen in water isn’t that easy. And it takes energy, not just baking soda.
Besides, you engine is already downright sophisticated and efficient. Would you want to jeopardize that?
I’m amazed that e-bay allows people to sell them. It’s like selling snake oil isn’t it?
Yes it is…These types of products have been around for YEARS…and you can find them at WallMart, Sears, KMart and almost any auto parts store. Ever hear of Slick-50…TOTAL SCAM PRODUCT. They sell MILLIONS every year. There are HUNDREDS of others just as bad…and that’s just automotive products.
“People are actually claiming to see increased gas milage(sic).”
Are these claims by any chance on the various websites that are peddling this scam product? Do you really think that you can trust that information?
On the Mythbusters TV program, they tested this device, as well as some other things touted for gas mileage improvement. The Mythbusters staff found that it did produce hydrogen–enough to run the engine for a few seconds, after which the engine stopped. If your travel needs require that you drive for more than a few seconds, I would suggest that you save your money.
skip the splicing step and dump the water in your gas tank, you’ll save some more money that way.
Well, it may be a scam… but to be honest, the mythbusters program didn’t try installing a device that will separate hydrogen from water and introducing this hydrogen into the intake manifold to increase fuel economy. What they did was empty the gastank and try to run it on hydrogen alone. Would adding a system with supplementary hyrdogen increase your fuel economy or not? I haven’t seen any proof one way or the other.
Yes, supplementary hydrogen will increase your fuel economy. So will supplementary gasoline. Also propane, butane, natural gas, aviation fuel, a mule team – same thing. As long as long as some benefactor is giving you free fuel you save money on gasoline purchases. (Duh-h)
What this site really needs ia a system that will automatically block any posts about these scams and ban obvious shills like “sdkerekh” who is hitting every thread whooping it up for this CRAP; and just calling it what it is.
Please feel free to buy the kit/manual, or whatever this huckster is selling, and then report back to us on the outcome. We know that it is a waste of money, but your persistence causes me to urge you to spend your money on this experiment.
Hmmm…Maybe if your install TWO of these systems on your car you will be able to really save money on gasoline!
I suggested in a previous thread that a filter needs to be put on the forums for “hydrogen” and “water”, maybe even “H2O” to be blocked from posting new threads
To be fair, the system I’ve seen sold claims to produce “free” hydrogen by electrolysis. You hook up the system and supply water, electricity is applied, and you get hydrogen and oxygen… the hydrogen is pumped into your manifold, supposedly increasing your fuel economy.
Please don’t do that! You could have to pay an expensive repair bill!
Does anyone know of a forum where I can bring up issues and have them discussed objectively without having to be subjected to insults and namecalling?
No, I’m just looking for objective evidence. You mentioned an ariticle in Popular Mechanics that debunks the theory you could use the electricity your car already produces to produce hydrogen by electroylsis and then use that hydrogen to improve your fuel economy. What year and month was that ariticle printed? I’ve tried doing a search for it in “yahoo” but haven’t found it.
sderekh:
you have been keeping these two threads going for a while now.
you talk like it is car talks’ fault that there is no proof on this web site, or that it somehow is all the responders responsibility to provide this proof.
the website you provided on the other thread (YES, i wasted 15 minutes looking it over) gives proof that the hydrogen system works (to produce hydrogen); but is too energy consuming and unwieldy to work in a practical sense.
so what further proof do you need, or are looking for?
why are you blaming us for NOT getting the answer you are looking for?
go elsewhere if you want better info.
maybe the other answer on the other thread is really the answer you are looking for:
go buy one and try it, then your doubts, questions will be answered.
BUT, please post a new thread with your results.
What is it you want me to talk about on this thread? I'm not very good at insults, insinuations or accusations. I'm looking for evidence. Is that so bad? No, I'm not blaming anyone. I'm just lazy... I want someone else to do the hard work for me. Does that make me a bad person?
What other proof do I want? I want the year and month of the article in Popular Mechanics that debunks the theory you could use the electricity your car already produces to produce hydrogen by electroylsis and then use that hydrogen to improve your fuel economy. What year and month was that ariticle printed? I've tried doing a search for it in "yahoo" but haven't found it.
What answer on what other thread?
Maybe you should go elsewhere if you don’t like my posts.
You could always use the ‘Search’ function on this forum, you’ll find plenty of references the “Run your car on hydrogen” concept.
Alternatively you could try Googling “Car Hydrogen Scam”, you’ll get about 290,000 references.
This forum gets a couple of these questions a week and the answer so far has remained static i.e. NO IT DOESN’T WORK. I believe that answer will remain in place for some time to come.
In any case, think about it. If it worked the US government would be mandating it for all cars instead of churning agriculture over to ethylene production. Wouldn’t they ?
Or it would be top secret.