The assertion that electrolysis requires more energy to produce hydrogen than the resulting hydrogen energy you get is something that many of us learned from our college physics courses. Others learned it from reading similar materials.
Many of the replies in this thread are based with such laws of physics in mind. Is that what you’re questioning?
Eventually something like this may be practical. At the moment it does not exist and the problem is not that anyone is totally dismissing the concept.
The problem is that your “personal dear friend” sdkerekh (in cahoots on this forum?) is promoting something as existing and viable at the moment.
As Joe Mario mentions you seem to be willing to overlook a few things; as in we don’t need no stinkin’ physics.
Majpops and sdkerekh, things would be simpler on us, you, and this forum if you would spend your own money on one of these things and motor on forever by simply filling up at the water hose.
In the time it takes to make one post here you could have logged on to any one of dozens of sites with credit card in hand and ordered one of these amazing devices.
Install it and snicker at us for the rest of your life. Would that not be much simpler than posting against a bunch of heretics?
goof ball this was directed at YOU… well maybe not at you directly, but at people who are looking for something for nothing, and are pouting because it is not handed to you.
it is NOT up to anyone here to prove this theory wrong. the correct way to deal with this is to prove it RIGHT.
i am thinking that this website is NOT the place to come looking for approval of an untried, unproven system.
go yonder and find a website which delves into these ideas.
this is NOT the web site you are looking for.
Cappy208 is secretly the CarTalk Jedi “This is not the website you are looking for.” 
Every time there is an increase in the price of gas, we get these Rube Goldberg devices touted. Nearly all of them don’t work, and most actually decrease your mileage.
The various laws of nature dictate that you don’t get anything for nothing, and with every change of enegy form there is a net loss.
If you could make hydrogen at home in Washington state where elctricity is cheap, and then put it through your car you could come out ahead if you amortized the equipment over a very long time.
If any of these gadgets worked, the Japanese and Europwnas would be using them already, since their gas prices are at least twice as high.
I’ve seen only one item that worked back in the 70s; it was a disconnect switch for the A/C compressor when the accelerator was pressed. That temporary disconnect required less gas for the engine while accelerating.
I have also looked on the internet for such research. What I found is a different setup, that creates hydrogen gas from a fraction of the gas, and creates a plasma and injects it into the engine. They claim it cleans up emissions and can improve mileage by 20%.
http://consumerguideauto.howstuffworks.com/the-hydrogen-boosted-gasoline-engine-cga.htm
This idea surfaced in 2003, but hasn’t result in a product yet. I wonder why.
this is why:
I started this post in the hopes of getting objective information about systems that claim to get increased fuel economy from hydrogen produced by electroylsis. I also hoped to find information about an actual test. My research has lead me to believe there has NOT been such a test.
There have been many people who have given me some objective rational reasons they believe the system would not work. The two arguments that make the most sense to me are 1. You would lose any gains from the hydrogen because of the increased load to produce the electricity to produce the electroylsis. 2. The amound of hyrdrogen produced would be very small. 3. The information from this site: “http://mb-soft.com/public2/hydrogen.html” (copy and paste to your browser).
I was disappointed by the number of people who took instead of using rational arguments, instead resorted to insults, insinuations and outright accusations.
Buy one, install it, and ignore the heretics. Problem solved.
In the time this thread has gone on you could have already been the proud owner of one of these miracle workers.
Well, here’s the rub, and maybe a free lesson learned by me that you won’t have to, sderekh! [posted on the other thread, too]
I had actually posted a question to Car Talk about this last weekend, because I figured if these guys knew anything about it then I would trust them. I was genuinely curious about this option (found online, had been looking for something else) and unfortunately I impulse-bought a document “detailing” how to put together a machine/contraption that would do this. My first think-through made sense, but granted I also could not find a source that I trusted to tell me one way or another. Hence I wrote on these boards (thank you Click & Clack).
However, I was set right – it won’t work nearly enough to make it worth the while is my impression – and I have re-learned the lesson not to take anything on the web at face value… ESPECIALLY when the webdesign is so gawdawful.
So for the benefit of all, in hopes of getting at least an entertaining return on the $45 I dropped on this, I’m uploading the document with the hopes that I can disseminate it far & wide and get my “revenge” that way.
Sort of like the ‘Neiman-marcus cookie’ recipe story, although I think that was just a story.
Please spread far & wide!!!
I am a high school chemistry teacher and we recently started discussing alternate fuels. We also made batteries and did electrolysis of water. During the process we ran across the HHO, Hydrogen on-demand generators.
At first I thought hydrogen (produced by water split by electrolysis as in our experiment using a 9V battery) gas was used as an alternative fuel source. Then the following newscast was aired, showing that the Hydrogen and oxygen actually provide a cleaner burning environment in the combustion chamber. http://www.wptv.com/content/specialreports/story.aspx?content_id=74b15465-2ebb-49e0-acb1-939c4bb13a28 They did an investigative report and found a 60% increase in fuel efficiency after one month as proven by a dynamometer.
My mechanic will not install the one I purchased from eBay. He installed several back in 1975 and they did increase gas mileage, but he said that the valve seals got destroyed due to the high heat. I’m trying to get information to see if anyone has this on long-term and experienced problems with the valve seals.
Interesting link. Too bad it’s a load of BS:
Modern combustion engines burn something like 97% or 98% of the gas delivered to the cylinders, not the 85% the makers of the magic device are quoted as claiming.
The reporter says the fuel economy of the test vehicle rose from 9.4 MPG to 23.2 MPG, for an increase of 61%. Um, according to my calculator, that’s actually an increase of 248%, which is complete nonsense.
Therefore, I can only conclude that the linked page is totally bogus or the t.v folks were taken in by the con artists.
As a chemistry teacher, you should know better.
Theoretically, mathematically, yeah, it works. But the amount of hydrogen it produces is so miniscule that the gasoline savings is not worth mentioning. Being said, also remember that any weight-ANY weight on a car requires fuel to move that weight. This gizmo weighs SOMETHING (doesn’t matter if it’s only one pound-it still has weight). Any piddly ‘extra’ boost the mileage may get is more than eaten up by the weight of this thing (not to mention the initial cost, which you will never recover through gas savings). If you want to be cool and say you’re helping the environment or something like that-then go for it, you’re not going to hurt anything. If you’re thinking it’s going to help with your gas mileage, then I’m afraid you’re wasting your time and money.
Silly NYBo, you should know 96.578% of the statistics are made up 87.5624% of the time.
ok sderekh im new here but i will give you the info you seem to be wanting. first “will it work” short answer no, long answer sort of. yes it will produce hho, yes hho will enhance performance of an automotive engine. however these systems will not. and here is why. they are saying that the system uses energy that you car already produces to increase efficiency. that is the main falsehood. these devices draw energy from you battery, which in turn draws from you alternator. any device that draws battery power will cause the battery to need more power from the alternator to maintain a charge. you altetnator is equipped with a device known as a voltage regulator. the voltage regulator increases the power from the battery to the “field coils” in the alternator when demand is increased. that increase to the field coils causes an increase in magnetic resistance, therby causing an increase in power production and a simultaneous increase in horsepower used by the alternator. no hho generator is 100% efficient at turning electrical current into hho, not even close probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 percent. and no internal combustion engine is 100% efficient in converting fuel of any type into mechanical energy. at best most are about 35% efficient. so in turn. oh by the way your alternator is at best 80% efficient at turning mechanical energy into electrical current. do the math, this equals a loss in energy. its kinda like putting a windmill on top of your electric car. if you want to experiment try coupling a 2 or more hho generators to car batteries charged off cheap grid power in the trunk. i dont know but at least then the laws of thermodynamics wouldnt be against you…
well i bought the water for gas system i own two car lots in troy,mo i put it on a old ford ranger last thursday so far all i know is it does seem to run alot better doesn’t ping or smoke or anything like i was scared of i did put it on just a old truck to see fist the truck was getting before was 17.8 mpg then drove the truck about 200 miles over the weekend then sunday refilled it up and it is at 21.4 mpg i read the stupid book lol so now increaseing the baking soda don’t know if it will help or not yet but i does seem to run alot stronger i am just trying it out to see if it works i haven’t changed any other varables yet but i will report back on next fill up the truck is a 1993 ford ragner v6 4x4 131k miles but the 6 mpg was nice for first try but idk really want to put a couple tousand miles on it before i talk good or bad about it yes this might be a scam or joke i may have wasted three hunderd bucks on it but i have spent on more stupid things lol
4 mpg lol mistype
You got a 22% improvement - not bad. As for the rest of the thread, I have seen numerous people hung up on the concept of hydrogen as fuel in this system. True, hydrogen acts as a fuel of sorts, but there is lots of documentation (get off the net and visit a library) that hydrogen gas enhances the combustion of gasoline in internal combustion engines. So basically, you’re adding a combustion enhancement, not another fuel, to the engine.
Another popular myth seems to revolve around the combustion efficiency in today’s engines. True, almost all of the gasoline is burned now, which would prompt the question “how much more efficient can it be?” All who claim to know something about thermodynamics apparently dozed off in class, because the idea here isn’t how much fuel burns, but how much work we can extract from the burning process. If a significant amount of the fuel burn occurs after the midpoint of the power stroke, you really don’t get much work, just heat. But, if you can speed the process so that the fuel burns faster, more work goes to the crankshaft.
The bottom line - a little hydrogen can indeed improve the efficiency of an internal combustion engine. Arvin Meritor is currently developing a “plasmatron” add-on that will derive hydrogen from a portion of the gasoline, then re-inject it back into the fuel. This was a joint development with MIT, with the idea being that gasoline is already in the car and people probably wouldn’t want to add two “fuels” (water and gas) every time they fill up.
“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” - Richard Feynman
ok you admit that it works…but you say you use more energy in the form of electrical from your battery than you get back in the cylinders…this is illogical because your motor is a gas combustion chamber that runs on gas not electicity so you dont lose any energy by using the electricity from your battery in the engine; they are both separate parts not linked in the horsepower output of the internal combustion process, especially since the battery is continuously recharged by the alternator while the engine turns, and this turning of the alternator is not burdened by adding a HHO; two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule gas into the intake of the engine…or brown gas as it is called. The only part that isnt free in this system is the cost of the water which contains the combined gasses of oxygen and hydrogen, ready made fuel that is readily available in mass quantities all over the earth. I dont know the exact increase in horsepower that is achieved in adding the HHO to your intake, but logical reasoning would tell me that there would be an increase and not a decrease like you suggest. A real breakthrough would be if some scientist actually found a way to add some element that causes water to combust when added to it automatically, so then all you would need is the element and water to make an engine that could do anything you need it to do for essentially the price of the water and the element that does the trick to it. I think it exist somewhere out there or can be discovered or made by a chemist or inventor.