could not resist! HHO

I was looking on duck duck go for some info on nickel catalysts, if you follow the logical line you end up at HHO cells. Especially as hydrogen and CO2 need nickel catalysts to combine, anyway sure enough the HHO stuff popped up, but one of the good guys who debunks this stuff has a video, i couldnt resist posting it as it had me in stitches.

I think he is a aus engineer, but has some good stuff on his vids. Also a little self promotion...... I will be starting a you tube channel .

Little Ghostman said:

I was looking on duck duck go for some info on nickel catalysts, if you follow the logical line you end up at HHO cells. Especially as hydrogen and CO2 need nickel catalysts to combine, anyway sure enough the HHO stuff popped up, but one of the good guys who debunks this stuff has a video, i couldnt resist posting it as it had me in stitches.

I think he is a aus engineer, but has some good stuff on his vids. Also a little self promotion...... I will be starting a you tube channel .

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yeah, i saw one of those videos where they ran an electrolysis machine, and then compressed the Hydrogen-Oxygen mixture into steel gas bottles, and then fed it into the carburetor of a car. meanwhile i'm thinking "you may use less gasoline, but you still have to pay for the extra electricity". the heat of combustion of the mix is higher than that of gasoline, but how much is that going to cause your electric bill to skyrocket? efficient electrolysis requires a lot of current, and a lot of the power is dissipated as heat in the water, the rest of the energy dissociates the water molecules (and there's heat spent there also). then you compress it, so... more loss of energy through heat. then you feed it into your carburetor, and the dissociated water burns and recombines, and the heat of combustion is significantly less than the heat loss in the dissociation process. to add insult to injury, some of the hydrogen has escaped from the container, and and electrolysis apparatus by diffusion, making the HHO mixture a little bit rich in oxygen (and because some hydrogen has escaped, the chemical energy available in recombination has been diminished.

unclejed613 said:

yeah, i saw one of those videos where they ran an electrolysis machine, and then compressed the Hydrogen-Oxygen mixture into steel gas bottles, and then fed it into the carburetor of a car. meanwhile i'm thinking "you may use less gasoline, but you still have to pay for the extra electricity". the heat of combustion of the mix is higher than that of gasoline, but how much is that going to cause your electric bill to skyrocket? efficient electrolysis requires a lot of current, and a lot of the power is dissipated as heat in the water, the rest of the energy dissociates the water molecules (and there's heat spent there also). then you compress it, so... more loss of energy through heat. then you feed it into your carburetor, and the dissociated water burns and recombines, and the heat of combustion is significantly less than the heat loss in the dissociation process. to add insult to injury, some of the hydrogen has escaped from the container, and and electrolysis apparatus by diffusion, making the HHO mixture a little bit rich in oxygen (and because some hydrogen has escaped, the chemical energy available in recombination has been diminished.

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Funny you mention that, normally as you know they it with cars alternator. So engineers always hit back with the fact that no energy is saved because the alternator runs the engine harder etc etc. As i mentioned the other week i went to a Environmental energy conference, i actually went on bio methane day (yes there is even a day for bio methane now!!). The conference on that day was mainly focused entirely on Bio Methane, have to say that this year was excellent!! So many tiny companies with some great products.

Anyway sure enough in the dark corners of the hall you get the HHO guys, some were even cheeky enough to have stands selling HHO cells!! You would not believe the number of people there from local authority energy departments who brought the cells!! So i wondered over as you do and asked a few questions, one of the first things the guy said to me was........

These cells really work! unlike normal HHO cells that use the energy from the car, ours use energy from outside the car. So turns out as you said they charge them up at home and run them with a separate battery. So apart from the obvious arguments i put forward, i came up with another, i asked him would injecting HHO into the inlet manifold increase the power or decrease the MPG? He said yes it would.

So i asked if he would mind showing me it working, he said he couldnt drive with it as it would need fitting, i asked if i could show the engine readings would he be able to run it on a stationary car? He again said yes.....

On the stall next to the Scania lorry one, was a stall with state of the art OBDC readers/writers. printers on them the lot! (£500), so having spoken to the guy on the ODBC stand alot i went and asked if i could borrow one the smaller ODBC readers and explained what is for. He grinned and said he could do better than that and to meet him in the car park.

So me and HHO man goto the carpark, I asked HHO man what car we needed and he said his would be ok to use, so the OBDC bloke comes over to us with a laptop and one of the top line readers. The HHO guy hooks up the Cell to his inlet manifold and runs the engine, the OBDC guy hooks into the ecu and on the laptop screen you see the MPG (the car is a merc, like alot of cars it has a read out on the dash of your current MPG), it had power and oxygen on the screen and all kinds of other information.

The HHO guy was perplexed as every time he put the tube into the inlet the MPG on the machine dropped, the max BHP dropped, the emission went up and so on. So the OBDC guy says to HHO man......how many of those have you sold, he says 30!! OBDC guy says i would get in your car and drive away very fast, HHO man asks why and the OBDC bloke says.......

In 40 mins its my turn to do the talk in the main hall, i am going to use your data to show how well our machine works!! The HHO guy went white, last i saw of him was him shoving stuff into box's and filling his car. So they are aware its a scam, or he wouldnt of run like that, we did tell him why the engine dropped power etc. That was the night the other HHO guys all gathered slowly around me in the bar/restaurant, Lucky i am 6'2 now and some the Bio guys were in the bar and came over, i left a bit after that as it started heating up lol.

I have a quick temper, last thing i wanted was getting into the middle of it and missing the final day. One final note, the HHO guy emailed me a few days back with a invoice attached for loss of earnings!! So i emailed back a invoice for treble the amount for the consultation and use of equipment

on older carburetor/point-condenser cars, injecting a small amount of water vapor into the intake manifold will improve gas mileage, but not due to a dissociation/recombination reaction. it actually moderates the burn rate of the fuel/air mixture, which causes vaporization of any aerosol fuel droplets (which don't always burn completely) into fuel vapor which burns more efficiently. since the flame front is slower, the aerosol droplets have time to absorb heat and vaporize while combustion is taking place. however, too much of a good thing can be bad. too much water and the burn rate gets too slow, and there will be unburned fuel in the exhaust. most modern cars can't benefit from water vapor injection because they are already burning fuel efficiently.

i have a book about gas engines from 1912, and one type of automotive carburetor that was in use back then was like a small fractional distillation tower. the fuel would be boiled by heat from the exhaust manifold and the carburetor, acting like a fractioning tower had a condensation chamber at the top where excess fuel vapor would condense out and go back to the boiler section. there was a throttle valve that opened to the intake manifold, and the column of fuel vapor would get sucked out and mixed with air. the text describing the carburetor said it was very fuel efficient because the fuel could burn efficiently at 100:1 mixture (because the surface area was molecular rather than aerosol droplets). the carburetor had it's limitations though, first that it required a regular carburetor to start the engine and get the evaporator up to operating temperature, second, there were circumstances where all of the lightest constituents of the fuel, leaving behind fuel constantly getting heavier and more difficult to boil (i.e. it would boil off mostly pentane and hexane, and leave much of the septane and octane behind). with the mixture not containing the right proportion of heavier alkanes, the engine would produce less power.

unclejed613 said:

on older carburetor/point-condenser cars, injecting a small amount of water vapor into the intake manifold will improve gas mileage, but not due to a dissociation/recombination reaction. it actually moderates the burn rate of the fuel/air mixture, which causes vaporization of any aerosol fuel droplets (which don't always burn completely) into fuel vapor which burns more efficiently. since the flame front is slower, the aerosol droplets have time to absorb heat and vaporize while combustion is taking place. however, too much of a good thing can be bad. too much water and the burn rate gets too slow, and there will be unburned fuel in the exhaust. most modern cars can't benefit from water vapor injection because they are already burning fuel efficiently.

i have a book about gas engines from 1912, and one type of automotive carburetor that was in use back then was like a small fractional distillation tower. the fuel would be boiled by heat from the exhaust manifold and the carburetor, acting like a fractioning tower had a condensation chamber at the top where excess fuel vapor would condense out and go back to the boiler section. there was a throttle valve that opened to the intake manifold, and the column of fuel vapor would get sucked out and mixed with air. the text describing the carburetor said it was very fuel efficient because the fuel could burn efficiently at 100:1 mixture (because the surface area was molecular rather than aerosol droplets). the carburetor had it's limitations though, first that it required a regular carburetor to start the engine and get the evaporator up to operating temperature, second, there were circumstances where all of the lightest constituents of the fuel, leaving behind fuel constantly getting heavier and more difficult to boil (i.e. it would boil off mostly pentane and hexane, and leave much of the septane and octane behind). with the mixture not containing the right proportion of heavier alkanes, the engine would produce less power.

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I dont know much about modern ecu's in cars, but they have alot of sensors, so if you add something to the inlet the ecu tries and corrects what it sees as an error, i guess they could remap it, but then you right back to square one, you still havnt gained a thing unless you steal the power or have a solar roof on the car lol. Modern fuel in the UK has next to no Hexane in it , Hexane is expensive and i often distill petrol for some of the fractions to use as general solvents (cheap way to get pet ether), running it through the GC you see trace amounts of Hexane which is a real shame as its got silly expensive to buy and ship, its also one of the best general purpose extraction solvents around.

i had read in a chemistry book that gasoline was (at least when that book was written) was a mixture of pentane, hexane, septane, and octane. the boiling points of those constituents are within a few degrees of each other. that was written in the late 1930s, and catalytic cracking had been invented by that time, but not used in any large scale refining until WWII. since the gas engine book was couple of decades older than the chemistry book, the mixture then known as "gasoline" was most likely pentane through octane. gasoline still consists of a number of liquids with different boiling points (and flash points).

hmmm... according to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexane
hexanes are still used in gasoline. maybe you're referring to a particular isomer, or hexane at a very high level of purity?

unclejed613 said:

i had read in a chemistry book that gasoline was (at least when that book was written) was a mixture of pentane, hexane, septane, and octane. the boiling points of those constituents are within a few degrees of each other. that was written in the late 1930s, and catalytic cracking had been invented by that time, but not used in any large scale refining until WWII. since the gas engine book was couple of decades older than the chemistry book, the mixture then known as "gasoline" was most likely pentane through octane. gasoline still consists of a number of liquids with different boiling points (and flash points).

hmmm... according to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexane
hexanes are still used in gasoline. maybe you're referring to a particular isomer, or hexane at a very high level of purity?

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Lead free petrol on the whole dosnt have much at all, its got some isomers but not many and not in any large amount. I have a old chemistry text from the 60's when lead was in petrol, all kinds of goodies like benzene etc.

In the book it describes a fairly elaborate fractional column and the ability to extract 11 distinct boiling points. Now there is such odd amounts in it that you tend to get 3 fractions come over. when you see petrol ether 30-50 its talking about the boiling points of whats in it (i am sure you are totally aware of this). My assumption was that it would contain fractions that boil over that range, instead its likely that fraction will over come over at a temp somewhere in the range 30-50.

You also get 20-40, 40-60, 60-90 and some higher ones. but my own experience is from 2 ltr of petrol and a big column i get roughly 3 different boiling points. It could be anti knock agents or whatever 'bind' the chemicals i dont really know. Eve more strange is you boil a fraction and collect everything at a precise temp. Stick it in a GC and you see 5-6 things in small amounts.

I have seen old gas chromatographs of petrol, they make me drool , man they had some good junk in that stuff! All that benzene just for the asking

There is a serious technical evaluation of HHO addition here, for anyone interested.
https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/43012/zammit_experimental_2014.pdf

In essence it can possibly give some very, very marginal benefits, _if_ the engine management system is fully recalibrated for different timing and mixture requirements..

Without that it's far more likely just to mess things up and decrease performance, if it does anything.

And, you are extremely unlikely to get the all the critical timing and mixture conditions right all the time outside a laboratory.

rjenkinsgb said:

There is a serious technical evaluation of HHO addition here, for anyone interested.
https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/43012/zammit_experimental_2014.pdf

In essence it can possibly give some very, very marginal benefits, _if_ the engine management system is fully recalibrated for different timing and mixture requirements..

Without that it's far more likely just to mess things up and decrease performance, if it does anything.

And, you are extremely unlikely to get the all the critical timing and mixture conditions right all the time outside a laboratory.

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Like emission targets, inside a lab is nothing like real world driving. I think it would take some doing to replicate real world driving. I wasnt aware of any research using remaps. As i said above if people wan to look into it then remapping goes without saying. BUT whatever you do you cant get more out than in, you can get it from different/cheaper sources but mostly these are alternator connected devices, those are a dead duck as it would break one the laws that there is no if and buts about.

The free lunch rule cannot be violated no matter what you do, energy cannot be made! it can only be transformed. You cant magic something into existence, electrons proton and even the sub atomics have to exist already to form something. Otherwise you could rightly claim yourself as god

large_ghsostman said:

The free lunch rule cannot be violated no matter what you do, energy cannot be made! it can only be transformed. You cant magic something into existence, electrons proton and even the sub atomics have to exist already to form something. Otherwise you could rightly claim yourself as god

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this also presents problems for fusion energy because all of the electromagnetic energy released (even in the form of gamma and X- radiation) is part of the thermal losses if it can't be captured in some meaningful way. since gamma and X-radiation tends to pass through most substances unimpeded the loss of this energy is non-recoverable. the only fusion reaction that has been proposed that doesn't have large losses of this type is hydrogen+boron->carbon+beta. since the beta particles are electrons, the reaction produces electricity directly.

back to hydrocarbon fuels, this data sheet https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp72-c3.pdf references an Air Force assessment from 1989 that shows hexane as a constituent of gasoline (22.6% by weight adding up the three hexane isomers shown). the fact that there may be a shortage of purified hexane for diagnostic use is not an indicator that it is not in gasoline, but more likely an indicator that obtaining hexane in highly purified form is more difficult than refining gasoline. the type of hexane you are referring to is most likely linear hexane, which is half of the hexane content in gasoline.

while looking all of this data up, i came across a method people are using to clean carbon buildup out of their engines, and in some cases improve their fuel mileage, and that's the addition of small amounts of automatic transmission fluid to the fuel. i know from experience (due to a faulty modulator valve diaphragm) that large amounts of transmission fluid in the fuel produces huge amounts of water vapor (white smoke). it did improve the gas mileage of that car until i replaced the valve diaphragm (but at the cost of 2 quarts of ATF per tank of gas that was getting sucked into the carb, didn't save me any money).

unclejed613 said:

this also presents problems for fusion energy because all of the electromagnetic energy released (even in the form of gamma and X- radiation) is part of the thermal losses if it can't be captured in some meaningful way. since gamma and X-radiation tends to pass through most substances unimpeded the loss of this energy is non-recoverable. the only fusion reaction that has been proposed that doesn't have large losses of this type is hydrogen+boron->carbon+beta. since the beta particles are electrons, the reaction produces electricity directly.

back to hydrocarbon fuels, this data sheet https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp72-c3.pdf references an Air Force assessment from 1989 that shows hexane as a constituent of gasoline (22.6% by weight adding up the three hexane isomers shown). the fact that there may be a shortage of purified hexane for diagnostic use is not an indicator that it is not in gasoline, but more likely an indicator that obtaining hexane in highly purified form is more difficult than refining gasoline. the type of hexane you are referring to is most likely linear hexane, which is half of the hexane content in gasoline.

while looking all of this data up, i came across a method people are using to clean carbon buildup out of their engines, and in some cases improve their fuel mileage, and that's the addition of small amounts of automatic transmission fluid to the fuel. i know from experience (due to a faulty modulator valve diaphragm) that large amounts of transmission fluid in the fuel produces huge amounts of water vapor (white smoke). it did improve the gas mileage of that car until i replaced the valve diaphragm (but at the cost of 2 quarts of ATF per tank of gas that was getting sucked into the carb, didn't save me any money).

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This has made me really curious, are you looking at UK petro0l? I ask because nothing on the GC comes back as Hexane or a identifiable isomer. So makes me wonder if its not uk petrol or maybe they are adding an additive that changes it, but chemically that is more wishful thinking than fact....

When i get a chance i will run it through the GC and mass spectrometer, the MS will tell me exactly what molecules are in it and maybe if anything is happening. But its baffled me totally, Hexane has shot up in price in the last 12 months, even n-Hexane reagent grade non isomer separated has hit nearly £35 for 500ml then £25 for shipping on top. The bigger worry is something i saw last year with Chloroform, cheap then really expensive just before it was almost impossible to get at a sensible price.

Alot of it is to get people (including universities) to use 'greener' solvents like ethyl acetate, but for some things you cant beat hexane for extraction. am with the phosphate rules and banning tri sodium phosphate from cleaning products because of the aquatic impact with algae etc. Trouble is there has not been an alternative found that come close to the cleaning power of TSP at its level of safety.

Thanks for looking into it, its spured me on to try and find out what is going on! Chloroform i make from IPA and 21% homemade active bleach (alot nicer calmer reaction than using Acetone), but Hexane i would deeply miss! I do recover most of mine via a Rotovap, but its not going to last forever.

Annoying thing is 2 years ago 20 ltr ofit cost £30 delivered! and £45 for known isomer of it.

That alternative energy conference had some fusion talks, you could tell the physicists and scientists in the room, they were the ones who got up at slide 2 and walked to the bar .

There was/is a company called Mekong energy services from Japan i think, they were there with a stand and a mock up of a cold fusion set up.

Generally i dont add anything to the tractor except my own home made super duper bio diesel made from fatbergs , the big drawback being its hygroscopic to some extent, so maybe i do see some the steam effect. Not from the summer on obviously, as we tend to burn through tractor fuel from around now until late November.

That massey fergy we got drinks fuel like a sailor on leave for the first time. one of the newest tractors we have ever owned and by far one the worse for fuel economy, what really stings is the fairly small tank on it.

If you do contract cutting or travel 20 odd miles to a job, then you get 6 hours work from it before you got to drive back to refuel OR buy red diesel at a petrol station, that costs more than mine but its the break in work that really adds costs.

If i am cutting hay i like to cut in large blocks so everything is the same age roughly when you turn it.

since the documentation i'm finding on the composition of gasoline are all sourced in the USA, that would be american gasoline.

Looks like we are getting messed with stuff then!! But then again you also get ever clear ethanol where as we dont get anything near that purity without a license (exemption) and for alot more money. Just noticed same thing with Toluene, it seems to be climbing in price.

large_ghostman said:

But then again you also get ever clear ethanol where as we dont get anything near that purity without a license (exemption) and for alot more money.

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they sell it in liquor stores.... depends on what state, though. i grew up in Massachusetts, and they don't sell it there, but they sell it here in Colorado. from what it sounds like, your government doesn't want people tinkering with anything more dangerous than bubble wrap. that's not to say we don't have politicians here that have the same silly ideas, but we do have enough level-headed politicians to keep most of the silly ones from getting their way.

unclejed613 said:

... your government doesn't want people tinkering with anything more dangerous than bubble wrap. ...

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Good one, UJ ...

(BTW, love your avatar. Were you Tank Corps?)

unclejed613 said:

they sell it in liquor stores.... depends on what state, though. i grew up in Massachusetts, and they don't sell it there, but they sell it here in Colorado. from what it sounds like, your government doesn't want people tinkering with anything more dangerous than bubble wrap. that's not to say we don't have politicians here that have the same silly ideas, but we do have enough level-headed politicians to keep most of the silly ones from getting their way.

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They are just tax grabbing!

What made you think we were allowed to play with bbubble wrap? People suffocate with that ****

cowboybob said:

Good one, UJ ...

(BTW, love your avatar. Were you Tank Corps?)

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Thats his town car, saves on parking

no, i was in Signal Corp, but on a field exercise at Ft Irwin, one of the tank unit's commo vans had a problem with their radio (AN/GRC-106). they were receiving no signal. they weren't sure they were transmitting either. i opened up one of their intercom boxes and took out the neon bulb that lights up when somebody (like the driver) wants to use the intercom. i took the bulb and held it next to the antenna cable, and told the R/O to key up the transmitter, and the neon lamp lit up, so i told them that yes, the transmitter was working. the GRC-106 has a push-lock wire terminal for an external wire antenna for the receiver, so i hooked one end of a spool of telephone wire up to the receive antenna terminal, and had somebody unspool about 500 feet of wire across the desert. it worked, they were receiving, so they were able to log into the teletype net. their team chief made me an honorary tanker.

large_ghostman said:

Thats his town car, saves on parking

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i wish i had one, it would be great in traffic too...

unclejed613 said:

... team chief made me an honorary tanker ...

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That works in my book ...

large_ghostman said:

That massey fergy we got drinks fuel like a sailor on leave for the first time. one of the newest tractors we have ever owned and by far one the worse for fuel economy, what really stings is the fairly small tank on it.

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Likely has tier 3 or higher emissions compliance. That's why. Farmers and big commercial construction and earthmoving people here hate hate hate hate what Tier 3 and 4 did to their equipments fuel burn, general operating costs and overall service lives for what tiny gains it makes in overall emissions improvements. 20% of 20% of 20% 0f 20% is a pretty low number to be trying it cost justify as worth anything in reality beyond being a huge power and money grab past the first two stages of improvement and clean up that were justified.

The BTO (Big Time Operator) farmers I work with seasonally here have been watching their fuel consumptions per unit of crop harvested going up for years despite the overall operating efficiency of going to bigger and bigger and more modern equipment that should have had it solidly going the other way.

As is too many are finding the new Tier 4 farm machinery has fuel consumption numbers for actual useful work done approaching the less than brag worthy numbers that antique equipment, like the 2 cylinder John Deere tractors and flathead I4 and I6 gasoline burning engine powered machinery of the 1930, 40's and 50's had.
(manufactures say one set of numbers, reality however is showing far far worse numbers in too many cases to be denied random flukes at this point.)

large_ghostman said:

They are just tax grabbing!

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Exactly, That's what a huge part of the push for deregulation and review of overreaching all encompassing blanket regulation for localized issues is about here. It's not that we don't care about our environment. We do. What we don't care for is ridiculous unjustified rules and regulations (and fees, and fines and ever more costly useless bureaucracy supported by it all) that have too little real world validity being forced on everyone.

Nobody here in the midwest likes being told that we have to do water conservation (while we are having flooding problems) because california or somewhere else is having a drought or that we need to start taking out much needed water retainment systems (during our drought now) because california or somewhere else is having flooding. Let the locals deal with local problems on their own as they find fitting and only step in with blanket regulations when they fit the large scale problems that need them.

Same with being told you can't do ABC because it may affect some organism that is not and never has been known or found to inhabit the area. Assuming something does live someplace (even though it never been confirmed) is not a justification to regulate 'just in case'. When it has been found and has been seen to be noticeably negatively affected by ABC action, then it's fair to put some reasonable regulations and monitoring in place in that area. Not before and not 'just in case' (because it gives bureaucracy, and those who push for it, more unwarranted control and cash flow for it.)