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Car hydrogen conversion kit
- Thread starter ScoTTyBEEE
- Start date
- Joined
- 1 Jun 2004
- Posts
- 2,021
- Location
- London
It looks like you just feed it in through the air filter and it aids normal combustion.
It works in that it does provide a fuel source when ingested by the engine but where does that fuel source come from?
Burn Petrol to turn the engine - 30% efficient
Engine turns alternator to produce electricity - 55% efficient
Electricity used for electrolysis of water - 70% efficient (being generous)
Produced hydrogen & oxygen (HHO) fed into engine
Ultimately your energy source is still petrol. Worse than this each step to generate your HHO is inefficient and loses much of the input energy. In the example above you take fuel (petrol) transform it through several steps and return to the start with a new fuel (HHO) but have lost almost 90% of the energy content you started with.
HHO proponents contend they have some kind of secret sauce that makes their HHO generator >100% efficient. To be precise the amount of electrical energy put into their generator is less than the thermal energy later released burning the HHO. They have provided no proof of this or what the ratio of energy input to output is.
The other problem with these HHO devices is they produce such a tiny amount of HHO it is completely insignificant.
Take one of these generators and stick a balloon on top. You would be surprised how long it takes to fill. I'm just going to say it takes 1 minute to produce a litre of gas.
Lets say we have a 1.6 litre naturally aspirated engine running at 3000rpm. Turning the engine through 2 complete revolutions would cause it to consume 1.6 litres of air. At 3000rpm it consumes 2400 litres of air per minute.
Put another way the HHO flow is 2400 times smaller than the airflow.
Even allowing for massive inaccuracies in my figures and that we are partially comparing apples to oranges it is clear the effect of HHO is effectively zero.
People see improvements through either confirmation bias or driving more gently. That is why there are no reliable tests of the technology.
I'm off to sleep now but I'll have another look at the thread in the morning.
Burn Petrol to turn the engine - 30% efficient
Engine turns alternator to produce electricity - 55% efficient
Electricity used for electrolysis of water - 70% efficient (being generous)
Produced hydrogen & oxygen (HHO) fed into engine
Ultimately your energy source is still petrol. Worse than this each step to generate your HHO is inefficient and loses much of the input energy. In the example above you take fuel (petrol) transform it through several steps and return to the start with a new fuel (HHO) but have lost almost 90% of the energy content you started with.
HHO proponents contend they have some kind of secret sauce that makes their HHO generator >100% efficient. To be precise the amount of electrical energy put into their generator is less than the thermal energy later released burning the HHO. They have provided no proof of this or what the ratio of energy input to output is.
The other problem with these HHO devices is they produce such a tiny amount of HHO it is completely insignificant.
Take one of these generators and stick a balloon on top. You would be surprised how long it takes to fill. I'm just going to say it takes 1 minute to produce a litre of gas.
Lets say we have a 1.6 litre naturally aspirated engine running at 3000rpm. Turning the engine through 2 complete revolutions would cause it to consume 1.6 litres of air. At 3000rpm it consumes 2400 litres of air per minute.
Put another way the HHO flow is 2400 times smaller than the airflow.
Even allowing for massive inaccuracies in my figures and that we are partially comparing apples to oranges it is clear the effect of HHO is effectively zero.
People see improvements through either confirmation bias or driving more gently. That is why there are no reliable tests of the technology.
I'm off to sleep now but I'll have another look at the thread in the morning.