fuel from water – is hho a scam?
There are numerous websites that claim that drastic fuel efficiency improvements (or even freedom of fossil fuel) can be achieved by seemingly simple system that creates brown gas/hho from water.
these claims are typically divided into 2:
1. HHO introduced in combustion drastically improves combustion efficiency. Though the amount of hydrogen is not substantial enough to be major source of fuel the improved combustion process helps capture a whole lot more energy from the fuel. Improvement in efficiency has to be huge as it is enough to cover the energy used in electric production for the HHO system and substantial improvement in gas mileage.
2. Burning HHO creates much more energy than it takes to create it – this is along the Stanley Meyers’ claims. Basically HHO is actual fuel in the combustion not just helping agent. Thses systems basically claim that you can split water with energy amount X and recover many times X energy by burning the gas back into water. As the suggested us is in internal combustion engines with very low efficiency (25-35% as far as I know) it means that the created excess energy must be huge.
Just to get even the process would be roughly something like this:
1kw electricity (80 amps at 12 volts) used to creating gas has to yield enough gas to create thermal energy of 3kw (at 33% engine efficiency) back on the axle – and this wouldn’t yet yield any mileage improvement.
HHO websites use the term over-unity to explain how more energy can be recovered than was invested. Is this really possible?
Are these claims too good to be true scams / frauds?
They seem to often involve some kind of money collecting licensing structure and some have been around for long time yet no confirmed proof seems to be around.
3 more things that I can’t quite grasp.
4. None of these systems seem to use any kind of proper fuel metering system – the gas is fed at quite arbitrary rate to the engine – wouldn’t (if indeed there is enough HHO to be substantial fuel) this mess up the mixture of the engine? I get that the gas has oxygen and hydrogen in “perfect” ratio.
5. If indeed the claim 2 was true then wouldn’t it make much more sense to use the HHO in some other way than very inefficient internal combustion engine? Heating for example – us fraction of energy to fire a boiler with HHO. Or turbine generator – much higher reliability and efficiency could be reached. It should be pretty easy to create profitable business for units that use 1kw and return 5-10kw.
6. Where does the extra energy come from – at lest roughly what is teh theory of teh process that creates more energy than it uses?
I undertaken the argument that “if it worked it would be used commonly” – however that doesn’t explain the physics or lack of them.
to the other answerer: Adding oxygen does not improve burning. Engine needs quite accurately metered ratio of fuel and air (oxygen) too much oxygen causes unstable combustion and excessive heat – besides risking catastrophic failure through melted pistons or knocking the very hot flame creates NOx emissions.
Direct injection engines can run leaner (more air to fuel).
Direct ignition allows leaner mixture but the reason is not unburned fuel in traditional fuel metering. Cannot see HHO gas would change anything here. (besides cause too much heat potentially).
And I call it HHO as that is what the fuel cell builders call it. Basically it is water that is split into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis.
(and there was no number 3 in my question list – sorry)
