A skeptic's journey, my experience reading up on HHO and now starting...

[DigitalMocking]

I, like MrSmith of these forums, am a skeptic by trade and personality. If it's too good to be true, it has to be has been my mantra most of my life, and it's served me well so far. After reading his dedicated writeup, many of the other threads here and on some other forums, I can't say I'm a believer yet, but I'm willing to experiment on my own. I've ordered the necessary parts to build my own HHO reactor, and I have a few things going into this project that should make it relatively easy to quantify my results. I'm an active Hypermiller right now. I check and adjust tire pressure on my car weekly and I keep pretty anal retentive records of my gas mileage. If adding HHO and changing my car's F/A ratio and timing increases my gas mileage, I'll be the first to raise the believer flag and do what I can to convert others.

I currently drive a 1994 jetta 5 speed manual with the 2.0 engine in it. In mixed driving over the last 10 tanks of gas I'm getting 24.1mpg, which is just above the revised EPA numbers for my vehicle. Gas usage is measured via GPS readings, not the speedometer, as the vehicle has larger aftermarket tires installed. I've been considering going back to stock, thinner tires for some time now, but for the duration of this test, I don't want to change anything.

These are my thoughts going into this project;

It's current 6:32AM and I've been reading all night and I'm still having trouble figuring out where the increase in MPG is coming from at all. The law of Conservation of Energy tells me that the total energy of a system will remain the same, regardless of what I do with it in the middle. If I'm using energy to create HHO, the output of that energy even in a 100% efficient system will still be the same after I use the HHO to help propel the car forward. We all know the alternator hanging on our ICE engines aren't near 100% efficient.

The best thing I can come up with is that the HHO mixed with the fuel is acting as a catylyst that's having a significant change in the energy output of the resulting detonation. In theory, if we measured all of the emissions from an HHO/gas system, we should see less overall emissions from that vehicle because more of the mass went into the detonation to propel the car forward. The amount of energy released by burning the gasoline/HHO mixture would have to be higher than the energy needed to produce the HHO and the normal detonation of an equal amount of gasoline. That's the only way this would work, make the detonation more efficient in terms of energy released vs physical byproduct. Unfortunately I can't find any science to back that up, no one has done energy release tests of HHO/Gasoline mixtures, nor emissions captures from HHO vehicles.

What bothers me most overall to be honest are the amount of snake oil salesmen who have been attracted to HHO, the worst of the bunch seems to be the pyramid scam of water4gas.com. I have additional concerns about the long term viability of an HHO plant, production of noxious and poisonous byproducts and how we deal with their disposal.

I also wonder if a lot of the supposed increases in mileage don't come from people being aware of their driving habits. I have a 2004 jeep grand cherokee with the big v8 in it. When my wife drives it, she sees 15mpg on average sourced over her last 10 tanks of gas. I took the jeep for about 2 months, I see 21mpg on average, doing mostly the same driving, but I practice a lot of hypermilling and I check and adjust my tire pressure once a week.

So please, don't think I'm going into this starry eyed about how wonderful it'll be to get 35mpg from my beater Jetta. I've seen enough in the way of documentation from some levelheaded people that I want to test it out for myself. The overall cost is very small (less than 100 bucks) to build a test system to see if adding about 1lpm of HHO to my jetta will have any effect.

I plan on building a simple plant like the one MrSmith has outlined and doing the adjustments to the ECU via vag-com software and lemmiwinks.

I'll detail my build, and results in this thread going forward. If anyone has any comments on some of the questions raised, I'd love to hear them. I'd really like to understand where the increase in efficacy of the fuel is coming from.

[wrxdrvr]

As I think I understand it. the increase in energy comes from using the faster detonation of the fuel to push down the piston as it is already starting to go down and not as it is still going up. So the timing needs to be changed to get the benefits... I too have just started to read about all of this so...

[BoyntonStu]

A guy installs a booster and he drives 60 miles and refills the tank.


Wow!!! A 80% MPG imprvement!!


I say, BOW WOW!

Premature evaluation.


Drive at least 10 gallons of gas distance.


Until then, keep it to yourself.


BoyntonStu

[Cadillac]

The gains generally come from the illegal tampering of stock emissions equipment. This allows most to run less gas and supplement hydrogen as the fuel. The hydrogen that is used is way, way more then the amount of gas that would have to be used.

A liter per minute of output would equal 0.264 gallons. In an hour that would be 15.84 gallons of hydrogen. A car that gets 30 MPG at 55 MPH would only use a maximum of 1.83 gallons of gas in an hour. Keep in mind that hydrogen is no where near as powerful as gasoline but with those production numbers you can see the potential for supplementing it as part of the fuel.

Energy is already losed from making the alternator turn. In most cars the alternator is pulling anywhere from 15-25 HP already. With the vast majority of the HHO systems being used there is no real added strain. These alternators are made to go in multiple cars with multiple accessories so they see very little drag or heat build up from pulling extra amps. Not to mention most alternators are already at maxium output by 2000 rpms.

As far as pollution goes everything is out of the window once the HHO is equipped. The Catalytic Convertor is set-up for exhaust at the stoichiometric point. The stoichiometric point is when most of the exhaust gas is oxidized CO2. The convertor can easily reduce this amount with fresh air supplied to it (via the A.I.R.system or the secondary A.I.R.system) and in the cooling of the gas. Once you get away from the stoichiometric ratio (14.7:1) all bets are out the window. If you run to lean (to hot) an abundance of NOX is present and more CO2. More then the Catalytic Convertor can handle. If the mixture is to rich (or cool) carbon dioxide is reduced but only in favor of carbon monoxide. The catalytic convertor is not set up to finish the break down of carbon monoxide so it is escaping the exhaust outlet in great numbers now. It is far better for the enviroment as a whole to put out the carbon dioxide then any of the other two.

If you are using tap water then chlorine is a by-product. It will generally escape water within 24-48 hours of it being exposed to air. Most people are trying for air tight systems though. Some of the electrolytes have the same by-product. For those who don't know chlorine is also called "mustard gas". A commonly used posion in WWI it would cause a person to start bleeding in the lungs and then drowned in their own blood. Flouride has to be some what of a concern with it being turned into a gas. This is generally only polluted by man in nuclear by-products and in aluminum making. In water it is harmless. Once turned into a gas it is very powerful posion. I really don't know enough about some of the other electrolytes to make specific comments. These are really minimual problems with water and electrolytes since HHO is not full scale.

Got to say I like the way your are trying to go at this DigitalMocking.

[Stevo]

I'd really like to understand where the increase in efficacy of the fuel is coming from.

http://hhoforums.com/showthread.php?t=1159

I would highly doubt that somehow every person who claims a gas mileage increase is somehow a part of a pyramid scam even though there are a lot of shady sites out there. And I am not stating that you said anything like that either, so there should be no confusion there. What I am saying is that a lot of people have done the same thing you are about to do with mixed results. Different engines, different computer controlled systems and different levels of mechanical/computer knowledge. Good luck on your journey.

[DigitalMocking]

Cadillac, that was an excellent response, thank you, I hadn't considered the reality that we're utilizing energy that's already lost by drawing on it for use, thank you.

BoyntonStu; I'm not trying to debunk this, I had honest questions, if this is something you'd like to see move past a few small hobbyists, some civility will help. I'll run more than 10 gallons of gas, I'd like to get through 10 tanks or so, I'm hoping weather conditions over the next 3 months will be the same as they were last year, that way even some of the potential enviornmental factors will be lessened.

[Smith03Jetta]

If your habits are what you say they are, then you probably have Gas mileage data going back a year or more. It should be relatively easy to decide if you are getting any benefit from HHO. I've tried several things to get better mileage out of my Jetta. I'm currently not running any lean settings. I'm just working on my ignition timing by itself to see what adjusting it does to the mixture.

I think I blew a fuse or something this morning. My cruise control would not work on my drive to work. I'll have to check that this evening. It has never been a problem before. Today is the first time I drove my Jetta this week.

[BoyntonStu]

"In most cars the alternator is pulling anywhere from 15-25 HP already. "

I disagree:

20 HP = 20 x 746 watts/HP = 14,920 Watts

14,920/14 Volts = 1065 Amps

Way, way, out of range of automobile alternators.

I hope that this helps.

BoyntonStu

[DigitalMocking]

If your habits are what you say they are, then you probably have Gas mileage data going back a year or more. It should be relatively easy to decide if you are getting any benefit from HHO. I've tried several things to get better mileage out of my Jetta. I'm currently not running any lean settings. I'm just working on my ignition timing by itself to see what adjusting it does to the mixture.

I think I blew a fuse or something this morning. My cruise control would not work on my drive to work. I'll have to check that this evening. It has never been a problem before. Today is the first time I drove my Jetta this week.

I bought the car in May '07, I had originally bought it to mess around in the local stock autocross circuit, I got the gps 2 months later and started keeping gas records then.

Interesting, so you haven't leaned out the mixture with lemmiwinks?

[Smith03Jetta]

I did lean out my fuel with Lemmiwinks to see what would happen. It helped some but now I'm trying a test with only adjusting the ignition timing by itself to see what happens.

To be honest with you the adjustments that I'm making with Lemmiwinks causes the acceleration to not be smooth. The linear adjustments are probably making the 3d Fuel Map look all goofy. I've been cheap and haven't purchased some more expensive fuel management software.

It can get jerky and power can drop off during acceleration or at higher RPMs. I haven't found the magic bullet yet. I'll post it when I get it.

Here's a number that you can use when calculation how amp draw reduced gas mileage. Every 10 amps of electricity used reduces your gas mileage .4 mpg. The most a VW Jetta Alternator (90 amps) can affect your gas mileage if it is pulling the maximum 90 amps is 3.6 mpg. If your alternator is being taxed at 90 amps your battery is discharging just to keep your engine running.

An air conditioner on this car reduces your gas mileage about 10%.
Air Conditioner use max effect = 2.4 mpg
100% Alternator use = 3.6 mpg

While each vehicle reaches its optimal fuel economy at a different speed (or range of speeds), gas mileage usually decreases rapidly at speeds above 60 mph.

You can assume that each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.26 per gallon for gas

An extra 100 pounds in your vehicle could reduce your MPG by up to 2%.