Figuring amount of power from Hydrogen

[astrocady]

I would think this formula should be easy to find, but I've search and searched and my eye is tired, so I'm turning to y'all for help.

I have been asked to determine how much of the power of a hydrogen assisted ICE comes directly from the hydrogen. I know it's a very small amount, but I need a starting point.

Does anyone know how many BTU are contained in a liter of HHO?

Thanks in advance...

Steve

[Owen_]

Well I did find this number a long time ago, but since I can't remember how to spell my middle name some times, that number is long gone. But an alternate way to figure it out is:
the wattage necessary to make the given amount of HHO in a cell that is 100% efficient. Then take 20-30% of that to account for the efficiency of the ICE, then if you want it in HP there are something like 748.5 watts in one HP.

[astrocady]

Thank, Owen, but what I'm actually looking for is what percentage of the power that an engine with HHO assist produces, is actually generated directly by the combustion of the HHO. So if the engine is producing a total of 10,000 BTU (or any other convenient unit of measurement) and the engine is being fed 4 LPM of HHO which produces 10 BTUs when combusted, then the percentage of power being produced directly from the HHO would be 10/10,000 = .1%. What I need to know is how many BTU are in each liter of HHO.

[myoldyourgold]

My feeble guess is 7646.4 BTU per Liter Don't quote me but that is what I remember reading some where. It could be wrong. Try a google search for btu of hydroxy and you might find it.

[Owen_]

I found with a little searching that hydrogen has 319 Btu per cubic foot so HHO would have about 2/3 of that.

But you could still use the method I first mentioned. Ex:
small car at 60mph using 25hp to maintained speed
You are adding 2LPM of HHO
at 7.5MMW that is 267watts
25% of that (engines efficiency) is about 67watts
67/748 (watts in one HP) = about .09hp
.09hp/25hp= 0.36% of the power

This requires knowing the HP you are using, which requires some fancy tools, which you probably don't own (i don't... yet). But you could figure out some idea this by knowing your gas millage at this speed.

If you factor in the draw on your alternator this all goes out the window. For this .09hp you will draw:
say 6.5MMW for the 2L= 308watts
the efficiency of the alternator is at best 85% which would result in a draw of about 1/2hp on the engine.
So your adding a .5hp load for your .09hp gain, so you really have a system loss of .41hp

[astrocady]

Good answers, both of you. Together with what you told me and some stuff I finally found on my own, I think I have the info I need.

This is all about whether HHO assist qualifies as a "fuel additive" which is heavily regulated in some states. If the amount of "power" derived from a product is over a certain percentage of the total power produced, it is regulated as a "fuel additive". Not certain what that percentage is, but I think it about 10%. Hence my need for the calculations.

Here is where I'm at now -- I'm hoping this will satify the lawyer...

Determining the amount of "power" in a liter of HHO is not clear cut. It is clear that a liter of hydrogen gas contains 9.54 BTUs, but I have read that HHO contains 6 times more BTU's than hydrogen alone. Personally, I think this is probably true, but only if your looking at the explosive capacity of a container of HHO vs a container of pure hydrogen. Nothing burns without oxygen, so if you already have the needed oxygen inside the container, it will burn/explode faster and hotter.

However, if your looking at the mixture inside the combustion chamber I think it's a totally different story because the HHO has already been mixed with so much air that the minute amount of oxygen coming from the HHO gas is of no consequence. So at this time, I'm not going to count it.

Here are the values I came with. 1 liter of hydrogen gas contains 9.54 BTUs and 1 gallon of #2 diesel contains 140,000 BTU.

So, it you are driving down the road in your truck at 60 MPH getting 7 MPG, you are burning about 8.6 gallons per hour, or 1,204,000 BTUs/hour from the diesel, IF the engine was operating at 100% efficiency. Since the only about 50% (?) of the diesel is actually burned, even with HHO assist, that reduces the BTU/hr to 602,000.

If you are injecting HHO into the engine at the rate of 6 LPM, that would be 4 liters/minute of hydrogen or 240 liters per hour, or 2,290 BTU/hour at 100% efficiency, which is correct for the hydrogen . If you add the BTUs from the diesel that was combusted to the hydrogen that was combusted, you get a total of 604,290 BTUs/hr. So the percentage of that total that was produced directly from the combustion of hydrogen would be only .37%!!

I'm not sure this is all 100%, but it sounds right to me -- at least today ;-)

[Owen_]

though the O enhances combustion it doesn't actually add any BTU's to the fuel.

[IM2L844]

though the O enhances combustion it doesn't actually add any BTU's to the fuel.

It doesn't add BTU's to the fuel, but it does add Joules to the ensuing explosion that takes place.

Experiments have shown that increasing the oxygen content of the I.C.E. intake air from the naturally ocurring atmospheric oxygen content of 21% to just 24% can increase horsepower, torque and the fuel efficiency up to 6%.

This cannot be derived from the energy density of oxygen. it can only be derived from experimental data.

Allgood Automation was on the right track but was unable to get consistant results because, I believe, his methodology was fundementally flawed. You can view his experiment here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JkQZIm1wN0

A new apparatus needs to be designed and built where a vacuum can be created in a temperture controlled chamber of a certain volume, then HHO that has been thouroughly dried and filtered can be introduced until a psi equal to the ambient atmospheres of pressure is attained (somewhere between 14 and 15 psi). When this volume is ignited the energy released to raise a certain weight to a certain height can be measured and from that the energy content in joules per milliliter can be calculated (1 joule will raise 1 pound ~ 9 inches). B.T.U.'s are an inferior metric to use.

I'ts just my opinion, but I believe it is a supurfluous endeavor to use pure hydrogen as the basis of calculating or comparing possible gains from the introduction of HHO into an I.C.E.

[astrocady]

If our truck has an engine displacement of 16 liters, and it's a 4 cycle engine, that means it will suck in 16 liters of air every 2 revolutions (assuming naturally aspirated). So if our truck is cruising down the road at at 2000 RPM, it's injesting 16,000 liters of air every minute. If air contains 21% oxygen, then that equals 3,360 liters per minute of oxygen. If we're injecting 6 lpm of HHO, then we would need to add those extra 2 liters of oxygen bring the total up to 3,362 lpm of oxygen. 2/3362 = is only .06% increase in oxygen due to the HHO, so I think I'm safe in ignoring its effects.

I do agree 100% that the explosive energy of 1 liter of HHO is way more than 1 liter of pure hydrogen.

[myoldyourgold]

It doesn't add BTU's to the fuel, but it does add Joules to the ensuing explosion that takes place.

After seeing what astro was after I had planed to do a little reading to try and explain what the O does but you have saved me some gray cells. Thanks I need to keep them active but not over worked.