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Thread: Hcs

  1. #1
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    Hcs

    Hello guys,

    I just found out yesterday of this technology developed by someone in Indonesia called Hydrocarbon Cracking System.

    I noticed that at least 2 people from this forum have used it. hhofox and Roland Jacques.

    I was wondering if there's other people who've tried it or heard of it. I'm curious about your thoughts on it.

    Also, for hhofox and Roland Jacques: are you still using the technology ?

    Any advice for a beginner ?


    Best regards.

  2. #2
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    HCS as applied by most people does not work.

    Quote Originally Posted by whear View Post
    Hello guys,

    I just found out yesterday of this technology developed by someone in Indonesia called Hydrocarbon Cracking System.

    I noticed that at least 2 people from this forum have used it. hhofox and Roland Jacques.

    I was wondering if there's other people who've tried it or heard of it. I'm curious about your thoughts on it.

    Also, for hhofox and Roland Jacques: are you still using the technology ?

    Any advice for a beginner ?


    Best regards.
    At least in producing large amounts of smaller hydrocarbons - unless you are using ethanol laden gasoline. The ethanol breaks down more readily and you can get larger amounts of CO and H2. Otherwise the conditions found in a tube wrapped around an exhaust pipe are inadequate to produce nothing more than evaporated gasoline - which has benefits in and of itself creating the sense of improved performance.

    Proper HCS execution is far more complex than simple HHO production via electrolysis. However, there is the potential to produce far more H2.

  3. #3
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    The proof is in the pudding. Rusty seems to have been through a whole lot of myth busting and has come out jaded -in a very realist kind of way.
    Hell yes, I still use HCS! I plan to run the damned car on vapour alone one day!

    TO show that there is some sense to it. I can make my car idle on HCS gas alone! THink of it, Idle on HCS, drive on HCS plus regular gas = savings. Anyhow, HCS takes care of the cooling effect gas undergoes when vapour is applied, so the sky is the limit. Just have two bottles; 1 with gas, and the other with water. Bbubble them both with hot air, and let the engine breathe it in.
    Let us know what kind of car you have, as well as the results, okay?

  4. #4
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    The proof is in the mass spectrometer.

    Quote Originally Posted by hhofox View Post
    The proof is in the pudding. Rusty seems to have been through a whole lot of myth busting and has come out jaded -in a very realist kind of way.
    Hell yes, I still use HCS! I plan to run the damned car on vapour alone one day!

    TO show that there is some sense to it. I can make my car idle on HCS gas alone! THink of it, Idle on HCS, drive on HCS plus regular gas = savings. Anyhow, HCS takes care of the cooling effect gas undergoes when vapour is applied, so the sky is the limit. Just have two bottles; 1 with gas, and the other with water. Bbubble them both with hot air, and let the engine breathe it in.
    Let us know what kind of car you have, as well as the results, okay?
    I am as hopeful and forward looking as anyone on this forum. I am also much more experienced and capable than most on this forum and thus I temper my enthusiasm but back up all my claims with good science and proven knowledge.

    I have built and run the so called GEET systems put out by Paul Pantone. They are just an extension of what you are doing with the bubblers and copper exhaust wrap. They work but have their limitations. I have discussed this in previous posts. At one point, I took output samples and had them tested at a local university chemistry lab. The amount of H2/CO production depended on the heat, pressure, residence time as well as the catalyst used and the hydrocarbon fuel used as the input.

    I have not built a unit exactly as you described but in 1980 I did help with the construction and testing of an auxiliary vapor carb system. It was installed on a 1978 Dodge 360 V8 gasoline engine powering a 15 seater passenger van. A small carburetor off of a single cylinder garden engine fed a 3/4" copper tube wrapped and braze-welded 6 times around the driver's side exhaust pipe. It's output was fed into the phenolic spacer that resided under the Carter ThermoQuad 4 barrel carb. The placement of the feed port by-passed the larger carburetor and it would adjust accordingly. The auxiliary carburetor was controlled via a cable push pull knob on the dashboard.

    Once warmed up, the big engine could idle smoothly and would propel the large van at speeds up to 45 mph on level ground.

    A larger auxiliary carburetor from a single cylinder motorcycle provided enough flow to power the van at 55 mph on the level.

    This was with the vapor from the auxiliary carb and the idle mix from the main carb. A solenoid fuel valve from an old NOS injector allowed us to shut off fuel to the main carb, though it would take several seconds to fill the bowl when more power was needed. But, it did show us that we could run the engine on nothing but vapor. In the end, we simply leaned out the primary circuit in the main carb since the auxiliary carb handled the idle and part throttle regimes quite well. We enriched the secondary to give us more power when needed.

    The performance improved measurably with the addition of metered water (suction tube and jet in the auxiliary carb throat). An early Edelbrock electronic water injection system was added for full throttle cooling, spraying through a split viper jet into the secondaries.

    However, a gas sample was taken from the intake during operation and was tested by a student at the local university using their lab mass spectrometer.
    It was largely gasoline and water ( condensed at the bottom of the capture flask) and a few percent of lighter aromatics in gas form ( including H2 and CO). Hydrocarbon cracking was only occurring to a small degree with our system.

    An accidental discovery prompted us to look into the addition of H2 gas. Testing the exhaust with an old Hawk gas analyzer showed us we had gone leaner than the 18:1 fuel/air ratio the original learn burn system was designed to run at. We found ratio's as lean as 22:1. However, when the bolts holding the plenum box cover ( right before the phenolic spacer port) were replaced, the engine ran much better and could run as lean as 27:1. At least for a while. Then it would run rough at those lean settings. It turned out the 4 bolts of the plenum cover protruded into the box and the hot steam/gasoline vapor mix. They had been replaced with bolts that had a heavy zinc coating and this coating had bloomed into a fluffy zinc oxide which also meant that the water had reacted releasing hydrogen gas. Once the coatings were consumed, the hydrogen production stopped and the engine ran poorly. Measuring the mass of leftover zinc oxide and the time it took to consume it showed we only needed 300 cc of H2 gas per minute. A large mason jar ( yes, they existed before smack invented them) with 1/8 th inch 308 SS welding rod as electrodes produced enough HHO at a few amps to provide the needed hydrogen gas to run the engine at the very lean settings. Remember, the richer secondaries in the main carb meant the higher power settings were running around 13:1 so the engine ran very much like any other engine of it's class.

    Stock, the big Dodge van achieved 9-10 mpg with a full payload of people and luggage. After the addition of the vapor auxiliary carb, water injection and Hydrogen gas, the van would prove to get 21 mpg on the highway ( the national speed limit was 55 mph at this time) with similar payloads.

    The van would pass the tailpipe emissions test enacted by California at the time. But, once a visual became part of the test, the van was failed. HC and CO were almost non existent but there were elevated levels of NOx which could be lowered by the addition of more water. As such, we were using 7 gallons of water for every 40 gallons of gasoline.

    I still have the van. And no, you can't have it.

    I may be jaded, but I have reason to be . . . I've been there and done that.

  5. #5
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    Great input guys,

    So Rusty, what you're saying is that it would be easier to crack alcohols such as ethanol or methanol, rather than gasoline ? I mean, it would take a lower temperature to get the same percentage of Hydrogen, right ?

    There is one more thing that I don't understand. I looked on the autoignition temperature chart for different chemicals, and gasoline has an autoignition temperature of 260 degrees Celsius.

    Could it be possible that the gasoline would autoignite when passing around the exhaust pipe ?

  6. #6
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    You are correct.

    Quote Originally Posted by whear View Post
    Great input guys,

    So Rusty, what you're saying is that it would be easier to crack alcohols such as ethanol or methanol, rather than gasoline ? I mean, it would take a lower temperature to get the same percentage of Hydrogen, right ?
    When you look at the dissociation energy for the alcohols in comparison to gasoline or diesel, you will see that they are much lower. The temperatures they dissociate at can be below 300 degrees centigrade especially with the presence of a catalyst such as nickel. We did not use the steel wool in our tubes for the Van in question, but the Stainless steel wool you are using would constitute a certain amount of nickel. Even without the SS wool in our heating tubes, the van gained 2 to 3 mpg on the highway with the wide switch to ethanol laden unleaded gasoline, even with common sense telling us that E5 fuel has less energy than pure gasoline. I believe much of the fuel we use here in N. America and the Caribbean has some percentage of ethanol or methanol. This means your system could be producing significant amounts of H2 and CO depending on your local fuels alcohol content. You might want to experiment with additional ethanol in your bubbler.

    I am trying to find a sensor circuit that is common and cheap enough to sense the output of H2 gas. There are industrial sensing systems but they can be pricey. Someone PMed me with the possibility of using CO sensor circuits and indirectly measuring our H2 production that way. The idea has merit though some of the CO will oxidize into CO2 and the relationship to H2 will not be direct.

    I say this because one of the problems with the GEET and HCS systems is the reduced exhaust heat production when the system starts to really produce synthetic gas (H2/CO). The efficiency gain reduces the exhaust heat and the dissociation of the hydrocarbons is also reduced. The system cycles back and forth. This is why GEET systems can be so un-driveable in some applications.

    With our HCS systems, we are adding the syn gas to the fueling of the engine to reduce the fuel use. But it would be advantageous to balance our HCS output so as to run entirely on syn gas.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by whear View Post
    Great input guys,

    So Rusty, what you're saying is that it would be easier to crack alcohols such as ethanol or methanol, rather than gasoline ? I mean, it would take a lower temperature to get the same percentage of Hydrogen, right ?

    There is one more thing that I don't understand. I looked on the autoignition temperature chart for different chemicals, and gasoline has an autoignition temperature of 260 degrees Celsius.

    Could it be possible that the gasoline would autoignite when passing around the exhaust pipe ?

    The simple speed and motion of the vapor will keep it much cooler then the actual temperature of the exhaust. It would be a much different story if the vapors were not moving and building heat in a stationary state. I don't believe we really have a way to measure the actual temperature of the individual molecules of the vapor, but it would probably not be half that of the exhaust. I would only have a slight concern over this as with the engine running you have a constant vacuum which keeps the temperature of the vapors down.
    Now I no professional, but I do know that the lighter the fuel the easier it is to "crack". But don't take my word on it.
    Its done right or its not done !
    Hail HHO.

  8. #8
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    You are correct about the lighter the fuel . . .

    Quote Originally Posted by Madsceintist View Post
    The simple speed and motion of the vapor will keep it much cooler then the actual temperature of the exhaust. It would be a much different story if the vapors were not moving and building heat in a stationary state. I don't believe we really have a way to measure the actual temperature of the individual molecules of the vapor, but it would probably not be half that of the exhaust. I would only have a slight concern over this as with the engine running you have a constant vacuum which keeps the temperature of the vapors down.
    Now I no professional, but I do know that the lighter the fuel the easier it is to "crack". But don't take my word on it.
    . . .The easier it is to crack.

    Also, the temperature transfer is not just dependent on the temperature differential, but on the residence time. Again, one of the reasons GEET systems are un-driveable is the inability to produce high horsepower when the reactants do not have time to pick up heat and dissociate.

  9. #9
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    One thing that most don't look at is that the the smaller the port in what ever the piping is the better the heat rise. Take this as an example; The exhaust has a catalytic convertor in stream. How hot does the convertor get compared to the rest of the exhaust ?? It's the hottest part of the exhaust due to the forcing of the heat through the small ports which capture the heat more so than a large opening. The longer the convertor the hotter the entrance is ! {Measure it, I have} ! This is basically the same concept as a heat riser for a boiler.
    When you wrap these tubes around the exhaust you want to wrap them with aluminum foils then a good layer of fiberglass insulation to retain as much heat to the tubes as possible. Also many narrow tubes are better than one large one, at least where you are trying to get the heat from. This is also the reverse of an inter-cooler.
    Its done right or its not done !
    Hail HHO.

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