Anyone tried water 4 gas? OT

[Mr. Belvedere]

There are companies out there claiming to increase your gas mileage by 20-50% by releasing hydrogen from water. You buy their step by step instructions then go to the hardware store and buy the supplies to build it and for under a hundred dollars you build an some type device that can work on any car or truck. They claim it does no engine damage and is perfectly safe and will not void warranties, also comes with a money back guarantee. I have heard of this stuff before but wrote it off as some kinda snake oil or scam. Some friends of ours tried it on their caravan and are now averaging over 30mpg so I am now considering it anybody here tried it?

[hucks 50]

i made one for my s10,puts out a good amount of gasses ,but it works against you if you veh is computorized,o2 senses a lean code and fattens up the fuel. i actually got a little worse gas mileage.it flammable though.

[DonaldSmith]

It was recently debunked again, somewhere. It takes energy to release hydrogen from water. File it away with the snake oil remedies.

I think some of the reputed good results may be by persons who are now driving more carefully and efficiently, now that they have some mileage gizmo to keep mileage on the mind.

I improved the mileage of my 03 Venture (25 mpg) on a recent trip by relying on the speed control to accelerate and coast instead of using the gas pedal and brake. Following at a good distance is part of it, maybe a large part of improving the milage.

[TodFitch]

It was recently debunked again, somewhere. It takes energy to release hydrogen from water. File it away with the snake oil remedies.

I think some of the reputed good results may be by persons who are now driving more carefully and efficiently, now that they have some mileage gizmo to keep mileage on the mind.

I improved the mileage of my 03 Venture (25 mpg) on a recent trip by relying on the speed control to accelerate and coast instead of using the gas pedal and brake. Following at a good distance is part of it, maybe a large part of improving the milage.

Bingo! You hit the nail on the head.

Regarding the HHO devices:

1) Your internal combustion engine is about 20% efficient at converting the heat energy in its fuel to useful mechanical energy. (That is basically driven by the Carnot cycle efficiency of of the engine based on how much the heated gas is allowed to expand. On an Otto cycle engine your expansion ratio happens to be the same as your compression ratio. Hence the higher your compression ratio the higher your conversion efficiency. But there is a limit there based on when you get pre-detonation (ping) and that is based on the octane rating of the fuel.) Anyway, only about 20% of the energy in the HHO gas you feed the engine is going to be useful to you.

2) To make the HHO they are disassociating H20 (water) using electrolysis. To actually have that work you need to apply more than the theoretical bonding voltage that holds the hydrogen and oxygen together. And that excess voltage basically translates to heat put into the electrodes and solution. That heat is lost energy so your efficiency is less that 100%.

3) To get the electricity to run the electrolysis you are pulling power from the generator/alternator. Guess what? There are energy losses there too. Why else do you think they have an open vented design on alternators and built in centrifugal fans on the pulleys of generators ? It is to dissipate the heat (lost energy). So you have less than 100% efficiency there too.

So you have an option of taking the mechanical power from your engine and putting all of it into the drive train (as shipped from the factory). Or adding that device and taking some of the mechanical energy, running it through a system to lose over 80% of it put then the remaining part back into your drive train. Which do you think is better?

The only possible way I can see this working would be if there were a magical catalytic effect of the HHO on the fuel/air mixture. But I really doubt that as modern engine controls mean that you are already very efficient at converting the fuel/air mixture to fully burned hot gasses to drive your Carnot heat engine cycle.

[RHDSP15C]

There is a very simple answer as to whether this works. The facts confirmed by

university studies are that 1 kilowatt of electricity is required to produce 340 liters of HHO gas. 340 liters of HHO gas produce 5.4 kilowatts of energy when burnt. The problem is that the snake oil merchants are having a field day making generators out of Mason jars or even plastic pipe, big oil is doing everything to

hinder any research. Governments risk losing billions in tax revenue and the welding gas companies are set to lose their shirts. The power generators are also looking down the barrel. Fortunately there are several organizations that have done their homework and are making units that really work.

This not going to go away like the snagless stocking.

[greg g]

I have read that it takes about a liter of out put per hour to make an apprecialble difference in combustion efficiency. Most of the under hood contraptions are hard pressed to make a liter per day. Just bump up your VR and collect the outgassing from the battery, probably be more effective but still not enough to make a difference.

[TodFitch]

There is a very simple answer as to whether this works. The facts confirmed by

university studies are that 1 kilowatt of electricity is required to produce 340 liters of HHO gas. 340 liters of HHO gas produce 5.4 kilowatts of energy when burnt. The problem is that the snake oil merchants are having a field day making generators out of Mason jars or even plastic pipe, big oil is doing everything to

hinder any research. Governments risk losing billions in tax revenue and the welding gas companies are set to lose their shirts. The power generators are also looking down the barrel. Fortunately there are several organizations that have done their homework and are making units that really work.

This not going to go away like the snagless stocking.

It is inconceivable to me that the energy needed to disassociate water in to its component parts is less than the energy released when those parts are recombined. Basically you are describing a closed system that releases energy with no change in internal state, in other words a perpetual motion machine. That violates pretty much everything I remember from my science and engineering classes.

[RHDSP15C]

To increase mileage by one third a Powerstroke 7.3 TD needs up to 4 liters a minute. Mason jars and most of that ebay junk cannot produce that volume.

[RHDSP15C]

Depending on your sense of humor this will give you a laugh. Goto Google - search - My 2nd hydrogen experiment - on youtube. No I didn't do that.