Hydrogen conversion

[Mariner 31]

Does anyone know of hydrogen conversions on power boats and what kind of results have been achieved.

[CDK]

Hydrogen conversion is a nuclear fusion process where hydrogen is changed into helium. It may still take a while before it will be used in boating.

But I guess you mean something different, like combustion.

[FAST FRED]

Look up "Brown's Gas" the con has been running for 40-50 years.

[rxcomposite]

Originally Posted by FAST FRED

Look up "Brown's Gas" the con has been running for 40-50 years.

Yeah, been researching that HHO or "Brown's Gas" for the last few days in the google. If it takes 10 amperes to break down the water and produce 4 to 5 liters of gas/minute, might as well use the 10 ampere to power a DC motor.

[Mariner 31]

I too have researched this on google and hence my question. The HHO is mixed with the fuel to increase mileage. The power to produce the amperes comes from the alternator.
If you were to read all the comments made by users they say it improves mileage by 30-50%.
Has anyone used this system on a boat?

[kerosene]

Here you go:

all scams.
I could write an essay here but I would have to re-write it every week (gets asked a lot). They all prey on the fact that people don't have too god of a grasp oh physics.

roughly 2 alternate and sometimes overlapping claims

1. hydrogen improves combustion - they point out that internal combustion engine only burns 30% of the fuel and hydrogen helps heat up the burning and makes it more complete. Claim is totally false - modern engines burn almost every molecule of the fuel. They are only 25-30% efficient but it is NOT because of unburned fuel. The car's engine burns all fuel - the low efficiency is result of friction, mechanical losses, heat etc.

2. With waste current from your alternator you can create enough hydrogen to produce substantial amount of fuel for the car to burn. This is bogus on two levels. a) there is no "waste" energy from the alternator. Car's alternator creates electricity "on demand" ie. it will resist the motor more the more you have electric demand. Ever given a jump to another car with flat battery? Your car is running and you hook the cables to the car with flat batt. the idle often drops as the running car starts charging the flat battery The load on the alternator went up and the motor works harder.
Now this electricity is supposed to split water to oxygen and hydrogen and then burn in the engine to be joined back into water. That is the claim and it can be done - however it will take multitude of more energy to split the hydrogen than you can ever recover from the joining (let alone with crappy combustion engine).

That sort of sums it up.

There are many obvious flaws in the systems:
- really small currents are supposedly creating enough hydrogen to run the engine - not gonna happen unless there are higher forces and perpetual motion at play.
- the gas doesn't need any kind of advanced metering - you just pipe it into your intake. If the amount of gas actually amounted to something substantial it could totally mess your fuel/oxygen ratios and cause serious engine damage. Also the explosion risk would be rather huge as they have hydrogen and oxygen traveling in same pipe.
- none can really explain how this system really works - ie. what is the reason why it breaks the most fundamental physics laws of thermodynamics.

Add to that that these systems have been around since 80s, many high profile promoters have been sued for fraud, no real manufacturer has ever adopted any of them, you can build it in your garage from stainless steel...

Sure you can make a bubbler but it will not amount to anything.

[rxcomposite]

It is easy to see in the video demo.

One video demo, they used a small 5 Hp or something gas engine but they use an HHO generator as big as a welding machine to produce the HHO. Power to the generator comes from I know not where.

Second, they powered a small car (on idle) using HHO generator but the HHO generator is being powered by a big truck's alternator by its side reasoning that the small car's alternator is not big enough. Makes more logic to push the small car by the truck to make it go.

[FAST FRED]

Add the fact that alternators are not very efficient at producing electric.

FF

[thudpucker]

I am in Awe of those who know, and grateful they post here for us.

In another place someone said a PWM would do the trick. Pulse Width modulators, can make a kind of a Square Wave Bombardment of the H2O......ad anon!
I'm beginning to think the HHO can be 'brought out' with some thing.

To see the Engineer's approach that "it costs more to produce than you get out of it" laide out simply like that has convinced me.

I was interested. I got stopped when I saw nothing about metering the HHO flow into the Air intake.
That could get real "loud" if you had a 'backfire' as many small engines do, when all the fuel and the HHO in the intake went up at once.

So thanks Guys. I'm going back to Algae Diesel.

[powerabout]

if any of these magic solutions that have been bought by the oil majors and hidden away ( never happened) the Chinese would be running their country on them now, along with North Korea, Cuba and all the others who have energy issues.

[thudpucker]

The key to the Snake Oil exposure is seeing where they inject the HHO into the Auto Conversions.
It goes into the intake.
So if the gas is metered by the computer for Rich n' Lean, the theory is the HHO changes that, and the computer leans out the Gasoline injection, and the HHO takes up the slack. I'd be surprised to see any documented fuel milage increase beyond 10%.

So my idea of using lake water to power a small B&S 5 hp will be a pipe dream for a long time to come. At least until I can come up with a 'Varying gasoline jet' for the carb.

The Electrolysis part works. A chemist or Phycyst (SP I miss Firefox) will tell you the HHO is expensive, energy wise, and does not provide as much energy as it costs to produce.

The ONLY advantage to HHO is the Cleaner burning, more Green.

A similar option is an Algae product that replaces the Ethanol in Gasoline.
It will increase your milage slightly, but the Alcahol is replaced by this Algae product.
I ran aross this while researching Algae Diesel, which IS a Reality.