A while ago, in a post in one of our too-frequent over-unity threads, I wrote about having a lot of respect for science, scientists, engineers, and academic mentors. The post rambled, like most of mine (actually, more than most), but it struck a chord with a lot of readers, garnering a surprisingly large number of GAs. So I know that there are a lot of people here who share my views, as you'd expect in an engineering and science forum.
It drives me up a wall when I search for "hydrogen" and most of what comes up on the web is pseudo-science, and a very large portion is just plain fraudulent -- one HHO booster scam after another. We now have frequent visitors at CR4 promoting the use of HHO (Brown's gas, oxyhydrogen, Hydroxy, magic, Joe cell) injection to boost fuel efficiency. 15 years ago, an internet search on "hydrogen and engine" would give you plenty of interesting hits about real uses of hydrogen in engines. Now, pseudo-science and anti-science are gaining ground against rational thought. (Ironically, the first HHO booster was patented in 1918, and looks just like those of today -- although some of the loonier promoters of today have added more obfuscation: molecular resonance, pulse width modulation, AC electrolysis, etc. (None of these has the potential for improving efficiency to 100%, whereas just breaking even on an energy balance would require over 500% efficiency -- so it is all just distraction.)
There is a $1,000,000 prize offered to anyone who can devise an HHO device that actually works as the frauds claim. Of course, that prize remains unclaimed. There is a far bigger prize, however, available for the developer of any device which can be shown by the EPA to actually work. A device that can improve the mileage of a car by 50% (Dennis Lee's "guarantee") is worth billions to the auto industry. Toyota spent a billion dollars just on coming up with an expensive, complicated scheme for improving the mileage of a small car to make the Prius. Imagine how much they would pay for a device that, instead of increasing the price of the car by $4000, increases it by $20. What an unbelievable advantage Ford would have if they could offer a $16,000 Focus which would beat the $23,000 Prius on fuel efficiency.
The same guy who offers the $1,000,000 prize put together a good video about these devices. This is perhaps a good place to steer people who seem incapable of reading the relevant studies, or opening a chemistry of physics book.
Elsewhere on this site I've written loads of posts about HHO, some going into considerable detail re the thermodynamics and combustion science involved. Generally, there is no way of knowing if some of the people arguing (on CR4) that HHO boosters work are scammers or only deluded, ignorant of the issues involved, insane, or incapable of designing a valid test. (This last is not a good excuse, because the EPA has been doing tests of such devices for years, and they can do a valid test for you -- or if you read their reports, you can see what is required.) An alternative is that the claimant has uncovered a real way to overturn physics and combustion science -- in which case, he or she should be running to the patent office, rather than trying to convince people at CR4.
So far, I have not seen any argument presented on CR4 that stands up to even light scrutiny. The more common arguments presented are these, the unlucky 13, which I came up with in an early response to some HHO promoter.
1. 15% (or 20% or 30%) of the fuel goes past the exhaust valve unburned: Flat Lie.
The percentage is never more than 1% either side of perfect, and is
typically closer than that. Catalytic converters are damaged by values
outside these limits.
2. HHO improves combustion: Misconception. The 1977 NASA study
scammers routinely refer to (but never actually read) shows that injection amounts must be at least an order of magnitude
higher (than HHO units produce) to have enough effect on combustion
speed to have any significant effect on energy efficiency. Even
this only applies when the H2 is delivered for free thermodynamically.
The situation is actually much worse with electrolysis units, which consume engine power.
3. HHO simply adds additional fuel to the engine, which you get for free from the water: you are just "releasing the energy of the water". Flat Lie.
This is the classic perpetual motion scheme, and was the standard HHO
promotion lie for years. Water is not a fuel, which should be
incredibly obvious to anyone who has put out a camp fire. Making H2
from water requires more energy than you can get from burning the fuel.
Always, and by any method. (The fundamental chemistry of water dictates this. Claiming otherwise is much like saying that every time you put salt on your food you risk chlorine poisoning. This principal, re H2O, applies even if you use the highest
quality electrolysis equipment, and burn the hydrogen in a calorimeter
-- which measures its entire heat value. In an engine, the
situation is much worse, because you only get 25% the energy converted
to mechanical output.) The alternator load, and the fuel used to power
it, goes up with the electrical load.
4. There is excess electricity being generated all the time by the alternator. Flat Lie.
The greater the draw on the alternator, the more HP required, and the
more fuel consumed. This should be obvious to anyone who has seen
generators at Home Depot: big ones which (consume a lot of fuel)
produce more electricity than small ones. It is also obvious to anyone
who has read how a car alternator works, or who has worked on one.
5. I've developed a method for splitting water that is twice, five
times or 50 times (yes there really is such a claim!) as efficient as
"brute force" electrolysis. Flat Lie. A reasonably efficient HHO unit is 50% efficient. 100% efficiency is not possible, nor is any efficiency over 100%.
6. But my method "jiggles" the molecule apart with pulses of x frequency (or ac) at some frequency. I use "resonance." Flat Lie.
This suggests that (in the inventors corner of the world) the laws of
thermodynamics do not apply. It matters not whether you use tweezers or
rocks, or high voltage or low, the laws of thermodynamics apply: even
assuming 99% efficiency of the electrolysis process, the net loss is
still large: for each ounce of fuel you consume to produce HHO, you get
back 1/5 oz of energy in HHO (because, at best, the engine and
alternator making the HHO is only 20% efficient.)
7. But I'm getting a 50% or 100% improvement despite the fact that you stupid science types think it does not work. Profound misconception, bad test method, mental instability, placebo effect, Flat Lie? Imagine
yourself an inventor with a billion dollar device but sitting
around making videos on YouTube, or spending your time trying to
convince CR4 members, most of whom apply science every day, that
science is bogus. Plausible?
8. You stinky meany heads would have kept the Wright Brothers from flying. Profound misconception.
The Wright Brothers were classic scientists, and relied heavily on
aerodynamics texts by Chanute and others, and on the experience of a
very long line of aviation pioneers.
9. Stanley Meyer was convicted of fraud because of the Big Oil conspiracy against him. Profound Misconception.
Stanley was convicted because he was a fraud who claimed that you could
run a car on water, and bilked investors.
10. I'm not proposing any kind of perpetual motion machine. Profound Misconception.
For the amount of HHO generated to even creep up anywhere near close
to the point that its effect would be measurable (and not a net loss), the process must
operate at multiples of over-unity (in which case you have a perpetual
motion machine -- just plug the out put into the input and it runs
forever.) In a typical engine of today, the electrolysis process would
have to operate at 500% efficiency, just to get to the break even point. That is the physics of perpetual motion.
11. Well, if these things operate at a net loss, then I'd see my mileage going down, but I don't. Slight Misconception.
These units draw about the same current as headlights (100 watts). The
effect of 100 watts is very hard to measure on engine of 150,000 watts.
(Obviously the potential benefit would be unmeasurable as well.)
12. HHO is monatomic, with completely different properties than H2. Flat Lie or profound ignorance. HHO
is similar to oxyacetylene -- if you crack open both valves on an oxyacetylene torch
when you light it, you get a bang. Ditto for lighting an HHO torch. However,
when you put HHO into the intake airstream in the incredibly tiny
amounts produced by an HHO "booster" the two gases separate, and all
that is left as an energy difference is the tiny additional amount of
H2, surrounded by and intermixed with an incredibly large amount of air
(into which the O2 has mixed) with a small amount of gasoline vapor. At the instant that HHO comes
out of the common duct, all you have is a tiny amount of hydrogen.
Wackos claim that ultra high flame front speeds will prevail, thinking
apparently that HHO remains in one place (about the size of a rain drop
in the relatively huge volume of a cylinder) but it does not. It simply
mixes with everything else. If it did not, it would be impossible to
make the other silly claim -- that it has a measurable effect on
combustion -- because only one in 500 times would that little chunk of
separate HHO be anywhere near to the spark plug, to "explode" and improve combustion.
13. The HHO units makes the ECU "think" the engine is running lean,
so the ECU increases the fuel flow. Therefore, you must tamper with
your emission system. Flat Lie. These differences are not
measurable (just as you'd expect because of the tiny amount of H2
injected) as verified by perhaps the best recent test of HHO devices, that done by Popular Mechanics.
The Popular Mechanics test is particularly good, because it is easily
understandable, but also because it was performed by a body that is
beyond independent -- they gain ad revenue from mileage improvement devices, so it is clearly in their best interest to say that these things work,
rather than that they don't work. If you poke around HHO websites, you'll find
many "reasons" why HHO can only work if you buy additional stuff:
solvents, magnets, fuel heaters, etc. Ironically, some HHO sites which
said that their unit worked just fine a year ago, now say that you must
buy additional stuff to make them work. ("We were lying then, but now
we are telling the truth.") Suckers keep coming, though.
So... I've written about all I can about these units in zillions of posts here. I plan to generally ignore the HHO threads other than the really egregious ones. Perhaps others who are inclined to take up the slack, can use this post as a sort of summary for those people who stumble into CR4 with apparently genuine questions about whether these things work or not. Warning: the "apparently genuine questions" are hard to weed out from the "hard core scams". We had a guy recently who started with a few questions, then a wild claim of doubled fuel efficiency, then an admission that he is in the business, then a list of papers which he apparently hoped nobody would read which show (to anyone with a little science background) that these devices cannot work as claimed.
The Unlucky 13 HHO Lies
Re: The Unlucky 13 HHO Lies
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