[simpsonsdotcom]

My dad and I both have a Jeep his is a 6 cylinder and mine is a 4 (for now). Less valuable engine was the one that got tested for the hydrogen system. I haven’t used the system or tinkered with it in a while because too many other things have come up (like a 5.3 Vortec in my wrangler). I remember that I found about a 20% increase in fuel mileage.

The mixture in the tank is sodium hydroxide or lye. It is a corrosive base so be careful. The lye is dissolved in water. We never made it as far as to get an exact ratio of lye to water but it depends on the surface area of your conductors that are touching the water. The stronger the concentration the more amps the system will draw and the more hydrogen produced. We used copper rods insulated from a stainless steel tank as conductors originally one was pos. and one was neg. We eventually made a switch inside the car to turn it off if necessary. We installed an amp meter inside as well to monitor the draw. We also connected it through the fuse box so it would not receive power when the engine was not on. To get the hydrogen gas from the tank to the engine we simply connected into the vacuum line.

We made two different designs both out of stainless steel. The first was a horizontal system. The main flaw with this design is that when you stop or accelerate the fluid inside of the reservoir sloshes back and forth. When the fluid sloshes some of it may get sucked into the vacuum line and make its way to the engine. The second design which is the one I have pictures of is vertical. This design dampens the likelihood of too much sloshing. It also makes it easier to find space for under the hood. Another beneficial factor is that the rods can now be longer, increasing the rods surface area and increasing the amps. This enables you to use a lower concentration of lye in the water and get the same output. To increase the surface area even more we made both rods positive and made the stainless steel tank itself negative. When we did this the amount of draw on the single alternator came into question. If I remember right it was drawing upwards of 80 amps. So we installed a second alternator designated only for powering the hydrogen system. This is where we left off and haven’t really done anymore experimentation with the system.

A few words of warning:
• Simple but worth mentioning hydrogen gas is extremely explosive (but this is what makes if perfect for running an engine)
• The copper rods eventually become corroded and need to be replaced
• The tank gets very hot and it seems that the warmer it becomes the more hydrogen it produces
• The fluid level will decrease as it is used and need to be replenished problem is there is still lye in the tank so you have to check the concentration again. Try using a coolant tester for anti-freeze.
• I have heard that doing this can promote rust in the engine and exhaust
• I have also heard that it cannot possibly work because energy in (from the alternator) equals energy out (fuel saved by burning hydrogen) knowing this I still gained about 20% in MPG.

[Jeepster83]

youre going to be getting a lot of nay-sayers and skeptics here because there arent any before and after charts showing your fuel consumption and hydrogen production vs hydrogen usage. the theory itself isnt a bad one but its still yet to be proven with numbers and test-based facts.

im glad its working for you but until you can provide the info people will definitely ask for its all for naught.

[Pillswoj]

Yep, we went through this about 6 months ago, the people running them showed an increase in mpg for a tank or two but then the computer would compensate for the mods and mileage would go back to normal.

[JESSETHELJ]

Ya buddy had it on a chevy worked for 2 months then back to normal. then we put it o jeep and same thing

[George Dickel]

Wouldn't a custom tune fix this??? I mean you would obviously have to have your concentration/mixture pretty exact but this should be programmable.

[J_Ro]

I can get into a long detail discussion of why by all the laws of physics this is impossible, but why bother? I'm sure you've heard it all before and still choose to disbelieve it.

[George Dickel]

Originally Posted by J_Ro

I can get into a long detail discussion of why by all the laws of physics this is impossible, but why bother? I'm sure you've heard it all before and still choose to disbelieve it.

Huh? Which comment was your post aimed at?

[Pillswoj]

Originally Posted by J_Ro

I can get into a long detail discussion of why by all the laws of physics this is impossible, but why bother? I'm sure you've heard it all before and still choose to disbelieve it.

And you would lose, In theory this could work, in practice it does not.

[jinx44]

Originally Posted by simpsonsdotcom

I have also heard that it cannot possibly work because energy in (from the alternator) equals energy out (fuel saved by burning hydrogen) knowing this I still gained about 20% in MPG.

That would be true if you were converting back to the same energy, such as trying to run an electric vehicle off the alternator. But in this case, you are making a fuel with more energy than the electricity that it requires to produce.

[sportcoupe]

I say you got zero % mpg gains at best. I can say that because I did extensive testing a while back with a smack booster on my TJ.

There is no way around the computer even for one tank of gas. The computer kicks in before you even burn a 1/4 tank of fuel. You can try manipulating engine sensors if you like. I varied the IAC, MAT, O2 and MAP, all at the same time and every different combo of each with NO SUCCESS. The sensors at best give you only about 5% authority before you get kicked into open loop and a CEL. The compute can compensate for up to a 20% correction so all my effort was in vain.

The only solution would be a custom tune but alas, we have a Mopar ECU and there isn't software to re-map it like the Ford and GM guys can do for certain engines.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in the concept of HHO energy, it is very explosive and therefore very possible to obtain results under correct conditions, ie. if we had carbs instead of EFI then it may work great.

Now about your "I remember that I found about a 20% increase in fuel mileage" statement. Either you made errors in calculation (ie. driving for 10 miles and topping up to see "improvement") or your engine was running bad to start and under stated mpg anyway and the HHO gas was able to bandaid you back to stock mpg readings.

[J_Ro]

sigh... I'll bite. Nothing planned this morning anyways :P

Originally Posted by Pillswoj

And you would lose, In theory this could work, in practice it does not.

In theory this is impossible, and in practice even more so. If this somehow worked, everything that mankind knows about physics would have to be thrown away. The conservation of energy is the very foundation of all of it. This system can only work if energy is created from somewhere.

Originally Posted by jinx44

That would be true if you were converting back to the same energy, such as trying to run an electric vehicle off the alternator. But in this case, you are making a fuel with more energy than the electricity that it requires to produce.

This is actually even worse than running it directly off the electricity produced because after you have converted the kinetic energy created via the combustion of gas into electricity, you are again converting that energy into a fuel. You can not make a fuel with more energy than it took to produce it (ask yourself, where did the energy come from?)

In a closed system (These are perfectly ideal conditions, and our Jeep Engines are no where near as efficient) there can be NO gain or loss of energy in the overall system. Our engines work by taking in fuel with a high potential energy but low kinetic energy and burning it to convert the potential energy into kinetic energy (heat). This conversion results in a large amount of heat (high kinetic energy) and exhaust (H2O, CO2, CO, etc - things with a much lower potential energy. ie Water will not "burn")

Some of that heat is harnessed and used to power the drivetrain, some is harnessed into electricity via the alternator, but a large amount of it is simply lost as heat into the engine block and into the exhaust. That's kind of a simple description of the operation of the engines in terms of energy levels.

The hydrogen that is being produced is also a fuel (aka high potential energy) that will get burned just like the fuel above does.

So we've established that our fuel->energy conversion is not 100% efficient due to the loss of heat generated into the exhaust and into the engine cooling system. This is energy that is not converted into moving the vehicle or into electricity.

But now we have this store of electricity that we've collected from the burning of fuel. Using this to turn water (low kinetic, low potential energies) into hydrogen and oxygen (low kinetic, high potential) is also a very inefficient process (Google Electrolysis to get an idea of just how inefficient is really is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis) So our end result of hydrogen and oxygen will HAVE to have less potential energy in it than the total sum of energy that we put into the electricy->hydrogen conversion.

You then inefficiently burn as a fuel (just like above), and move the vehicle a little bit with it as well as electricity to create even less hydrogen, etc.

Because of the inefficiencies of all these energy conversions that are being done, there is no way for you to increase the efficiency of your engine (after all you are still only getting this energy from the gas that you put into the jeep). In fact this setup will result in WORSE mileage that without it.

[Pillswoj]

Originally Posted by J_Ro

sigh... I'll bite. Nothing planned this morning anyways :P

In theory this is impossible, and in practice even more so. If this somehow worked, everything that mankind knows about physics would have to be thrown away. The conservation of energy is the very foundation of all of it. This system can only work if energy is created from somewhere.


This is actually even worse than running it directly off the electricity produced because after you have converted the kinetic energy created via the combustion of gas into electricity, you are again converting that energy into a fuel. You can not make a fuel with more energy than it took to produce it (ask yourself, where did the energy come from?)

In a closed system (These are perfectly ideal conditions, and our Jeep Engines are no where near as efficient) there can be NO gain or loss of energy in the overall system. Our engines work by taking in fuel with a high potential energy but low kinetic energy and burning it to convert the potential energy into kinetic energy (heat). This conversion results in a large amount of heat (high kinetic energy) and exhaust (H2O, CO2, CO, etc - things with a much lower potential energy. ie Water will not "burn")

Some of that heat is harnessed and used to power the drivetrain, some is harnessed into electricity via the alternator, but a large amount of it is simply lost as heat into the engine block and into the exhaust. That's kind of a simple description of the operation of the engines in terms of energy levels.

The hydrogen that is being produced is also a fuel (aka high potential energy) that will get burned just like the fuel above does.

So we've established that our fuel->energy conversion is not 100% efficient due to the loss of heat generated into the exhaust and into the engine cooling system. This is energy that is not converted into moving the vehicle or into electricity.

But now we have this store of electricity that we've collected from the burning of fuel. Using this to turn water (low kinetic, low potential energies) into hydrogen and oxygen (low kinetic, high potential) is also a very inefficient process (Google Electrolysis to get an idea of just how inefficient is really is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis) So our end result of hydrogen and oxygen will HAVE to have less potential energy in it than the total sum of energy that we put into the electricy->hydrogen conversion.

You then inefficiently burn as a fuel (just like above), and move the vehicle a little bit with it as well as electricity to create even less hydrogen, etc.

Because of the inefficiencies of all these energy conversions that are being done, there is no way for you to increase the efficiency of your engine (after all you are still only getting this energy from the gas that you put into the jeep). In fact this setup will result in WORSE mileage that without it.

Ok, this will be my one and only reply. I know the system does not work, I have followed the members including Sportcoupe that tried to make it work.

Conservation of energy can only be applied if all the efficiencies are know and constant. This would include the efficiency of the alternater, It is much less efficient at low load then high.

Incomplete combustion is the one that we need to look at here, This is what all the "exotic" sparkplugs and high energy ignition systems (MSD etc) attempt to address and NO I won't argue whether or not they work.

HHO proposes in theory that the injection of a small amount of browns gas into the combustion chamber will improve the combustion of the main fuel - nothing more nothing less. This increase in combustion efficiency should result in better mileage. This is no different then different engines getting different fuel economy in the same vehicle. The problem is that the scam artists trying to sell the system claim more then it does.

I'm out of this thread, like I said we beat this horse to death about 6 months ago.

[timberwolf0122]

In this forum we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

[J_Ro]

I just can't believe that it improves the efficiency of the gas combustion so much that it overcomes the extreme losses in energy it takes to produce the hydrogen.

[mrblaine]

Originally Posted by J_Ro

I just can't believe that it improves the efficiency of the gas combustion so much that it overcomes the extreme losses in energy it takes to produce the hydrogen.

Nor should you.