Browns Gas? For better MPG! Tuning?

[rice_rocket]

Hey guys... just thought I'd start a thread and see what those out there think about it.

 

A little info on Brown's Gas.... basically it is a H20 (water) dissociation device to break up water into H2 O2 or HHO etc etc. Essentially I'm increasing the oxygen content to the intake, so the fuel can burn more efficiently.

 

Seeing as this is really only for me to use cruising back and forth to work, a small bubbler should be sufficient for cruising back and forth and increasing my fuel mileage.

 

So.. what are the problems I can see? Well first thing's first... the MAF might read the car going too lean and more O2 into it by the fuel mixture seen in the O2 sensor. This might trip my CEL light.. that would suck.

 

Second issue that to me is minor is.. running too lean on a spool. Well, considering that this bubbler doesn't produce a LOT of the HHO gas, then to me, it would be consumed waay before I hit full boost.

 

So.. maybe it will work, maybe it won't? Very simple to setup.

 

Anyone have advice or input on what I could tune so that it runs most efficiently?

 

I certainly travel a lot, but not an obscene amount. This is more like the little science experiment that won't cost too much money, but might net some nice gains. So.. before people start busting my chops about paying for premium fuel etc etc... please no more input. It's not like I'm going to stop filling up my car with premium.. not like I think my car is going to be a Prius.. But hey, I have a friend that has it on his mercedes kompressor engine and does indeed bounce his fuel mileage a good 20% higher.. ie from 30 to 36mpg on his VERY long drives.. which he does going from state to state.

[doctorbrody]

I'm interested to see someone install it on an LGT, but pretty skeptical about the results. Take pictures of the install and keep track of your mileage: inquiring minds want to know!

[boostsr20]

I think AKLGT already went through this on her LGT and she saw pretty good results.

[mwiener2]

O don't start this again. I thought I buried it the first time.

 

 

She saw negligible results, then closed the thread as data proved her wrong.

 

 

The proposed principles of how these HHO generators work breaks the simple laws of thermodynamics. Any reported gains people see are NOT from the HHO generator. These people simply become more conscious of how they are driving, and the way the generator is plumbed into the system it creates restrictions and vacuum leaks.

[rice_rocket]

Hmmm.. I'd love to see this thread, I did a search and it didn't come up.. maybe I'll try again.

 

Like I said.. a good friend who is a field engineer (hence his travelling) Did indeed see his own gains.

 

If you want to send me any cliff notes via PM that would be fine

[mwiener2]

she also deleted the thread I believe, again, cause she was proved wrong

[NSFW]

I prefer to stay on the right side of the laws of thermodynamics.

[btlegacy]

The laws of heat transfer can not be cheated

 

Some solid evidence:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/how_to/4310717.html?page=2

[Alaskan_Legacy]

Oh dear god.

I didn't keep up on AKLGT's thread on here, but on Nasioc, she still claimed she got good results I thought.

 

Personally, I'll always side with the science.

[AKLGT]

side with whatever you want. It did work, 5 mpg gains on avg city. only slightly better for hwy (than what I usually got). Still 5 mpg avg gain for city was pretty good, however imo, not necessarily worth the $1200 system when you can build your own for a fraction of the cost. The maintenance and upkeep involved is also a huge factor, so if you want maintenance free fuel economy, an HHO system will not be it.

 

the thread was not deleted, but moved where actual discussion could be made and not the usual BS from those who were not willing to even test it out (even though it was not even their own funds involved). Look on NASIOC, there are several WRX owners who are running various HHO systems and getting very good results (after tuning). However, as I mentioned, the upkeep is quite a bit, as I had to check the water levels and amperage every time I filled up with gas.

[BAC5.2]

Anyone who calls water "HHO" and considers it something totally different is a fool.

 

Water is water is water, be it in solid, liquid, or gas form.

 

The gains you see with these "ZOMG!!! MA CER RANS ON TH' WATER GASOLINE" kits are mirrored by the gains you'd see with any water injection setup.

 

I bet, using math and chemistry, that we could figure out exactly what these "HHO" kits are trying to accomplish, and how they do it.

 

It's common to think that oxygen from the water is used to replace the oxygen from the air, and thus increase efficiency. Let's see if that's true...

 

Air fuel ratio is a ratio of fuel injected to air injested. It's actually a mass ratio, NOT a volume ratio. The stoichiometric ratio for gasoline is 14.7 (I can go through the calculations to get here if necessary). That means that, for every mass unit fuel, we need 14.7 mass units of oxygen (oxygen, not just air).

 

Air is ~23.2% Oxygen. At WOT, and we'll be generous, we can say that the MAF flows 500grams/second. That's reasonable, and if you do even more math, it works out to a gram for every .01V MAF reading. MAF maxes out at 5V, so 5/.01 = 500. I use WOT under the assumption (the correct assumption) that WOT is when the engine is at peak Volumetric Efficiency (the greatest decrease in pumping loss is when there is zero manifold vac.)

 

So, we flow 500g/s of air, which equates to ~117.5g of oxygen per second. Divide that by 14.7 to get the required number of grams of fuel required, and we get about 8 grams of fuel required per second.

 

The premise of these HHO kits is to add oxygen post-maf, in order to lean out the AFR. Oxygen added after the MAF is not metered and one of two things happen. Either the flow through the maf is decreased (which would lean out the mixture), or the volume of oxygen increases without affecting the maf reading (which would lean out the mixture). Either way, the net result is about the same. Since you have a fixed volume in the intake tract, and we treat air as a non-compressible gas (since it's, effectively, in an open ended container, this is a valid assumption), if you dump air into the tract post maf, the conservation of volume says that flow will decrease through the MAF. Easy.

 

The total amount of air getting to the engine remains constant, but the MAF reading drops.

 

A 25% increase in fuel economy (the difference between 20mpg and 25mpg) means a 25% decrease in fuel consumption.

 

Since, clearly, the relationship between air mass and fuel mass is linear, a 25% decrease in fuel consumption must mean a 25% decrease in registered air ingestion.

 

SO, back to math. 8g/s/1.25 = 6.4g/s of fuel, and 94.08g/s of oxygen. 117.5-94.08 = 23.42 grams of oxygen per second LESS oxygen must be metered under our specified conditions.

 

So, we know how much oxygen we need per unit time, and we can extrapolate from this the amount that the HHO device would need to produce in order to sufficiently meet their claims.

 

We know a flow-rate per unit time, so we need some finite time interval to examine. We will choose 1 minute because I like to be able to do math in my head.

 

The intake valves open every 720 crank-rotation degrees in a 4-stroke 4-cylinder engine, right? So for 3000RPM, there is one combustion event every 2 rotations... per cylinder... so that turns out to be 1 combustion event every 180 crank-rotation degrees. So 3000RPM has 6000 combustion events, which means 6000 openings of the intake valves.

 

So, in 1 minute, our non-"HHO" car needs 7,050 grams of oxygen. Our "HHO" car needs 5,640 grams of oxygen. OK. We now have air mass.

 

And we can see that we would need our "HHO" kit to produce 1,410 grams of oxygen per minute, in order to replace the air coming into the engine. This is TERRIBLY unlikely.

 

Now, two moles of water are required to release 1 mole of oxygen and 2 moles of hydrogen. This means that you need ~36 grams of water to recover 32 grams of oxygen. 1 mole of oxygen is 32 grams, so we need ~44 moles of oxygen. Now, to make 2 moles of water, we need 1 mole of oxygen for every 2 moles of Hydrogen. With a mole ratio of 2:1 (water:oxygen), we need ~88 moles of water to produce ~44 moles of oxygen. This all makes sense, right?

 

How much is 88 moles of water? Well, 2 moles of water is 36 grams, so that means we need 1,584 grams of water, right? The densito of water can be approximated as 1g/mL, so 1,584 grams of water = 1,584mL of water = 1.584L of water. That's a lot of water to dissociate, just to run the car for 1 minute using 25% less fuel.

 

So clearly, the idea is NOT to add oxygen post-maf to supplement the air being drawn in from outside.

 

Continue to keep in mind that I am assuming 100% volumetric efficiency and perfect flow. This is an idealized situation, and as such, the numbers produced are a good bit higher than they likely are in the real world. Still, even if I am off by a factor of two, .75L/min of water is a LOT of water.

 

Clearly, there is some other reasoning behind this "HHO" stuff.

 

Perhaps it is to run the car on the "waste" hydrogen? Looking at setups, there is no Oxygen recovery, and all byproducts of electrolysis are ingested to the engine. So no, that cannot be it. We could figure out how much hydrogen is produced during the dissociation process, but that would be kind of pointless because it would require an INSANE amount of water to produce enough hydrogen to actually run a car. To burn fuel with hydrogen instead of oxygen, the AFR approximately doubles, meaning you'd need half as much Hydrogen as you do Oxygen. But the yield of hydrogen through electrolysis is minimal compared to the relatively large amount of Oxygen recovered (4 grams of hydrogen for 2 moles of water compared to 32 grams of oxygen). So to get 792 grams of Hydrogen, you'd have to have 396 moles of water. As we discovered, 396 moles of water is ~12,672 grams of water. 12.672L of water per minute is a LOT of water.

 

But wait a second. We are overlooking something VERY important. How much energy does it actually take to dissociate water?

 

As it turns out, by doing more chemistry, you can calculate the net energy required to break a bond. I'll spare the math, but it can be seen that the net energy cost of breaking the covalent bonds in water is 118kcal. What the hell is a kcal? It's the energy required to raise the temperature of 1L of water, 1 degree Celsius. Oh yea, that's 118kcal to decompose 2 moles of water (2 moles of water is ~ 36 Grams). So that means for our 88 moles of required water, we have a total net loss of 5,192kcal.

 

That is a LOT of energy. That's about as much energy as an average person consumes in 2 days. You would have to burn the equivalent of 2 Big Mac's to get that kind of energy. That's 120 Big Mac's per hour, just to save 25% on fuel. More scientific than Big Mac's, 5,192kcal is equivalent to about 21,723 Kilojoules.

 

So what is really happening here? Well, by this point it should be pretty clear.

 

These "HHO" kits aren't actually dissociating water into hydrogen and oxygen. That simply takes too much energy. Instead, what these convenient little scam devices are doing is BOILING water.

 

Why? Because it requires FAR less energy, which means that the water in this "HHO" jar would boil FAR before it would dissociate. To dissociate water, we must input 21,723 Kilojoules of energy.

 

To boil that same amount of water (our 1,584 grams. We can assume that the jar and water are at ~30*C or ~90*F), it would require a "mere" 4,045Kilojoules of energy. About 1/5 the energy!

 

So, in conclusion, these "HHO" "Run yous carz on teh hydrogens and oxygens" kits are simply no more than steam injection kits. Instead of vaporizing water through a nozzle, like a traditional water injection system, you are vaporizing it with electrodes causing localized boiling and the phase conversion from liquid to vapor.

 

Think about it. If you DID happen to be breaking the covalent bonds between water and dissociating it into it's two elemental components, what would happen? Hydrogen is EXTREMELY flammable. You'd be able to ignite the resulting gas.

 

I will put this challenge out there to ANYONE running an "HHO" kit. Pour water from a sealed container (like, a deer park bottle that's sealed). Open it, dump it into your jar, start the car, and try to ignite the resulting gas. If it ignites, I'm wrong. If it doesn't, then you got suckered for your money.

 

I'm pretty sure I'm not wrong.

 

The funniest part about all of this? The suckers who fall for it are actually PAYING to do this. You are dumping energy into the electrodes from the alternator to boil water. You could, instead, do it for "free" by using the exhaust manifold. Build a stainless steel water container that encloses the exhaust headers, and run a pipe to the intake manifold. The energy of the exhaust (in the form of heat) would boil the water and you would route the resulting steam to the intake. THAT is truly recovered energy. No moving parts, no electricity, and no bullshit. The question at THAT point becomes, whether or not the gains offset the increased weight of the apparatus, or the increased inconvenience of having to fill a water reservoir.

 

The caveat to ALL of this is that you are purposfully leaning out the mixture. Steam would help quench detonation to some extent, but you are really asking for trouble if you don't have a good array of data logging instruments to keep track of what is going on. You have to treat all of this just like you would water/meth injection. It requires tuning to optimize.

 

If you honestly believe the "HHO" hype, then I've got a bridge in brooklyn for sale. I'll cut you a really good deal!

[rao]

I bet if you installed one of those systems AND used Royal Purple, you would see huge gains in MPG

[Bolksey85]

To quote The Simpsons: In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

[lgt_nube]

Water injection was used in WWII aircraft engines to increase the effective octane rating and allow more boost from the supercharger before detonation set in. Possibly these current things will do something similar, allowing the engine to take advantage of a higher octane rating. I'm just guessing about that, though.

[btlegacy]

The injection in WWII aircraft translates to us running water/meth kits on our cars

[mwiener2]

BAC2.5 - you're right, it doesn't work. but the book long gibberish you just posted is so far off....

[BAC5.2]

How so? It requires more energy to decompose water into it's elemental components than it does to boil it. It's entirely feasible that the electrodes get hot enough to cause localized vaporization, and highly unlikely that it actually results in electrolysis. While the numbers may not be totally accurate (as I noted), they are reasonable enough for comparison purposes.

 

I am terrible at chemistry, so I wouldn't be surprised if I mixed things up, though I think the theory is sound.

[snow05gtRI]

can someone cliffnote that book of a post? haha...

[mwiener2]

Cliff notes:

 

To break H2O into H and O you need to use energy, in the form of electricity in this case. The electricity required to break the H's from the O's is GREATER than the energy you get back from burning the H's and O's.

 

There is your 2 sentence explination of why this CANNOT work. Some diesels do use Hydrogen injection to get a performace boost.....BUT, they get the hydrogen from a cylinder of compressed hydrogen. They aren't trying to create the hydrogen and then use it at the same time.

 

A car's electrical system simply isn't robust enough to create enough gas in a useable amount.... but even if it was robust enough, it still wouldn't have any net gains.

 

 

You'd have better luck covering your car in solar cells and using that............. I might be on to something here........

[BAC5.2]

That holds for any fuel. It takes more energy to make than the fuel will produce. Even things you burn directly, like wood. It took more energy for the tree to grow than the energy output from burning.

 

I have seen a Prius putting around Washington DC with solar panels on the hood and roof. A sticker on the back window said "90mpg".

[PhilT]

That holds for any fuel. It takes more energy to make than the fuel will produce. Even things you burn directly, like wood. It took more energy for the tree to grow than the energy output from burning.

 

I have seen a Prius putting around Washington DC with solar panels on the hood and roof. A sticker on the back window said "90mpg".

 

Basic physics "You can not create energy"

[rao]

I can

[rice_rocket]

Sure I understand you cannot create enery, I wanted to imply that perhaps there is a way to make it easier.

 

So another curveball that nobody has mentioned in any of the posts... you usually use a water/lye or other such chemicals to help make this reaction go faster/easier. It certainly helps out the arguement a little.

[PhilT]

I can

 

Do tell

[rao]

Well, after I figured it out severl large corporations offered to buy the secret from me and after I refused they threatened me

 

I can tell you that it involves grounding kits, low temp thermostats and synthetic oil.