HHO genrators? does the fuel saving magic work?

I studied this myth to the bitter end when I was in engineering school.

The water gets pulled by engine vacuum, into the cylinders, cooling and cleaning them. It's as simple as that. You will get better performance and fuel economy because you've relieved your water pump from having to do the work of pumping as much water through your radiator as it normally would.

The hydrogen and oxygen molecules that are produced, if any, are very few, and more work goes into producing them than you get back out of them (see the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics). The only conceivable benefit of the electrodes would be to bubble the water so it's more likely to be pulled into the vacuum hose. Engine vacuum, especially in a turbocharged engine, ought to be intense enough to make the electrodes unnecessary.

These devices have existed for ages. Airplanes were first to use this method for cooling, at least since the 1940s, but I think even the Wright Bros did it. There are thousands, probably even millions, of semi trucks today that use it as an auxiliary cooling system.

Search the web for, and read about Water Injection. No one's calling this a revolutionary superfuel but the snake oil peddlers, and suckers like me. I actually decided to go to engineering school to pursue my Free Energy hopes, only to systematically crush each of them with Science.

:huh

The water pump is driven by a belt or is geared to the engine, depending on application. It always spins at a rate proportional to the engine speed, no matter the temperature of the water it is pumping. That's why we need a little heat activated valve (Thermostat) to keep the water from circulating through the radiator before the engine is warmed up, and to maintain the engine temperature.

Do new cars have electric water pumps with PWM speed controllers or something? Crap, I'd better check to see if my new car has a t-stat.

water/meth injection to cool intake charge is a whole 'nother discussion..

and i dont believe you want to be injecting water/meth into a turbo motor when it's making vacuum... :huh

edit:

THIS thread IIRC is about consuming manufactured hydrogen to increase engine efficiency.

Mechanical load increases power requirement for a water pump. i.e. The difference between pumping water through the block alone, or pumping it through the block, the radiator, and the heater core. Cooling requirement increase begets mechanical load increase. Cheers.

:huh

engineers..

Hah! Tell me about it.

Sorry, after reading the first post, I thought we were talking about the all-in-one HHO generators that you see people installing under their hoods, with a water tank with electrodes in it, and a vacuum hose to inject the product of electrolysis into an engine's cylinders.

FWIW, Inject means to introduce one substance into another. Positive pressure not required. Also, a turbo provides positive pressure, not vacuum. Vacuum is highest during deceleration, and higher at idle than WOT.

Wait! You mean that it doesn't really even work?? I bought one of these from the JC Whitney catalog back in the early '70's and have run it on my cars ever since. Well I guess that was $9.95 wasted!

BMW uses a pwm regulated water pump on the N52 engine but it also has a thermostat. The water pump usually fails at about 70k to 80k miles.

dude, are you OK? or do you just lack any reading comprehension skills?

the theory of these HHO generators is that by burning the off-gassing vapor, it increases hp output.

YOU brought up water injection in turbo engines, which was a different conversation than HHO being BURNED in an engine to increase efficiency, which is what this thread is about. IIRC. so i tried to get you back on track.

look ding dong, turbo engines make vacuum just like any other engine.

and, YOU stated that water being drawn into a turbo engine was a great thing. but the only way to draw water into an engine is with vacuum which is the wrong time to be injecting water into a turbo engine. and again i tried to help you out there.

:huh

and just for posterity's sake and your own education, i'll break it down for ya. admittedly, i'm no engineer and may be wrong..

dude, if you're gonna come on a web forum and announce yourself as an ENGINEER, you better know something about the topic in question. HHO consumption for fuel economy.

now you're talking about water injection. which actually reduces horse power by cooling the charge, but yes it does clean and cool the combustion chamber and backside of the intake valves.

what the fuck? the water pump is still pumping the same amount as it was before you injected water into your engine! it's not on a clutch. this makes no sense whatsoever.

yes, the bubbling is the product of separation of the hydrogen & oxygen gases. for burning cause water dont burn!

here you're actually correct that turbo engines make vacuum. they do.

but how is intense vacuum gonna separate hydrogen & oxygen from water. cause that's the only thing that will negate the need for the electrodes... you own a vacuum powered atom splitter, fuck yeah you're an engineer!!

now you're back to the cooling benefit of water injection. yes airplanes were some of the first to use water injection, and do you know why..? at high altitudes, the air is thin and the engine's power is reduced. by turning up the supercharger boost pressure more power could be made to make up for the power loss due to altitude, but more pressure made more heat. water injection was used to reduce the heat and allow the higher boost pressure and horse power.

i believe the german's used this on the ME109 & FW which was why they could attack from higher altitudes than the allied forces, but i may be wrong there.

again, water doesn't burn thus water injection isn't a "super fuel".

The actual HHO generator part works, sort of.... It does put out small amounts of HHO with pretty much 0 pressure, I made a shitty pencil torch like that once. Will it save you gas/time/money/etc? Hell no

The strongest proof this doesn't work is every car company in the world spending millions of dollars to improve fuel efficiency, but not using hydrogen generators.

The fact that the water always moves at the same rate doesn't imply that the same amount of work is required to move it. If you push a wheelbarrow at a constant rate, you'll use more energy pushing it through the mud or up a hill. Same concept: mechanical resistance is proportional to the energy required to overcome it.

Mechanical load for vehicle cooling goes like this:

Thermostat closed, heat off: water pumps through engine block only. Lowest mechanical resistance.

Thermostat open, heat off: water pumps through engine block and radiator. Greater mechanical resistance requires more power to maintain the same flow rate.

Thermostat open, heat on: water pumps through engine block and radiator and heater core. Greatest mechanical resistance requires more power to maintain the same flow rate.

It stands to reason, then, that if you can keep the thermostat closed more of the time, you can recover both horsepower and fuel economy.

No, it's the water boiling due to the application of heat and vacuum. Lower pressure lowers the boiling point of a fluid. Any molecule splitting by the electrodes is so minimal it's negligible, and comes at a net loss.

It won't split atoms. Not sure where you got that. And we're talking about molecule splitting, not atom splitting. Atom splitting would be awesome, but the neighbors would complain.

What I'm saying is that the only benefit you're getting is by reducing engine load from what amounts to an auxiliary cooling system, fed by a vacuum port.

It takes more energy to produce H and O gas than you get back by burning it. Electrolysis is at best 70% efficient, and engines are at best under 20% efficient, so the energy recovered by splitting molecules and then burning the gasses is a net loss.

That's where I always was. On demand vehicle fuel from water (HHO gas) is a sham.

I was an auto mechanic for 8 years before I became an engineer. I'm not bragging about either. Just stating a fact, so as to give a little background information. About as many people irrationally hate mechanics as irrationally hate engineers, and I've been both for long enough to witness the reasons the stereotypes exist. When I was in school I did auto repair work on the side, to make ends meet, and at one point some kid tried to hire me to help him modify body computers so they wouldn't throw emissions codes. He was installing these HHO kits. I explained to him that this modifying a vehicle's emissions system is illegal in our state, and that I couldn't do it for him. I then tried to explain that this was a big hoax. He claimed it wasn't, and that he was getting crazy fuel economy, like 100+ mpg. He was good natured about it, and offered several times to prove it to me, but never managed to produce any proof. I spent a good 20 hours working out the math and chemistry, to determine the amount of energy spent and then gained by taking water, splitting it, and then burning it. I found that it is a waste of energy. What isn't a waste of energy is the use of water to absorb heat and carry it away from the engine.

I was pretty excited about that. That's when I learned about its uses in the past. Pretty cool stuff.

If this diagram is correct, then having the thermostat open will cause lower flow restriction for the water pump because the path through the radiator is in parallel with the path through the engine. Which means cooling the engine with water vapor into the air intake will not reduce the horsepower needed for the water pump.

It's not an accurate illustration. The thermostat is coupled with the water pump. As an assembly, it acts as a diversion valve. When open it diverts flow through the radiator (i.e. paths are in series, not parallel).



I forgot to mention also that there is fan load associated with a vehicle's cooling system as well as its cabin heater. Any time the fans kick on, engine horsepower is required to provide the power they demand. Mechanical for the shroud fan and electrical for the heater.

Edit: sorry, the flow is actually in parallel during the transition between the thermostat being all-open and all-closed.

Now I am curious, do you have a correct illustration showing the pump, the path through the radiator and path through the engine?

Shot in the dark here - what about a hot water siphon instead of a water pump? I saw a 2 cylinder Kubota that worked like this, along with some early model T's... must be a reason they don't use it, like insufficient flow rate.

Yeah. I'll post one from one of my tech training books, tomorrow afternoon.

electronic cabin heater ? headscratch