Hydrogen Generator

Hi Ive just fitted a hydrogen generator to my old van, I mentioned this to Trevor and Shane whilst drinking before Sundays Championships.
The unit generates HHO quite well, I have been told you can reduce current demand for this type of unit with a power supply that pulses @ 20Khz I think the speed controllers used in the robot scene might do this job I have a couple of 4QD speed controllers could these be used to power my generator what do you think?
:)

Be interesed to hear how you get on with this, been looking at these on the Net, several different ways of doing it, which have you gone for.

DaveMac

DIY:)
I have made it from a bit of drainpipe with screw cap ends the anode and cathode are 4 pairs of SS plates 75mm*200mm approximately, kept apart with foam tape and all held together with cable ties!
I get about half litre per minuet HHO and draw about 16 amps!
This is why I would like the power supply, this is the tricky bit I can get a 30 amp unit off ebay but I would like to have a unit that varies the frequency of the modulation the trick is to harmonise this with the unit or so I have been led to believe.

I would suggest that you do not spend any further money on this...

If one could use a combustion engine to generate electricity to generate hydrogen from water and then use the hydrogen to power the engine, then the worlds energy needs would have been solved a long time ago.

im having a blond moment, can u explain what the point is ?

John

I believe the idea is supposed to be to increase combustion efficiency because of the wide flammability limits of hydrogen. I suspect youd need a heck of a lot of hydrogen to affect efficiency noticably and bearing in mind its being generated probably at 15% overall efficiency, youre likely better off just making sure your tyres are at the correct pressure.

Tsk, next thing you are telling me you dont believe in over-unity machines either. :rofl:

I have to say in respect to Johns comments that he is probably right.

That said, I do recall reading about the guy who invented the decompression chamber giving his wife the bends and almost killing her a number of times and the bloke who discovered the effects of amonia on the eyes becoming blind because he stuck a bit too much in his own eyes. The way to find out what works is by trying it.

You carry on with it if you want. You can stick some nice solar panels on the top of the van and run it from a set of batteries charged by the sun, little wind turbine on the top of the van the charge batteries as you move along basically look at where you can scavenge energy from, regenrative braking? etc etc.

I do have to say though that aside form Johns comments, hydrogen is explosive and if youre not careful the headline Bloke in crap van blows himself up! may be appearing in your local paper some time soon :rofl:

Andy

(Message edited by widow_twanky on July 21, 2008)

leave the van out of it,its class

Thanks for the comments guys,
John I can see your point I would say from what I read the point is to assist in the burning of the petrol the van uses. A point made by Nick.
Jonno the point is I just like this kind of thing,
Leo I do believe in overunity even though it seems impossible at the moment.
Andy the amount of gas stored at anyone time is very small as it€™s used as soon as it€™s produced but thanks for your concern for my safety.
I just wanted to find a power supply that uses PWM and I can adjust the frequency of the pulse as this is supposed to make the thing more efficient.
Look the subject up on utube there is some interesting stuff to see.
Oh and they have taken the word gullible out of the dictionary .................................................. ...look it up.
:)

Over unity might work if those pesky laws of thermodynamics wouldnt get in the way.

yeah but do you think i should run my 4x4 on cooking oil ?

currently doing about 1200 miles a week. average about 40,000 a year at the moment.

Not unless you filter it and mix it with petrol. Also I think you can end up getting fined the same way you can for using red diesel.

Andy

Companies all over the world are spending millions looking to improve the improve the efficiency of internal combustion engines by just a few percent. And yet not one car manufacturer has fitted a hydrogen generator... must be a conspiracy! Only possible explanation.

I just hope Andy was joking when he suggested putting a windmill on top of your car...

Windmill? :rofl: I said wind turbine, big difference. I was not talking about renting it out to Windy Miller to offset the fuel costs!! :mrgreen:

Mind you the way things are going maybe thatd be a good idea.

One thing that concerns me about hydrogen generation is that it seems to work in the same way as easy start. Basically it enriches the fuel and make it burn in a different way. With easy start this burns out parts of the carb and the car essentially gets addicted.

Andy

but surely

1) this is going to have a detrimentle effect to the engine... not designed to cope with such enrichment, the same as adding an contane booster to a race car !

2) why havent manufactures come up with already ?

Yor poor little van craig... i do love it though !!!
john

yes im bored in a hotel in scotland with nothing better to do than get involved in discussions about hydrogen!

:)

I find this thread intresting, as my brother and I tried doing a HHO generator for his car, but didnt know how to make a PWM pulse to make the generator more effective.

I did however find some intresting links while looking through youtube. If anyone is intrested I will post the links.

Post the links Post the links Post the links Post the links
John i did have a wind turbine on my house but the White horse district council made me take it down, Google my name and you will find the bits about that saga.:sad:

Pic on profile

Neighbours protested about the potential noise from the turbine 24 hours a day - they thought it might harm pets with sensitive hearing...

omg, this country has no chance of making any progress on reducing our dependancy on fossil fuels.

What with public enquiries stopping all the useful projects (not that putting a tiny windmill on your house is particularly useful) and crackpot schemes like HHO confusing the matter, were all doomed.

I think this might be the time for the Stirling engine to re-enter the stage. Sure the output is not great, but anything producing heat can fuel it. Manure, solar power, you name it.

or we start using public transport.... what a joke :)

Heres a thought, a standard air to water heatpump has a COP of 3. Meaining for every 1kw of electric used it can transfer 3kw of heat from the air into your central heating. The Effciency of the best powerstations can convert heat to electric at around 50% effciency.

So: 1kw of Electric produces 3kW of heat, 3kW of Heat produces 1.5kW of Electric leaving you wil 0.5kw excess. Also helps cool the planet :)

Going back to my university....

Remember the first law of thermodynamics - Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be converted from one form to another.

Sounds too good to be true !!


I was reminded of that when i was convinced i had invented perpetual motion about 10 years ago !!!

:)

http://revision3.com/systm/zapper/http://revision3.com/systm/zapper/
Saw this a while back, claims he can make perpetual light energy!

n.b.not the first article on the vid

So: 1kw of Electric produces 3kW of heat, 3kW of Heat produces 1.5kW of Electric leaving you with 0.5kw excess. Also helps cool the planet :-)

Second law wants a word. Specifically the COP when pumping heat to the high temperature needed for the powerplant will be maybe 1.3. If you drop the cycle temperature to get higher a higher COP, you get lower powerplant efficiency, still cant break even.

District heating, largely using waste heat from power generation, would have been worthwhile in this country but I doubt it can really be done as an afterthought.

Jonno, your forgetting that heat pumps actually introduce energy from the air (an external source) so effectively they are not as efficient as the first seem. Work in the same principle as a big fridge

- drop pressure making gas cold so it takes on heat from the air (even if its cold air)
- Raise pressure making gas hotter than room air so it discharges heat to the room.

Anyway, heat pumps tend to give off relatively low grade heat making them impractical to generate electricity.

Also got involved in a very low key way on using CO2 as a refrigerant which significantly increases the COP of heat pumps. Amonia is another one which does the same (won the RIBA sustainable building of the year for that one .........oooh get me!:blush:). COPs as high as 5 can be achieved on that.

Another useless fact is that most planning applications are objected to by the MOD or civil aviation authority as they have an unpredictable effect on radar installations and cause obstructions for low level flying operations.

For district heating CHP has been installed quite a lot in the UK. Its great for when you have a fixed base load (Smithfields meat market being a prime example - refrigeration using aborbtion cooling) but efficiencies suffer greatly when the load fluctuates.

Andy

As long as none of you beat me to achieving true perpetual motion so that I can become rich and famous then Ill be happy :)

I have fitted a relay to the power circuit for the HHO generator as the power went through the ignition switch and yesterday the ignition switch and key got very hot! I have also removed one set of pates so now there is only 3 sets, this coupled with the relay should help I measured the current at 10 amps. There is a company that sells power supplies for these units it is a 15 amp PWM the frequency is not what I want but I thought it would make a start plus I cause it for bench testing motors as well.:)

http://www.alternative-energy-resources.net/browns-gas-the-reality.htmlhttp://www.alternative-energy-resour...e-reality.html

Thanks Woody I noted on the same web site they were selling automotive HHO generators :)

So ...the addition HHO gives an increase in fuel efficiency.

http://www.fuelsaver-mpg.com/doc/HowMuchHHO.htmlhttp://www.fuelsaver-mpg.com/doc/HowMuchHHO.html

There is some interesting reading on the their forum.... makes me wish I had an old banger to try it out on.

Not a surprise, a few % increase of fuel efficiency. Hydrogen burns cooler and has a faster flame front, so the thermal signature of the engine is a bit better.

But where do you get the power to make the HHO gas? From the battery. And how is that being charged?
In effect, youre putting on the airco, go get a bit more milage....

Woody - I cant see actual evidence on that page that it actually does anything useful, only claims that it does. What seems more telling is that on the forum results!/not getting any results???? thread. They suggest that you need to play with the sensors...Oh..right.

Its highly likely that the process is bogus in its claims.
Id however be happy to tinker for a few hours with no expectations of success ..itd keep me entertained for a while.:)

From the fuelsaver page:
We pour the majority of our gas out the exhaust pipe (presumably the american use of gas i.e. petrol)

That is arrant nonsense. If only a tiny amount of unburnt fuel were to enter the exhaust, it would very quickly ruin the catalytic converter.

All petrol cars with catalytic converters use some form of fuel injection to accurately meter the fuel, usually using a closed loop feedback system to ensure that the optimum fuel/air mixture is maintained.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_sensorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_sensor

OK, maybe Craigs van doesnt have a cat, but just about all the other petrol cars on the road do.

You could see it as a rather circumvent way to say that most of the fuels energy goes into heat, and a part of the heat is dissipated by the exhaust and the exhaust gasses.

In the end, combustion engines convert about 1/3th of the fuels energy into movement.

And I really doubt Craigs vintage van has any kind of enviroment protection device. Wont even surprise me if it uses carburators.

Carburettors it only has the one that is a Zenith fixed jet down draught? I have just got the PWM controller I will fit that into the circuit and see if that makes any difference to the works!!

:)

Craig

Why not collect the gases and use them to power a rocket motor. Engines use most of their fuel in accelerating the car from a standstill, so fire the rocket at the traffic lights, when you reach cruising speed, dump the clutch in top gear and shut off the rocket motor, simple, yes?

You could plug the converter into the mains overnight on economy7 and be fully gassed up in the morning.

Imagine the sight of your old van leaving the boy-racers for dead with flames shooting out of the back...............

End of the dreaming - there is probably a law against it somewhere.

Once saw a rocket car at Santa Pod do the standing quarter in 3.95seconds, now that was a sight to see.