skeeterb

If anyone here watches videos from ZeroFossilFuel, I found out a disturbing fact that the stainless steel that is used as electrodes puts out a hazardous chemical because of the electrical current being passed through the steel. The chemical is Hexavalent Chromium. Yes the same chemical which is highlighted in the movie "Erin Brockovich" starring Julia Roberts. Be very careful with your used electrolyte when disposing of it. I hope everyone listens to this advice. Peace

__________________
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
Not with a BANG
But with a BELCH


BURRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPP

Electric_EyE

Yes, I just saw that yesterday. I guess they use chromium in the manufacturing of 316 SS, and it leaches out in liquid form...

Oh, BTW, SS = stainless steel. BTW = by the way. Sometimes people don't like to type things out, but if other people need everything spelled out for them then I guess that is what we will have to do.

Speaking of zerofossilfuel, I saw him build an electrode with magnetic wire and am still waiting for him to test it out. The manual I acquired from the "run your car on water" website, has design plans with a toroidal core (it's basically a coil/inductor with a donut shape ferrite core) sitting atop a "joe cell" type of electrode of a similar diameter. The inductor is pulsed at around 20Hz, and is supposed to produce "parahydrogen", the slower burning form of HHO. This I am abit skeptical of, and is why I am asking if anyone out there has submersed an inductor under water with any good results?

Conrad_Turbo

Yes because we can just lean out an engine and expect it to run fine and it's just something a whole bunch of engineers overlooked? Lean out an engine 60:1 and you'll see rods go through your block and pistons through your hood, no matter if you suppliment it with HHO or not. $500 programmer is nothing, you can tune an engine with a $200 MegaSquirt ECU or go to a full blown Motec unit which will cost you thousands. You can't just "willy nilly" things and go "oh wow why hasn't anyone done this before?", you'll find out why nobody drives a car with 60:1 air/fuel ratio once you try it yourself... The cult following seems to have a lot of uneducated people in the group, and those that are somewhat educated seem to follow their god Stanley like sheep.

I'm all for alternative energy, but if it requires energy to extract something (wether it be oil, nuclear or hydrogen) the output has to be greater than the input...otherwise it's like running a generator to keep itself running...until it runs out of gas. Then what's the point?

Julia Roberts must be a fantastic scientist...or how about you post some reports that backs up this claim? What form is this hazardous chemical emitted? *feeds the fire*

Conrad_Turbo

Ah hahahaha. Yes that is one element of what makes stainless steel "stainless", the chromium added to it. Now if you run current through it in a vat of water, the chromium leeches out? What does that do to the stainless steel? It will rust. Now how many of your HHO modules do you have to keep replacing the SS plates and housings due to rust contaminating your water?

Almost everything you guys say contradict everything that is already known through modern day engineering and physics.

Maybe from now on, any claims in this part of the forum should have some credible info backing it up, these HHO threads would die in a heartbeat.

Electric_EyE

How do you know this? and exactly what are you qualifications? I guess you are here to educate us all with your EXPERIENCE? I hope so which is why I post some of my ideas. Pistons and rods are more likely to break under intense gas expansion or forced air induction like supercharging or turbocharging under lean conditions, that is NOT running at idle no matter how lean. I would like someone who has tried it before to educate us with their experience, not ridicule with conjecture.That is even more worthless than "crackpot" theories IMHO.

I have my theories as to why some things have not been tried before. But that is saved for all the conspiracy theorists and would not make for a constructive discussion.

Electric_EyE

What "credible info" are you referring to? I thought the guy just made a credible statement warning against hexavalent chromium.

Conrad_Turbo

Toothpaste used orally stunts brain development. Note: Just because someone says something doesn't make it credible... (FYI I just made that up, just so you don't believe that statement I just made)

It's common place knowledge in the Mechanical and Metalurgical Engineering field...hell you can even google it and it will show you there is Chromium along with other elements *gasp* that are in Stainless Steel.

I work in a Mechanical Engineering position and run my own company engineering/fabricating automotive parts along with servicing local engineering/fabrication shops. Now your turn...

I post here because this thread is a prime example of how dangerous the internet can be. I can't say I have ever seen so much misinformation in a thread before until now...it's actually quite funny. However there are quite a few in here that do know what they are talking about.

Well exactly you'd have to richen the air/fuel mixture when you were to drive the car. At idle you are getting 0mpg. When driving the car under load an air/fuel mixture of 60:1 is asking for detonation, detonation creates extremely high peak cylinder pressures and causes broken and melted parts. If you have any automotive tuning experience you would know that already.

Pointing out lies and myths is not ridicule, if you cannot be faced with facts then you're in for a long ROUGH life...

Electric_EyE

At idle I am going to get 0 mpg. Well thank you for that one. I now feel like I am in some sort of comedy cook off here. Sorry, you win! I am in the wrong forum. I hope I didn't piss on your sorry little ego big company owner. Oh yeah, and orally taking anything is pretty dangerous, especially if it has hydrogen fluoride. But then what you take orally contains none of that, does it.

mneary

What exactly is HHO? Is HHO also known as H2O? Or is it 2H2 + O2? Or is it an entirely new compound?

jpanhalt

HHO has become shorthand for a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen in the ration of 2:1 (i.e., stoichiometric).
John

killivolt

What the heck is this ? Is it only during a electro chemical bonding process and is just residue while making chrome.

They are suggesting it leaches into to the surrounding water during their formation of H2 or 2h2 or what ever.

kv

__________________
Truthiness Monkeys : Obedience, Ignorance, Fear.

Mr RB

Lately I've been running into a disturbing amount of people who are believing this "water as fuel" concept here in Australia.

I have messed around with electrolysis and HHO a few times since the late 1970's when I first read about Yull Brown and his work to promote "oxy-hydrogen" as a usable gas that could be handled and stored safely without separating the gasses. I've built a number of electrolysis units and even blown one up once (ahem).

There is one basic fact that a lot of people need to have drummed into them;

Water is NOT a fuel...
Water is an energy storage medium.

Electrolysis adds energy to H2O and separates the bond to make oxygen and hydrogen. The when you burn it that EXACT SAME AMOUNT of energy is released as heat and it re-combines as water. Always. You put the energy in to break the molecular bond, and that SAME energy can then be released later. Thats it. Water is not a damn "fuel".

Now if any of you pro-HHO camp guys want to work with electrolysers there is valid research work to be done to improve the efficiency and high efficiency high longevity devices can be worth a lot of money to thei inventors.

My advice is to start small with an electrolyser, maybe 12v @ 2amps or 24 watts. Make sure you have decent quality ammeters and voltmeters so you can measure the actual amount of power you are feeding into the electrolyser. Its very easy to prove input power. Work with DC for all your initial testing, this is easy and will prove a base efficiency reference for later when you want to compare pulsating DC with your first tests.

Measuring the efficiency of your electrolyser is fairly easy. All waste energy is dissipated as heat. All other energy consumed is going into electrolysis. So "characterise" your electrolyser by suspending a resistor in the liquid and passing a known amount of power into the resistor (measure volts and amps) and measure the temperature rise of the electrolyser above ambient temperature. You will get a figure of 'C/watt.

Then run the electrolyser on DC with measured input power. By simply measuring the temp rise of the device you will know exactly how much waste heat is produced in the device, and with that simple thermomenter reading you instantly get a good idea of its efficiency. You dont even need to measure the output gas, although you can collect the gas and measure that too.

The main problems with electrolysers are plate corrosion and plate bubble fouling. Higher efficiencies require close plate separation and the bubbles that form on the plates reduce the percentage area of the plate in electrical contact with the liquid, reducing the effective plate area and reducing gas output. There are many possibilities to remove bubble fouling including plate treatment, liquid agitation and even some experiments in device resonance... Likewise electrolytic corrosion runs rampant and damages the surface of the plates which generally reduces output although in some materials this surface damage can cause an increase in total surface area. There is good work to be done in plate materials, surface treatments, plate shape and design etc.

And this whole idea of running HHO into your car engine? The math is pretty simple. 14v at 30 amps is 420 watts. Lets say you have a good electrolyser of 60% efficiency. Thats 420 x 0.6 = 252 watts of combustable, real gas energy. 252 watts is 1/3 of a hp. So there is a possible 1/3 hp gain. To generate the extra 30 amps with a typical alternator of 80% efficiency will drain 525 watts or 2/3 hp from the car engine.

I dont have any proof of car performance claims but I do know that running lean gasoline mixture and water vapor injection will both improve mileage. So it is possible these device improve gas mileage a bit as the car computer injects less gas and there is a definite water injection from the HHO. I also think a lot of the mileage gains are from the drivers new attention to mileage, you can get 20% better mileage easily by being aware of how far you push that pedal down.

Sorry for the long post, but it irks me when a legitimate exciting fuel like hydrogen, that deserves research, gets sidetracked and smeared by idiots and scammers trying to sell a lie about water itself being a fuel. Lets do some real research with real voltmeters and real ammeters - its not that hard people...

Electric_EyE

Mr. RB, thanks for the info, the ideas of a plate electrolyzer are pretty straight forward. Have you done any work with a coil type electrolzer, one that used electromagnetic wire and low frequency pulses to break the molecular bonds?

I've made an electrode with 316 SS, 12 plates 2"x12" .0625 thickness, gapped .045, alternate plus minus (no neutral plates). I've done about 3 tests with straight DC to measure water temp changes over time, current drawn, etc. Current appeared to go up as the water rose from room temp to 150 deg F. After the tests, the shine was gone from the surface of the plates. Also, I have 3/8" (.375") oxygen free (99.99%) solid copper connecting the electrode to the voltage source. I was wary at the time I made it because dissimilar metals usually have unwanted interreactions, but now I know this was a mistake because each time the water turned a reddish color. As I was looking on at all the bubbles, the reddish color appeared to be forming between the plates. At first I thought it may have been the impurities in the water maybe iron or rust, so I tried distilled water with same results. Now I realize the copper was attempting to deposit on the surface of the plates, like electroplating. This is why I believe the danger of hexavalent chromium. But maybe the danger will go away over time? Maybe the electrodes have to go through a time of tempering. Either way we should be careful of toxic waste.

My 2 cents about water "scammers": They are the ones making money. I don't think the majority of those that post on the subject have plans on making money. They seem to want to spend their time and money and their results freely with others for the good of the community. And all are not on the same level of progression as some of the geniuses out there with the background or the experience, hence the recycling of ideas. But hey if we weren't interested we wouldn't be reading this stuff right?

ArrowHead

Yeah, sad, isn’t it? I even went so far as to suggest an experiment for someone who was pushing the issue on another forum:

Build a small campfire in your backyard, then dump a bucket of water on it. Tell me what happens.

And that’s in a perfect world. In the real world, you lose energy as heat through the inefficiencies of the process.

Commentary: Good luck with this argument. From my experience with people who’ve been taken in by the water car scam, they don’t seem to understand how a generator or alternator works, period. They think that an alternator rated for x amps is always putting out x amps, and so if you’re only drawing 5A, the other (x-5)A is somehow being wasted to the void.

Or, just plain confirmation bias: The driver tosses the logs that show he isn’t getting an improvement in fuel economy, and touts the ones that do. Or, he isn’t making any measurements at all and just feels as if he’s going to the pump less often.

Agreed 100%. I’ve actually seen people call this scam a “hydrogen fuel cell”. I’ve had to correct them and tell them it’s an “electrolysis” cell, and that hydrogen fuel cells are something completely different and completely genuine.

ETA:
And here’s something else to think about before putting one of these bubble buckets in your car:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement

ArrowHead

Oh, and here’s something else to think about before putting one of these bubble buckets in your car:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement