Author Topic: Brown's gas  (Read 4120 times)

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Frank S

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Brown's gas
« on: May 21, 2012, 05:08:01 AM »
Brown's gas is also sometimes called Rhodes Gas (after William A. Rhodes who predated Brown), oxyhydrogen, hydroxy and HHO gas. There has much controversy and confusion over the years as to just what Browns gas is.

For instance, some called the substance 2H2O2 while others simply call it HHO. The recent thinking is that Brown's gas contains two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen in a kind of loose molecular bond that is flammable and can be combustible under the right conditions.
 OK that is the book definition. back in the middle 90s a couple of guys rented a small space fro me in my machine shop.
they were working on a "Brown's gas generator" by the time they came to me they were on their 4th prototype design. the 1st one never produced the 2nd & 3rd ones exploded in their garage nearly killing the both of them.
 So I was a bit uneasy about this Hodgepodge of components being tested in my shop  without certain safety measures.
  Plus I got roped into machining many of the parts so I had an insurance liability at stake.
  I had learned that the #3 unit had produced gas through several re-fillings so their concept had been proven to work all be-it still a bomb waiting to explode.
  #4 was to be a 20 liter unit about 90 cm long & 25cm in diameter not the actual capacity of fluids & gas. first off I machined 72 SS steel brass and inconel disc. and 72 CPVC spacers to fit inside of the 10 inch urethane tube with a 30 mm wall thickness.
 that and the center tube is pretty much all there was to the machine per-say. except for a way to fill it with water under pressure and a way to administer the catalytic  compound. next came the power supply which in this case turned out to be something they had cobbled together from a old television .
  her was my contribution to their scheme. They had been using a series of anti flash back valves from an oxy- act. torch but when a back flash occurred the valves could neither act quickly enough to stop the burning gas before it reached the vessel. I came up with the idea of a bubbler where the gas had to overcome a column of water before  reaching the valves and hoses to travel to whatever they were going to power .
 the run test consisted of hooking the hose up to a 4 cylinder car engine much like you would run an engine on LPG. The problem was they had selected a fuel injected Toyota engine. it could start on petrol just fine but to switch over it lost all power and would just about only idle on the "Brown's gas" anyway they got so far behind on their rent that I had to terminate their use of space.
 I know there is a lot of info now on the internet about the devices and various types of producing the gas Does anyone here have any real practical knowledge experiences other than my limited exposure?
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dbcollen

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Re: Brown's gas
« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2012, 12:41:58 PM »
It can not be a power source, you will ALWAYS use more energy producing the gas than you can get back out of it.

OperaHouse

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Re: Brown's gas
« Reply #2 on: May 21, 2012, 01:59:24 PM »
there are pipe sections with thick nacell sections of aluminum that absorb heat of the flame and therefore can't transmit it like a flame arrestor on a boat engine.  I remember a mile section of compressed air line that caught on fire internally from oil deposits over the years.  A lot of things can happen if you are not familiar with that technology.

Frank S

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Re: Brown's gas
« Reply #3 on: May 21, 2012, 03:52:30 PM »
dbcollen;
  That is the problem with 90% of all energy consumed. when a cradle to grave production to consumption is put into play all fuels  consume more energy to produce than usable energy output can be achieved. We have a tendency to ignore it but even laying a piece of steel out on a ground to warm it a few degrees by the sun takes more energy consumed by the sun than the rate of return of the few degrees rise in temperature it would take to cook an egg on. ( T.n.s.t.a.a.f.l.)
 as a fuel Brown's gas will run a small engine or can be used to cut and weld but again like you say the production cost if one were seeking to find a viable alternative to say natural gas it will not work out. the  deposits of Natural gas  took millions of years of constant energy consumption by the earth to produce by the way,     
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Frank S

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Re: Brown's gas
« Reply #4 on: May 25, 2012, 04:20:52 PM »
actually where Brown's gas can come into play as a viable source of fuel NOT AS A POWER SOURCE, is on remote locations where a guy needs a fuel to cut steel.
 a well designed unit can produce about 1200 liters of gas per hour @ an electrical energy use of 4 watt hour per liter
 the unit the guys had in my shop could cut, melt through & burn would be a better description of about 1/4" thick mild steel @ 8 psi  but if oxygen was added as in a regular torch then you could cut 1/2 or 3/4" with normal cut oxy. pressures. the preheat times were long even longer than when using propane/ oxy. but the cut speeds were fine.
 This got me to thinking yes wood ignites when that happens.
 My portable Hypertherm 30 AMP plasma can cut 3/8" but to do that it takes about 18 AMPs @ 220v Plus it requires a 4 HP air compressor if you want to deliver enough air to cut for any length of time, so the 2 combined would be upwards of 8KW
 Versus 4.8 KW using the Brown's gas unit flat out.
  For me I would be better served with a carbide generator & an oxygen generator but these are expensive to operate and in the case of carbide dangerous if not handled properly. but instead of using a carbide generator if a person were to go the route of an oxy generator or buy bottled oxygen a Brown's gas unit wouldn't be such a bad thing
 However consider this for cutting a gasoline oxy torch can cut super thick steels faster than Acetylene & oxygen.
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thingamajigger

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Re: Brown's gas
« Reply #5 on: June 27, 2012, 02:41:58 PM »
@Frank S
I did some testing on Brown's gas and HHO which some believe is one and the same and found the topic very divided as many people had very strong opinions on this matter but very few facts. I think dbcollen post describes one side perfectly---"It can not be a power source, you will ALWAYS use more energy producing the gas than you can get back out of it.", which is completely the wrong perspective in my opinion. Yes this is true however it completely ignores the best attributes of HHO and in fact you can get more back than you put in.

Here is why, I used an HHO generator to supply on-demand HHO at the inlet of an internal combustion engine and the gain in output and efficiency easily outweighed the electrical input to the HHO generator. This is where most people have problems because they cannot think in abstract terms or indirect mechanisms in which 1a + 1b =3, however 1a was never 1 it was actually 4.
We could think of it like this, I have an ICE running at 20% efficiency then I expend 2% of the output energy to generate HHO which creates a fast burn in the combustion chamber which produces more pressure/power but actually lowers the EGT. Now my ICE runs at 30% efficiency which greatly increases the power output however this does not change the fact that this large increase in efficiency was due to a relatively small input. This is because relatively speaking there is no difference between gaining more or wasting less because wasting less is a gain in the real world.
I don't believe in getting something from nothing that's crazy however believing there was never anything there to begin with is just as crazy.

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Thing

Frank S

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Re: Brown's gas
« Reply #6 on: June 27, 2012, 03:31:38 PM »
@Frank S
I did some testing on Brown's gas and HHO which some believe is one and the same and found the topic very divided as many people had very strong opinions on this matter but very few facts. I think dbcollen post describes one side perfectly---"It can not be a power source, you will ALWAYS use more energy producing the gas than you can get back out of it.", which is completely the wrong perspective in my opinion. Yes this is true however it completely ignores the best attributes of HHO and in fact you can get more back than you put in.

Here is why, I used an HHO generator to supply on-demand HHO at the inlet of an internal combustion engine and the gain in output and efficiency easily outweighed the electrical input to the HHO generator. This is where most people have problems because they cannot think in abstract terms or indirect mechanisms in which 1a + 1b =3, however 1a was never 1 it was actually 4.
We could think of it like this, I have an ICE running at 20% efficiency then I expend 2% of the output energy to generate HHO which creates a fast burn in the combustion chamber which produces more pressure/power but actually lowers the EGT. Now my ICE runs at 30% efficiency which greatly increases the power output however this does not change the fact that this large increase in efficiency was due to a relatively small input. This is because relatively speaking there is no difference between gaining more or wasting less because wasting less is a gain in the real world.
I don't believe in getting something from nothing that's crazy however believing there was never anything there to begin with is just as crazy.

Regards
Thing
Thing one could build the same argument that coal crude oil Nat gas or nuclear can not be a viable fuel since it takes more energy to extract, produce of refine these than the amount of power (BTU) output is produced.
 the deeper one has to drill the more fracturing that has to be done the more over- burden that has to be removed , the longer the centrifuges  have to run the lower the total return per btu spent for btu gained.
 HHO/ Brown's gas is nothing more nor less than the use of one form of energy to convert a substance into something else.
 the known laws of physics in this universe mean one thing and one thing only TANSTAAFL  we pay for what we eat no matter how we slice it.
 The 2 guys who were using my shop had reduced their input voltage  from 200Amp @ 12 V to to 50 Amp @ 6V per  100 CF of gas produced by the time they had used up their welcome in my shop. I think they may have had something if they would have chose to use it as an enhancer or a way to reduce the total amount of conventional fuel in their model instead of trying to make it run solely on the B/G  they may have had something or had they perused the use of it as a way to generate a gas for cutting steels for remote locations  then it might have been viable. but just!
  I know of Fire& rescue units who are using gasoline & oxygen as a cutting source in lieu of acetylene those units offer a higher portability and in most cases a safer or at least cheaper way  of cutting away debris.   
I live so far outside of the box, when I die they will stretch my carcass over the coffin