@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.