Author Topic: what is the bottom line with hho?  (Read 11044 times)

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albert sun

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what is the bottom line with hho?
« on: September 29, 2016, 03:03:28 PM »
i recently got a book about fuel cells and started looking at youtube videos. are people really running a lawnmower engine with hho? what is the bottom line with power in and gas out? i understand there isn't "free" energy and would like to hear your opinion about this.

dnix71

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2016, 09:09:42 PM »
We are a practical bunch. If it worked and made economic sense to do it, we would.

North Korea cooks waste vegetation to make flammable gas to run vehicles because they have to. The Nazis cooked coal to make fuel and other things because they had to.

If things ever get so bad you have to disassociate water just to run your lawnmower you will not need to mow the lawn and you will likely not have the electricity to waste doing it.

Fuels cells that combine stored hydrogen and oxygen to make electricity and water are used by NASA because of special conditions in a closed environment outside the earth's atmosphere.

george65

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #2 on: September 29, 2016, 11:50:06 PM »

The bottom line is it takes more energy to make the gas than what you get out of it.  End of short story.

Long story:

"Free" energy exists.  It's called Solar, wind, Biogas and Hydro. ANYTHING else is bunk.

I got inquisitive on this about 15 years ago. I guy I knew that was a very straight shooter tried it and claimed he was getting better mileage with the setup he had. He'd always measured his consumption very carefully and was very precise in everything I knew him to do.  He wasn't trying to convert anyone, just talked about how he too was surprised but couldn't argue with the results he was seeing.

Against our better judgement, I Set up a test with ho ho ho gas  based on this as it got another mate and I very inquisitive about it.  I got a small diesel engine, hooked it to an alternator and a load and ran a long clear fuel pipe that I could see and measure the fuel being used.  Mate and I ran tests all afternoon documenting everything and doing each test multiple times and in random order and making the test as legit as we could.
The thing ALWAYS used more fuel with the gas generator on than it did without. I even tried cheating running the gas producer off a battery and the thing still didn't make any improvement to the run time with the gas more than the margin of error we got just repeating any test multiple times.

We caught up with the guy running it on his car some time later and told him of our results.  He said he was wrong. At the time he put the gas machine on his car he started measuring the fuel he put into it with a drum to be accurate. He made the mistake of taking the 25L drum he used as 20L so in fact he was putting more fuel in the car than he was aware of and naturally saw an improvement over his previous measured results because of that. I also pointed out that with the unclamped push on connections he was using, he was virtually carrying and making a bomb out of the trunk of his car.  He saw the point and removed the devise and that was it.

Of course running on a flammable gas works, it just doesn't work to improve combustion, get higher mileage ( the complete opposite in fact) or pretty much anything else they claim foe ho ho ho gas. It's simple physics, every time you convert energy you loose some. There is no " Over unity" in energy either. That's also crap touted by people that I can only assume have hollow lives and need some sort of alternative religion to believe in.

Using an engine to drive an alternator has a loss in the transmission through the belt. The conversion of the mechanical power in the alt to electricity has a loss. There is a loss of the power going through the wire to the gas machine. There is a loss of energy converting the water to gas in the form of heat alone.  Hydrogen  is a tiny molecule which will leak out connections that are water tight.
The combustion process has losses that they will make up a lot of rubbish about that Hydrogen makes more efficient.
 It's all Bull.

The thing that makes me laugh with this is if you go to pains to build a gas generator and put it on... whatever, and don't instantly get 400 MPG, you did something wrong.  You didn't make the machine right no matter how close you followed instructions. You are .0003 of a volt off, your solution is 1.1 Ml off in a 10L machine, The trammy phase girdle spring inductor is out of phase, you didn't align the thing with the waning globus phase of the moon on the planet Zorg or you didn't wait to build it during the salmon run in Slovakia which is critical to the whole process and you should have known that.

Then of Course Bill Whathisname from wherethefukarewe, Backwater USA comes along and says how he found a rusty old tin can by the side of the road, pissed in it, ran a couple of bits of fencing wire into the thing and connected it to a battery from a radio he last used during the war, the Boer war, put the thing in the back of his pickup he hasn't driven since 1970 and suddenly the thing got 96 MPG on the still flat tyres and ran 5.6 in the quarter at 264 MPH.  All the fairy dust and unicorn believers will all then chime in to congratulate him on a job well done and hold his testimony as irrefutable proof that this dose work and there is no possible grounds for claiming it doesn't and anyone that doesn't believe in and worship the idea is a stooge for the oil companies trying not to let the secret get out!! 
YA!

It's unbelievable in how brain washed people can be with this crap!! 
But I have worked out the way to make it work.  It's so easy! All you have to do is forget about, fact, logic, physics and if you have a low IQ, are very gullible and believe everything you hear or read, this rubbish works brilliantly. Helps if you are able to kid yourself and have a great imagination as well. Then you can REALLY get this crap to work well.

Yes, you can idle your lawnmower from the gas fed in and generated by another energy source.  The amount of power you will use will probably cost more than running it on petrol to start with. Then you have to make the generator, buy the support equipment set it all up etc.  You ever seen a vid of anyone actually MOWING their lawn on a bottle of this? No, I haven't either and its a whole different thing to put this in practice than make up a BS demonstration.

I haven't spent more than about $50 a year on fuel for the last 13 years next month. I run my vehicles on veg oil. It works and there is no Voodoo magic or setting aside principals of physics required. I can demonstrate it all day long by filling the tank and driving all day ( with a top up) and then driving back, like from interstate, which I do 2-3 times a year.
Now, You ask some clown to do the same on Ho ho ho gas and show you the saving they make on consumption with you sitting there beside them. Never going to happen.

I have just started playing with Biogas. Put all your kitchen and food waste into a an airtight drum and get gas out.  10's of thousands of setups around the world including a couple  not far from me that uses that the gas to run a turbine to make power. Now you could make the gas with this, compress it into a bottle and use that to run your mower, car or a generator as many do in places like India.  that is real and demonstrable, Ho ho ho gas is not in practical similar application or live up to the claims.

One of those claims I have read about so often is that the ho ho ho gas increases efficiency of the fuel burn in an engine.
They cite efficiency numbers that illustrate they don't even know what the fluck they are talking about to begin with. They will say an engine only burns 50% of its fuel. If that were the case, where does the 50L per tank full go on my truck that doesn't get burned?  It's not running out the tail pipe, its' not filling the sump so where the hell is it going? Of course ho ho ho gas will make that 99.9 % fuel burn and I'll now get 4 times the mileage and some other disproportionate amount of power.

Of course what some of these idiots mean is the engine is only 50% efficient. If it was THAT efficient, it would be almost 20% better than teh best modern tech has come up with. The huge, slow 120 RPM diesel engines in ships are near 50% efficient but the engine in your car is barely getting past 30% efficiency.
The engine is burning the fuel VERY efficiently as can be verified by emissions tests that show unburnt fuel amounts in the hundredths of 1%. That being the actual case, how is the Ho ho ho gas going to improve the inefficiency? That's in the mechanical friction, heat loss and other things, not in the fuel burn. That's the one thing an engine does real well, Burn fuel. It's converting the energy to mechanical power where it falls over.

As far as this malarky goes, I strongly suspect you would be better off putting the energy used to generate this laughable gas into charging a battery to drive a fan to help push your car along. I would guess the efficiency would be just as good (poor!)  and maybe better.
The gas WILL run an engine, no 2 ways about that, it's just creating it by electrolysis is HIGHLY inefficient and there are problems with transfer and storage and the over all process being a substantial energy Deficit.

If you want to run your lawn mower or car off free energy, get an electric one and charge the battery off a solar panel array.  :0)

hiker

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #3 on: September 30, 2016, 12:33:51 AM »
Made a few of those over the years..did one with aluminum plates..hit it with 12v. 10 amps  at the start..pulled the wires off ..and it sat their for hours makin HHo..all on its own..makin about 2.5 v out put as well..not as much out put to keep a a small torch lit..but a lot of bubbles that would go bang..every time you hit it with a lighter..it was just a small peanut butter jar..still I kept it outside..not safe to breath in . Another one I made only needed  4 amps to keep a candle size flame going..just try it..and go from their....fun stuff..
WILD in ALASKA

electrondady1

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #4 on: September 30, 2016, 09:00:30 AM »
i have 4 small windmills with a total swept area of 33 sq. ft .
rectified to DC the outputs are combined and hooked to an electrolytic cell.
it's a nice load for the  mills
the hydrogen gas it produces is vented right now .
 but it is definitely flammable .
next step is to create a bladder of some kind to store it up.
i want to feed both gases into a fire.

over the years people have tried and documented their automotive  hho generator experiments.
my understanding is, in combination with regular gasoline it improves mileage and combustion efficiency by a measurable amount.
something like 10 or 15 %




« Last Edit: September 30, 2016, 09:27:40 AM by electrondady1 »

george65

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #5 on: September 30, 2016, 09:55:33 AM »

over the years people have tried and documented their automotive  hho generator experiments.
my understanding is, in combination with regular gasoline it improves mileage and combustion efficiency by a measurable amount.
something like 10 or 15 %

I solemnly promise and guarantee that if you can produce one of these Ho ho ho devices that verifyably and repeatedly improves a vehicles Mileage by 15%  under controlled and measured test conditions, I will buy it off you for $100 million.

Does it not occur to you if if these simple and cheap devises could actually improve combustion and get an extra 15% mileage on a vehicle, the manufacturers would have done it years ago to get a huge competitive edge on their rival makers?

OperaHouse

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #6 on: September 30, 2016, 11:51:50 AM »
Most of the HHO systems in cars are just glorified bubblers.  Many years back water injection was popular.  This actually works, it was used on fighters to take off.  Great antiknock agent.  The trouble is, best performance is adding 50% water to fuel usage.  These HHO systems add a lot of steam when they are drawing 20A.  That gives performance, but you have to generate that electricity.  Years ago I had the rare pleasure of seeing both inventors of the jet engine on stage, British and German.  The German said he had to do a demo for Hitler.  The fuel combusters at that time were having technical issues.  He ran the demo with hydrogen which was easy as pie, but could never be used in a plane.  Hitler never asked any questions.  So, everything runs better with hydrogen.  It just isn't practical.  Factoid...hydrogen is the only element that doesn't have a solid state.

dnix71

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #7 on: September 30, 2016, 08:50:24 PM »
Some people add methanol/water mist to their turbo diesel intakes to boost power. Not cheap, but if you tow a heavy trailer you might need it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDlpa1NVJ0s   This is a mist system. Without the methanol you get no extra power.
There are mist systems for gasoline engines. Again, you need the alcohol. Some people report injecting ahead of the turbo ate the fan, some say it works without damage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7  This was a limited production car that actually ran on hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen gas is a very small molecule, and makes steel brittle. The US Space Shuttle flew on liquid hydrogen and LOX. In both cases it was German rocket science that made this possible, so I don't expect some backyard inventor to be able to make this work. You are not going to be able to break down water fast enough to make this portable. The efficiencies are also terrible. NASA went to LH and LOX instead of kerosene and LOX for environmental reasons and because hydrogen fuel cells are a safe, efficient way of making electricity in orbit as well as making O2 to breathe using onboard solar.

Methanol is expensive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd5vj_6l5XQ A cost comparison here.

electrondady1

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #8 on: October 01, 2016, 09:56:26 AM »
hey i just checked George , and it looks like i could use a 100 million so i will at some point do the experiment and get back to you:))
it was a few years ago we had a poster here document his experiments over the course of several months.
he was using his ford pickup (ute.)as a test bed and getting improvements in  millage.
don't recall his name or i would post a link.
trying to generate hydrogen on the fly so to speak puts a load on the alternator which puts a load on the motor.
i think things get complicated when you are introducing extra oxygen into the combustion chamber .
 modern cars  have an o2 sensor adjusting fuel ratios and that must get thrown off .
hho is an accident waiting to happen.
for me the bottom line is, SEPARATE THE GASSES.

here is the real question with regards to hydrogen,
can a gas turbine make electricity ?
the answer is YES!
https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiR6ubc_LnPAhUIPT4KHXEfBFAQFggiMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fkraftwerkforschung.info%2Fen%2Fhydrogen-gas-turbines%2F&usg=AFQjCNHInmVwtMLCYAklIdNt4c_A9LynxQ&sig2=xu0hMS38-kbvANzstm_mgw

bio gas, methane gas, natural gas, CH4.
it's all hydrogen with various amounts of carbon attached.



« Last Edit: October 01, 2016, 12:20:22 PM by electrondady1 »

electrondady1

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #9 on: October 01, 2016, 10:10:35 AM »
from what i have read your need different ignition timing when running hydrogen in an I.C. engine  the flame front in the combustion chamber is much  faster.


 







 
« Last Edit: October 01, 2016, 12:36:32 PM by electrondady1 »

electrondady1

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #10 on: October 01, 2016, 11:49:27 AM »
!


« Last Edit: October 01, 2016, 12:23:44 PM by electrondady1 »

Mary B

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #11 on: October 01, 2016, 04:48:43 PM »
If I remember right the guy "claiming" improvements in gas mileage ended up being banned for OU garbage. TNSTAAFL!

george65

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #12 on: October 01, 2016, 08:44:47 PM »
hey i just checked George , and it looks like i could use a 100 million so i will at some point do the experiment and get back to you:)) 

Fantastic! I'll be more than happy and able to give you your $100M because I will have already leased the technology out for Billions to all sorts of engine manufacturers..... Or just the military.


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trying to generate hydrogen on the fly so to speak puts a load on the alternator which puts a load on the motor.

This is the crux of it. There is no way to generate the Ho Ho Ho gas and get an energy surplus. No question hydrogen burns and burns to the point of being dangerous Combined with Oxygen, it's just that unlike the dreamers claim, You can't do it and get better mileage in a vehicle.


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i think things get complicated when you are introducing extra oxygen into the combustion chamber .
 modern cars  have an o2 sensor adjusting fuel ratios and that must get thrown off .

That's a valid point as well.  A modern Vehicle would adjust it's fuelling, eventually if you introduced a steady stream of any fuel outside it's metering it's own injection rates but if the alternator is generating the power to make the gas, nup, you are going to see a loss.
Modern alternators have a 3rd wire that allows the computer to turn the ALT off so it runs in batch rather than constant mode. It allows the battery to run down a certain amount and then charges it at a high rate till it comes up to where the computer wants it then turns off again. It's supposed to save " Up to 2% fuel over the life of the vehicle".
I'd guarantee most people could save 10% fuel just with better driving habits and wind the window down instead of use the AC all the time but anyway.


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hho is an accident waiting to happen.
for me the bottom line is, SEPARATE THE GASSES.

Plenty of entertaining vids and demonstrations on YT of how explosive this stuff is.
I have thought for a while, If you were a nutter and wanted to cause trouble, All you would need to do is make this stuff and compress it into a bottle at low pressure and set it off and you would have a very powerful low order explosion.
Like the guy I knew that had the generator setup in the boot of his car with crappy and loose push on hose fittings.
He was just waiting to get his head blown off one day when he opened it and the light set the accumulated gas off.

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here is the real question with regards to hydrogen,
can a gas turbine make electricity ?
the answer is YES!
https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiR6ubc_LnPAhUIPT4KHXEfBFAQFggiMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fkraftwerkforschung.info%2Fen%2Fhydrogen-gas-turbines%2F&usg=AFQjCNHInmVwtMLCYAklIdNt4c_A9LynxQ&sig2=xu0hMS38-kbvANzstm_mgw

bio gas, methane gas, natural gas, CH4.
it's all hydrogen with various amounts of carbon attached.

I'm a bit surprised the answer there isn't as simple as running a water spray though the engine to keep it cool on Hydrogen. They fly jets through rain and the rate at which they are tested with water throughput is colossal!

The phase change of the water to steam would help produce a greater flow of gas to drive the turbine harder.  Would take energy but I would think this would be recovered as the energy would be contained till it exited the generator turbine. Maybe it just takes too much water which is non recoverable and would have to be clean and maybe de mineralised thinking about it to prevent build up on the blades?

george65

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #13 on: October 01, 2016, 09:17:59 PM »
If I remember right the guy "claiming" improvements in gas mileage ended up being banned for OU garbage. TNSTAAFL!

If there were anything to this Ho ho Ho gas, it would have found some commercial application by now.
They do make electrolysis units for welding which replace Oxy/ acetylene units but they generally run on 3 phase electricity and aren't trying to get more mileage from a vehicle.

Water injection has been used and still is in a variety of vehicular and different applications. I have looked in the wheel wells of a Super Constellation aircraft and seen the big water tanks they have which was injected on take off to keep the egt's down and the engine from melting itself at takeoff power settings.

I have run WI myself for ovr 10 years in my veg fuelled Diesels primarily to keep them clean but with the very welcome added benefit of the increased power and lower engine temps under high load.  You CAN get more power on water alone just through the cooling effect and  subsequent increase in air density going into the engine. On one old merc I had I could test that to a 3/4 second reduction in 0-60 Kmh time. On that old plugger, 50%  Meth mix took of almost 3 seconds to that low speed which required a good amount of road on that car. It was a HUGE improvement.

When towing a large trailer that had a big frontal area but not that heavy, the water would take the thing from overheating on the highway to running a comfortable temp as long as the water lasted. I used to carry 25L in the boot and it could go through it in 150KM which was more than the fuel consumption!

There is a good reason WI isn't used on production vehicles and it's not because it doesn't work because there are loads of creditable tests asl well as uses that say it does.
They simply can't put enough water in a vehicle practically to get it from one service to another. They certainly can't rely on the driver topping it up.
It's hard enough to get people to put fuel in their vehicles now days and one can easily Imagine the amount of morons mixing the 2 tanks up and putting fuel where the water should go and vice versa no matter how many labels there were.

The other reason is legal. If a manufacturer took advantage of the WI they could change the engine tune to get more power with lower emissions etc. When the water ran out, the emissions would go up.  It's actually illegal for that to happen in most parts of the world. The vehicle must stay within required standards at all times.  As the manufacturers can't guarantee the owners will keep the water supplied, they can't take advantage of a WI system if fitted.


Ho ho ho gas may be workable in some application like using solar panels to produce the power and then making Hydrogen to burn later in a generator to make power when the sun has gone down but as I have never heard of that, I presume it is too inefficient a process as well to be viable.
May be the same reason why hydrogen cars will always be a pipe dream.

The  pressures required to get enough hydrogen in a tank to get still less than battery cars is huge and so is the energy consumption of the compressor driving them. The trials they have done with Hydrogen ( and NG cars) shows the things take like 8-12  hours to fill a tank with a very limited range in order to keep the consumption of the compressor low enough to be supplied by normal household mains current.

The day I see a Ho ho ho Supplemented car in the showroom is the day I will believe it works as all the claims  go.
Until such time, I'll regard anyone claiming mileage increases through HOHOHO  to be either Con men or scam artists or just horribly ignorant and having a flawed test procedure or measurements.

electrondady1

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #14 on: October 02, 2016, 10:51:12 AM »
the O.P. was curious about the videos were someone gets an  engine to run on hydrogen. whether they were real or not.
  i say yes you can.

it takes more energy to break the water down than what is contained  in the hydrogen.
 but it is considered a good energy storage medium.
so  if you have electrical energy that you can't use right now, produce hydrogen and then run a generator off the stored hydrogen when there is a need .
that seems to be the way things are headed.
at least in Germany .
this is all to do with the intermittent nature of wind and solar.
it's the energy storage capability that will make the technology main stream .







dnix71

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #15 on: October 02, 2016, 11:03:06 AM »
george65 The Germans have cars running on H2 but it is cryogenic. The cars have a Dewar bottle. That was the only way to get enough H2 to make a reasonable driving range. That also means you had to use it or lose it, as it will warm up and vent.

It is also horribly ineffcient to make cryogenic H2 but Germany has a staggering excess of electricty in the winter from wind and it's neighbors have been complaining about Germany dumping the excess power on the grid.

http://de.total.com/en-us/home/media/list-news/total-opens-hydrogen-fuel-pump-innovative-cryo-compressed-and-700-bar-fuelling-technology-munich

albert sun

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #16 on: October 02, 2016, 03:53:18 PM »
i watched a couple videos about using the hho for a torch, it looked like it burns really hot. what is your opinion about using an electrolyzer versus buying acetylene/propane? would an electrolyzer be a good dump load?

george65

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #17 on: October 02, 2016, 07:54:29 PM »
the O.P. was curious about the videos were someone gets an  engine to run on hydrogen. whether they were real or not.
  i say yes you can.

I say you can run an engine on hydrogen as well.
Same as LPG, Natural Gas, Biogas/ methane, coal gas, wood gas, acetylene... and any other combustible gas.  Question is just cost and supply.

The OP actually asked about HHO, a totally different thing in my book to Hydrogen and a totally different process of fuelling.
I have never seen any reference to HHO that wasn't with the implication of on-board generation and rubbish claims about efficency and extra MPG and a whole load of other crock.

Yes, you can run an engine on HHO or any other flammable gas you can think of.

Quote
it takes more energy to break the water down than what is contained  in the hydrogen.
 but it is considered a good energy storage medium.
so  if you have electrical energy that you can't use right now, produce hydrogen and then run a generator off the stored hydrogen when there is a need .
that seems to be the way things are headed.
at least in Germany .

it's the energy storage capability that will make the technology main stream .

I'm not sure about it being such a good storage medium other than it can translate straight from electricity.

Firstly it's a small Molecule so sealing is difficult. 2ndly it has to be highly compressed to become a liquid which takes more energy than it is worth and requires impractically strong and expensive storage tanks especially for Vehicular use.
3rdly I am given to wonder about the efficiency of the process. Seems to be a lot of energy conversion in it and each time you convert, you loose.  This may not be such a big deal in storing an excess that will be wasted anyway but the cost factor will come in on a commercial level and they it comes down to the question being which storage medium will give better bang for the buck and returns on investment.

It may be that batteries or pumping water up to a resivour and generating power when required on the down hill might be better.
I'll have a look up about hydrogen energy storage but thinking the process through, it's hard for me to imagine a system being cost efficient enough to be put into wide scale use.

That said, last night I was watching a Vid on a solar plant of 640MW  which was recently Commissioned in india. Seemed Ironic a big part of this was a control system to throttle the power back they were sending to the grid.  They were talking about as little as 10 and 25% being exported and that certainly seemed to be somewhat more of a norm than an exception the way they were talking repeatedly about just topping off the grid and not over powering it.

IF they could store excess power in Hydrogen in a viable way, I'm sure they would be all over it.  By the same token, generating even 100MW of power through a bank of IC engines is going to be an undertaking in itself.
Then again, It's also going to take a near unimaginable amount of Tesla batteries to do it as well.

george65

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #18 on: October 02, 2016, 08:18:08 PM »
george65 The Germans have cars running on H2 but it is cryogenic. The cars have a Dewar bottle. That was the only way to get enough H2 to make a reasonable driving range. That also means you had to use it or lose it, as it will warm up and vent.

Hydrogen is Different to HHO.
You can put sparks in a tank of Hydrogen or any other " Pure" fuel for as long an you like and nothing will happen.
The problem with HHO is you DO have the oxygen in it so the stuff is ready to go BOOM! at all times.
Hydrogen from a tank is also different to HHO generated on board a vehicle.

Cars already run on gas in the millions. The type of gas is irrelevant from the point of the engine.  Set it up with regards to timing, compression etc and an engine will run on any gas including smoke from a fire which is essentially what wood gas is.

It's everything downstream that comes into play. Supply, storage and distribution are the make or break factors, not whether an engine will actually burn it which they will.

If I were a betting man, I'd put money on the fact Hydrogen will never become a wide spread fuelling type for vehicles at very least.
The properties of the medium make it inherently unsuitable.
Look at the original question, a lawnmower.
The size of the tank required to mow your lawn using Hydrogen would probably be bigger than the mower itself. The energy density of  Oil is something few people really appreciate.  Then how go you fuel it? Probably not going to be able to have a supply yourself and refuel as that would take a lot of energy so you are probably going to have to swap bottles. Like BBQ gas. Yeah, we all love that don't we?
Just wait till you go to fill your car and it takes an hour to do....

The fact companies research and develop hydrogen systems and get on the green bandwagon with it now are irrelevant.  There is money in research grants, there is PR in hydrogen fuelling stations and other hype and a whole load of other self serving benefits in going down this road atm OTHER than it being a viable fuel of the future.

I don't see it replacing oil  but I don't see any other current technology doing that either in it's present form.
The oil replacement I believe is something we still haven't heard of or maybe has even been developed at this point.

Yes, I can hear people jumping up and down and saying what about Electricity.
Hmm, what about it?
I can't see a Jumbo jet or a container ship or a train even running from it's own fuel reserve like a long distance Diesel does now running on electric power  in the short time I have left and if they do, it will be in a new form of storage, not any one we have now.

There is a lot to be gained from getting on the green bandwagon alone but that is a far cry from coming up with a solution to replace a massive infrastructure that has so many variations in use and size.

albert sun

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #19 on: October 03, 2016, 01:11:11 AM »
 i am perfectly happy buying 91 and diesel. i wouldn't run anything other than, in either of my turbos. the author i am reading is making lye from wood ash to make electrolyte, does this make HHO? i don't know chemistry very well and should probably stay focused on my wind turbine, but i am interested in the possibly of practical uses for gas. making hydrogen from fossil fuels is more productive than electrolyzing water? or hydrogen is better for making hydrocarbon fuel than using as a fuel? doesn't hydrogen release noxious chemicals making these hydrocarbons? would these same hydrocarbons be more efficiently converted into electricity with fuel cells than with internal combustion engines? does hydrogen hold a discrete stance in our fuel production already?

electrondady1

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #20 on: October 03, 2016, 09:25:48 AM »
i haven't tried to make lye yet (potassium hydroxide), although i have a wood stove now and can try to make it .
I turned 65 last month so i might have more time on my hands when the government old age checks show up.
 i still have a good supply of sodium hydroxide (Caustic soda) left from deck cleaning which is said to be the next best electrolyte.

 i was just 12 years old when i made my first HHO.
i was very impressed when i tested it with a match and it blew my apparatus  to pieces.

 another thing the Germans are also experimenting with, the Sabatier reaction is a process were hydrogen is combined with CO2 at elevated temperatures and made to form Methane . adding a carbon molecule makes the stuff easy to handle.




 
« Last Edit: October 03, 2016, 09:30:48 AM by electrondady1 »

george65

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #21 on: October 03, 2016, 06:45:05 PM »
i haven't tried to make lye yet (potassium hydroxide), although i have a wood stove now and can try to make it .

Like a lot of things, I believe it's not all that easy to do. I remember a friend trying it years ago for Biodiesel manufacture.  As I recall his summary was it takes a LOT of ash to make a small amount and more work still.

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I turned 65 last month so i might have more time on my hands when the government old age checks show up.
 i still have a good supply of sodium hydroxide (Caustic soda) left from deck cleaning which is said to be the next best electrolyte.

I love that stuff!  I cleans everything it doesn't try to dissolve. Brings concrete driveways and paths up like new, cleans yecch like no tomorrow.
I don't recommend it on sand shoes though, the last pair I tried it on fell apart in the bucket.  Oops!

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i was just 12 years old when i made my first HHO.
i was very impressed when i tested it with a match and it blew my apparatus  to pieces.
Got to be happy with that!!!   ;D

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another thing the Germans are also experimenting with, the Sabatier reaction is a process were hydrogen is combined with CO2 at elevated temperatures and made to form Methane . adding a carbon molecule makes the stuff easy to handle.

I had a look for the Hydrogen energy storage and could find a lot of talk about it in projects now due to have been completed but no actual articles of a setup in operation. I also found a creditable looking report but also a confusing one that seemed to say that Hydrogen storage had a very low " round trip" efficiency below that of lithium cells but when used to store excess wind energy had a higher energy return that Batteries.

After reading a few times I couldn't really understand the conclusion of what they were trying to say.  I also noted that they almose went to pains not to avoid a cost comparison.
Other than that what I found seemed to be a lot of Ra ra ra articles from companies and entities trying to promote their specific methods of using hydrogen to attract investment and " Green " Credits.

Would be interesting to see if there are any Hydrogen solar storage setups in operation.  May not prove a lot though. There are a number of solar farms  that have been well noted in the media for being green and a wonderful breakthrough in clean energy that are also known to be suffering a lot of trouble and don't show any promise of returning their investment et alone a profit.

They only tell you what they want you to believe and will spin doctor the heck out of that they don't want you to know.

There is one thing pretty apparent.... Solar generation these days can be done very easily and cheaply.  Storing the power you generate, especially on a commercial scale is still a big hurdle to overcome.

albert sun

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #22 on: October 04, 2016, 01:06:25 AM »
it seemed like, making lye is just pouring water into the ash and then waiting a week to collect it. i am familiar with the cost of solar, controls and storage, and a case of oil for the generator too. g.w.bush gave millions of us money to hydrogen research and i think i understand where the return was, or where the interest was.

madlabs

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #23 on: October 19, 2016, 06:57:26 PM »
I was lucky and got to play with some fuel cells. I was running an after school science club a few years ago and we decided to build a fuel call powered robot. I'm good at begging (as all professional educators are) and we got a couple of small fuel cells. We spent a couple of years playing with stuff, building electrolyzers, both grid powered and solar, played with homeade soda ash electrolyte, all kinds of stuff. We tried several types of tanks for the robot, starting with mylar balloons with a weight on them, then a flexible bladder. In the end we got tanks of hydrogen and a metal hydride storage tank. We got a paid field trip to Humbolt U, where they have a fuel cell lab. Really fun stuff and fuel cells are really cool. The take home for me was:

It takes a lot of juice to make any amount of hydrogen.

Good luck holding on to hydrogen. Very slippery stuff. Pretty hard (but totally doable) to build up explosive levels of the stuff. It is just so determined to escape.

Never monkeyed around with HHO stuff. Smelled to bovine for me.

Jonathan

XeonPony

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Re: what is the bottom line with hho?
« Reply #24 on: October 20, 2016, 01:51:50 PM »
HHO for cars engines n such = scam and BS you lose at every angle

HHO for a field torch in a pinch? Yup works well enough for small fixes, we did this int he logging camps, but it is like jugging a live grenade! got to be really care full.

H2 is an inefficient battery at best, it is not a fuel but a storage method, a rather poor storage medium at that IMO less you can store it in liquid form!

There is complicated set ups to converting it to liquid fuels via heated iron catalysts, will be building such a system for my self on a small scale once I have my solar array built to a larger sized system.
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