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Thread: HHO Conversion

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    HHO Conversion

    Has anyone had any experiance of HHO conversion for their car?

    I am considering giving a DIY kit a go.

    One thing I am aware of is that the power used to create the gas will put more strain on the alternator and has the potential to actually reduce milage, so I am looking at hookin the whole lot up to a second battery which can be taken out and charged at home.

    To start with I will just use graphite from a kids Jumbo pencil and see if that works.

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    The only other thing I am concerned about is the conversion takes the gas and turns it back in to H2O. If this happens in the cylinder wouldn;t the cylinder get flooded. Also H2O does not compress very well so has the potential to knacker the pistons?????

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    No experience of HHO but I have converted both a Range Rover and a Land Rover V8 to propane

    both were complete disasters. If anything goes wrong, you are on you own, it's impossible to get any help from any dealer or get the car serviced

    If you do go ahead, check with your insurance company, as you are now driving a modified car

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    Quote Originally Posted by Lee Bartholomew View Post
    The only other thing I am concerned about is the conversion takes the gas and turns it back in to H2O. If this happens in the cylinder wouldn;t the cylinder get flooded. Also H2O does not compress very well so has the potential to knacker the pistons?????
    A car post in teh geeks thread? Who is your audience ?(personally, i think you are talking to yourself )

    edit...and philsmove

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    Quote Originally Posted by philsmove View Post
    No experience of HHO but I have converted both a Range Rover and a Land Rover V8 to propane

    both were complete disasters. If anything goes wrong, you are on you own, it's impossible to get any help from any dealer or get the car serviced

    If you do go ahead, check with your insurance company, as you are now driving a modified car
    I can see the potential problems with propane .

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post
    A car post in teh geeks thread? Who is your audience ?(personally, i think you are talking to yourself )

    edit...and philsmove
    Chemistry

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    I'm not really very up on this (and I know, as a mod, we're supposed to be knowledgeable on most subjects ) and have no idea if this is what your talking about ..

    BUT my brother had his BMW converted to take LPG (gas) His job required him to do many many miles a week and he was extremely happy with it.

    When it was time for him to get a new car, he gave it to my parents and they had a slightly different perspective... firstly, it took up at least half of the boot space and secondly, they had to drive MILES to find a garage that did LPG.

    Also, you can't just start off in LPG, you have to start the engine and drive for a while using petrol, then you switch over to gas and I know they had a fair few problems with the car cutting out.. in the end they found a weird nack, something like 2 quick switches over and back again, then leave it for one minute and do it again and it 'usually' worked
    But my Mum hated the uncertainty of it all and refused to switch over when she was driving!

    The upside was, they could (and they told me numerous time ) drive ALL the way to Yorkshire AND back(over 400miles), for less than £15 and to my house and back (120 mile round trip) for less than a fiver! Not bad for a 5 series beemer!

    There you go, thats my very untecky contribution!
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    Re: HHO Conversion

    HHO (2 parts hydrogen to 1 part oxygen (H2O (water)) or at least gas form of water)

    Basically it is using water seperated in to hydrogen and oxygen to supliment your petrol and help increase milage.

    THere has been claims that people have built compleate cars to run on just water.

    The kit itself is easy to home build. Just a plastic tub, distilled water, baking soda, a bit of tubing, wires and a pencil

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    Quote Originally Posted by Lee Bartholomew View Post

    The kit itself is easy to home build. Just a plastic tub, distilled water, baking soda, a bit of tubing, wires and a pencil
    I don't know why but this picture suddenly sprung to mind
    Attached Images Attached Images
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    Re: HHO Conversion

    Quote Originally Posted by Lory View Post
    I don't know why but this picture suddenly sprung to mind
    Yeah it is pretty rough but if it works I will work on improving it and making it look nicer. Lets see if it works first before wasting hours on it.

    Just about to start with a milk bottle and a pencil

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    Quote Originally Posted by Lee Bartholomew View Post
    Has anyone had any experiance of HHO conversion for their car?

    I am considering giving a DIY kit a go.

    One thing I am aware of is that the power used to create the gas will put more strain on the alternator and has the potential to actually reduce milage, so I am looking at hookin the whole lot up to a second battery which can be taken out and charged at home.

    To start with I will just use graphite from a kids Jumbo pencil and see if that works.
    I am struggling to understand the benefit of this. You use petrol in your engine to generate electricity in your alternator. You use this electricity to electrolyse water into hydrogen and oxygen and then you burn this hydrogen and oxygen in the motor to produce power. I am having a hard time understanding how the energy that you expend in making the electricity is going to be less than the energy that you get from burning the hydrogen and oxygen in your engine.

    If you can then you will have made a machine that creates more energy than it consumes.

    If you can utilise the energy of combustion that gets wasted (mostly the heat that has to be lost by the radiator to keep the engine cool) to produce this hydrogen/oxygen mixture then you will have an overall gain in efficiency. That would be worthwhile doing. This is what happens in combined heat and power units where you use a motor to produce electricity and use the heat in the cooling water to provide space heating. Not very easy to use in a moving vehicle.

    Can you let us know how this is supposed to work.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lee Bartholomew View Post
    The only other thing I am concerned about is the conversion takes the gas and turns it back in to H2O. If this happens in the cylinder wouldn;t the cylinder get flooded. Also H2O does not compress very well so has the potential to knacker the pistons?????
    All fuels that contain hydrogen (all hydrocarbons such as petrol, diesel, LPG, and hydrogen itself) when burnt in air will form water. It will not exist as liquid water in your cyclinder because the temperature of combustion will keep it as water vapour or steam. Your engine cyclinders and pistons are exposed to water vapour all the time without harm. Most of the time you will only notice water coming out of your exhaust when starting your engine from cold and the vapour can condense back to liquid in your still cold exhaust pipe, or on cold days when it condenses to a fine mist or fog on leaving the exhaust pipe.
    Last edited by Chef; 29th-July-2009 at 01:09 PM.

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    Quote Originally Posted by Chef View Post
    Can you let us know how this is supposed to work.
    The argument is that the HHO improves the efficiency of the combustion process for the petrol. In other words, the "win" is making the petrol burn better, rather than using the HHO as an energy source in its own right. (As you say, the latter option would basically sound like a violation of the laws of thermodynamics).

    This seems to be a topic where everyone with scientific knowledge reckons is very skeptical, and everyone doing it says "it really does work". I'd love to see some proper studies, but I haven't been able to find any - Google searches are massively dominated by people who want to sell you HHO.

    [I freely admit I don't know enough chemistry to say whether or not it could possibly work, but I'm feeling pretty sceptical about it myself].

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    Quote Originally Posted by Chef View Post

    If you can utilise the energy of combustion that gets wasted (mostly the heat that has to be lost by the radiator to keep the engine cool) to produce this hydrogen/oxygen mixture then you will have an overall gain in efficiency. That would be worthwhile doing. This is what happens in combined heat and power units where you use a motor to produce electricity and use the heat in the cooling water to provide space heating. Not very easy to use in a moving vehicle.

    Can you let us know how this is supposed to work.
    If the initial tests work OK, then I would look at running it off a second battery which can be removed and charged as needed.

    Of course if you were looking to try and get 'Free' energy, then you would have to charge the battery via solar power.

    All tests at the mo to see if what is written on google works or not. The only way of finding out for sure is to try .

    I don't know if the heating of the water will help the seperation (i read somewhere that it does). If thats the case then you could cert use some of the waste energy back in to it.

    For me the big question is how much power does it use compared to how much it throws out. power in will always be > power out but it is finding the best way not only to minimise that gap, but to keep that gap filled econimicaly

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    Quote Originally Posted by David Franklin View Post

    This seems to be a topic where everyone with scientific knowledge reckons is very skeptical, and everyone doing it says "it really does work". I'd love to see some proper studies, but I haven't been able to find any - Google searches are massively dominated by people who want to sell you HHO.

    [I freely admit I don't know enough chemistry to say whether or not it could possibly work, but I'm feeling pretty sceptical about it myself].
    as a purpetual motion machine people claim to have done it but I too am sceptical about that and yes google searches are pretty much about selling the kits which is why I am making my own

    One site that I am working off with some good info is this forum http://forums.maxima.org/4th-generat...ake-kit-6.html

    and this instructable http://www.instructables.com/id/SK38G6NFHY0H56W/

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    hi Lee,

    I fancied HHO but could not figure out if it would be worthwhile or not.

    If this is going to be a hobby you may wish to google scangauge, which can determine your exact fuel consumption.

    I have bought a Vauxhall ASTra which was factory fitted with LPG, it is great. The tank is in the spare wheel well, , which means the spare wheel just sits in the back of the estate.

    I set it to run on LPG all the time, it starts on petrol and switches over automatically after a few seconds to LPG.

    If you are interested in greater fuel economy, you could google the term "hypermiling" which is popular in the states, but AFAIK not got much publicity here. - Ecommodders is an indepth fuel saving forum which i would think would have informative threads on HHO.


    best of luck, John

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    Built it and ran in to first problem. It need power off the battery to work but when hooked up, the heat through the copper wires melted them. It would not have been that bad, but i was using jump cables

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    Quote Originally Posted by Lee Bartholomew View Post
    Built it and ran in to first problem. It need power off the battery to work but when hooked up, the heat through the copper wires melted them. It would not have been that bad, but i was using jump cables
    School boy error, the electrodes shorted.

    Remade the who lot using a tupperware tub, spanners and jump leads.

    Connected the whole lot up (output pipe in to vacuum pipe of car) and took it for a spin.

    Def a couple extra horses released under the bonnet .

    On the fuel side, hard to tell as only a short run. Also I would need to re-program the ecu as the cars o2 sensor will detect more oxygen going in to the exhaust and throw in more fuel to compensate.

    I think over the next couple of days I will need to get a bigger water holder and find the best conductor and a better electrolite than salt. Any ideas other than platumn?

    Also need to make an on/off switch as at the mo have to hook it up to battery direct.

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    Quote Originally Posted by Lee Bartholomew View Post
    I think over the next couple of days I will need to get a bigger water holder and find the best conductor and a better electrolite than salt.
    If you are using salt you might end up with chlorine coming off the other electrode, a bit toxic, and probably corrosive.

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    Quote Originally Posted by jiveclone View Post
    If you are using salt you might end up with chlorine coming off the other electrode, a bit toxic, and probably corrosive.

    Yeash salt is not the best thing to use, but I couldn't find baking soda at my local shops.

    What would anyone recomend for the electrode? The best thing I can think of, other than platinum is stainless steel and Baking soda?

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    My car has a little lcd trip computer display on the dashboard that can be switched to display various different readouts, including current mpg and average mpg.

    I've noticed that if I get to the end of a journey when I've had current mpg showing for most of the time, the average mpg is often slightly better than if I've had another variable (such as the time) showing throughout the journey.

    Assuming there isn't some magical feature that improves mpg when I set the trip computer to monitor it, I can only conclude that this change is due to "the nut behind the wheel". Even when I'm not consciously trying to drive more economically, showing mpg rather than time seems to make a slight difference to my driving.

    So I treat with scepticism any device that claims slight mpg increase through mysterious means, as any changes can usually be explained by small changes in driving behaviour by a driver who is presumably more conscious of mpg and probably looking for an improvement.

    Just my 2-penn'orth...
    Love dance, will travel

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    Re: HHO Conversion

    Quote Originally Posted by DavidY View Post
    So I treat with scepticism any device that claims slight mpg increase through mysterious means, as any changes can usually be explained by small changes in driving behaviour by a driver who is presumably more conscious of mpg and probably looking for an improvement.

    Just my 2-penn'orth...
    I see what you are saying but this is a proven method of, if nothing else, providing your car with more horse power. With people claiming to run their cars off nothing but this, if they are able to do this, then MPG can not be disputed.

    Nothing mysterious about it, it's just like putting NOS in the car

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