|
“Small
Amount of Hydrogen”
This
week I received an email questioning how such a small amount of hydrogen
can do any good. Below is the
email discussion. His comments are
in black and my comments are in red.
Fran
I really love your website due
to the tremendous amount of information on HHO and the various tests that
you and others have performed. It’s what is so lacking on other
websites and Ebay generator offers, though good
looking, are also appallingly and inadequately presented.
I agree. I
also shun the term HHO because it is also a relative new comer.
What I would really like to
know is at what proportion HHO should be mixed with petrol to ensure the
benefits that you report? I have a Volvo 850 SE with 225,000 on the clock
and realise that subject to compression and seal testing it may not be
the best candidate for a hybrid conversion. However, it is a 1993
model with only a MAF sensor (no O2 on exhaust) so the ECU may be easier
to fool.
I also shun the term
“fool the ECU” used by new comers.
It may also pre-date an
OBD2 analysis and so the Scanguage or other
electronics might not suit.
Scangauge certainly
will not work on your car.
My basic maths tells me that a
2 liter engine at 3000 RPM and an HHO generator
of min. 2 liters/p/min would give a 1:3000
ratio of HHO:air/gas
p/min by total volume.
A 2 liter engine at 2000 rpm inhales less than 1000 liters of air per minute at full throttle. At
typical cruise throttle the manifold vacuum is typically 15 inches Hg
(approximately one half atmosphere) therefore
the engine is only inhaling 500 liters of air
per minute. Approximately 20% of that air is oxygen. So 20% x
500 liters = 100 liters
of oxygen per minute. Now the two liters
of Browns gas per minute available with our smallest system does not
sound like such a small proportion at 1:50 does it? At idle this is
more like 1:12.
Is this enough to get the
minimum 15% fuel saving that you say is possible?
I also say that
adding a hydrogen generator alone will not likely increase your mileage
unless the vehicle is operated primarily under “stressed combustion.” The rest of the system is needed to
take advantage of what the hydrogen can do for the engine.
What of higher RPMs? I just find it hard to believe that
such a small input of HHO can achieve a significant fuel saving.
We actually
recommend not producing as much gas as is possible because we have seen
optimum gas production to be somewhat lower than maximum.
If you are able to offer any
clarification, albeit something in your Newsletter that I might have
missed, I would greatly appreciate your time and help in resolving this.
Maybe I should write
a newsletter with the above discussion. Do I have your permission?
Looking forward,
Fran
Regards
Adam East
Eastwood Services
Fran’s comments:
A 5% hydrogen in oxygen mixture at
standard temperature and pressure (STP) is said by most experts to be
combustible, and that is with the hydrogen being the only combustion fuel
in the reaction. In the combustion
chamber of an engine the gases are compressed closer together which
increases the reactivity as does the increased temperature of compression. So a much lower % of hydrogen would be
needed than at STP. Also the
gasoline (petrol) in the combustion chamber will contribute to the
combustion, so even less hydrogen would be needed to have a beneficial
contribution to the combustion. It
doesn’t take a lot of hydrogen to do the job if you have stressed combustion. Our experience has shown that one liter
per minute production of Browns gas will suffice for every 2.5 liters of
engine displacement. For diesel it
is even less because the compression ratio is much higher and the RPMs are much lower.
However many of our competitors’ unit cannot produce this much
hydrogen and many others are so inefficient that producing hydrogen
require 6 times as much electrical power as our units require. High efficiency and high gas production
in a small enough package to fit under the hood of today’s car is a
challenge but we have met that challenge, unlike most of our
competitors. Of course we’ve been
at it for over eight years and most of them jumped on the band wagon in
the last couple years.
|