Wednesday, October 8, 2008 8:44 PM CDT
HHO: Using water to run your car
By NATHANIEL WEST, Staff Writer
nwest@jg-tc.com
MATTOON — The notion of the “water car” has been around at least since the 1970s, although it has usually varied somewhere between hoax and scam.
These days, the Web is fraught with sites promising to replace your gasoline with good ol’ H2O. But again, these claims are bogus.
Almost.
According to that pesky Second Law of Thermodynamics, it’s impossible to run a vehicle solely on water. However, local experts say it’s theoretically possible to use water — well, the hydrogen and oxygen that form water molecules — to help gasoline and diesel burn “cleaner” and thereby improve fuel efficiency.
But this shortcut to greater energy independence is difficult, obviously. To quote the underrated film “Road Trip,” “It’s supposed to be a challenge; that’s why they call it a ‘shortcut.’ If it was easy, it would just be, ‘the way.’”
Perhaps most surprising, the greatest challenges to the feasibility of so-called “HHO conversion kits” are posed by the newest technologies, said Joe Tillman, an electrical engineer and instructor at Lake Land College.
As he and his cohorts dabble with HHO conversion kits, they often are stymied by vehicles’ computer systems, which misread the decrease in fuel consumption as some sort of problem and then try to compensate.
However, the theory behind HHO conversion is sound, and recalls high school physics class: Sending an electrical current through water breaks it down into its two basic components, which can be recombined at a different mixture to form something wholly different than water.
Hydrogen and oxygen are “the same stuff they use on the space shuttle,” said Tillman. “You’re basically making, in a sense, rocket fuel.”
Add this to gasoline in the cylinder of an internal combustion engine, and the fuel burns faster and cleaner, Tillman said.
HHO sites on the Web alternately sell actual “kits” or instructions on how to assemble and install your own conversion system.
The required parts, though, are roughly the same: A vehicle’s battery is somehow connected to a tank of water, and after the process known as “electrolysis” (the separation of positively and negatively charged ions, not the removal of body hair), hydrogen and oxygen are rerouted to the vehicle’s fuel system.
“But most of the systems on the market you’ll find are a bunch of phooey,” said Tillman. “They make outrageous claims they can’t deliver.”
This is because many kits force your engine to use more energy on electrolysis than is produced in the cylinders (in other words, the energy input exceeds the output), or the kits do not account for vehicles’ computer systems.
“But if you can do those two things effectively, you might see some gain” in fuel economy, Tillman said.
He and a few other instructors at Lake Land “have been working on stuff like this” on their own time, he said. Yet tackling such a project is not for the automotive novice.
“I would recommend that somebody’s got to have a technical background or is a very good tinkerer,” Tillman said. “You need to know what you’re doing (because) you’re basically riding on a bomb.”
Lee Hudson, a mechanic at Battery Specialists in Mattoon, has been involved in HHO conversion — not through his job, but through the interests of his father, Raymond Hudson. “He’s played with it some,” Lee Hudson said.
And Battery Specialists presently will not install HHO conversion kits. “It’s highly explosive,” said Hudson.
“And it’s really not feasible in computer-controlled cars until you get a computer chip that recognizes” the changes. “There’s a lot of potential there, but it’s not one of those things we’ve gotten into.”
David Johnson, owner of Johnson’s Automotive Service in Charleston and Greenup, said he has not yet worked on an HHO conversion, but “It’s something I would probably be willing to look into.”
He likewise discouraged the inexperienced from taking on this sort of task. “Just about anything on any (newer) vehicle that involves the power train, I recommend the do-it-yourselfer try and stay away from it,” Johnson said.
Tillman pleaded for reasonable expectations by those looking into HHO conversion.
“If you think you’re going to put this on your car and get 100 miles per gallon, no,” he said.
Contact Nathaniel West at nwest@jg-tc.com or 238-6860.
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Mike P wrote on Oct 14, 2008 1:07 PM:
Now we have 20 to 30k disposables, that usually hit the junkyard, in 7 to 10 years, if they survive that long. They sure don't make em like they used to. Plactic bumpers, that allow 3 to 5k or more in damage, from a 5 mph crash.
Thirty years, since the oil crisis of the seventies, and they have barely increased fuel efficiency. Corn ethanol, is less efficient, dirtier, and more expensive. Some of this epa regulation, of mpg rating, should have leaned on refineries to develop a better fuel combination, for increasing some of these gains. Now your lucky to get 92 octane, at a gas pump. Its a counter productive circle of development they are involved in.
Companies are looking to bring to market, plug ins, with a 40 to 100 mile range, on a charge. How many folks, are going to spend 15 to 30k+, on a car that might be able to do one round trip and some errands, between Charleston and Mattoon, on a full charge. Its not going to be a practical solution.
Research and development, of automotive technology, seems to have prety much stagnated. They figured out how to build bigger and more horse power motors, sometimes spread between 10 and 12 cylinders, in 200+ mph cars.
The science of improving the combustion efficiency, that takes place, needs to lead the the development of the next generation engines. It should have been the focus all along. Internal combustion, is the most effective form of sustainble power, and keeping the weight of the vehicle, supplied largely by its structure members, and the engine, is the best balance of weight to power. Cars already crinkle like aluminum cans, cutting weight to account for heavy bateries, is going to make the structure be more sacrificed, with lighter and lighter components.
Stable liquid fuel, needs to be the continued bulk source of transportation fuel. Improve the combustion, fuel, mix, and distribution of power transfer. Redesign the engine for the improved combustion to be best utilized it powering the system. Its likely most of the technology has already been developed. It just requires combining the ingredients effectively, adjusting designs to better fit, and function, and hopefully it is all done, in a not overly complicated system, that can run normally, with proper maintenance, for hundreds of thousands of miles.
Small cars, might go with rotory engines again. Big trucks, with v12's, that get better economy, and use partial cylinder shut downs, when the demands allow it.
Cars being designed to run on less efficient fuel, is a self defeating challenge to overcome. It has to start with the fuel, and go from there. "