Hydrogen Generator

6 months later another guy I worked with and had spoken to about this because of his machining skills makes 4 metal cannisters of 2 or so litre capacity and fits them to his 360 Cu inch AMC Jeep grand Cherokee (One of the old ones).

Trev comes to me to do some wiring and to build a control and safeguard device so he can stage the cannisters, monitor temp, current flow etc which I do in a crude fashion to iron out a few bugs.

Problem is we haven't tested to see if these things actually work and so its back to basics on all 4 cannisters and we find that they all work and once breeding they produce a fair whack of hydrogen gas.

Small issue though, these suckers are pulling roughly 20 amps each, once again get fairly hot and are a tad crude to control as they took 5 or so mins to stop breeding when the power was cut.

Problems sorted, Alternator upgraded to 120 amps and a 2nd battery fitted we go for a drive, 30 or so km each way.

Already there is a noticeable increase in low down power and he uses 1/2 the throttle he used to use and at the half way mark we stop to check the water levels using the sight gauges we fitted to the cans which we find are nearly empty (We hadn't designed a remote fill system as yet) so we sit for 10 mins waiting for the cans to cool so we can unscrew the lids to fill them and 20 mins later we are off and running again on our way to Launching place pie shop.

We stop and buy n eat lunch and he has the radio on, done with lunch we go to head home and go to fill the cannisters which we find are still on, red hot and breeding like mad sucking the last of the power from the batteries.

Seems they fused 3 of the 4 x 35 amp relays in the ON pozzy and now the batteries are too flat to start the car.

So we disconnect the system, get a jump start and head home.

For 2 weeks he played with the system until it blew his air cleaner to smithereens, increasing the relays to 60 amp, heavier cables to the cells and a crude refill system and he claimed that it cut his fuel consumption down by 30% over 3 tank fills until the explosion after which he disconnected the cans.

The cannisters were never reconnected and as far as i know went with the Jeep when it was sold.

The issues,

Heat, heat and more heat.

Current draw

unpredictability of the breeders which continue to breed hydrogen for a good few mins after shut down.

The sheer flammability of hydrogen.

Water usage and an expedient filling method (We had some fuel system solenoids from an LPG system but didnt want to pressurise the cannister when we shut off the flow so we never installed them.)

We also suspect that the life span of the cannisters would be short and we also were not sure of the effect hydrogen gas has on a standard car engine as it is a dry fuel and far more explosive than the air/fuel mix usually used.

There was much discussion by both mates about a more sophisticated control and fill system and others have also worked on this glitch with some claiming success and publishing the basic electronics to build such a system although with the 2 I saw published there was nothing done about the heat or the initial current draw and most advocated 3 and 4 lt cannisters being 4 inches wide by a few feet deep with the breeder elements in the bottom half of the cannister.

I do think these things work and ive heard credible claims of a guy near lakes entrance running a datsun 1200 ute on Hydrogen for all but the initial 5 mins but without a good commercial breeder and control devices its just a fun way to spend a few days and 4 to 700 dollars.

The safety is also suspect as hell.

So unless you are very good with digital/analogue electronics and are dead serious about spending a few hundred hours working out bugs to drive what I see as a ticking bomb id give it a miss...

Oh and you also need a **** load of room under the bonnet and good air flow.

Cheers,
Tony

not to be too picky but how were they breeding once the power was cut off, are you sure they werent just boiling off?

wonder if steam fumigation would have any effect?

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Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

not to be too picky but how were they breeding once the power was cut off, are you sure they werent just boiling off?

wonder if steam fumigation would have any effect?

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Yep.
Once an electrolysis cell gets hot, most of the gas it's producing is steam. You need to keep it cold to ensure you're actually splitting water, not boiling it. Keeping it cold means way less current than any of these guys are trying to run.

Perhaps we should start a water injection thread?:angel:

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Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

not to be too picky but how were they breeding once the power was cut off, are you sure they werent just boiling off?

wonder if steam fumigation would have any effect?

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They probably were boiling off or just releasing some of the hydrogen still in the water that had already been split.

Either way with a reasonable space between the water level and the top of the cannister there was residual hydrogen in the cannisters well after they had stopped the process.

Perhaps a container with a cooling system that you could immerse the cannisters in to keep the temps low would work but from what I saw of James Landy wagon there's little enough room under the bonnet as it is without accommodating a unit of the size needed.

I did toy with the idea of a roof mounted box with electric fans and 2 x 20 lt water containers and a small pump to top off the cannisters.

A very valid point made regarding the steam from the cannisters and it stopping the electrolysis and something I didn't take into account at the time and the heat issue would definitely be easier to cure with an externally mounted system but with a small water supply of 40 lt and some cooled casing to house the setup its already getting fairly large.

Another thing is that when pressed the few people who claimed success in this sort of venture wouldn't divulge much more than was already known which always made me wonder if it was all that effective and there was of course the "Men in Black who are coming to get you on behalf of big brother and the oil companies" conspiracies to explain what happens if you really are successfull in running your car on water :-)

So it seems we need the following...

A roof mounted and cooled enclosure holding 4 or more large metallic breeders.

A water supply (40 litres?)

Cool breeders solve the current draw issues?

A water level monitor and auto top up control.

Some data on water consumption on a stable breeder system.

And finally coz I cant resist...

A tin foil covered Armadillo helmet so the men in black cant read your mind.........

Im also wondering about ignition timing for such a system as Hydrogen packs a far bigger bang than a standard fuel/air mix.

Cheers,
Tony

When I was a child I experimented with electrolysis (dreams of very loud bangs etc). Papa helped. It was very easy to generate steam, very hard to get an explosive amount of hydrogen and oxygen. I never got the bang :( but lots of steam :p .

I knew a bloke who encased his exhaust manifold, dribbled water on it to generate steam, and claimed magic improvements to his consumption. I suspect most of the improvement was due to tune up and higher engine running temps but he was adamant he had invented a gold mine.

This steam generator was fitted to an old Sigma, which later cooked itself and died, as Sigmas do.

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They probably were boiling off or just releasing some of the hydrogen still in the water that had already been split.

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Fiddlesticks. H2 and O2 bubbles are formed at the electrodes. Gas bubbles rise quite quickly. Stop the current and generation of H2 and O2 stops. Steam from residual heat contunues to form.

[mrs lovejoy voice] Won't somebody please think of the first law of thermodynamics!!! [/mrs lovejoy voice]

So, we use lots of electrical energy to make a small amount of H2 and O2 and lots of steam/water vapour.

We use lots more energy to cool the generator to limit steam production, and make sure things don't cook or explode.

EDIT - AND we get better economy from the engine????

Hmm... yes - sounds logical to me...

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Originally Posted by isuzurover

[mrs lovejoy voice] Won't somebody please think of the first law of thermodynamics!!! [/mrs lovejoy voice]

So, we use lots of electrical energy to make a small amount of H2 and O2 and lots of steam/water vapour.

We use lots more energy to cool the generator to limit steam production, and make sure things don't cook or explode.

Hmm... yes - sounds logical to me...

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I swear this is all evidence for cold fusion....

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Originally Posted by WhiteD3

No offence intended but as per the other threads on this subject........................................I'm sorry.........it's rubbish..............:(

Energy in...............energy out + waste heat, that's that way of things.

If it were as simple as that we'd all have one....but I'm saving up for the 2012 hydrogen fuel cell D5.

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Those who already run their cars on self-Generated hydrogen may disagree with you on this. At one stage it sounded to much like perpetual motion to me untill someone pointed out you may also be getting some other things out of the exhaust, other than water. H2O2 for example. Anyway people are already running their vehicles on it.

It will never be legal as the oil companies have too much at stake and are too powerful--George bush for example made his money from oil.

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Originally Posted by JohnF

Those who already run their cars on self-Generated hydrogen may disagree with you on this. At one stage it sounded to much like perpetual motion to me untill someone pointed out you may also be getting some other things out of the exhaust, other than water. H2O2 for example. Anyway people are already running their vehicles on it.

It will never be legal as the oil companies have too much at stake and are too powerful--George bush for example made his money from oil.

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Conspiracy theories aside, no-one who has run such a system has been able to quantify the gains.
No-one, on the whole interenet.

Plenty of wild claims though, there's the 90mpg downhill youtube exploder video (probably long gone by now), there's the guy who was claiming his old 350 chev was using less fuel at 70mph than it used to use idling.

Remember, extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof. It's been years and we still have none. Just like the WMD's.:angel: