Thread: test results back from hydrogen

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thanks don

Originally Posted by Don Shillady

I do not know what the black clamp is on the + wire. Maybe folks on this Forum can discuss the construction some more?

Looks to me like a fuse holder. Just like This one.

Originally Posted by Dave Severson

It would take a very serious change in driving habits to account for 12-15 mpg increase!!!!! Maybe a few mpg difference from light footing the car...

I'm still curious to see the results on the F-150, got anything yet, Moon?????

I know that... Just saying test that would be more convincing for the skeptics...

Don, I'm a little confused about all this. It looks like the photos are showing breaking down the water by electrolysis, but other photos and even films I have seen show the breakdown being effected by the addition of a "catalyst". What element would that catalyst be?

Very interesting! Keep the info coming please. Perley

Tech1, Good to chat with you. For some reason my popup blocker will not allow me to read your other message but here is a GUESS at what the catalyst may be. In the later years of my research career I worked on lanthanide compounds which have a number of unusual magnetic and electric properties. Elements 57 to 71 increase in the number of electrons in a "4f" shell which can hold up to 14 electrons based on the parent of the row in the periodic table beginning with Lanthanum, No. 57, hence the name "Lanthanides". The 4f electron shell is not tightly bound so the electrons are in a "soft" electronic environment and they are close to being "free electrons". The compounds containing these metal ions have pale colors and tend to be strongly magnetic, often more magnetic than iron. In addition the whole row of these 14 atoms tend to be +3 ions and studying the chemistry of them shows them to all have very similar chemical properties with +3 ions. In fact when these elements are found in nature they are all together since they have similar chemistries. The U.S. has limited amounts of these elements found along the Ariz.-Calif. border at Mountain Pass, but China and India have vast deposits. HOWEVER, a principle in atomic Physics shows that half filled shells are particularly stable and the middle of the row is Gadolinium which has 7 (unpaired) electrons in a half filled shell and it is particularly stable and is essentially colorless in the human eye range. NOW, consider Europium which is just one electron less than Gadolinium but is still a +3 ion which means it has 6 of the 4f electrons while Gadolinium has 7 (half of 14). You have to remember that electrons are -1 charge so adding an electron (from current) to Eu(+3) makes it into Eu(+2) by neutralizing one of the + charges. Soooooo, after this long lesson, it is well established that Eu(+2) can exist where one electron fills in the 4f shell and it becomes like the very stable Gd(+3). It has been demonstrated many times that when Eu(+2) comes into contact with H2O it will react with the water to directly split it into O2 and H2! There has been a lot of research in Israel, where there is abundant sunlight, to use the Eu(+3)->Eu(+2) reaction due to some reaction with sunlight and then to make O2 and H2 when the Eu(+2) contacts water. This is one avenue of research to improve solar energy efficiency and I am sure there are quite a few papers on this peculiar property of Eu(+2) compounds. Note if there is a + ion in solution there has to be a - ion somewhere in there too or you would have "lightening in a bottle" so there is some sort of chemistry which has - ions along with the Eu(+2) but the real business part of the compound is the Eu(+3)/Eu(+2) part. Sooooooooo, I AM GUESSING that the powder is probably EuCl3 and is probably pale purple or mostly white with a slight pink/blue tinge and during the electrolysis some Eu(+2) is generated in the solution of water and as soon as the Eu(+2) is formed it cleaves H2O into H2 and O2 and is itself oxidized to Eu(+3) but then another electron comes along due to the current flowing in the cell and it becomes Eu(+2) again ready to cleave some more water while the amount of Eu(+3/+2) remains constant and stays in the cell and is not consumed. That is the definition of a CATALYST, a material that enhances a reaction of other things but is not consumed itself. Soooooooooo, I am guessing the catalyst is EuCl3 or some other Europium compound. If I am guessing correctly and this type of "Hydrogen on demand fuel" device gets the safety problem solved there may be a demand for Eu greater than the U.S. Mountain Pass site can provide and Eu may become a strategic material and trade of lanthanides from China may be big business. Interestingly there are a lot more research papers about lanthanide chemistry in China than other places because in China they have so much of this stuff that they have folks researching how to use it, but if Eu(+3/+2) takes off you ought to have stock in Moly-Corp which owns the Mountain Pass U.S. site. Unfortunately I have little funding to invest and am on a fixed income. Well you asked and you pressed my button on ten years of research so I am giving you my best guess. I am guessing the compound is the trichloride of Eu, EuCl3 as Eu(+3)Cl(-1)3, which is water soluble while another common form of Eu is the oxide as Eu2O3 which is about as soluble in water as brick dust! You can buy EuCl3 from chemical supply houses and it is not particularly expensive (yet) or particularly poisonous, but don't eat it or drink the solution (Hah!)

In return for this potentially useful information can anyone tell me where to drill the holes in a '29 Ford firewall for the rods that hold the radiator?


Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Don you took me back to freshman chemistry. Nicely put, and easy to understand. This does make the old bell jar device seem more viable. That 50 dollar site is only for plans, correct? So I'm wondering did mooneye make his or buy it from another site? Mooneye chime in and let us know where or how to come by one of these devices. Thanks, Steve.

Don makes a lot of sense, Im a Freshly Graduated Chemist, going on to my PhD, and we used lanthanides or if you want what IUPAC says Lanthanoids... Same thing, in quantitative analysis we compared the electrolysis of water using lanthanides as a catalyst with platinum vs stainless steel as electrodes. You actually dont need the catalyst in there, for the application of forming HHO, you could get by with just two stainless steel electrodes for your anode and cathode, or positive and negative sides for your current. I would be interested in the plans if you can post them mooneyes. Im always looking for a way to improve mileage on my 72 Chevy big block.

Don, thank you very much for your contribution to my education concerning the chemistry involved. I brag on you all the time to my friends....honestly I do.....telling them that I know a chemist who is pretty sharp about these things. As an aside, my first wife's father was a chemist. He used to sit me down and explain how things worked, taking me to the lab with him. (National Analine) It was quite a slap in the face for a 20 yr. old to learn that companies use a chemical process to increase the viscosity of a product while touting to the public that it is "concentrated". That was my first taste of how the real world works. Brilliant man, but a victim of a bad marriage involving a fish-wife of a woman. To escape the abuse, he took to drink. When she continued to abuse him for the drinking, he began mainlining Vodka so she couldn't smell anything on him. You can guess the rest....one night, overdose. That was 44 years ago. To this day, I still miss Charlie.

Anyway, the mounting of the support rods might be accomplished in the manner I used with my T body and A shell. The A radiator has provisions on the back to attach the support rods. They are splayed at a particular angle left to right as viewed from above. If you'll tie a piece of brightly colored line, like the neon orange line that brick masons use, to the support and eyeball the angle at which it comes off the support (90 degrees to the support), you can get a pretty good idea of the left/right position (viewed from the front of the car) of the firewall support piece as you extend the line back to the firewall. Now, for the up/down position of the firewall support piece, have the wife hold it in the proper left/right position and move the firewall support up and down while you stand off and eyeball the attitude of the line in relation to the general lines of the body. You'll be able to see the magic attitude with your eye pretty quickly. Once you see it, have her hold her position while you tear off a small piece of masking tape to mark the position. Finish the other side with the same routine using the wife or just measure in and down from the hood recess on the body. One more thought. If her eye for perspective is better than yours, then you hold the line while she eyeballs for a match to the body line.

Oh, and the private message was thanking you for the information on SFR 100 oil supplement. I ordered a quart, which was delivered to the front door for (I think) $37.37. A cheap price to pay for peace of mind when firing up a new motor. I used 10 ounces with 6 qts of oil for the initial fire-up and cam run-in. Will fall back to 1 ounce per qt of oil for subsequent running. I also said that if it didn't work I was coming after you with an ax. No, No, just kidding.

Originally Posted by techinspector1

Don, I'm a little confused about all this. It looks like the photos are showing breaking down the water by electrolysis, but other photos and even films I have seen show the breakdown being effected by the addition of a "catalyst". What element would that catalyst be?

Tech, google Bob Boyce and see what you get. Bob made all this stuff public a while back. The catalysts are Sodium Hydroxide (lye) or Boyce says the best one is Potassium Hydroxide because it does not get used up in the process.

Kitz

Originally Posted by Don Shillady

Tech1, Good to chat with you. For some reason my popup blocker will not allow me to read your other message but here is a GUESS at what the catalyst may be. In the later years of my research career I worked on lanthanide compounds which have a number of unusual magnetic and electric properties. Elements 57 to 71 increase in the number of electrons in a "4f" shell which can hold up to 14 electrons based on the parent of the row in the periodic table beginning with Lanthanum, No. 57, hence the name "Lanthanides". The 4f electron shell is not tightly bound so the electrons are in a "soft" electronic environment and they are close to being "free electrons". The compounds containing these metal ions have pale colors and tend to be strongly magnetic, often more magnetic than iron. In addition the whole row of these 14 atoms tend to be +3 ions and studying the chemistry of them shows them to all have very similar chemical properties with +3 ions. In fact when these elements are found in nature they are all together since they have similar chemistries. The U.S. has limited amounts of these elements found along the Ariz.-Calif. border at Mountain Pass, but China and India have vast deposits. HOWEVER, a principle in atomic Physics shows that half filled shells are particularly stable and the middle of the row is Gadolinium which has 7 (unpaired) electrons in a half filled shell and it is particularly stable and is essentially colorless in the human eye range. NOW, consider Europium which is just one electron less than Gadolinium but is still a +3 ion which means it has 6 of the 4f electrons while Gadolinium has 7 (half of 14). You have to remember that electrons are -1 charge so adding an electron (from current) to Eu(+3) makes it into Eu(+2) by neutralizing one of the + charges. Soooooo, after this long lesson, it is well established that Eu(+2) can exist where one electron fills in the 4f shell and it becomes like the very stable Gd(+3). It has been demonstrated many times that when Eu(+2) comes into contact with H2O it will react with the water to directly split it into O2 and H2! There has been a lot of research in Israel, where there is abundant sunlight, to use the Eu(+3)->Eu(+2) reaction due to some reaction with sunlight and then to make O2 and H2 when the Eu(+2) contacts water. This is one avenue of research to improve solar energy efficiency and I am sure there are quite a few papers on this peculiar property of Eu(+2) compounds. Note if there is a + ion in solution there has to be a - ion somewhere in there too or you would have "lightening in a bottle" so there is some sort of chemistry which has - ions along with the Eu(+2) but the real business part of the compound is the Eu(+3)/Eu(+2) part. Sooooooooo, I AM GUESSING that the powder is probably EuCl3 and is probably pale purple or mostly white with a slight pink/blue tinge and during the electrolysis some Eu(+2) is generated in the solution of water and as soon as the Eu(+2) is formed it cleaves H2O into H2 and O2 and is itself oxidized to Eu(+3) but then another electron comes along due to the current flowing in the cell and it becomes Eu(+2) again ready to cleave some more water while the amount of Eu(+3/+2) remains constant and stays in the cell and is not consumed. That is the definition of a CATALYST, a material that enhances a reaction of other things but is not consumed itself. Soooooooooo, I am guessing the catalyst is EuCl3 or some other Europium compound. If I am guessing correctly and this type of "Hydrogen on demand fuel" device gets the safety problem solved there may be a demand for Eu greater than the U.S. Mountain Pass site can provide and Eu may become a strategic material and trade of lanthanides from China may be big business. Interestingly there are a lot more research papers about lanthanide chemistry in China than other places because in China they have so much of this stuff that they have folks researching how to use it, but if Eu(+3/+2) takes off you ought to have stock in Moly-Corp which owns the Mountain Pass U.S. site. Unfortunately I have little funding to invest and am on a fixed income. Well you asked and you pressed my button on ten years of research so I am giving you my best guess. I am guessing the compound is the trichloride of Eu, EuCl3 as Eu(+3)Cl(-1)3, which is water soluble while another common form of Eu is the oxide as Eu2O3 which is about as soluble in water as brick dust! You can buy EuCl3 from chemical supply houses and it is not particularly expensive (yet) or particularly poisonous, but don't eat it or drink the solution (Hah!)

In return for this potentially useful information can anyone tell me where to drill the holes in a '29 Ford firewall for the rods that hold the radiator?


Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

My head hurts now....joe

Tech1, thanks for the suggestions on mounting the radiator rods. As Wemdog said, at 12 volts water should electrolyze easily but usually in the lab demo one would add a little H2SO4 to increase conductivity. Thanks for the mental exercise, I was just thinking of adding a little table salt to increase conductivity but then you and Matt mentioned kits with a "catalyst powder" so it reminded me of work on Eu(+3/+2) which will add conductivity as well as some catalytic action. This afternoon I decided to walk the 100 yards down the street to see my neighbor Dick Ivey because I had not seen him all winter. It turns out he has just finished a complete restoration of a 1930 Model A Fordor that looks like new! He said he has been working inside all winter 8-10 hour days to finish the car and that is why I had not seen him till now when the weather is nice and his garage door is open, who knew? Anyway we measured the spacing on his 1930 cowl and found the rods were up about as high as the rounded part of the cowl allows and the centers seem to be 11 3/4" apart but the 1929 cowl may be narrower. He came up the street to see my progress and he seemed mildly amused by the SBC350. He also helped me figure out the set screw on the "Quail" I just got from Speedway for my Walker radiator. Of course he also has a "Quail" on his Fordor! The Speedway Quail fits nicely on the fake spout of the Walker radiator once you loosen the set screw intended to help align the bird to face into the wind! With his advice and your method I will just space the rods 12" apart in the last flat space of the Bebops 'glass cowl just under the hood lip. Fortunately I just put on one of those "everybody-has-one" Edelbrock 14"x3" air filters on my 600 CFM Edelbrock carb and it looks like the rods will clear the big chrome filter by at least two inches. I mention this because the Edelbrock air filter Part No. 1221 has indented places to punch out and attach a hose inlet about 1/2" ID. It is intended to attach a crankcase breather hose BUT for the present thread it could be the inlet for the HHO mixture of H2 and O2. For me that would be the natural thing to do with a carburated engine, BUT (!!!) do I really want to have H2 and O2 flowing into my air filter for a short time after I turn off the engine with hot manifolds? You could put a switch link into the electrolysis circuit that turns off with the ignition, but HHO gas will still be flowing. Then you could also add a switch we discussed with Brian's siphoned gas into his crankcase in the flow line so that it would also close when the ignition is turned off but there would still be some H2+O2 in the air filter. Hey, I want to use one of these HHO devices but I want to do it in such a way that I don't burn up my 'glass car so I want to figure out some added safety procedures. Mooneye777 points out the small volume of gas in the line but the interior of an air box on an FI system or a large air filter is considerably larger. So let's keep on working on this idea but worry over the safety features more.

I guess Kitz got his post in while I was typing. That was my original thought also to use a salt of a Group I metal like Na or K since it is almost impossible to electroplate out those metals from water so it won't be consumed. NaCl might be bad because it might evolve Cl2 which is poisonous and corrosive. KOH is of course caustic but the K(+) would not plate out and the OH(-) will be lost in the water and become part of it. It is a fact that Eu(+2) will indeed convert water to H2 and O2 but I do not actually know if that is in the "catalyst". KOH should work also. I may have been misled by the comment of someone that the "powder" cost $30 and of course KOH is very cheap but that may be just profiteering. Be aware that KOH can cause serious eye injury so wear eye protection if you use that. If your fingers feel "slippery" when using KOH be aware that it means the KOH is dissolving your skin. I did have one thought as to whether Eu(+3) would plate out on the electrodes as free Eu metal. Trying to "guess" the content of a "white powder" can be tricky! I will look up some Boyce references.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Originally Posted by kitz

Tech, google Bob Boyce and see what you get. Bob made all this stuff public a while back. The catalysts are Sodium Hydroxide (lye) or Boyce says the best one is Potassium Hydroxide because it does not get used up in the process.

Kitz

Thanks Jon, there's a ton of good reading there.

My head is beginning to ache also, I thought I was out of this game five years ago. I see where Kitz got the idea of harmonics from the Boyce material. There is even a review of the supposed "Top-3" technologies at

http://runyourcarwithhho.info/?id=A115034

I find the idea of monoatomic hydrogen resulting from magnetic fields in water a tough sell but using KOH in electrolysis to produce a mixture of O2 and H2 could work. As with any technology the sensible approach is to take something that works, try to understand it and improve it by extension. If the device mooneye777 has works, my approach would be to improve it and especially to make it safer. I note his plastic device is probably safer than a glass jar. I do know that some of the "Brown's Gas" devices use alternating current, plasma arcs and electrodes which will withstand the higher temperatures of plasma but here we have low temperature DC electrolysis so I think what mooneye777 has is an explosive mixture of both H2 and O2 and with some safety improvements can be a useful device. I stand by the fact that Eu(+2) will reduce water to O2 and H2 but that does not necessarily mean that is the catalyst and in fact I wondered as to whether Eu would plate out as a metal. I will read more of the Boyce stuff but I am skeptical about producing monoatomic hydrogen without O2 and that is still an explosive mixture.
Let's get back to the safety aspect of piping some sort of explosive gas into an air filter on a carburated engine. Maybe all we need is some safety features a plastic electrolysis cell and an Edelbrock 1221 air cleaner with some suitable safety accessories?

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

The setups I've seen use a vacuum port in the manifold to feed the HHO. I've had some time on my hands and did a little thinking about this whole idea. If the device uses, say, ten amps, that's 10X12=120 watts. 846 watts is 1 HP, so that's about 1/7 HP. Even without the law of diminishing returns, you aren't going to get any more than that back when you burn it in the engine. If your car takes, say, 20 HP to hold 60 mph, that 1/7 HP is a small fraction of what's required. Even allowing for some catalytic action improving the way the gasoline burns, the numbers just aren't there for me.
It was stated that 12 hours driving used only 4 oz. of water. At 30 mph, that's 360 miles, saving somewhere around 5 gallons of gas. That's asking a lot from a small drink of water!