Thread: test results back from hydrogen

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Originally Posted by stovens

I say we all build them, try it for a couple of tanks of gas doing our usual commutes and then get back here and post our results. In my case, my 4x4 93 Toyota truck gets 20 mpg no matter what I do. It has for the last 10 years that I can remember. It also has about 170k on it, so it should be a good test vehicle!

Better yet, after you make one and test it out unhook it and send it to me. I'll do the same testing and pass it on to someone else.

How in the hell do you get 20mpg out of your toyota? I have a 95 4x4, and im lucky if i get 14mpg mine has about 180k on it v6. im gonna make one as soon as possible, and ill know real quick if it makes a difference. My buddy is gonna try it out on his chevy truck too.

It's a gutless four banger, but, the thing is, it's also the most maintenance free engine we have ever owned! 170,000 mile. 1 clutch changed at 55k, oil changed regularly, and thats it. Nothing else!

Thanks to Jon's suggestion of googling Bob Boyce, I've been reading non-stop. I still don't understand all of it, but the gist of it is this. They're using thin stainless plates of 304 or 316 alloy sandwiched together, but separated from each other. Half the plates are connected to (-) and the other half are connected to (+). (+/-/+/-/+/-/+/-) and so on. As Don Shillady said, it takes 1.29 volts minimum to effect the breakdown of water into gases, so an array of say....9 of these electrolysis units connected in a series would seem to be about right to divide 12 volts. It's the amperage that does the job, not the volts. Bundling 9 of these together, taking the gases off at the top and running 9 hoses into the bottom of a bubbler would be the safest way the way I see it. Take the product off the top of the bubbler and mount the bubbler as close to the motor as possible. Making the cap for the bubbler just a friction fit, it might just blow off with a little pop and that would be it.

Now, I've just got a little bit of understanding of the current used to do the job. It seems that the key is in the frequency. I was reading through quickly, but it seems there are 3 important frequencies that work. I'm not sure if only one of them would be used or all 3 would be used together. I have some more reading to do to determine the answer to that and also to understand how these frequencies are created. I'm no electronics genius, so will have to pass what I find to some of you who are smarter than I am.

From one of the sites:
"Today, though Bob has gotten out of boat racing, he makes his own PWM3 Controller for Hydroxy torches and gensets. They aren't for sale but you can find the info in files on the Web. The controller uses three 556 Dual 555 timers. Each dual uses one 555 for pulse width and the other for frequency, generating 42,800; 21,400; and 10,700 cps respectively."

Here's a neat video from youtube that shows the operation of a double helix ?? unit......
http://pesn.com/2007/09/29/9500450_B...rolizer_Plans/

From Bob Boyce:
"The unit does not use "normal brute force" electrolysis when operating in high efficiency mode. It relies mainly on a chemical reaction that takes place between the electrolyte used and the metal plates, which is maintained by electrical energy applied and stimulated into higher efficiency by the application of multiple harmonic resonances which help to "tickle" the molecules apart. I coined the term "electrochemical reaction" to describe the process and I called the chamber an "electrochemical reactor". I used multiple cells in series to lower the voltage per cell and limit the current flow in order to reduce water vapor production. It relies on the large surface area of the total number of cells to get the required volume of fuel vapor output. In my first prototype of this design, I used a custom built controller/driver that gave me a lot of adjustability so I could experiment with multiple frequencies, voltages, and waveforms individually and compare performance. The result was a pattern of 3 interwoven square waves rich in harmonics that produced optimal efficiency. When I had the basics figured out I realized that I could just replace the custom controller/driver unit with a modified inverter much easier than building one from scratch. When the original controller was stolen at the first break-in, I then experimented using a 300 watt pseudo-sine wave inverter that had been modified so the base frequency could be adjusted between 700 and 800 hz. The stepped sine wave output was fed through a bridge rectifier which turned each stepped sine wave into two positive stepped half waves. Each of these half waves had 8 steps, so a single cycle was turned into 16 steps. The resulting output, while not consisting of intermixed square waves, was still rich in harmonics, and I found it much easier to dial in resonance than trying to tune 3 separate frequencies. The frequency range can change depending on the number of steps in the pseudo-sine wave of the inverter you choose since not all inverters are created equal. The desired effect is caused by the multiple harmonic resonances in the inverter output at higher frequencies. You will know when you hit resonance by the dramatic increase in vapor output. The frequency does vary a bit as to what electrolyte is used, the specific gravity of the electrolyte solution (how much electrolyte to water is in the mix), electrolyte temperature, water purity, etc. Keep in mind that my electrochemical reactor tank was large enough to hold 61 plates of 316 grade stainless that were 6" X 6" each, spaced 1/8" apart, to create 60 cells in series, with the 130 VDC power from the inverter, through the bridge rectifier, applied to the end plates only. That gave 4,320 square inches of surface area, plenty of surface area to produce enough fuel for an automotive engine. The best electrolyte I found for efficiency was potassium hydroxide, and the electrolyte level must be kept below the tops of the plates to prevent any current from bypassing the plates and creating excess water vapor through heating. Distilled water was used to prevent contamination of the electrolyte which would result in reduced performance and efficiency.

I never finished the second unit for any engine run tests because the shop was broken into again and the second prototype and inverter were both stolen. The only testing I had managed to complete before the theft was the tweaking of gas flow while dialing in the inverter frequency. When the theft occurred, the pressure switch and water pump were not yet installed and the water injection port was blocked off with a 316 grade stainless plug. If the thieves tried to use it as it was, the pressure would most likely have built up to the point of the chamber exploding from overpressure, since there was no feedback installed yet to shut down the applied power at 5 PSI. I certainly would not liked to have been around when that much hydrogen and oxygen as well as extremely nasty electrolyte let loose!

Now on to the mechanical details. On my unit I had 316 grade stainless wires tack welded to the tops of the end plates, and tack welded to 316 grade stainless bolts that were through holes in the ends of the container, with rubber o-ring gaskets inside and out, above liquid level. If I remember right cost was over $1000 on the 4' x 8' 316 grade stainless steel sheets and having them sheared into the 6" x 6" plates by the vendor. That was for enough plates to build 3 prototypes plus some extras to make up for the rejects that are typically unavoidable when trying to obtain precision cut material from a supplier. Inverter output was to be switched on and off to the plates by a 5 PSI pressure switch on the side of a tee at the water injection port. There was a PVC spray bar attached on the inside of the chamber to the water injection port with tiny holes drilled along its length on the underside to supply replacement water evenly to the cells when the water pump was switched on. A backflow prevention valve on top of the tee would keep the gas from flowing back into the water lines. It was originally planned to add an electrolyte level sensor arrangement to automate the addition of replacement water but that point was never reached. Water consumption was fairly slow so it was not hard to keep track of manually. There was a mat of interwoven plastic fibers (air conditioner filter material) cut and fitted on top of the plates to help prevent sloshing. Make sure to use plastic and not fiberglass mat, which could cause a severe reaction with some electrolytes, like potassium hydroxide."

We built one with the multiple plates like tech says, except we made one a ground and one a possitive at each end, and used a couple sandwiched in between with rubber washers so they did not touch the possitive and negative. In the 114 page book we now have, it said to do this and not connect the center plates to a powered source, and somehow they work as a neutral, and it did produce more gases. After reading some of your posts on here, I know we got some smart people here. Alot of this is way over my head, (O.K., all of this) Im the kind of person that cant think it through and just instead does it to see if it works.

Im not the guy that says, hey see if you can shoot this gas can off my head with this bow and arrow, but just a step below that is me. The plans I sent out to people who asked for them stated the internals of the tube with a generic idea in the building of the unit, but every version is the same principle involved. I did leave out that the tube we used was 10 inches in length, and 3 inches in diameter.

And I think there is a better way to do this now that we have the plated version. But weve only ran it in a bucket not a car. In the 114 page book it lays out a detailed list with part numbers for all sensors and gadgets, so you can monitor cylinder temps at all plug tips, fuel quality in and out, and also a way to adjust it from the drivers seat. But its like 500 dollars to build it and a lot more smarts then ive got. I sent the book to my dad and he will probably give it a shot someday. All I know is im not willing to ride a moped around just yet.

If you need stainless plates or tube---down the street from us is a company that uses a lot of stainless to roll into and weld to make big tubes---they have a lot of left over quality pieces that I'm always gettig into for projects---if you have a certain size tube or plates you need PM me and I'll see what he has and if he would supply you if you needed larger quantity

mooneye777 the reason it works with the plates in the middle not connected is because you are passing a current through the water. if you stack plates inbetween the current will energize them and again you will have seperated charges across the surface, i cant remember the physics of it off the top of my head. But it has something to do with the flux of the metal and the current passing through it. If you all give me a couple of days, I can talk to one of my professors and find out the correct terminology.

There are high voltage stacks and low voltage stacks. It only takes 1.29 Vdc betwen plates stacked at 3-5 mm separation, so any more votage is just wasting currrent by heating the electrolyte. What you want to do is use all your source votage making gas, and not heat.

Kitz

In addition to the web link that Don posted here is another one on the same subject.

http://www.water4gas.com/2books.htm

I've always like my flames to be on the paint and not under the hood or out of the exhaust pipes , so I'll have to let someones else take the lead on this project.

I reluctantly agree with Stovens in that I am interested in seeing plans and learning of results from those who actually build one of these devices but maybe I don't want to try it on one of my vehicles until I have really thought it out. However I have thought of a few additional things I would include.

1. I would add an electromagnetic shutoff valve in the fuel line between the galvanic cell and the carb inlet so as to be off when the ignition is off. I think I would use a cutoff valve currently marketed for propane-powered fork lift trucks; I can get one at the nearby Hanover Air Park for about $95.

2. I would rig the wiring so the cell is disconnected from the battery when the ignition switch is off. In addition I would add a dashboard switch to override that switch so I could turn the cell off and just run on gas both for safety and for easy comparison of with/without the electrolysis in use.

3. I would probably use the idea of about 1 Molar KOH in the cell for conductivity. 1M is about 56 grams of KOH in 1 liter (about 1 quart) of water initially and then just add water thereafter. This may be too concentrated so maybe only 10 grams/quart of KOH would be safer and sufficient for good conductance. For this sort of rough estimate of concentration you could use a 1 liter plastic soda bottle and dissolve 10 grams of KOH in water filled to the top.

4. I might experiment using Eu(+3) salts instead of KOH but I would not use the chloride since as my previous example showed, the evolution of Cl2 (corrosive poison gas, google WWI gas attacks) can occur at only slightly higher voltage than O2 so overvoltage might lead to evolution of Cl2 which would corrode engine parts. So I probably would take a look at using Eu2(SO4)3 instead of the chloride. As I said before Eu2O3 will not work since it is very insoluble in water.

Just for interest here are a few "transference numbers" for positive ions. The values for the negative counter ions are the values given subtracted from 1.000. The transference number is the fractional part of the current carried by a given ion in solution and they are not exactly 0.5 as one might expect! Note that other than H(+), K(+) is very good. H(+) would come from a strong acid like HCl or H2SO4 but that would be corrosive in the same way that battery acid is. The vaues are from a very old text book: "Principles of Physical Chemistry" by Maron and Prutton, Macmillan Co. 1958 (one of my favorites!)

Salt t+(1 M conc.) t- (=1.000-t+)

HCl 0.844 (18 deg. C) 0.156 (18 deg. C)

KCl 0.488 (25 deg. C) 0.512 (25 deg. C)

NaCl 0.39 (25 deg. C) 0.61 (25 deg. C)

NaOH 0.163 (25 deg. C) 0.837 (25 deg. C)

From this brief table you can see that even though each example is a (+1)(-1) ion pair, the ions do not carry the charge equally even though for the current to flow (t+) + (t-) =1. When you get to +2 or +3 positive ions even stranger things happen because of the way the water molecules pack around the ions and in effect a +3 ion like Eu(+3) might drag along as many as six water molecules and thus behave as a much "fatter" ion so I would expect Eu(+3) to have a low t+ value but be available for Eu(+2) catalysis. Until then we see tha KOH has close to a 50% of the conductance and of course the OH- ion will become part of the O2 evolution eventually.

As my understanding goes, the +-+-+-.... series coupled multiple cells up to say 9 in a row would have to be connected in series so they would need to be connected with + of one cell connected to a - of the neighboring cell, ie in series. As I say I may eventually be satisfied with the safety of such a device but I welcome information and results from work by other braver souls in the meantime.


For legal purposes I note that these are only suggestions and you proceed at your OWN RISK although I have tried to think of safety first. There is still a risk of a small explosion from gas still in the cell after the ignition is off and KOH can slowly dissolve human skin!
Don Shillady
Retired SCientist/teen rodder

Then Don, like I've said for the third time now, just google Bob Boyce and read your heart out .............

Seriously, I ain't kidding!

Kitz

Kitz, I did read it once through and it sounds a lot like the stuff I have heard from other inventors who invent their own names. Of course using square wave pulses invokes all frequencies under Fourier analysis just as used in pulsed NMR spectroscopy so whatever "frequency" is the key frequency is in there somewhere. I prefer to look at it as simple electrolysis. Maybe there is some sort of a "scouring effect" just as there is in ultrasonic cleaning but when he got to the magnetic field effects I noticed the equations dropped off and imagination kicked in. I will reread it more and study it but I have already spent several years in this sort of quasi-scientific explanation and the challenge is to find the truth in there somewhere. Still I have enough experience in science to respect experiments and to puzzle over what is really happening there. I have said all along that maybe there is something good happening there but I have already been sensitized to a number of quasi-inventors who offer unusual explanations for what mught really be something else. My mention of the E(+3)/Eu(+2) rediction of water may seem far out, but it is a fact that it is a sort of Holy Grail in solar energy research so I thought it might be useful in this regard but probably Boyce is not aware of that and prefers to use EMF frequencies with KOH but Eu salts might be worth looking into in the future.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Kitz, I read more and the only thing new I got from it was Boyce's claim of generating monoatomic H atoms, presumeably by first producing H2 and O2 and then dissociating the H2 into 2 H atoms. Yes, H "free radicals" are very reactive but the energy required to dissociate H2 into 2 H atoms is about 0.1744 hartrees which converts to about 2.373 volts! I have not read enough to understand how Boyce came up with the frequencies shown in his oscilloscope display but it is clear that his use of 555 timers to create the frequencies requires some small power requirement in addition to complexity of the device. Using a square-wave pulse does solve the problem of finding the best frequency since a square-wave includes ALL frequencies according to Fourier component analysis. Of course it would be great to create a more reactive form of H and the additional energy required to dissociate any diatomic H2 into atoms would seem to be only about twice the voltage for slow electrolysis, but one wonders how the H atoms would remain monoatomic in the presence of other H atoms and O2 molecules. I would think the H atoms are so reactive (in sophomore Organic Chemistry it is a mantra that free radicals are extremely reactive) that it would be a good idea to keep the path to the engine as short as possible. I could look up the reaction cross section for 2H-> H2, but while I suppose some H atoms could survive a path of several feet into an engine, I would guess most reconvert back to H2. From what I can read so far Boyce admits his "discovery" of a resonance effect is still a mystery. For me I can only conculde so far that IF (?) there is a some component of monoatomic H, it would be best to keep the path to the engine short. The writings by Boyce seem to be more oriented toward all of the fuel being from the (H2 + O2) fuel gas as compared to the interest here in extending the mpg of existing gasoline powered vehicles. Frankly, I hope the the Aptera succeeds and maybe the price will come down?

http://www.aptera.com/

A further thought in edit mode is that it would seem to me that if the path from the generator to the engine is long, a meter or more, it would actually be better if the H travels as the less reactive H2 diatomic molecule until it gets into the engine.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

here is another idea from the hho experiments, a couple torches.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbCWE6ycF_0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJblbj9bnYs

here is all that happened to 5 hho containers from a short. Just blew the caps off, not the entire shop or car.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJFq_...eature=related

Lindsey Publications Inc. has two or three books on the subject, one is a very basic set of plans for a hydrogen generator, but the info is there. You can add bells and whistles and make it as idiot proof as you like. Nothing fancy about this one. Sniper