Water Fueled Vehicles, HHO is this Fact or Fiction

Perhaps it is a childhood obsession, but to get energy from water is something that keeps popping up in my mind ever since I produced my first hydrogen and blew out our neighbor´s window in the process. I know about the awesome power a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen has. So running a car on water alone is a very exiting idea. It´s clean, green and sounds so simple.

There is a lot of talk about water fueled cars, does it work? Is the HHO solution that what we have been looking for? I'm afraid in the suggested configuration it is not.

But is it really?

What are the Fundamentals behind the Water for Fuel Hype

There are a variety of possibilities but will focus on the HHO solution

There are many ways to make cars run on hydrogen, a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen or hybrids of hydrogen fuel cells and regular gasoline combustion engines.  This article is about the most discussed homebuilt variety, the HHO fueled vehicle.

Hydrogen and Oxygen mixed in a 2:1 ratio is a very explosive mixture that can easily replace the water/fuel mixture in a car´s engine. And it´s simple to make.

Wiil HHO fueled cars reduce your Transportation Costs

Oxyhydrogen or HHO is the gas that a lot of the eBooks on the internet are suggesting as the solution to our energy problems. The production of this gas is as simple as making a sandwich. The chemical formula for water is H2O. This chemical recipe for water states that water equals to two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule

When you want to make this alternative Fuel, you need an HHO recipe.

In plain English our recipe would read something like this:

Alternative Car Fuel

You will need:

• two hydrogen molecules and
• one oxygen molecule

To make:

Stir the mixture vigorously until it forms a gas. Serve to the engine immediately

HHO production made practical

This may sound mysterious but is in fact very simple to do. All you need to do is to run an electric current though a bowl of water using two carbon electrodes.

The moment you apply a DC current to the electrodes bubbles start to form. A closer look at this phenomenon will reveal that there are twice as many bubbles forming at the minus electrode as at the plus side electrode of the our experiment .
The first are the hydrogen and the second the oxygen gas atoms escaping in the form of a gas.

Mix these gasses and you end of having a very pure HHO.

Igniting this mixture produces similar reaction as the normal gasoline/air mixture in your car´s engine. And now the beauty of it all, the byproduct of this burn is not a mixture of toxic gasses and CO2 or greenhouse gas, but.. Pure WATER.

Did just invented the Perpetuum Mobile?

Doesn´t this sound wonderful, use a dynamo to produce the electricity you need for the hydrogen production. Feed the exhausts water back to the water tank, and use a dynamo for the power you need for your Hydrogen production. Now all you need is an initial push and you will just keep on going forever, laughing whenever we pass a gas station.

Great, but if someone could really pull this off it would mean he has find a way to overcome one of the basic laws of physics. Why? when you convert energy from one form to another there is an inevitable loss. Let´s track down the flaws in the system

Energy Losses through Conversion

For example only 30% of the energy we feed our cars engine is responsible for moving its wheels. The remaining 70% is "wasted" through heat, friction and various other losses.

Almost 99% of the energy needed to produce light from a light bulb is lost

One of the most striking energy inefficiencies is very poor performance of the classical light bulb. Only 1.5% of the total energy input at the power plant is transformed to the light emission you use to read you read your newspaper with at night. This stunning 98.5% energy loss clarifies the significance of the energy conversion inefficiency.

Is the water for fuel car different?

History is packed with examples in that age perceived impossibilities that have become not only possible but are now deeply ingrained in our society. Airplanes where once called impossible by prominent scientists.

Therefore the motto "Never say Never" is a great one to live by.

When find a way to redefine the laws of Physics would you sell that idea in a $30 EBook?

There must be a catch in this system and it´s not hard to find. The electrical current we need to stir up the H and O2 atoms enough to form a gas uses more energy that we get out. This starts to make more sense. We know the flaw in our thinking.

What is Better an HHO ran Car or a Regular Gasoline ran vehicle.

Now the only thing we need to look at is if producing HHO and using it to power our car takes more energy than burning some "regular". And so is does. We lose 50% during the production phase and another 50% during the burning phase. So our car has a 25% energy efficiency rate.

This idea does have potential

Compared to the 30% effectiveness of our gasoline powered vehicles we need additional measures to make Hydrogen fuel an option. There are plenty of opportunities to improve the system.

And the difference of only 5% between the two propulsion systems sounds very promising indeed. In this article we have been discussing HHO production at sea level. Pressurizing the system could draw up its efficiency, and so could some modifications in the engine itself
.
Hybrids cars do have a great future during the transition from our regular guzzling, CO2 producing transports to clean water or hydrogen fuelled cars.
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