Earlier today I was browsing around on facebook when a friend of mine posted a pic of Stan Meyer and his water car. In the thread a friend of his actually commented “So do tell how do you get a net gain in energy when separating hydrogen from oxygen in water?” What I took his question to mean was “How does it work?” Here’s what I wrote in Response:
What you are alluding to my friend is the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics: You cannot get more out of something than what you put into it.
So far, no one has been able to duplicate and replicate Stan Meyer’s technology perfectly. But based off of some of his designs, many HHO Kits are close.
The real debatable issue is not the Law of Thermodynamics. The technology works just fine and abides by the Law and there is a simple explanation as to why. But explaining it for people to understand will take a bit of time and effort, so bare with me for a moment.
Cars operate best with a 14.7:1 Air to Fuel ratio. Engineers, mechanics and Smog Technicians have found that at a 14.7:1 ratio a car gets the best of horsepower, mileage, and emissions.
If you Richen the mixture with fuel, Horsepower goes up, mileage goes down, and though the Nitrous Oxide (NOX) levels go down the carbon monoxide (CO) and Hydrocarbon (HC, aka unburnt fuel) levels go up.
Conversely, if you Lean out the mixture, your horsepower goes down, Mileage goes up, and though the NOX levels go up the CO and HC levels go down. Much like a teeter totter.
Now let’s talk altitude. If your car is programmed to keep the air to fuel ratio at a 14.7:1 ratio, it would make sense that if you drive up a mountain where there is less air, the vehicle will compensate by injecting less fuel to keep that ratio at 14.7:1. In this manner if we think of emission levels, by having less air and less fuel being injected, but the 14.7:1 ratio remains the same, then it goes without saying that our emissions teeter totter would go from up here ^ to down here _. Our emissions would be lower. Also, in addition to lower emissions in higher altitude, because our cars are programmed to inject less fuel in altitudes where there is less air, we would actually achieve better gas mileage if we constantly drove at an altitude above 6,000 ft.
Now that we’ve cleared up how our vehicles engines and most of how our emissions check and balance systems works, let’s move on to electricity. This is the area that most old school mechanics get lost. Because by their reasoning and what they learned in college, based on the Law of Thermodynamics and how it relates to electricity, you cannot put an extra load on a battery and expect to yield a higher output of energy. True. But that is not what is happening. The load goes from the battery, to the water generator to create hydrogen and oxygen gas, and from there the electricity goes to ground/the battery. The circuit is complete. No laws being broken there.
Now let’s talk stereo systems. I know, nothing to do with Stan Meyer’s technology, but here is where it comes into play. Mechanics reason that Stan Meyer’s technology and HHO Gas technology would not work because of the Law of Thermodynamics. Put plainly, they say it wouldn’t work because you would be putting an extra load on the battery and alternator, and you can’t get more out of something than what you put into it. (Adding a load that sucks up power, will not give you more power.) True again. But people install 1,000 watt stereo systems in their cars without any significant loss of power, horsepower, mileage or otherwise and they are not MEANT to increase mileage or horsepower. They are only there for he music.
So now we have reached the point where the stereo system correlates with Stan Meyer’s tech. Cars have 1,000 watt stereo system upgrades all the time with almost zero loss in power and mileage. Stan Meyer’s tech and current HHO tech typically requires 500-750 watts to work. This means that whatever loss there is is less than what would occur with a stereo system upgrade. No significant loss in mileage or horsepower.
What makes up our air: Air is about 70% nitrogen, and 20% oxygen and about 10% other types of miscellaneous material. Oxygen is the only usable material for combustion. Nitrogen doesn’t burn, and comes out the exhaust in the form of NOX emissions.
Finally, let’s look at how the technology works. Electricity is run through what is called an HHO Generator. Water that has mixed with an electrolyte solution to better conduct electricity is gravity fed from a reservoir to the HHO Generator. When electricity is run through the generator, the water splits and hydrogen and oxygen gases are produced. The hydrogen and oxygen gas is call HHO. (2 hydrogen atoms to 1 oxygen atom make up the water molecule) Instead of separating the hydrogen from the oxygen and feeding the hydrogen to the car (a common misconception) the HHO gas is fed into the air intake of a vehicle, after the Mass Air Flow (MAF) sensor. The MAF sensor operates by detecting how much outside air is flowing into the engine, and feeding that information to the vehicle’s onboard computer, where the amount of fuel to be injected into the engine is determined based on that 14.7:1 air fuel ratio. Less measured air flowing into the engine, like in high altitude situations, means less fuel will be injected, increasing mileage.
Since HHO gas is being introduced after the MAF sensor, the sensor measures that less air is getting into the engine, thus lowering the amount of fuel to be injected into the engine for combustion. Now here’s where it gets interesting. HHO gas is combustible. Much like fuel is combustible. The difference is that fuel requires oxygen to burn, and the HHO gas has its own oxygen. The HHO mixture (hydrogen to oxygen ratio) is already at the perfect level for an optimum burn. The cool thing about it is that the HHO is a gas, while the fuel is injected as liquid vapor droplets. A mist if you will. And in a normal engine the fuel is injected while the vehicle breathes in the air from the air intake, compressed, and then ignited for combustion.
In an engine with an HHO mod, that process remains the same, only that air now contains combustible HHO gas. So if fuel is combustible, and HHO is combustible, adding HHO would be like injecting more fuel making the mixture richer. And as we covered earlier, a rich mixture has less NOX emissions, and higher CO and HC emissions. Not the case with an engine that has HHO gas supplementing the fuel. HHO supplements the fuel by making the 14.7:1 air/fuel ratio a little bit “richer”. And since the HHO supplements the fuel, and acts as a catalyst that ignites and burns all of the fuel being injected, fewer HC and CO emissions go out the tail pipe because ALL of the fuel being injected is now burning. Doing this increases mileage, and in some cases depending on the vehicle being used (typical with older models), horsepower goes up as well because of the richer mixture. And as with older model cars, when there is an increase in horsepower, the driver doesn’t have to press down on the gas pedal as far to get up to speed. Not pressing the gas pedal as far equals less fuel being injected, and as we covered earlier, less fuel injected into the engine gets you farther with the fuel you have in the tank.
Now I could end it there, but since I have explained the entire process from the tech, to starting from the front of a vehicle and to the engine, it only makes sense to conclude by explaining what happens at the tail end of a vehicle that’s had an HHO mod. Older cars don’t have sensors in the tail pipe, so this doesn’t apply to them. But the newer models have oxygen (O2) sensors in the tail pipe to measure how much oxygen is in the exhaust. Not enough oxygen in the exhaust means you are running too rich, and too much oxygen in the tailpipe means you are running too lean, and the sensor will tell the computer to adjust the fuel injection accordingly. Modern vehicles with an HHO mod will have an increase in oxygen going out the tailpipe. So to prevent the O2 sensors from freaking out and communicating to the onboard computer “HOLY CRAP!!! YOU’RE RUNNING TOO LEAN!!! INJECT MORE FUEL! INJECT MORE FUEL!” HHO aficionados have what is called a Mileage Chip.
The Mileage Chip is a small computer chip that plugs into the vehicle’s OBDII port, and calms down the vehicle’s onboard computer. Essentially the Mileage Chip acts as a third check and balance system for your vehicle. It tells the computer “Hey there, you can calm down, don’t worry about the O2 sensor back there. It is working fine as it should, but you’re engine is running better now. And look, your air/fuel ratio is fine. In fact, your numbers are a little high, so you can lean out the amount of fuel you are injecting a little more even.”
Now car tuners and mechanics might be thinking “oh that’s just a mileage mod” or “that’s just an ECU tune” which is how THEY would tune an engine to increase horsepower or increase mileage. But there is a difference. With an ECU tune or a mileage mod, increasing the horsepower or increasing mileage will have the expected side effects because that is the nature of those mods. With added horsepower it would be a decrease in NOX and an increase in HC and CO emissions. And with an increase in mileage it would be an increase in NOX and a decrease in HC and CO emissions.
This is not the case with an HHO mod coupled with a Mileage Chip. As I said before, adding an HHO System would be akin to taking that emissions teeter totter from up here ^ and bringing it down here_. It’s still a teeter totter, but you would be lowering the level at which the teeter totter takes place, thereby lowering both NOX and HC and CO emissions while improving mileage. The Mileage Chip would not tell the computer to run at a different air/fuel ratio like an ECU tune or a mileage mod would. The purpose of the Mileage Chip in an HHO System would be to help the computer run the engine at a proper 14.7:1 air to fuel ratio by calibrating the O2 censor and the computer for a better performing engine.
Anyways, I have gone on long enough. If you would like to know more about the technology inspired by Stan Meyers then I suggest you first take a look at this video my dad and I made when we installed an HHO Kit on his car and check out our results.
Hope that clears things up.
*****End of Response*****
If you would like to learn more about this awesome technology, feel free to stick around on this site and keep reading or watch the video I mentioned by clicking on the link above or on the video located at the Top Right of this site. If the video is too small feel free to watch it on youtube and enlarge to full screen.
For those of you who have learned enough and you are convinced that an HHO Kit Is exactly what you’ve been looking for make the decision to CLICK HERE and Get Started!
Authored by Chris Anderson
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