Would a hydrogen booster work?

Question

whats your opinion on weather or not a booster would work? What reasoning do you have proving for or against this technology?

Answer 1

the amount of unburned fuel in an exhaust is measured in ppm, that parts per million which means that even if by some strang chemistry the H2 could get all the unburned fuels to burn, the amount of added energy is in the parts per million, ie a 30 mpg vehicle would increase by 50/1,000,000 or .0015 MPG.

Answer 2

anything to fix this gas crisis, I don't care anymore.

Answer 3

did you read this on PICC.com or PICCTV.com?

That website is a scam.

Hydrogen boosters do work though, so long as the engine gets at least 5%-7% of its energy from hydrogen.

Answer 4

Despite what they tell you, if this technology existed it would be in production cars today.

DIESEL IS THE WAY TO GO, HYBRIDS ARN'T!

Answer 5

No they don’t work.

The whole premise of the hydrogen booster is that it allows for more complete burning of the fuel.  Even in the mid 70’s your hydrocarbons emissions were only (Federal 1975 emissions standard) 1.5 grams per mile of hydrocarbons now even if we assume that 1.5 grams was all un-burnt gasoline and if you could burn it all you wouldn’t save that much fuel.  If I remember my math there is about 3785 grams in a gallon which would mean you’d have to drive over 2,500 miles to make up one gallon of gas, and let’s assume you managed 20 mpg before they hydrogen booster, so you would use 125 gallons of fuel. If the hydrogen boost managed to burn that extra fuel your mileage would be 20.16192 mpg not counting the fuel lost making the HHO. And those are 1970’s numbers; cars today are much more efficient at fuel management.

The only way they make better mileage is to lean out the fuel air mix, but doing so will increase the temperature of the inside of the cylinder, this will result in burnt valves, pistons, and cylinder head damage. You won’t notice the damage right away it takes time so say in 5,000 miles or so you get the joy of rebuilding a motor, $2,000 to $5,000+ going without a car for a few weeks. In addition to the engine damage caused by lean burn and high combustion temperatures and an excess of oxygen (when you burn lean you burn all the fuel but you don’t use all the oxygen) cause the formation of oxides of nitrogen.

BTW if you just lean out the fuel air mix and don’t hook up the hydrogen booster you’ll get even better mileage.

Answer 6

You have already received two excellent answers on this so I will just fill in a few added thoughts. First it will consume more gasoline to produce the electricity that cracks the water into hydrogen than you will get back from the hydrogen being burned. It is called the power of diminishing returns and is why perpetual motion schemes eventually run out of motion! If you want a little low cost boost to power and mileage with low to no risk to your engine investigate something called a bubblier. It injects through one of your cars vacuum line a water/alcohol mix that cools the combustion a little so the mix burns cleaner and more completely. Also it gradually removes carbon buildups from the valves and cylinders making the engine more efficient.

I went back and reviewed the saved information I had on Bubblers and HHO and remembered why I was highly skeptical of the HHO claims. All the HHO schemes run through a bubbler on their way to the intake manifold. All the functional benefit they are getting is from the bubbler they HHO part of the system is just consuming energy from the alternator and giving you a fell good feeling about cheating the oil companies.

Here is a functional article on bubblers, how they work and what you can expect from them.

http://blizzard.rwic.und.edu/~nordlie/wa...

Answer 7

Doesn't work, just a fraud.

My reasons:

1. The laws of physics don't allow it.

2. Car engines already get about as much out of the fuel they burn as they possibly can (> 99% of the fuel does burn in the engine, despite what idiots may have told you, if it didn't get to near complete combustion the catalytic converter would melt).

3. Generating the hydrogen takes more energy than it can contribute towards running the car (see 1 above)

4. No one who has ever measured the fuel economy properly has found any increase in fuel economy (though a lot of people haven't measured it properly and many have in fact changed their driving style (often subconsciously) after installing their hydrogen generator waste of money).

5. Leaning the mixture is most likely illegal (since the catalytic converter can't deal with NOx from a lean mixture and that's the worst of the three big non-CO2 pollutants that come out of a cars tailpipe) and the engine computer in modern cars will do its best to prevent you and may even enter a reduced performance, reduced fuel economy limp home mode.  Tampering with emissions control equipment is very much illegal.