Hydrogen Generator Blog

This is the install of the third HHO Gen. I have built. The best one so far, but still very low production. Even at 19.5 amps.  I am in the process of building a RandyCell / SmackBooster hybrid. We will see how that goes. As for the current build, if anyone has any ideas for further improvement, please let me know!   

 This current system is built of the following:

2 quart mason jar, 14 gauge wire, the generator core is #40 Stanless Screen mesh with a negitive inner polarity & positive outer polarity, all air lines are 1/4″ fuel hose. The relay is a 50 anp relay off of a salvage farm tractor, the bubbler is a 2″ PVC SCH40 pipe that is 14 inches tall. There is 8″ of water in the bubler tube. No check valve in place yet. In the photo it was tap water & baking soda. I have now changed it over to 50/50 distilled water & KOH. 

                   Thanks for viewing!   ———————————kj

 

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Aug 15,2008

I would like to say thanks everyone for letting me post here. I have been working on different hydrogen generators for about four or five months now. I started out like everyone else curious at first and could not wait to get down to the store and buy some stainless. I have built four different generators not counting the one shown here and was never really pleased with the production and heat problems I experienced with the other types. I have settled for now on my build of the Tero design. The Tero design has its problems like all the others but you have to make a choice sometime or do you? I can’t decide. I have built the outer part of the cell out of metal instead of plastic its heavy but seems bullet proof. I have tested only one of the cell’s on the bench not on a my truck yet. I have produced up to 4.5 liters per minute using a DC welding turn down and monitored with a multi meter showing 20 amps ( I don’t know how accurate that is but it is a high dollar multi meter) the unit got warm but not so much that you could’nt keep your hand on the side of it. The problem has been that a good production from the unit caused the water in the cell to flow out the gas port every now and then. I would end up with the cell only utilizing half of the plate area to generate hydrogen. I have installed a circulating pump and built a bubbler out of stainless steel and also added another cell and we will see what I can get this thing to do. I will post my results here. Please let me know what you think about my cell and any help along the way as far as experience and knowledge are concerned will be appreciated.

Aug 17,2008

Well, today I worked on my truck all day installing the system. It was easy to get everything to fit when your installing it in the back of your truck. I like the pump on the system. I bought the pump at Tractor Supply it is made for a spray rig and is weatherproof and has a built in 35psi cutoff. The pump only draws 2 amps and has a flow rate of 1 gallon a minute and cost $35. The pump in my opinion keeps the cells full at all times, which takes care of the foaming out the gas port problem and also maybe helps push the hydrogen off the plates quicker so it can make more hydrogen in that area of the plate. I am only guessing about pushing the bubbles off the plate. I started up the system and with 8 plates in each generator and no matter what I did I could not get more than about 3 amps draw on each generator. I wanted to take a sledge hammer to the thing after that. I decided I would use a piece of wire and jumper across the plates to see if running only 7 plates would help and it did make the production of gas and the amperage go up. I then decided to take a plate out of each generator to try and cure the low amp problem. I drain the cells and removed a plate on each cell and started it back up and was now getting a deciet amp draw and about 2 2 liters a minute out of both, no not out of each but out of both. So, I am very unhappy about the output of gas but I will fix that when I have another day off. Later, today I took it on a road test. I went to EZ mart and filled up and checked my mileage. I then headed up the interstate for a mileage check got back to the same EZ mart and same gas pump and refilled. I always get 24 miles to the gallon on my Toyota pickup without the hydro stuff and today I got right at 40 miles to the gallon. I know it works, I have seen it with my own eyes and that is with only 2 liters a minute and a O2 extender that I made. So when I get the amp draw on the truck right and my O2 munipulator made up I should get to my target of 100 miles per gallon. I do need to mention, I drove at 70 mph and I did not run my air conditioner and I did not even check my tire pressure which the back tires look low on air. Here are some more pic’s of my stuff and also a shot of the amp draw on the generator when its running. The amp gauges will not stay back there, I will dash mount them when I am done with everything.

Aug 26,2008 Tuesday

Well, today I received my Map/Maf Enhancer and as soon as I open the box I began to take it apart. I have been building one based on the schematic that I got off the forum but as a backup I purchased one. I took the one I bought apart it was very simple to make I don’t have the schematic but I took pictures so everyone can make one. I am no electronic expert but this is as simple as its gets take a look.

Ok, now that you have looked at the pictures.  There is basically a switch,resistor,pentiometer,project box and some wire ( 2 leads and a bare ground).  Instructions:  Ater completion of your easy to make Sensor Enhancer. 1.  Hook up bare wire to ground or your vehicle body 2. Black wire will be your signal from your map sensor 3.  Red wire will be your signal from the Enhancer to computer.

Here are some photos of my fuel cell, yes this is the one that produces to much. It is all Stainless Steel Perforerated Stock.

This cell can handle over 60 amps and with proper voltage control and will produce 45 Liters per minute.

I have run it at different settings with straight tap water ( in my case well ) I found that it will produce 1 liter a minute at 2 V.DC., 1.6amps, at 8 V.DC., 8 amps it produces 4.7 Liter per minute, again staright well water.

Now it’s your turn to build one. Enjoy. LtCFisher

Deleted to save Domain space.

Admin Comment: There is absolutely no shortage of space on this domain.�

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Well, Ok then I’ll post another then, thank you !

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So far in this Field of endevor I have been able to gather quite a bit of information.

Although it is my Dream/wish to power my Toyota 100% on hydroxy gas alone I am aware that that is not everyones goal, so I will restrict myself to the supplemental system .

Some or Most of this information I am about to tell you is hear say, not proven fact or absoulte facts, and its up to You to determan what is right and wrong, I am still learning about this too and I can be wrong…I am no expert, so read this with That in mind!

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I have discovered that between 1liter per minute (LPM) and 2 LPM are needed to provide enough Hydroxy gas(browns gas) PER Liter of engine displacement… less than that amount only helps with the burn of the gasoline and usually doesn’t add much to the Mile Per Gallon (MPG) gains in the automobile .

so I like the 2LPM per Liter of engine displacement for decent results… its a rough rule of thumb

but helps to narrow down how much Hydroxy gas you need for your car, to get a good gas milage increase.

for instance , if you have a 2liter engine you should have at a minimum of 4LPM output from your Hydroxy generator to realise a good gain in MPG. as I said its a rough estimate and not chisseled in stone !

Good gas milage with a Hydroxy generator added is determaned by many factors.

the effeciency of the engine your putting the booster on.

the Type of engine your putting it on (fuel injected or carberated)

the way you use the booster

and the tuneing of the engine to the new fuel supply.

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Time after time I read where someone builds up a Smack booster or Tero cell and hookes it up to the car and they get no change in MPG.

Its Not a matter of build it, and plug it in … its a matter of making sure everything is working togather and that is a diferent Kettle of fish !

I built a smack booster and achieved 1.5LPM from it on my best test. although it reached 1.25 LPM many times …

I like the Smack booster ! its a good simple easy to assemble Hydroxy cell that has Moderate output by todays standards…

here is a pic of that cell.

This cell as pictured worked very well, but at the time I was useing baking soda as an electrolite and it made so much green GOO as to coat the plates and render the cell unproductive in just a few days, only complete dissesembly and wire wheeling the plates made it useable agaiin, sense then I have switched to KOH and Lemonade Koolaid !

and so far the Lemonade works just as good as the KOH and maybe even better as it keeps the cell very clean!

…the Next picture is My very first cell I made with normal steel plates and re worked to obtain closer plate spaceing… I powered this cell with my AC/DC Arc welder at 75 amps and it produced over 4.5LPM for a few minutes untill the curcuit breaker at the electric pole tripped and everything went black !

You’ll notice I have a VTOM meter hooked to the 2 thredded rods that supply power to the cell, and that there is NO continuity at all… this is very important in building any cell because any continuity means there is a direct short in the cell itself.

once the cell is wet however there will be some resistance between the terminals, this is normal on close plate spaceing !
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THis next picture is that of a Make shift Tube cell… it didn’t work very well at all

but it gives you the idea of that a tube cell is… this one has 4 tubes inside each other and every one is electrified. the reason it hardly worked at all I believe was the spaceing between the tubes and the tube meterial ( normal steel)

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SO I’ve learned the best meterial is Stainless steel for more than one reason.

Plate spaceing makes a world of diference although 3MM works ( 1/8″) I have found much better results useing plate spaceing of less than 1/16″….but more than likely this is just because of the design I have worked on.
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There is some controversy on weather plate spaceing is a real consideration when you can just increase the Electrolite striength and achieve the same thing….

but in fact you don’t achieve the same thing , it only seams so… the resistance in the electrolite is a major contributor to generator HEAT there is no getting around that

so running a high concentration of electrolite will help reduce heat …IF and ONLY IF…you have a way of controling the amprage the cell recieves… this involves a PWM (Pulse Wave Modulator) or DC Motor speed controler. a device designed to provide short pulses of DC power (voltage and amprage) to the device.

This is because if you enrichen the Electrolite up to where there is hardly any resistance in the electrolite at all the cell will Look like a direct short to the electrical supply and melt the wires,kill the battery and probly melt the container as well…

at a guess a Smack booster set up in a super rich electrolite would probly draw 300amps or so…. far more than you can supply or control… and obviously a melt down would occure!

but you could do this with a PWM between the relay and the cell and reduce tha amps the cell actually gets… cutting it down to only 25 amps and your heat output would be much much less because of the higher concentration of electrolite… less resistance in the water means less heat build up…

I havn’t done this personally , but Bob Boyce has written allot about it and it finally dawned on me what he ment, although I read it many times before it never sunk in… that time, it finally clicked into place.

As far as cell construction goes , there are about as many designs out there as there are people tinkering with the Hydroxy gas stuff ! everyone has a diferent design.

But I admonish you to put off the experimentation untill after you build a good working cell of established design, one that you know will work for you…because it works for so many others! Like the “Smack booster” or the “Randy cell”, these are cheep to build (relitively speaking) and almost alwayse put out gratifying results.

Once you see that thing actually work and produce bubbles then you can play and experiment, by then your knowledge will have trippled on the subject and you will make better choices towards the design.

When your confident you can handle the task (and that realy doesn’t take all that much skill to build one of these things!)  then you can build a Tero Cell that Dan has provided

the plans for on this forum, just to help other people get going with a good solid cell!

and that it is… a good solid Hydroxy cell… although I disagree totally with some of his assessments about useing one on a car his cell design is without a doubt a very good one!… and a fellow experimenter here on the forum came up with a neet addition to the Tero cell a while back and that is the addition of a method I call the

Flooded Tero-Cell… which is a way to keep the plates in the Tero Cell wet all the time

and increase its output by a great deal and reduce the heat outputat the same time

the Tero Cell can be made in any size you desire, but the larger you make it the more amps it will take to run it … even a small increase in Plate size increases the needed amps a large amount , so keep that in mind !

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I have discovered a few Numbers that might be helpfull in your experiments

I know more about the Randy Cell than any other cell so I used it as my Basis.

I thought it would be helpfull in designing a Hydroxy cell to know how many amps it takes per square inch of plate area to produce gas at Optimum output…

(calculateing a single side of each plate)

I took these observations from this information I gathered.

a Randy Cell = #11-2″ washers=55sqr inch plate area.( approx. )

at 20amps it produces 2LPM

at 15amps it produces 1.5LPM

So spareing you my ugly math and round about ways of getting to the same numbers others would get to in a few seconds with more smarts than me …
we have then…
… 0.363636 amps per sqr inch.( although a cell will function well as low as 0.25 APSI)
Also How much that 1sqr inch is putting out in LPM

…0.03636 LPM output per sqr. inch (which is at Optimum production)

…0.025 LPM output per sqr. inch at reduced amprage

these Numbers helped me zero in on the right size of plates and their number

where I was saying 15 plates of 12″x12″ sounded like a good number…

to 5 plates of 12″x12″ will take 261.81 amps to feed !!!!!!!!

and produce a whopping  26.179 LPM at optimum amprage…

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more to come

Bob…

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  See - Pictures!

Many users on the forum have requested a way to post pictures of their projects.  Due to spam concerns and adult images popping up on the forum, pictures were not allowed to be posted.  One of the users suggested a blog that certain people would be allowed to author.  This is controllable and was a free service provided by my web host.  So, here we are, blogging away.  If you know how to admin Wordpress, I am looking for someone to coach me through it!

Register as a user on the blog software and if I am certain you will make a positive contribution to the community then I will add you to the author list and you can share your knowledge - and pictures with the rest of us!

Daniel Wells