HHO gas from water and dirt

[Dog-One]

Maybe this:
http://open-source-energy.org/forum/show...8#pid14818

John is having the same problem with flash back. So far what I'm using seems to be holding up. I'll no more shortly--building a nice water torch/genset cart where everything is mounted on board. Should have something to show next week if my tubing shows up tomorrow.

[Lynx]

(04-28-2013 04:26 PM)Dog-One Wrote:  Maybe this:
http://open-source-energy.org/forum/show...8#pid14818

John is having the same problem with flash back. So far what I'm using seems to be holding up. I'll no more shortly--building a nice water torch/genset cart where everything is mounted on board. Should have something to show next week if my tubing shows up tomorrow.

Okidok, thanks.
The (commercial) arrestors I found isn't depending on gravity, I.E they're not based on a simple water/liquid bubbling thing which you have to keep in a (more or less) vertical position.
Granted the bubbler I use works, no doubt about that, it takes the hit while saving the rest (electrolyzer, valves, hoses, me ) etc).
I'm unfortunately not sure I've seen my last backflash yet, which is why I'm interested in a resettable arrestor that which can take the beating of this 'nasty gas explosion', which, to say the very least, packs quite a punch tbh

[Dog-One]

Flashbacks are just a nature of the beast with this stuff and yes, you haven't seen the last of them.

I'm not sure how a "resettable arrestor" would work actually. It seems there would need to be some sort of trigger mechanism in it that detects a pressure wave or reverse flow and rapidly closes a valve before the flame ignition can get through. Even with that, it would need an electrical circuit breaker too, because should it get triggered, you would want it to shutdown the electrolyzer so you don't continue to build pressure from the HHO backing up behind it. HHO under pressure higher than atmospheric is simply a big fat NO NO. I suspect the ghost from the guy in California that tried pumping HHO into his 120 psi air compressor knows this first hand.

Thinking about the flashback... From what I can tell so far is a hose filled with HHO acts very much like a high speed fuse. The only sure way to stop it is detect it at the point of ignition and then way further down the hose, clamp it off rapidly before the flame front makes it down that far. What I'm getting at is that detecting the flashback right next to the valve where you attempt to shut it off may be a lost cause. I'm not sure what the pressure wave even looks like inside a hose. I know with my torch if you put a valve close to the torch handle and try to shut it off that way, the flashback starts and zips right by the valve before you can get it completely closed. If you put the valve way back on the hose, you can sometimes get it closed before the flashback progresses that far.

[Lynx]

Ok, thanks.
Seems as though I'll keep my bubbler and then add one of the resettable arrestors as the last line of defence.

[Lynx]

Why can't I get the engine to fire up at all?
I can't get it to even start coughing just a little bit.
There's nothing wrong with the engine itself, it starts up just fine using start gas.
And the gas I'm producing is explosive, trust me http://open-source-energy.org/forum/show...6#pid14886

Question: Can I mix the gas with air or will that somehow ruin the "explosiveness" of it?
Cause if it does then I'm afraid I'll need a far larger gasflow coming from my brute force cell if I'm supposed to feed
the engine with nothing but this gas I'm producing.

[Dog-One]

Yes these engines are designed for gasoline and waste most of it by design BTW. I looked at the valve timing on my engine and it was WAY OFF from standard settings. To run such an engine without modifications on HHO, you'll need a boatload of fuel. I set my cam advanced by two teeth and retarded the ignition by about 15 degrees to get it somewhere in the ballpark. How many CCs displacement is your engine? Mine is 305cc and 2 LpM HHO wasn't even close to start with. I now have my new cell in operation that can do 5 to 8 LpM and with the mods to the engine, I'm hoping it will at least idle. If it does not, then I pull the cam and grind the lobes and try again. If it is going to take more than 15 LpM to run this thing, I'm done, because it will take more electricity making the gas than I will ever get back from the engine. Something like 4000 Watts.

Unfortunately, it appears you hit the same wall I went through. Not sure where King Fred (John) is at with his setup, but I can tell you from what I've experienced already, running one of these little engines on HHO is not an easy thing to do.

On the question of whether you can mix air with the HHO to make it work better or worse... John says you can, clear up to 200:1. I think you have to in order to slow the burn rate. Problem is when you do this, you load the engine down during the compression stroke. If you think about it, compressing HHO is stupid, you don't need to do this because you can't possibly make enough HHO in one complete engine cycle to matter anyway. The only reason you compress the gas is so you can cram the combustion chamber with more fuel than the chamber could normally hold at atmospheric pressure. So in the case of my engine, I can hold 305cc. Can I make 305cc HHO for each intake stroke? Nope. Maybe close to that at the lowest possible engine idle speed, but anything faster, no way man. So you see, wasting power compressing the gas buys me absolutely nothing. Now if I add air... Maybe it does help some, but only if the engine produces more power due to the slower burn rate.

It's a real engineering challenge when you think it all though. The more I mess with it, the more I can see a turbine type engine would be far better for turning HHO into mechanical power. A standard piston engine seems a really poor choice for this kind of fuel.

[Lynx]

It's a Honda G65, 4 stroke, 240cc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Honda_engines
I guess I'm nowhere near 5 lpm, not even close to 2 lpm tbh, I'm just gonna have to measure the output from the cell just to get some idea of how far off I really am here.
What I do know is that it takes 20A at 14V rectified filtered DC, which means that the apparent power I'm measuring could directly be expressed in active power, I.E it takes 280 Watts to produce the current volumeflow of this (very explosive) gas.
I guess that I'll have to up the size of the cell if I'm to get some serious volumeflow going though.
The next thing I'm thinking of doing, and this will not be a very good idea , is to inflate a balloon which I in turn then would discharge whilst trying to start the engine, just to see if I can get it to ignite at all.
That would however demand the use of some explosion proof firewall protecting not only myself but also the engine, the cell, etc.

[Dog-One]

My calculations of efficiency are right around 200 Watts/Liter/Minute, so if yours is about the same, you'll need 1000 Watts to get your 5 LpM provided your cell stays reasonably cool. Mine starts to heat the liquid pretty fast with more than 1000 Watts and when that happens the efficiency plummets.

240cc is a pretty big motor, so you'll need lots of gas. You can do the balloon test to at least do a short burst run and what you'll find is how fast the engine gulps up the HHO. John did this to prove the engine can run this way. Do make sure of three things: Retard the ignition to about 10 degrees after TDC. Get rid of your waste spark. Make sure you have a working flash suppressor between the balloon and your intake.

Get that far and you should see some results.

[Lynx]

Okidok, thanks.
Delaying the ignition should be easy enough by simply adjusting the ignition breaker a little bit.
What is a waste spark and how do I get rid of that?
I've found some OEM backflash arrestors that looks interesting, I wouldn't try this out without one of them in place.

[Dog-One]

(05-02-2013 08:37 AM)Lynx Wrote:  What is a waste spark and how do I get rid of that?

These little engines use the crankshaft flywheel for their ignition source, not the camshaft. What that means is they fire the ignition on EVERY revolution of the crankshaft, not every other revolution. A four stroke engine makes two crankshaft revolutions for every complete cycle. So if you walk through a complete cycle, you will see the ignition triggers at the start of the power stroke AND AGAIN at the completion of the exhaust stroke; this second spark is referred to as Waste Spark since it tends to promote burning of unburned fuel on the way out the exhaust. When you delay (retard) the ignition timing as you need to do for HHO, you get a second UNWANTED ignition no longer at the end of the exhaust stroke but at the BEGINNING of the intake stroke. BAD, BAD, BAD as this guarantees you will get a flashback and the majority of your fuel will get burned up in the intake.

The way I overcame this problem is to dump the stock ignition and use an external timing gear that mimics the camshaft gear. Remember those gears I had Jeff 3D print for me...? I then trigger my aftermarket ignition system only once per cycle using a hall-effect trigger and magnet mounted to the external timing gear. And Shazam, no more Waste Spark. The easiest way is to mount the timing gears on the tail-end of the generator. Go have a look at my Genset thread and you'll see how I did it:
http://open-source-energy.org/forum/show...hp?tid=883

HTH,

D1

[Lynx]

(05-02-2013 01:18 PM)Dog-One Wrote:  

(05-02-2013 08:37 AM)Lynx Wrote:  What is a waste spark and how do I get rid of that?

These little engines use the crankshaft flywheel for their ignition source, not the camshaft. What that means is they fire the ignition on EVERY revolution of the crankshaft, not every other revolution. A four stroke engine makes two crankshaft revolutions for every complete cycle. So if you walk through a complete cycle, you will see the ignition triggers at the start of the power stroke AND AGAIN at the completion of the exhaust stroke; this second spark is referred to as Waste Spark since it tends to promote burning of unburned fuel on the way out the exhaust. When you delay (retard) the ignition timing as you need to do for HHO, you get a second UNWANTED ignition no longer at the end of the exhaust stroke but at the BEGINNING of the intake stroke. BAD, BAD, BAD as this guarantees you will get a flashback and the majority of your fuel will get burned up in the intake.

The way I overcame this problem is to dump the stock ignition and use an external timing gear that mimics the camshaft gear. Remember those gears I had Jeff 3D print for me...? I then trigger my aftermarket ignition system only once per cycle using a hall-effect trigger and magnet mounted to the external timing gear. And Shazam, no more Waste Spark. The easiest way is to mount the timing gears on the tail-end of the generator. Go have a look at my Genset thread and you'll see how I did it:
http://open-source-energy.org/forum/show...hp?tid=883

HTH,

D1

Brilliant, thanks
Btw, searching the web for simple enough instructions on how to convert your car/engine to run on HHO/Browns gas/Knallgas very often leads to "It can't be done" and "It's all a hoax" and the sites 'explaining' how to go about it says something like "1) Park your car. 2) Open up the hood. 3) Install the HHO kit. ".
I suggest we pack this thread, or why not make a new thread for that matter, with that which explains in great detail how to go about this.
Any takers?

[Dog-One]

Sorry Lynx, can't bait me, I'm already hooked. hehe I have too much invested in this thing already to quit. When I finally stop it will be because I'm dead, I made it work or I know why it will never work. Except for the dead part, you'll have all the answers you need coming soon to a forum near you.

I'm planning on giving it another go this weekend; hopefully that will materialize into something you can use.

[Lynx]

Well, I found quite a few interesting ideas in this document, http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandf...cm03r0.pdf
I'm gonna start incorporating some of them once I get the motor to start igniting as planned, like switch to using cold spark plug, get crankcase ventilation, injecting some water with the air, delaying the injection of HHO to BDC, prolonging the spark, recirculating 20-30% of the exhaust gas.
If there's anything of importance I've missed/overlooked here feel free to enlighten me.
The first thing I'll do though is to eliminate the waste spark, that's an absolute must do.

[Dog-One]

Well Lynx, no joy here.

Hooked everything up checked the timing to make sure I was well past TDC and got continuous flash backs. So I did a little checking and my intake valve isn't sealing properly. I think what was happening is the HHO was igniting and shooting right past the intake valve where it would burn up a good chunk of fuel before it could even get to the combustion chamber. I pulled the head and it is pretty obvious this motor took some abuse during the ice storm I had several years ago--I ran it around the clock for about two weeks straight. So now I need to order some parts and try again. I might be able to restore this cylinder head but it will take a lot of work. There's also a good possibility the head is warped from all the heat. So I'm thinking a lot of my problems so far have been due to this darn thing--that's what I get for not using new stuff I reckon.

The good news is my little flash back arrestor worked like a charm. I put it right next to the intake and never saw any flashes go beyond it down the tube to my big flash arrestor.

[Lynx]

Okidok, bummer then.
Got a pic of the little flash back arrestor?
Is it a DIY or a OEM?

[Lynx]

Found some designs on DIY arrestors,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3oTNDPoCjA using aquarium air stone bubblers,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2oJBzX0DCY using bronze wool, some form of granulates (not sure which is the best here) and screens to prevent the granulates from escaping the arrestor.

At the end of the day though, the ultimate test would be to build one of these and introduce the outgoing hose to an open flame and see what happens.

Don't forget your peltors........

[Dog-One]

(05-05-2013 03:16 AM)Lynx Wrote:  Okidok, bummer then.
Got a pic of the little flash back arrestor?
Is it a DIY or a OEM?

It came with my DIY cell. Looks like this:


I didn't specifically order it. I guess these folks are conscientious of people blowing themselves up. It does work though.

[Lynx]

Ok, gotcha, thanks.

[Lynx]

If I'm not mistaken it looks like the compression has to be increased in order to boost efficiency...........?
High voltage cold spark plugs is the way to go here though.
It needs both ignition and valve timing adjustments to be able to run by the looks of it, just like D1 says.

I've ordered some fine brass wool for my DIY backflash arrestor, I'm not performing any test runs using only my bubbler here, too noisy everytime it goes











****BANG****

[Dog-One]

I don't know Lynx. It isn't looking so good from my side. See:
http://open-source-energy.org/forum/show...6#pid15106

That post and my next one.

Gary says 1 LpM per 10cc engine displacement which puts me at about 30 LpM and that is only at 2/3 power. At just over 200 Watts/Liter/Minute, that is 6000 Watts from the wall to produce 2/3rds of the 5000 Watts the genset is capable of. Ain't going to happen partner.

Gary is a straight shooter and if he has played with this stuff for 25 years and only got up to the results he posted on YouTube, I'd say you can take that to the bank.