HHO gokart

[Karts of Kaos]

he guys, the other day in chemistry we performed electrolysis and it said in the book that the resulting gases were hydrogen and oxygen. so I made my own larger version out of a soda bottle and some screws. it worked well enough that it almost exploded the bottle when lit and that was only powered by a ten volt battery charger. powered by a lawnmower battery it goes much faster. I wanted to build a bigger safer model similar to the one in Grant Thompson's video by the king of random

. I was wondering how much it would take to power a gokart engine. I was thinking of attaching it through the place where the cpv attaches through the air box. what do you think? is it a bad idea?

 

[gegcorp2012]

I bet it still takes more than a HHO generator will make.

Be sure to include some kind of flashback surpressor in the HHO line between the generator and the engine. Hydrogen burns much quicker than gasoline, so a backfire could blow up your generator.

Side track:
I went through a R&D phase in the 2007 time frame that lasted while gas went over $3.50 a gallon... I had heard about Stan Myers and his water powered VW dune buggy... and was fascinated by the challenge to dial up a resonant frequency to "split" pure water rather than using brute force amperage and drain cleaner as many electrolysis generator builds.

Be careful with or avoid the KOH and drain cleaner in the generator if you can. It is dangerous and can scar you.

Here's a video from 12 years ago of me setting off 1 liter of HHO on my long lost channel on YT.

I'm sure HHO generators have progressed significantly in the past 12 years (right?),

The HHO research led me to study Nikola Tesla's work on pancake coils and other devices based on resonance like Tesla coils, etc... learned lots of stuff along the way, but got no closer to making an engine run.

Then I switched over to gasification of wood to produce wood gas. I was amazed at how practical wood is as a hydrocarbon fuel.(used in WWII to run heavy military trucks when fuel supplies were low).

I studied several gassifier designs and decided that wood gas is a more practical alternative than HHO, so I went through a phase burning wood pellets and welded up a gassifier or two.

Check out some of the work by Wayne Keith, he set a the land speed record for a wood powered vehicle in his Dodge Dakota with a gassifier in the bed of the truck.

There is a Drive on Wood forum with more info and several build categories if you are interested in pursuing a hybrid or fully wood or charcoal powered go-kart.

About the History category

Discussions about the rich history of wood gasification, from the town gas days of 1900, through the war years in Europe, when a milion cars and trucks ran on wood power. Also includes the woodgas revival in the 1970s and 80s.

forum.driveonwood.com

 

[itsid]

Oh jeez.... not that again....
HHO is well pointless BS, it's the snake oil of engine fuel additives (as useless as can be)

stan meyers of all... yeah [sarcasm] he was killed by the fossil fuel mafia[/sarcasm]
Jeez as if you switch your brains off while watching yt videos.
what next.. GEET? I swear I will vomit!

... and was fascinated by the challenge to dial up a resonant frequency to "split" pure water rather than using brute force amperage and drain cleaner as many electrolysis generator builds.

You MUST be joking right?

resonating frequencies huh.. any idea what frequency you are targeting to do that?
Any idea what Amplitude you are looking at to actuall transmit the required energy?
Any idea how much power and control you would need to feed into your wave generator to gain even the tiniest effect?

There is no easier and more efficient way to split water back into hydrogen and oxygen
than with 'simple' electric power.
drain cleaner is a bit of a nono.. way easier/cheaper to just use table salt (less toxic too)..
Or frankly just use sea water instead, there's plenty around and it's freely available as well.
But be sure to dial in the process properly..
else you might end up making SODIUM HYPOCHLORITE (a nice homemade sanitizer)
but not exactly a good engine fuel

ideally one's smart enough to ONLY collect the hydrogen though..
it's an anode cathode thing.. HHO believers are unable to figure that out though [since you find it in a school book]
the oxygen only adds volume for nearly no additional benefit, the air around has more than enough oxygen to combust the hydrogen.
(exception: submarines and space vehicles... bring your own oxygen.. but be sure, noone would build an HHO submarine or shuttle anytime soon)
in general hydrogen powered vehicles are a thing!
(for perfectly good reason)
Now it's on you to find out why no known entity
(no university, no car manufacturer, no boat maker, noone that ever produced some commercially successful product or the idea for one)
cares to use HHO...

'sid

PS man I'm sick of those flat earth - free energy babble

PPS that topic is terribly misleading.. hydrogen: "yeayyy go on..." HHO: "oh shut the fraud up and leave me alone with that BS"
[means: topic corrected]

 

[gegcorp2012]

I guess I asked for the punch in the stomache by sharing too much.

In short, the conclusion I make from the alternative fuel research I have done is that Mr Mcrib's wooden go kart would be better fuel to run an engine than HHO.

 

[itsid]

I am inclined to agree to that conclusion

it takes a chemistry book and five minutes with a pen and paper to come to a very simple conclusion:
"nothing to gain here!"

allow me to try w/o the book... (numbers may be off by a bit)
with all below I assume a perfect reaction, no stinking by products, no additional chemistry (which in itself will proof to be difficult )

splitting a mol (roughly 18 grams) of water into HHO produces 2grams of fuel (H2) and almost 16 grams of 'waste' (oxygen)
at atmospheric pressure it also increases the volume from 0.018 litres of water to about 22.4 litres of H2 and another 22.4 litres of Oxygen
44.8 litres ... an increase in volume of ~2500 %
And it takes about 280-300kJ of energy to do so.
you can compress the hydrogen down to some more manageable volume,
but that again costs energy (and quite a significant amount) and it increases the pressure which requires a heavier sturdier container.
(hence storing JUST the hydrogen is the MUCH smarter move than having to compress the 'unneeded' oxyen as well!)
especially since the ideal ratio to combust hydrogen is NOT 2:1 but in fact closer to 4:1 ratio with oxygen..
(in order to get a more exothermic reaction that is.. meaning releasing energy quicker.. in which case half of the hydrogen cannot combine with oxygen and gets expelled uncombusted ... too bad)
anyhow.. you release about 240kJ of energy when you burn those two grams of hydrogen entirely.. (ideal or not doesn't matter)

so unless you find a source at which you can get abundant hydrogen for free without having to add energy to split it first
and you have a container that is light and big enough to store quite a significant amount of it
it's a rather pointless approach to follow.

And now the worst part:
it's illegal for civilians to store 'significant amounts' of hydrogen almost everywhere.
and "significant amount" can be as little as a kg.
So you better ask your local firedepartement
about what amount of hydrogen is allowed in what container in your area.

'sid

 

[Karts of Kaos]

thanks sid and gegcorp2012
I did not know that it is illegal, or that it was that inefficient. i was just thinking that it would be a cool science experiment. but seeing as how unsafe it is I think that a wood gas gokart would be better,but I am not building this apparatus.

 

[jamyers]

Awful hard to beat the new wonder-fuel: "gasoline"

 

[itsid]

I did not know that it is illegal,

I can't tell if it's illegal where you are either!.. there are more than likely rules you need to obey is what I can tell you.

'sid

 

[Karts of Kaos]

just looked up the laws and yes it is illegal. https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/5336