As we test various kinds of HHO generators, one single problem keeps popping up with all brute force electrolyzers (wet cells with the electrode assembly immersed in water) is the overheating of the cell - we discussed this problem here earlier:

http://autofuelsaving.com/info/problem-of-overheating-for-hho-generators

As we mentioned at the above link, the only solution - without using a current-limiting electronic circuit - is to switch to the dry cell configuration. So we built one and installed it on our 2006 Dodge Sprinter cargo van. Here are pictures of the cell installed at the back of the passenger seat and the reservoir/bubbler used for the cell:

So we did some road tests with it and here is the most recent one that was done on April 14, 2009 for a trip to Edmonton. In order to make this test result comparable to the one we did on August 19, 2008 and reported here, we chose to keep the cell OFF for the trip from Calgary to Red Deer and then ON from Red Deer to Edmonton. The cell current was very steady (around 14A), unlike the wet cell design. For or curiocity and convenience, I chose to inject HHO before the air filter this time. The weather on that day was not good: icy snow all the way from Calgary to Edmonton with the temperature around zero degree. That explains why the fuel consumptions were quite high compared to those of Auguest 6 and 19 last year. As usual, we filled the tank to the rim on each fill-up. Anyway, here is the fresh and raw data, together with the last year’s August 19 result listed as well for comparison purposes:

continue reading "Testing Home-Built HHO Dry Cell on 2006 Dodge Sprinter 2500"

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Road tests are very time consuming and each test cannot be finished in one trip if the route is very long. And there is a lot of factors involved that could affect your test results: weather, fuel station/pump, driving speed, etc.

While carrying the road test, one question kept coming up: Is there a single test that could demonstrate if and how much a HHO generator can save fuel?
continue reading "The Crucial Test to See If HHO Generators Indeed Save Fuel"

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The tests on SL50 oxy hydrogen generator on our 2006 Dodge Sprinter cargo van (medium-long wheelbase with high roof) has almost come to an end - we just need to do one last test to confirm our recent result of 31% fuel saving.

Now we just placed an order for HydroxyTech’s EFI1250 Alexis kit to be tested again on our Dodge Sprinter. Their website says that it takes about 3-4 weeks for our order to arrive. It appears to be a better kit than SaveFuel’s SL50 as this one has a power unit which makes electrical connections easier for a non-professional electrician. The best of all is that it has an item called Vehicle Management Unit (VMU) which is essentially a small touch-screen computer that controls HHO cells and also control PWM, MAP/MAF sensor and up to four oxygen sensors. Their VMU can also monitor temperatures for up to two cells in *F or *C selectable. Here is a picture of their kit:

Here is a list of all the items in the kit:

• 1 Bubbler 3×3x10
• 1 Alexis Cell V2
• 1 Backfire Arrester 3LPM
• 1 6′ Fuel-Hose 1/4″
• 6 1/4″ clamps
• 1 Relay 12v (30A)
• 1 Add-A-Circuit ATO (ATM available)
• 2 Inline Fuse 30A
• 2 Holding Clamps
• 4 Relay connectors
• 2 O-ring Power Connectors
• 1 Vehicle Management Unit (VMU)
• 1 Vehicle Power Unit
• 1 VMU wiring Kit (w/connectors)

Please go to HydroxyTech.ca for more info on this kit and other kits and products. Once we get the kit, we will post test results here.

Update (Nov 7, 2008): I waited for two full months and finally I received the kit today - I mean yesterday as it is alreay almost 3 hours past the midnight

Anyway, spent some time trying to condition the electrode as suggested by HydroxyTech manual. And almost at the end of one of the conditioning cycle, I shot a video and uploaded to YouTube. In fact, this is my first YouTube video:

As you can see, it produces quite a lot of oxyhydrogen with only about 9.7A current powered by a car battery charger. The electrolyte is KOH solution (concentration is about 5g/500ml). After 3 cycles of electrode conditioning, the cell solution is still very clear.

I will do 3 more cycle of conditioning and then will measure oxyhydrogen production in real time and real numbers (L/min). After all this is done, I will install it on our cargo van.

Update (Nov 8, 2008): Measured HHO production rate today without using the pulse-width module (PWM) that comes with the VMU of the kit: roughly 1L/min. Not 2L/min as the kit manual describes. Will find out how to reach the 2L/min capacity. I plan to install it on a gas-engine car (1999 Hyundai Elantra), not our cargo van as we may have to sell the cargo van pretty soon and I do not want to mess with the latter’s sensors. Will see what to do.

Update (Nov 9, 2008): Have figured out why my Alexis cell from HydroxyTech produces only 1L/min HHO rather than 2L/min HHO. The KOH concentration - I did not weigh the KOH used in the test. I had quite a few fruit jars of KOH leftover solutions that I accumulated in the past doing KOH dilution. So I just added some and measure the cold start amperage to estimate the concentration. Turned out the cold start amperage should be 10A, not 5A as I thought to be. If the cold start amperage is 10A, then it should increase to 20A when the cell gets hot in working condition - reaching the normal working current designed by HydroxyTech.

Note that most battery chargers cannot give out 20A as 10A is the highest capacity. So I will do the electrode conditioning again using a higher KOH concentration and power the cell alive using a car battery (rather than a charger) while the engine is running.

Update (Nov 18, 2008): Installed on our 1999 Hyundai Elantra. Had some problems with the kit I received. Had to send some components back for replacement. Will continue the test after receiving the replacement.

Found that it is not an accurate way to measure fuel consumption by filling the tank until the pump stops by itself if you only use less than 10% fuel of the fuel tank. Unlike our 2006 Dodge Sprinter, the 1999 Hyundai Elantra has a inner cover in the fuel tank opening - even when I want to fill the tank to the rim there is no way I can see the fuel level. Strange enough, after driving for about 40 kilometers for the testing and filling the tank either when the pump stopped or when seeing the gasoline spilled from the tank, it was always the second filling requied less fuel. In future tests, I will carry a filled-up 5-liter gasoline container and drive the car until it stops (use this as the fuel baseline) and then fill the tank with 5 liters of fuel from the carry-on container. This way I just record the kilometers needed to empty the tank to the same level (when the car stops running). This tank-depletion method of calculating fuel consumption should be more accurate than the tank-fill approach. Note that my Hyundai Elantra is a manual car which makes it possible for me to drive it until the engine stops.

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As I mentioned here at the last comment of this post about the testing of commericial SL50 oxy hydrogen generator, I am now testing a home-made device I built according to an ebook purchased at www.water4gas.ca

OK, it took me a weekend to get the home-made HHO generator installed, re-built and reinstalled. The main reason for this prolonged process was because I set the operating current to be around 10 amps, rather than 5 amps or less as recommended. 10 amp setting was for the commercial device and it made the cell too hot with this setting.

Anyway, I filled the diesel tank to the rim this time and onwards - to be more accurate to measure how much fuel I will need to add to the rim next time.

I will make a trip from Calgary to Edmonton on Wednesday and I will take the same test as I did with the commercial device last time. I will report here as soon as the test results come out. Here are two pictures I took during the install:

Note that in the cell the electrolyte color was red and it was probably due to too high current (about 10 amps at the time of picture) causing my non-316L stainless wire to corrode fast. Another possibility was Jack who made the electrode for me used a green-colored plexi glass sheet to make electrode insulator/holder and the high-pH electrolyte might have caused the desolved green-color to turn pink. Will use a totally clear plexi glass sheet to make the electrode insulator/holder next time.

As you can see, I have listened to Bill’s advice to insert a threaded elbow fitting from the inside of the rubber air intake hose and tighten it up from the outside using a flexible plumbing hose. It is interesting to mention that I measured the pressure there while the engine was idling by connecting a digital pressure gauge and it turned out that the pressure was -3.8 hPa, not positive pressure but vacuum before hooking up to the HHO generator. It is kind of surprise but it was indeed so - hope someone out there can explain why (note: now we know that it was because the turbo was not kicked on). Anyway, it is good for us as we want the HHO intake to have some vacuum pressure so that HHO can be sucked into the engine rather than diffuse into it.

One last thing, a one-way air check valve must be installed inside the bubbler jar so that no water can be pushed into the electrolyzer when the engine is shut off (electricity cut off). It appears that the cooling of the electrolyzer creates an pressure inbalance between the bubbler (no quick change in pressure) and the electrolyzer (reduced pressure). The pressure inside the bubbler jar is great enough to slowly push all the water in it into the electrolyzer!

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We have a 2006 Dodge Sprinter cargo van (see picture below) for business use at DiaSolid Tools and Supplies Inc. It runs on diesel and is good on fuel - it uses 12.44 liters diesel for 100 KM (18.91 MPG) according to the average of 6 records (which correspond to 6 full tanks of filling) we had for it in the past. However, with diesel ($1.229/liter) selling higher than gasoline ($1.099/liter) - prices given are the prices at the time of this writing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada - we would like to save more money on fuel.

Before Christmas 2007, we had been searching for ways to increase fuel efficiency for vehicles we drive. Oxy hydrogen generators - both the commercial available ones and the home-made ones - caught our attentions.

We bought the commerical SL50 stainless steel oxy hydrogen generator found here last year on December 5, 2007 but only had the time to install it on our Dodge Sprinter yesterday (March 23, 2008). Here are two pictures taken after the installation was finished:

After installing the oxy hydrogen generator, we did not sense any noticeable change of engine noise - probably because it is a new vehicle (Dodge Sprinter 2006). However, one thing we did notice was that the coolant temperature did not rise up as fast as before - this makes sense as the product of burning HHO is simply water and water is the best in absorbing heat.

Also the temperature appeared to stay lower than before. Before installing SL50, the coolant temperature stayed usually around 85 degrees for city driving and 90 degrees for highway driving. After installing the oxy hydrogen generator, the temperature stays around 83 degrees for city driving. What is the temperature for highway driving? We have not tested that yet. One of our staff will be driving this cargo van to Edmonton (from Calgary) to deliver diamond tools to our Red Deer and Edmonton customers on March 8, 2008 - we should know the result pretty soon

Anyway, so far so good. We have now filled up the fuel tank with diesel and recorded the mileage meter reading. Once we have the result, we will report it here.

Note 1: We are going to run tests as well on the 2005 Toyota Sienna and 1999 Hyundai Elantra which we own and drive.

Note 2: Accidentally, we found that the water level in the plastic bubbler (marked IN above) decreased fast in the original design and also since it was made of black plastic we could not see when the water level was low. So we built one ourselves with a wide-mouth fruit jar - see picture below:

This home-made one is almost transparent and can hold a relatively large amount of water compared with the one that came with the commercial device we bought.

Note 3: To save your time of having to go over all our test entries in the comment area below, we summarize our tests here. Basically we got 31% fuel saving in our recent apple-for-apple road tests. We just need to do one more test on a longer route to confirm this. Will report here when we get that done.

Note4: I have not done it myself, but this YouTube video shows one guy in Guelph, Canada did it with his ScanGauge on his HHO generator:

From my own tests I have learned that you need to calibrate the MPG reading on ScanGauge with real tank-fill data. But the above video is the first one I’ve seen showing instant change of MPG reading with the HHO cell turned ON and OFF. Need to test this as I do have a ScanGauge II.

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