three teens and their experiments with hho gas

Hey all,

Sorry for the long silence since our last post, it is mostly because we really haven’t worked on much since around Christmas. Its not that we haven’t talked or thought about it since then, but between work, school and other hobbies and passions, its been hard to find the time. And the low gas prices doesn’t add that extra kick-in-the-pants that it used to.

However we did do quite a bit on the dry cell that we never posted about. 

I think somewhere I mentioned the differences between wet and dry cells, and the greater efficiency of dry cells. That is why we decided that they are the better way to go. 

I already posted about our first attempt, the one we built out of 1/4″ acrylic and quickly scrapped because we didn’t have the proper adhesive. 

The next thing we did was get a 2′x2′ sheet of 1/2″ HDPE plastic to use for a cell. We cut out the pieces with a table saw, making this a one a bit bigger, out about 6″x7″x5″. When we had it all cut out, we set the table saw it only cut about 3/16″ deep, and made grooves in the bottom and two sides about 1/8″ apart. We also invested in a plastic welder, since there is no adhesive that will bond HDPE. We screwed it together using little mettle corner braces and then welded the seams. The welder has quite of a learning curve, like anything else, and so overall it didn’t turn out that great. It seemed like no matter how much we tried welding on it, it still would leak from the bottom. Also the grooves in the sides didn’t line up very well because we grooved each piece separately, so it was almost impossible to get all the plates to fit in. So that is a far as we got with that one, we decided that we definitely needed to start over. :) 

So we ordered a new sheet if plastic, this time polypropylene, it is very similar to HDPE, but it seems harder and finer and is kind of an opaque color instead of a solid white. This time we grooved the sides and bottom in one piece, and then cut them out, so hopefully this time they will line up.

So, that is as far as we have gotten, hopefully soon we will be able to work on it again, maybe gas prices will go up again.  Also I will try and post about any other energy news, or qizmos that we have been thinking about, as hydrogen will be just a part of a bigger solution that is needed for our changing world.

So long,

Nate.

We have actually done a lot in the last week or so, I will be updating in the next day or so, as I am pretty busy right now. Short discription is that we are building a dry cell out of HDPE, and we have a plastic welder coming this week. Once we get it, we will finish the cell, and have some more reports for you.

We took apart the smack booster this morning, and determined that a loose connection made a spark which made the flashback I had yesterday. We just had the connecting straps sitting on a nut on the end of the bolt terminal. So we figured that it must have slid on the strap, creating a spark which set the whole thing off. So we put another nut on and screwed the it down tight, then put it back on. 

So I topped off and went to do the test route again. Something must have gone wrong though somewhere inside, because when I turned it on the voltimeter was reading 32 amps and went up steadily during the whole trip. It was kind of alarming, and I turned it off before I got back because it said 60 and the shunt was burning hot. At first I thought maybe it was just the shunt that was off, but when I got back we tested against another shunt and it said the same thing. Zikes! 

When I topped off again, it said 16 MPG compared to 26 without the booster on, 10 mpg less. That wasn’t to much of a surprise with such a high draw though, I’m not sure what caused it though, it might have been a short, or that the electrolyte wasn’t mixed up very well. 

So it looks like we’ll have to take it apart again! We might just shift all our focus to the dry cell though, it just seems like a better design all around.

The other thing that I wanted to mention was that we got our working Smack booster installed in my Ranger truck, which was pretty exciting. I have plenty of room in my engine compartment, so we were able to fit both the booster and bubbler in, bringing power directly in from the battery and running to a simple light switch in the cab. 

So today I went on a test run to see if it had any difference on my milage, that was the booster that is producing 1/2″ LPM at 17 amps. I started by topping off at a gas station and then making a 15 mile round trip without the booster on, the route I took was mostly 35 and 50 MPH highway. So I came back, topped off and then turned on the booster planning to make the exact same route. 

I had a multimeter hooked up to a shunt so I could keep an eye on the amperage as I was driving. Anyway, I was just crusing along when suddenly the multimeter showed zero amps. I was just about to pull over to check it out when POW! The bubbler went off.  Oh well, I’ll have to try again. :) 

I don’t think the flashback was caused by the engine, I think it was a short in the generator. Because the hose from the gen. to the bubbler was popped off, as well as the bubbler cap, the gen. cap was to strong to blow. 

We’ll take it apart tomorrow and let you know what we find!

Well, we did succeed in building a dry cell, but our anxiousness to see how it will work always makes us hasty, and so it usually turns out kind of sloppy. Not having the right materials doesn’t help either, but I think it turned out alright for a first try, it just didn’t work, LOL. 

We built the box type of dry cell, not the clamp type, which we did try first but decided that wasn’t the best way to go. As Micah said, we built the box out of 1/4″ acrylic, which is very challenging stuff to work with. It is rock hard, but at the same time cracks fairly easily. Also, the only proper way to join the stuff is with acrylic cement, we just slathered the thing with JB weld, our favorite adhesive, and unfortunatly it didn’t stick to well. Anyway, we did get it together, 7″ wide, 6″ tall, and 2″ wide. We also made a neat hinged lid with clasps that pulls the lid down on a cork gasket to seal it. The plates we just jammed into the box, using rubber strips to make them fit tightly. 

When we hooked it up nothing happened, it turned out that we didn’t have a very good connection between the plates and our bolt electrodes. So when we hooked the power right to the plates, it started bubbling really well, but the box was leaking so bad that the project had to be abanded.

So it was a good first start, now we are going to build a new box out of 1/2″ HDPE that we have. That we will be able to groove to fit the plates in, and also hopefully weld together.

We are building our new dry cell and hope to have pictures up soon. We are building it out of 1/4″ acrylic, and are having a hard time working with it. However, we are almost done. 

We will keep you updated.

Well, Micah came back last weekend, but we couldn’t find an obvious reason why it didn’t work for very long. We finally decided that it must have been just the high heat of the diesel engine that made the hho spontaneously com-bust and thus blow the bubbler cap. We couldn’t find any other reason. So, we didn’t find out if it helped the mileage at all, we’ll have to try again.

The other update is our work on yet another booster design, called a dry cell. We tend to bounce around alot, as we are always finding out new interesting stuff that we want to try.

Anyway, a dry cell is basically just a cell where the electrolyte is contained within each cell. With a Smack booster, the plates are just sitting in a container of electrolyte. The problem with that, is that the current can just leak through the electrolyte from the positive to the negative terminals, instead of flowing through the plate to make gas. In other words, go around the plates. 

So a dry cell aims to fix that problem by making sure there isn’t electrolyte around the outside of the plates where it can leak current. There are two main ways one can  do that. The first one is by clamping the plates together with gaskets, so that the electrolyte is contained inside the plates with by the gasket, so you don’t need a container of any sort, gas exits through a hole in the plates. 

The other way is to put the plates inside a tight fitting box so that electrolyte can’t leak around the sides. Either way, you have to fill it from the top since it isn’t sitting in a huge supply of electrolyte. That adds a slight challenge, but is out weighed but the added efficiency you get from stopping current leaks. 

So, thats what we are working on now, more as we go!

Well, we finished building another Smack’s booster, we had a lot of the parts already, so it didn’t take to long. We built this one following Smack’s instructions almost exactly, so we could compare it to our modified version. 

We used 16 of the 3″ x 5″ wall covers, and hooked them up like he does, with 1 mm washers between plates and 1/4″ nuts between cells. We also hooked the terminal straps to bolts in the cap instead of the side. Puting the terminals on the side was one of our mods that we decided didn’t work as well.

We were in a hurry to put it in his truck, so we didn’t test it very much, but it looked like it was putting out 1/2 LPM at 15 amps. With our other booster we were putting out 1/2 LPM at 20 amps with 8 of our 3″ x 10″ plates. So that is the same surface area as our 16 3×5s, just half the cells. 

So that still isn’t that much, as a untuned smack should get close to 1 LPM. We did sand and wash the plates, but didn’t condition them. There are A LOT of tests that would be nice to do on it comparing the two boosters, to try and see what is most efficient. 

Anyway, as soon as we got it finished Micah got it wired up to his truck. He put the booster in the bed of truck, and the bubbler in the corner of the engine compartment, there isn’t much room in there with the honk’in V8 diesel sitting in there! He stuck the hose into the intake, and wired the booster right to the battery with a simple kill switch in the cab. We figured that 1/2 LPM probably wouldn’t make much of a difference in such a big motor, but since he was going a long trip, we decided it was a good time to give it a go. 

He left Friday, (the 31st) and called me that night and said that the bubbler blew about 50 miles into the trip. We were both pretty surprised about that, as we also had a check valve on, and it all seemed pretty safe. It was dark, so he hadn’t checked to see what exactly went wrong. Now he is out in the middle of the woods were you can’t be bothered by cell phones, so we’ll have to wait until he gets back to find out the “rest of the story”.

There isn’t much that I can think of, it is a turboed diesel, so I wouldn’t think there could be a flashback through the intake, but maybe the hose from the bubbler melted because of engine heat. 

I will be pretty busy this week, so I probably won’t get to work on anything while he is gone, I’ll let you know if I do!

Well, we are building a new Smack, and we are also trying a Dry Cell design. We will be keeping you updated on how that goes. We hope to put the Smack in my diesel truck, since I am going on a 300 mile trip this Friday. Hopefully we can get it built and working by then.

Till then!

Howdy,

We had a chance to work on the torch and lawnmower today. First off, we went to town and got a 1/4 x 1/4 hose barb for the torch. Our current setup is just a plug with a pinhole in it for a tip, threaded into the end of the torch handle. That didn’t work, so the next step is to put a proper welding tip on it, just in case that is the problem. It seems unlikely that it is, but who knows. So we put the hose barb in place of the plug, and used a 1/4″ die to thread the end of it. So now it is ready to thread a tip in, we’ll update you when that happens. 

So then we moved on to the lawnmower project. We were wondering if the mower wasn’t getting enough air with the hho hose connected directly to the intake. So we made a simple setup to let more air in, just a T-fitting, air coming in at the back, and HHO at the T. 

That didn’t work though, it just came out the back. I think it would do that with the regular carburetor as well though, so we’re not sure what the solution is. 

While we were working on that, another friend who is working on this stuff stopped by, and answered our question on how to advance the timing on the mower. To run anything on pure HHO, you have to severly retard the timing or else you will just get backfires, which is what we are getting. That is because HHo burns instantly, while with gasoline, it takes awhile for the flame front to travel across the cylinder. So in gas engines the spark fires before the top of the compression stroke so that it has ample time to combust. But with hho, you need it to fire AFTER top dead center, because it burns so fast. 

Anyway, we were mulling over how to retard the timing, and he showed us how to do it by taking the flywheel off and turning it on the shaft so that the magito would fire later. So we fiddled with that awhile, and got it to fire more consistantly, but it it is still backfiring, so it will still need some work. 

We also fiddled with plate configuration on our generator, there are so many possibilities, and we are not sure what works best. Its all exciting though, we will get something that works really well one of these days!