electrolysis of H2O

I'm looking for the best plate spacing of SS plates to produce Browns gas. I'm using 12 volts, would like to not go over 15 amps. Also could someone explain the use of neutral plates between + and- plates. Plate size of 2" X 8" in distilled water.

If my understanding is...

I think my thoughts on this project thus far are this:
Because the energy required to split water exceeds the energy recouped by burning the product of the split, HHO-producing devices reduce, rather than improve overall car efficiency.



Oh, if you are building one of these devices for a car, make sure you include a flashback arrestor, remember safety is a must...

P.S. flashback arrestor does not need to be more then a small chamber with distilled water filled say about 3/4 of the way, on one side, you have a tube from the gas generator (electrolyzer) coming in from the top and going into the water, on the other side, the tube that runs to your intake connected to a hole on the top. design is such that bubbles of gas have to pass through water and then go into the openning on the top that leads them to the intake, thus if the gas in the intake ignites, it only travels down the tube and to this water jar, where it is then suppressed by the water. Its simple to make, and will increase the safety of your system (obviously you want to put this contraption as close to the intake, as you can... most people put on their dash, or even under the hood)

In the discussion of this procedure, one point has been omitted: it is possible that the admission of some hydrogen (plus oxygen) to the normal petrol + air feed to the internal combustion engine will affect the burning of the fuel in ways that might improve the resulting mileage of the car, to the degree that the energy lost in the electrolysis of water is more than recouped. Might. I don't know much about the actual chemistry and physics of IC engine functioning: one long-experienced engineer has been quoted as saying "...and I am of the fixed opinion that they are infernal works", because the physics of ignition and flame propagation are obscure.
Anyway, it should be clear that the energy lost in the generation of the H2 and O2 gas from water will only in part be recouped from the burning of the H2 as such, except for possible changes its presence causes to the burning of the much larger charge of petrol. Possible, but unexplained. This is why tetraethyl lead was added to engines: the energy contribution from the additive was irrelevant, but it facilitated different styles of engine operation, and this was well explained.
As well, there are possible improvements accidental to the installation (as one contributor mentioned, cleaning/replacing the air filter)
And more serious, fiddles to the engine controls that change the usage of fuel. This alone could be enough to modify your miles per gallon result, and if you're really lucky, the presence of the "Brown's Gas" in the fuel flow might offset the likely increased damage to the engine. Might. Really lucky. As well as overloading the electricity generation system. I hope no-one tries to store H2+O2 generated elsewhere for supply to the engine (so as no to load the engine + generator with the electricity demand to electrolyse the water): the mix is violently explosive, just as air + petrol vapour is. Actually, H2 + O2 is much worse.

Assessing the results is going to be difficult, especially for small differences. The vehicle is being driven over the same roads with the same loads in the same style?

So the only hope is of a possible improvement to the burning of the petrol. If there is something to be gained here, there should be other additives that will do as well. Pure oxygen, for example. There don't seem to be though.

Nicky, we actually discussed this in the forums in another thread... you can do the honors of finding it, its a thread called HHO or something, i'd look for it in the engineering section

While the addition of HHO to the engine will make the chemical reaction, produce more energy, it nowhere near augments the amount of power it takes to run the electrolysis to get the fuel. Nor is there enough HHO made to switch to it as a main source of power or anything.

to put it in perspective for you, its like running a wind mill on the roof of your car, to charge the batteries on your hybrid...

we need not to search fore improvements to burning petrol, we need to seek ways of eliminating the need for fossil-based petrol, and some microorganisms are showing a lot of promise in moving in that direction

Yes, I'm quite clear on the energy accounting of using engine power to electrolyse water to provide fuel to burn in the engine to provide power to run the generator that supplies the electricity that electrolyses the water, etc. even though I haven't found the engineering section you mention just yet. The point is that there may be auxiliary changes to the burning of the fuel (and pollution control requirements) that just might give a nett gain, though I doubt it. And curiously enough, this really is similar to having a windmill on a car that drives the car (either via direct gearing or with the intermediary of generator and electric motor) --- if there is a wind blowing (in any direction), that would work. A stationary car with windmill clearly can gain energy while a wind blows, and this energy can be converted to forwards motion, even if the wind is from dead ahead. A similar arrangement for toy boats actually does work with the boat heading straight into the wind, given suitable sizes for the air and the water propellors. But even with motion directly into the wind, the additional power extracted from the (windspeed + forwards motion speed) as compared to the power extracted from (windspeed) is less than the extra power required to force the vehicle plus its windmill forwards into the wind at a greater speed than zero. In the absence of the exterior wind, a vehicle set moving forwards would come to a stop even sooner than it would if it were to have no windmill apparatus. (Presuming an apparatus without inertia for simplicity)

In short, the additional feature, whatever it is, is a nett consumer of energy and power (even if only by its weight) but its presence may affect the utilisation of a much larger adjacent energy flow, perhaps even positively.