Good morning all–sorry if the OP was a little dense but I’ve been immersed in this for a while and I forget how confused it used to make me. Feel free to ask questions, I’ll field everything as best I can!
Bobbio, the math works out to one liter of distilled water producing just under 3500 liters of Brown’s Gas so at our current level of production (.5 L/min) and assuming no leakage (which so far has been the Achilles heel of every single other attempt at marketing this technology!) that works out to a liter of water every 7000 minutes of operation. In practice, we’re using standard 2 liter supply tanks and you have to fill up your gas tank way more often than the water tank. Of course, with distilled water running at about .70/gallon in the grocery store and vinegar (the ideal solution uses approximately .75 cup of vinegar to 2 liters of water, pH around 4) running a buck a liter or so–you’re still paying waaaay more for gas than for the hydrogen part of your fuel consumption.
To give you an idea of the difference in performance, the closest thing to a marketed system was producing about a half liter of gas every 4-5 minutes and was selling briskly at $400 JUST for the hydrogen generator and condensation trap–this did NOT include the supply tank, wiring, relays, solenoid, hose, clamps, etc., which we plan to market all together as a self contained kit.
Pie, we’ve spoken to warranty people whose knee jerk reaction was “but that will void the warranty!” After we lay it out on the table and asked whether or not aftermarket turbo/superchargers, hot chips, and other performance equipment voided the warranty and received a grudging “well, no,” they had to admit that since we’re not messing with any emission equipment (a gigantic no-no!) and aren’t changing anything about the engine itself or the computer that the HHO system does not affect the warranty any more than a million other aftermarket systems.
Them, the rate of hydrogen production is in proportion to three things–the surface area of the generator plates, the pH balance of the solution (unsurprisingly, a base solution such as lye/water works even better than weak acid solution but we don’t want to go with caustic ingredients–it’s all about the green, man!) and the supply of electricity available. For instance, many truck owners already go for high output alternators and/or second alternator systems in order to support higher electrical usage for trailers and suchlike–if you give the generator more juice it will produce more. Likewise, we can always increase the number of plates in the generator as well as messing around with positive and negatively charged plates because some configurations just produce better. We cap it off at 30 amps because we’re looking for a happy medium–it doesn’t make sense to cause the engine to work harder to supply the juice that makes the fuel, right? It has to be **truly parasitic **or you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The bottom line is that if you have steel, acid solution and electricity hooked up together you WILL get hydrogen and oxygen gas–that’s just physics. The trick is to make a system that will withstand automotive use which means it has to be tough, durable, small enough to install in the crowded conditions under the hood of most modern vehicles (the Chrysler Sebring got it installed behind the front quarter panel, where they also stash the battery) reliable and non-leaking. This is where the genius tinkerer comes in! Our prototype is reliable as hell so far and we’re looking into injection molding the casings to keep fabrication and assembly costs down as well as to make the thing look sexy, which is the hardest part of the battle for acceptance!
The main thing right now is to get a reliable SUPPLEMENTAL system in place that makes currently owned cars competitive in fuel economy with new ones. Those cars took a lot of energy to make and we don’t want them scrapped if we can extend their useful lifespan–this is why I hate the concept of the hydrogen powered fuel cell car, because it doesn’t help anybody NOW when they really need it. Americans tend to always be looking for the silver bullet, the ultimate 100% solution while they completely ignore or pooh-pooh perfectly useful interim technology that if it were widely supported would drive the innovation of further, more comprehensive tech. If nobody bought a computer until a 3.5Ghz processor with 4GB RAM, 750 GB hard drive and Lightscribe DVD were available–THERE WOULD BE NO COMPUTERS!
[Oh dear, would somebody alert the media–I just used a computer analogy to illustrate a car issue! I’m widely known for always having an analogy between cars and computers, but it’s ALWAYS the other way around!]
This is why we’re taking the angle we are, because we want these things out in the wild, performing and selling themselves before we worry about how to make the car 100% HHO generated or go to the car manufacturers with it. We figure if we can PROVE to the average Joe that this system works it will be a LOT harder to squash and bury the technology in the interests of big business. We aren’t bothering to patent because that’s expensive, time consuming and unenforceable; we’d just rather flood the market with inexpensive, working systems that quietly go about their work of making cars more fuel efficient while we use the operating capital they generate to make improvements and work on systems for other applications.
And yes, brujaja, we are watching our backs! I know I’m paranoid as hell, but I had my friend send his current plans, work drawings and suchlike to several trusted friends who can dump it all over the internet if necessary.
The thing is, I truly believe it’s railroad time–current conditions are such that if we don’t make this work somebody somewhere WILL, because it is TIME. We just prefer that it be made in America by Americans rather than having the Chinese beat us out. If it will fly here, it will fly anywhere because of our ridiculously labyrinthine emissions laws. Right now I’d kill baby bunnies to install one of these into a California car and see how it goes through an emissions check… Any Cali dopers feel like taking a leetle trip to Oregon?
