http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm5JhpWt4GQ Need help here. I'm no chemist but a friend sent me this via e-mail. Sounds too good to be true. Is there truth in this? Is HHO really capable of all these things and if so, how does it work? What's the catch if there is one? Is this a flim flam man? If it is legit then as in most things technological, does the military get it first?
Sounds like he just made Hydrogen out of water through hydrolysis. HHO seems, to me, to be the same as H[sub]2[/sub]O.. :shrug:
The devil is in the details. Listening closely, and then looking at some of the other HHO videos, all he's doing is hydrolyzing water into Hydrogen and Oxygen (why he calls it HHO gas is beyond me). Looking at some of the other HHO videos it looks like the breakthrough is actually in the electrode design, which looks like it's been designed to maximize surface area for a given volume. Maximizing the surface area improves the rate of electrolysis for a given current and voltage, although ultimately the rate is still limited by the amount of current the battery can deliver.
Calling it "HHO gas" is nothing more than a typical snake-oil salesman's trick to use technical-sounding jargon to fool the undereducated. The stuff was originally called "Brown's Gas" by the guy who first developed and commercialized it, Mr. something Brown back in the mid-20th century. It's nothing more than the hydrogen and oxygen produced by electrolysis that isn't separated as it's produced. It was originally developed to be used as a welding gas in remote locations (prior to the development of electric arc welding) and is inferior to ordinary ox-acetylene because of it's much lower energy content. It's not suitable for welding heavy material, either, for the same reason. Every ten or fifteen years, the con men crawl out of the woodwork and try selling it at a motor fuel. Especially at times when gasoline prices are high (like now) and during the 1970 when there was a shortage of gas. That's a poor application, though, because of the losses in energy conversion. The amount of power used to produce the gas cannot ever be fully recovered, no matter how it's used. But again, the undereducated do not know that and it WILL burn in an automotive engine, so the snake oil salesmen make money until the word starts getting around. Then they crawl back under their rocks for another decade or so until another opportunity arises.
Huh, what? Did you not understand that HHO gas is just a gimmick - not much better than throwing good money down a wishing well?
A simple grasp of thermodynamics is all that is need to drop 90% of engineering cons. The production of "HHO" requires more energy then you get out, end of story.
Very true. But fortunately for the con men, 90% of the general population lacks a simple grasp of thermodynamics. Even very basic things, like energy conversion losses in this case, aren't understood by the average individual in the world.
Sorry,but it's true. Once out of school for a few years, it's just the sort of thing that the average individual hardly ever thinks about so it just falls off the mental shelf. I'm sure quite few didn't understand it to begin with, but not to fault the rest too much - something that's unused will eventually be forgotten. And on just how many occasions would the average person even need to think about it, eh?Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! If you took college chemistry (and maybe even in high school), you learned the Alkane series - methane, ethane, propane, butane, etc. Do you still remember it all the way up to duodecane?Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Heh! Me, too, Trippy.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! As you know all it takes is understanding the prefixes and remembering "nonane" and undecane- I suppose that's because there was no good prefix that means "nine" or "eleven." At least the "un" in undacane is probably short for "uno."
Did I not just say it was a fact? Yes, I can still count in carbon atoms and name simple organic molecules, fuck I can recognize and name many complex ones even I only get a glimpse. Like me I think there are others here whos careers rely on it!
Actually in industry a 2:1 stochiometric mixture of diatomic hydrogen and oxygen gas is sometimes referred to as HHO gas. It's not meant to imply anything about the molecular structure, it's just indicative of the ratio of hydrogen to oxygen in the welding mixture. It used to be used in welding and some types of furnaces, but isn't that popular any more. But I agree that often con artists try to use the label to confuse people and obscure the fact that they're really just talking about a normal H2/O2 mixture.
