Learn to Make Your Own HHO Fuel Cell
Uncategorized April 20th, 2008
When Aron and I first started talking about hydrogen and uses for it, it was 1996. It was a little beyond both of us at the time. We didn’t have the resources we do now.
Lately, it seems like hydrogen information is coming out of the woodwork. We started trying to make our own hydrogen generators in the last while, since it isn’t really that complex. And we aren’t alone; many others are busy building their own HHO.
A lot of people want to find out more about homemade hydrogen generators. Not everyone will actually build one. Many of you probably just find it an interesting idea, and others will decide actually building one will be more work than they want to do themselves.
We can help out there, too. We will be reviewing the products of others, as well as showing you how we made our HHOs. We will give you links to materials ans even to completed units. Check back here later, or subscribe for email HHO hydrogen article updates.
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Very cool
how easy is all that
I am glad you showed that accidents do happen when putting these together, people are not realizing how dangerous these can be and it can be quite dangerous.
So were you able to find out and did changing the metal to stainless steal make a difference?
Since we removed internal connections and use solid stainless steel for our entire one piece anode / lead, we haven’t had any trouble. Unless the positive and negative somehow touch, there won’t be any problems with ignition. We test the anodes in an open topped large container to make sure we have everything safe.
I like your wrapped double electrode, about how long do you think the spacers between will last & how do they stand up to corrosion? what kind of encasement are you housing this in? thank you
The spacer material is a hard plastic mesh about a 16th of an inch thick, made for longterm outdoor use . I feel confident that it will last a long time. After repeated testing we have not had any troubles with it, and a few of our tests involved purposely overheating the unit to see what would happen. We don’t use caustic, only pure tap water so I have no idea what would happen with other fluids.
Our housings have usually been made from PVC pipe, since it is easy to work with. These anodes will heat up if used at maximum draw (10 amps), so a PVC housing will only work if you have a small transmission cooler or a bubbler tank with more water to disperse heat.
Awesome design guys!!!
What is the temp of the water solution at 10 amps ?
Have you tested this with a neutral plate ?
Have you tested this using a PWM ?
The water can get pretty hot if you don’t use a bubbler tank to recirculate, or if you don’t have enough volume.
We tested with a neutral plate, it didn’t seem to help at all.
Never used a PWM yet, but it’s on the to do list.
Do you have anyone using this on a diesel motor? I have a 2004 Chevy Duramax 6.6 Liter motor. And would like to find out how well it works on these motors.
Also what would be the best thing to build the container out of for this generator?
Pete
I am interested in your generator, but have a question. What is the mesh material made of?
Thanks for stopping by, Gene.
The mesh is made from durable polyethylene plastic intended for year round outdoor use.
I was wondering if these could be hooked up in a series for a larger production of hydrogen
Hi, Jeremie.
It would be possible to hook these in series or more than one in a housing. You just have to be careful of your connections. One way to keep wired connections safe would be to keep the cells upside down, so that wires etc would always be under water. If you can weld and have access to a tig or other appropriate welding machine, you could use stainless to weld up your units. Make sure that the rod or wire you use is compatible with the stainless you are working on. For instance, 309 rod is slightly magnetic, and should not be used with 304, 308 or 316 series stainless. Mixing will cause more corrosion in the weld or join area and may cause you problems.
Great work your doing, thank for posting. Could you explain what the bubbler is, how it’s made, and how it works.
As a side note if people are looking for the plastic mesh I got mine as a “tank sleve” from a dive shop.
Hey, Brac
The next post we will be putting out will discuss bubblers and how to use one. Check back in a couple days.
Top stuff. My question is, What determins the amps?
Well, Wooly, the more electrode you have exposed to the water, the more power it can draw. This is true up to the maximum of your power supply. Of course, too much power flow can result in a short circuit and arcing if taken to extremes.
It is possible to regulate your amps using a resistor, or rheostat of some sort, or a multi setting switch like the one controlling a heater fan.
wow great explanations i hope to learn more
Tim,
Thanks I look foward to the bubbler info. My next question is where you are connecting these to the engine, my thought was either just feed it into the air intake or into a vacuum line. Have you tried both?
Thanks again for posting!!
i have a slight question. what if you were able to figure a way to run your car completely on HHO? if im not mistaken HHO is Combustible if my assumptions are correct i should have a completely HHO fueled Vehicle in a matter of days.
Hi Josh. This has been done before so I’m sure it can be done again, you might want to purchase bullit proof vests, cars and hire security. Before a hitman sent by and oil company takes you out let us know how your project is progressing.
Hello Brac. We have connected our generators to both the air intake between the air filter and throttle body and into a vacuum line. They both work but conecting to the vacuum line will work better especially for low rpm crusing. We will post videos about bubbles and condensation traps soon.
We have built a small unit. It produces a small amount of bubbles. We heard that you can put something on to cause it to draw more amps and thus make more hho. for example, one of the comments said “I changed it from 2 amps to 20 amps”. How?
Hi Steve. You are thinking of electrolytes. Put a teaspoon of baking soda in four liters of distilled water. Drain your generator and add the new water. Start it up and after about 15 minutes your generator will draw more amps and make more hho. Adding more baking soda will increase production even further but will reduce the life expectency of the electrodes.
I dont know how much it would take to ingnite the HHO,but care should be exercised with mass air flow injected vehicles.The mass air sometimes uses a hot wire in the intake to sense airflow.These have ignited ether and throttlebody cleaner when sprayed into the intake.Also any backfire into the intake might be bad with alot of cars now have plastic intakes.I have seen the end of a intake blown off the truck when it back fired with fuel in the intake.Have fun experimenting but be careful.
Very good point Joe D. Everybody should be aware of that ignition source. One of our test trucks does have mass air so we draw the hho from the cell through a vacuum line.
I’m interested in knowing if anyone has tried duplicating the efforts of Stan Meyer’s hydrogen generator that used pulsed high voltage, but very low amp power? I have many of his design documents, but I’m not smart enough in electronics to understand the electrical part. By using high voltage, low amps, his generator didn’t produce heat!
These generators fasinate me. I want to put one my Dodge Hemi, but am learning I have to make some modifications. Thanks for the info.
I LOVE THIS STUFF. All these years as a mechanic and knowing the concept I never knew it was so easily applied, safe, and inexpensive untill just recently. I AM ORDERING MATERIALS NOW!!!!!
Does anyone know if you can run any gas burning engine completely off HHO by use of HHO stored in a propane tank in the trunk? If possible; on average how many miles per liter would be produced on a car with an epa rating of about 20 miles per gallon?
GREAT INFORMATION OUT THERE FOR US TO LEARN OFF OF BUT I JUST CAN’T SEEM TO GET THE RIGHT THICKNESS OF ELECTRICAL WIRE MINE GET;S TO HOT AFTER 15 MINUTES OF USE. ANY IDEAS WHAT I AM DOING WRONG
Darin, I think the problem would be how to pressurize it to get it in the tank, oh and the danger..
Hi Izzy;
The heating you are experiencing is caused by the amount of current passing through your cell. The current passing through the cell is controlled by four main factors:
1. The surface area of the stainless steel anodes.
2. The conductivity of the fluid in the cell
3. The spacing of the anodes.
4. The voltage applied to the cell.
If you are using 18 or 16 guage wire to supply power to your cell, try changing to 12 or 10 guage wire. Changing to the heavier (the smaller the number the heavier the wire)guage wire, should cure the problem.
If the above doesn’t cure the problem, try rinsing the cell out and filling it with plain distilled water.
You may have to reduce the voltage applied to the cell.
Good site thanks
I like this stuff it can be fun and also very dangerous use extream care when playing with hho. I have one i made with s/s wall switch plates i have one neg and a nuterl and a pos. +n-n+n-n+n- 14 plates in all produces very well usning distalled water and baking soda the amount of baking soda u put in will determine the amps. I have my unit going through a bubbler then into the air intake as close to the plemptom as posable away from all the scencers. I like the idea of using a multi setting switch like the one controlling a heater fan.
Thanks Tim
Oh ya i realy like the back ground of the Canadian flag way to go.
I just talked to an engineer who said that the closer the pipes are the more Amps the generator will try to use so there must be a way to control it or a formula for the optimal configuration. Any suggestions
Thanks
Bruce
My first comment must not have gone. I wanted to thank Aron for getting me started. I have a mechanical engineer that is going to work with me on this. We are going to use stainless steel pipes approximately 14-18 inches long. he is suggesting that we use acrylic pipe for our generator chanber. does anyone have any experience or comments on that idea.
2′nd question was: Does anyone have a formula or idea of how close the + and - pipes should be placed to get the best results?
Thanks
Bruce
we have built a generator using s/s wall plates we have 6 alternating + and - we have learned by trial and ALOT of error …. we have to use #8 wire and a continous power cylinoid …we have a switch run into cab so it does not run all the time ….we are haveing a problem with our bubbler …we only have one hose from generator and one to the intake …some input would be great
I’ve noticed that many questions are related to tweeking the system that was built. It leads me to wonder if there is any definitive instructions to build these HHO systems? Secondly, do any of these manuals offered on the internet give you everything you need to efficiently and safely build and install one of these systems?
Ok ive done a lot of research, im a certified master mechanic in gas and diesel and am a hydraulics specialist
Ive seen pressurizing, pulse width modulation and other methods! Has any one experimented with keeping the system under vaccum, and an oxygen scrubber to isolate the oxygen to later introduce the oxygen before combustion!
I would assume that if you could heat the water with the exhaust then pass the water through an electrical current then under a vacuum accumulate the hydrogen it could be stored in small quantities safly and repleneished as it is being used or a method somwhat similar!
This is for Izzy
quote”# IZZY | June 25th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
GREAT INFORMATION OUT THERE FOR US TO LEARN OFF OF BUT I JUST CAN’T SEEM TO GET THE RIGHT THICKNESS OF ELECTRICAL WIRE MINE GET;S TO HOT AFTER 15 MINUTES OF USE. ANY IDEAS WHAT I AM DOING WRONG”
The Amperage is what is causing the heatup of your wires, it is possible that you could have a very efficient system but you just need some fine tunning, one way to control the amperage heatup is to use a pwm pulse width modulator, If you could describe for us your setup, # of plates and dimensions style, conical or plates etc! voltage amperage wire gauge, then your test results, voltage and amperage applied temperature of your circuit etc we could further analize and possibly help with a solution!
Hi Steve.
Sorry to hear that your wires are heating.
You are probably american and the american rules, although good, are not strikt enouugh for europe.
Here we secure 1.5 quadrat mm single core copper with 10 amp at 240 volt
50 hz ac.
Dc produces more heat because its constant, not dead or reduced half the time(sinus wave).
I recomend that you use wider multicore wires and find out what the regulations say about 12 volt ameperage and wires and protection.
Then you must put in security, bimetal or something.
Remember that fuses are to protect the wires, not the application.
The application is suposed to have its own protection, the fuse is to protect the network.
By the way, what q are you using and what is your amperage use, a simple vom meter will answer that?
Wish you luck.
Johann.