Do It Yourself HHO Hydrogen Generator

More questions than we can handle! W don’t know all the answers either, but we will try to pass on some of what we have learned from our trial and error. I am going to post some of my thoughts on your comments so everyone will find them.

From: Gary Bruner

Hey guys I ended up making my anode out of stainless steel woven mesh and it works great and I made a simple housing using your design…….now how in the hell do I hook it up to my car. Again thanks in advance and with any luck I’ll be able to tell you about my road test soon!

From: Wooly

Hi Tim. I was wondering if their was a way to have the unit so that it only produced hho when the motor is running. eg: alternater. Or will it just take it from the battery anyway?

I want the unit only running when the motor has started is if people sit with the ignition on for some time. With a litre of hho a minute, it would soon be coming out the exhaust pipe in no time.

Disclaimer: You are responsible for anything you do with HHO information. Be careful! Make sure you take precautions, and don’t assume we have mentioned everything! Hook an untested unit up to a vehicle at your own risk! As far as hooking up your unit, there are a few things to remember. As someone pointed out in the comments, there is a heated wire in the air intake sensors to watch out for. This wire could cause an explosion, or flashback. That leaves the space between that sensor and the throttle body as safe. Don’t hook up on the upstream side of that sensor! If you don’t know vehicles, you need to find someone local who can help you out on where to put the HHO gas into the engine.

Always use a fuse on your wiring. This will help you avoid cooking any wiring in the case of a short circuit. Test your unit off the vehicle to make sure everything is good to go. Depending on how much gas your unit is producing and where you send it into the motor, you probably need a flashback arrestor to protect your generator.

For wiring into your vehicle, we can’t advise you on that since there are so many different variables on all the different models. If one of your buddies knows cars, quiz him up. Otherwise, talk to someone who installs car alarms, stereos, command start or handsfree phone kits for a living. They know more about what wire to tap into than any backyard mechanic. You can also look into what sellers of HHO hydrogen car kits recommend to do for attaching the unit.

You definitely have something there, Wooly. It is really important to make sure your unit isn’t running when the vehicle is shut off. That is why, for wiring, you should get professional advice or help. If it is your own vehicle, I guess you can take your chances with jury rigging a simple switch temporarily if you want. Don’t modify a vehicle for someone else and make it dangerous to use.

Another question we’ve been hearing, is where to find stainless steel for your HHO Fuel Cell. There are a lot of places to look, all around us. Aside from the obvious choice of a metal manufacturer, machine shop or a welding supply store, even Costco has stainless cookwear.

Our first HHO hydrogen generator was made out of a stainless steel stock pot. We bought it brand new for $9.99 at a nearby department store. You can’t cut stainless with an acetylene torch, so other methods had to be found. An angle grinder with a zip disk was used to cut two strips out of the pot. They were pretty thin and hard to work with, but the anode did produce hydrogen right off the first try. Note: there were a lot of razor sharp edges and a couple of cuts, so be careful if you try this! Wear safety glasses and gloves if you use any grinding or cutting equipment.

Since then we have been buying plate in 4 foot by 8 foot sheets. Since this isn’t practical for everyone, you can use a variety of kitchen and household items. From platters, to pots, to pitchers, many items are made from 304 stainless.

Speaking of which, some would have you believe that you need to use 316 stainless. We can’t figure out why you would need that, unless you will be running acid or hydrogen sulfide through your HHO fuel cell. 316 has extra hardener and anti corrosive elements to it, which also make it harder to bend and cut. So far, none of the 304 we have used has degraded measurably. 304 will conduct a current just as well as 316, and both are non magnetic.

If you can’t find stainless steel plate to build your hydrogen generator, we can direct you to this HHO  Kits and Supply site. Here you might be able to locate Stainless Steel plates, containers, bolts and wire. They also have several varieties of hho hydrogen kits for sale at any given time.

We have gotten a lot of questions about bubbler containers, overheating of HHO generators and things related.Here is a recent comment:

• Hey guys, I build a simple HHO generator and I got a good output I tested it already with my nissan sentra 1.6L ‘93model, my exhaus emit drops of water. My only problem is the water inside my HHO generator getting too hot, do I need to add cooling device or have something to adjust in my generator? I used spiral stainless wire with 13 turns .5 inch gap., distilled water with 1 teaspoon of baking soda. thanks,
  Allan / Manila, Philippines

First off, good work so far, Allen. There are quite a few things to cover here. The water can get pretty hot if your container can handle it. If it is made out of PVC, you have to be careful that it stays below 70 degrees Celsius or the plastic will start to ‘creep’ and change shape as the material becomes slightly liquid. A stainless steel or internally coated metal container could of course handle any temperature you might subject it to. A glass container can take heat but not impacts or any possible explosions. If you have to use PVC or other plastic, you will need to cool your fuel cell. Similarly, if your hydrogen generator is boiling the water it will need cooling to keep the water from steaming out of the unit.

A bubbler tank can help circulate the water and reduce the chances of a flashback destroying your generator at the same time. In the following video we show one experiment we filmed using a small bubbler tank to recirculate the water. The unit we were testing was composed of 4 stainless steel strips, 1 inch wide by 12 inches long, sandwiched together with a 1/8 inch gap. The HHO fuel cell was drawing over 20 amps. The more amps, the more heat produced. This small bubbler tank failed to keep the unit cool enough. Our conclusions were that this unit would need a bubbler at least as large as the unit itself, or a small cooler such as for a transmission. We decided to go with a smaller unit to reduce electrical use and keep the heat production down.