breaking water into hydrogen and oxygen requires a fair amount of energy, and since we all know that every conversion of energy from one form to another has losses associated with it. On-demand HHO production works like this:

Efficiency Loss 1: Engine power rotates alternator.
Efficiency Loss 2: alternator generates 90V three phase electricity.
Efficiency loss 3 : regular creates DC and lowers voltage to 14V.
Efficiency loss 4 : DC breaks apart water to hydrogen and oxygen.

That's just to produce "brown gas" as it's called in the first place.

With all the losses mentioned above, one could guess that for every 6HP of energy applied they'd get back about 2HP of energy. That means you're losing, not gaining power.

Now, there are some *other* scenarios where using HHO on a vehicle might make sense and have validity:

1. Generating HHO "on the grid" and storing it in a container on the vehicle. *IF* the price you pay per kilowatt to your electrical provider is notably less than what you pay for gasoline per kilowatt, then you might see some savings - in your wallet.

2. Storage and compression. I can see one possible benefit of generating HHO on the fly at a low rate and storing in a compression tank. Then when you need a lot of power (hill?), that stored HHO can be released and maybe you'll have more power for that hill than without. Kind of like a NOS shot except that it can be replenished.

Regardless, you can't make energy in one form without expelling energy in another - and there are always losses associated with doing so.

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Now, considering the very low effiency of gasoline engines and the marginally better efficiency of diesel engines, we know that much energy is "wasted" in these types of combustion processes. If you could figure out a way to "tap" all or most of the energy that goes out the tailpipe, you would fare much better in your goal of better mileage and better performance.

 

yep all the alternative fuels are produced on the power grid somewhere, be it hydrogen, biodiesel, CNG, electric etc. Frederic is right on about it coming down to cost. you can get home CNG refueling systems that work out to about $1 a gallon over the life of the equipment. however the main company that was making the Phill home fueling system went belly up but another Italian company bought their technology etc and should have a new and supposedly cheaper system out sometime this year for CNG refueling... CNG will also support the higher compression of Diesel engines. CNG also has no byproducts of combustion to get into the oil and you can go 20-30K or more miles between oil changes.. so that is easily a 75% reduction in engine oil purchases. If there was more consumer demand and fueling locations it would be the immediate fix for our oil dependance........
100% of our Natural gas in Domestically produced.. same goes for Biodiesel with new tech like the algae diesel etc... we can make all the diesel we need domestically if we really wanted to without using food crops...