My dad is a lifelong jet engine mechanic who was in the Air Force over 30 years (reserves for a lot of it) and has worked in private companies as a quality control manager for jet engine repairs for over 20 years. He has also fixed his own cars for decades. Long story short, he knows his crap when it comes to car or jet engines.

Anyway, he and about 3 of his jet/car mechanic friends are working on an interesting project... They are building and installing hydrogen generators for their cars that will cut gas usage by 50%. Once they get it working in their own cars they may offer it up to other friends & family and they have even talked about starting a business and charging $1200 for installation of a hydrogen generator in people's cars. I thought this was very interesting. I told him he's potentially sitting on a gold mine if they get this working and offer their services on the market soon... They hyrdrogen generator just takes tap water and the water is recyclable for weeks. Every few weeks you simply drain the water out, re-fill it, and boom, you're back in business using half the gas that everybody else does.

I'd like to see how he's going to defy physics. If it works, he's basically invented a perpetual motion machine. A sytem that gets out more energy than is put into it.

Explain... What he told me was that electrical currents will separate H20 into HHO (I think that's what he said) which is burnable and combustible. The byproduct of this is water (hence the water is recyclable).

He's not the only one doing it. There are plenty of youtube vids about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EFFjNS0i2A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfr-YXNEN0g

Look up to HHO on youtube and other places.

The electricity to crack the H20 into HH and O comes from the engine turning the alternator. The extra draw on the alternator makes the engine work slightly hardert to turn it, using slightly more fuel.

In order for the hydrogen burned to actually increase the fuel mileage, it would have to take less energy to crack the water than you got buring it. If that was the case, we'd have hydrogen generators making electricity for every home in the country. We'd have huge power stations buring hydrogen to make electricity, and using some of that electricity to make more hydrogen while the rest went to the grid.

The truth is that the extra draw on the alternator more than offsets the energy you get from burning any hydrogen the electrolysis generates.

There are dozens of kits on the market that do this already. Most claim a 50% increase in fuel economy. Mythbusters even tested them. And they came to the same conclusion - there is no such thing as a system that produces more energy than is imput into it.

HHO gas has been used by metal workers forever. It's just 2 parts hydrogen gas to one part oxygen gas.

It still takes more energy to run the electrolysis to crack the water into hydrogen and oxygen than you get from burning the gasses to turn them back into water.

Check this out:

Mythbusters Test Explained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydEkV-E0mP8

I'm just telling you, as an engineer, you cannot get more energy out of a system than you put into it. If we could do what these kits say you can do, we'd already have a hydrogen economy.

This guy is claiming 200% MPG increase with a 350 Chevy engine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1T5NqNtT7o

Isn't that a hydrogen fuel cell? Doesn't he need to worry about using patented technology?

I'm just asking.

I have no idea. A few people seem to be rigging these up though...

Even if it worked, bye bye vehicle warranty.

He's not doing it on a spiffy new car.

Not a fuel cell, more like an anti-fuel cell. A fuel cell uses hydrogen and oxygen to create electricity and water. An electrolyzer uses electricity to make hydrogen and oxygen from water. That's what he's trying to do.

SB's father has more issues to deal with than overtaxing his auto electrical system in order to make a negligible amount of hydrogen. He'll find out one of the issues with hydrogen reformation in mobile systems on a cold day next winter...

He would be much better off using a true renewable like wind or solar to produce hydrogen using an electrolyzer to be stored and then dispensed into a hydrogen tank on board the vehicle.

I could sell him a nice little system that I just sold to a municipality in California for about $225,000.

He lives in South Florida. No such thing as a "cold day" in winter there... Unless you think 50 degrees is cold...