How many MPG's am I losing for extra 20amps?
 

I understand pulling extra power puts an extra load on my alternator. I am pulling 20amps total (about 240 watts in all) and I'm trying to figure out how much FE this is costing me. I am running HHO and am looking for an alternative power solution. First, I am trying to determine if it will be worth it.

240 watts = 0.322 HP, assuming 100% conversion efficiency. How many HP it actually draws off your engine depends on your alternator's efficiency. How that HP draw affects your fuel economy will depend on your engine's overall efficiency and where it is at that moment on it's BSFC maps.
If you can get ahold of all that info, feel free to calculate it out. If not, just hook up your 240 watt load and find out.

I figure it as about 2/3 of an HP at around 60% alternator efficiency, so how much extra gas it sucks depends on the Brake Specific Fuel Consumption map of your motor. A "typical average" is normally taken as .45 lb/hp/hr thus if it takes 30hp to maintain a cruising speed of 60mph it would take 30x .45= 13.5lb of fuel with 6.5lb to the gallon, thus using 2.08 gallons over an hour for 60 miles travelled for an FE of 28.9 mpg... whereas 30.666HP would mean about 28.3 mpg, so you theoretically "lose" .6mpg

However.... this is where it gets fancy, the true situation, is that up to around the torque peak an engines BSFC improves with load, i.e. it's more efficient the more heavily loaded it is in it's most efficient RPM range. This means that while at a 30HP load you might need .45lb/hp/hr, increasing the load fractionally may move you up the BSFC curve fractionally, such that you only need .44/lb/HP an hour. (This is all dependant on the BSFC map for your particular engine, values given here for illustration purposes) So then, instead of .45 x 30.666, we do .44 x 30.666= 13.49 lb/hr.... say what? yep, by increasing load at certain points in the efficiency map, you might move to a lower BSFC region and end up using less fuel, or not as much extra fuel as you anticipate. So it could be the case that at highway speeds the 20A load costs little to no mpg loss....

However, at city speeds, idling etc, you may be using as much as .65/lb/HP/hr and only using 5HP for average speeds of 20mph. This might work out as about 40mpg if you keep moving steady (and have suitable gearing) but due to low BSFC, even with an incremental increase to .64 lb/hp/hr because the load is a higher proportion of the total load, you lose mpg to the tune of about 4 or 5 mpg.

This is partly why A/C use in city driving is so inefficient but may give barely noticeable economy differences on the highway, though in that case it's about a 3HP drain, moves you higher up the BSFC map maybe but due to it being a high proportion of total load in the city and a lower proportion on the highway, you still see a huge ding in the city.

Anyway, as surprising as it may seem, at modest highway cruise speeds just under the torque peak of the motor your might not see any mpg loss from "throwing away" 20A worth of electricity.

I couldn't ask for a better reply!!! You really know your stuff. I guess I won't be running my hho off any deep cycle batteries for a while (mostly highway driving).

Thanks again!

Unless you want to milk another 10A into a deep cycle batt at highway speed to feed the HHO in the city.

thats a good possibility. I'll have to put some thought into this one

Hmm, so my radio can load up 2/3rds hp from the engine? Gross.

It would be tough to pull a steady 20 amps through a stereo. I think huge stereo systems can hit that in a very peaky way on each bass thump. If you're going to rattle the whole neighborhood, expect to burn a little gas to do it.

Get rid of the HHO, it is snake-oil technology and is costing you more by reducing your MPG. Think about it, are cars made to run on hydrogen?

The 240 watts that the HHO uses is generated by the gasoline that is burned in your engine, not hydrogen. Do yourself a favor and remove the HHO from your car that is causing you more harm than good.

HHO again? Why doesnt someone just use a separate battery to generate the HHO, then recharge that battery at home overnight?

Electricity is much cheaper from the power company.

See how much your mileage improves with no additional load on the engine, generate fuel using you local power company. Power companies sell that kind of HP for pennies.

regards
gary

...and if you're going to charge the battery at home, why not skip the extra steps and their associated waste, and just make the HHO at home instead?

You would need to store it somehow. A decent amount of gas would take up a lot of volume at STP, and compressing it seems unwise at best to me. I mean, isn't HHO just electrolyzed water - a mix of H2 and O2 gasses? If that's the case, you would have hydrogen, a violently flammable gas, mixed with a stoichiometric ratio of oxidizer. Those kind of mixtures tend to explode, rather than burn when ignited. If you compressed the mixture to save space, it would explode all the more violently when ignited.

Not to mention the hydrogen seepage problem. Hydrogen gas will seep through stainless steel and many other containers, and turns metals brittle.

Compressed HHO can be described with another term.

BOMB

regards gary

Ah, that explains why. I kinda thought it might be the answer... :D

Sounds like fun!

If I had the engineering skill and money to waste i would build a solar panel and install it in place of the car body to run the whole car. Of course you couldn't justify the cost to build it just for the difference in the gas savings over a regular gas burning car, but from a technoligical standpoint it would be worth it.

I don't think you should be so overly concerned about the 20 amp draw as it relates to gas mileage. If you need the 20 amp draw use it and forget it. If you don't need it, then don't use it since at that point it would certainly be a waste. Just wasting gas for "no reason" would be worse.

If you are really really really concerned about gas mileage then do what my Son did and put a motor on a bike and get 150 mpg. He rides it to work every day and uses 1 gallon of gas per month. Of course, he can't ride it in the pouring rain/snow/etc, or go grocery shopping, pick up a load of lumber at Home Depot, etc etc, but that is what his vehicle is for.

Just use the 20 amps if you want/need it.

Of course, this is just my opinion.

I've just been thinking about solar panels in connection with hydrogen... but because I'm cooking up some crazy scheme for photohydrogen using carrot juice....

Hmm... Use chlorophyl to synthesize sugars, reform the sugars to produce hydrogen with CO2 as a by-product. Use the hydrogen as fuel and feed the CO2 back to the chlorophyl. It probably isn't all that efficient, but it might be more so than photovoltaics and electrolysis.

Can you grow it on-board? :D

Wow thanks!!! Maybe I could learn some from you seeing how you have built one of these before!!!

That would be a very large tank of HHO for an hour drive!

Thanks. Thats a good opinion! I'll probably lean in this direction. I see with this tank of gas I'm getting a little over 30MPG. I'll be strarting a gas log. Also, after this tank, I'll be going to the emissions facility to test the exhaust.
Thanks again

Laugh. I really don't care. I came to this forum for help. Not ridicule. I'm trying to learn here, to squeeze more mpg out of my truck, just like all of you on this forum. I'm getting a little over 30mpg now and trying to learn how to get more. If your not here to help, then dont friggin post. If you dont know what you're talking about, again, no need for you to post. If you have questions, I am more than happy to share what I know. I know how inefficient electrolysis is. I know hydroxy takes more energy to create than when used. However, I am convinced, after all that, gas is burned more efficiently with the hydroxy. This stuff is too easy to build and inject. Too easy to pass up on experimenting. The only hard part is adjusting the truck for hho. I finally made it so I don't throw any codes and making over 30 MPG (even with the 160lb. cap on the back)I would never ridicule any of you on any of your efforts. grow up.

For those of you who over inflate your tires, you may want to watch the peice done on abc. https://abcnews.go.com:80/Video/playerIndex?id=4826897

https://www.fuelly.com/attachments/fo...ed971bddd2.jpg[/URL][/IMG]

https://www.fuelly.com/attachments/fo...87ca7673bf.jpg[/URL][/IMG]

https://www.fuelly.com/attachments/fo...50d36bd2bf.jpg[/URL][/IMG]

A little sensitive? I was making a fun joke, not trying to offend. If I've offended you, I apologize.

What does that video have to do with inflation pressure?

Generate the HH0 with a solar cell.

regards
gary

Recharge your HHO battery with solar cell. Then you are not making HHO with the engine, recharge it at home if the solar is not enough.

Its dumb to use the engines alternator, when you can get the same power much cheaper from the grid, just have a separate battery for your solar cell to recharge and use it exclusively for HHO generation. Recharge it at home if the solar can't keep it charged.

Now you are making fuel (stored electrical energy) when you aren't even driving, use the electrical energy to generate HHO when you are driving.

Now you are improving you fuel efficiency without making the engine do any more work, and it might actually make a difference.

regards
gary

Y'all can just send me a check LOL.

regards
gary

Yeah make it payable to RoadWarrior Industrial Development Enterprises, PO Box 1337...

I misunderstood the concept of over inflation. The words are kind of deceptive. Shouldn't it just be considered proper inflation, or even "new inflations standard"?

But then you've added 40 pounds to the car with an extra battery... :(

Well, are we talking over inflation based on vehicle specs, or tire specs? Pumping a tire up to max sidewall pressure is often over-inflated based on vehicle specs, but is still perfectly safe to drive on. Going beyond max sidewall pressure would be over-inflated according to both specs.

I thought of using the solar cell first. But this seems too expensive to charge a battery. I'm assuming I need a 250watt panel to do this correctly and the price of a 12v 240-250 watt panel is 1500-3000 bucks. Not worth it for me.
Maybe thats not what I need?

Next, my next step would be to pull it off the grid. Once again, though, I need to find out if it is worth it...

Which brings me right back to the reason I started this thread. I'd like to know how much FE I'm losing because of the 20 amps. Im running 4 cells in series parallel drawing up to 240 watts. I beleive RW gave me the best answer so far.

I didn't want to make this an HHO bashing thread.
If I seem a little sensitive, I appologize. I've spent the last 3 months d*cking with this stuff almost every single day. All I hear is that it won't work. Fine. I don't tell others their ideas are dumb, the way they do stuff is dumb(eh hem)or anything like that. I won't be destructive to anyone looking for help and I would expect the same in return. All I want to do is save $$. I'm not selling a damn thing.Once again, this forum is designed to help save money by gaining FE. So, I've finally got it working and now I need some idears.

so what are people doing??? are they over inflating or inflating to max sidewall pressure? I guess I'm still confused

The answer to your original question depends on the vehicle, and the variables could be extreeme. The better your mileage the greater the impact of additional engine loads.

Electricity here is cheap, less than 8 cents a kilowatt hour. The best engine will generate about 10 killowatts on 1 gallon per hour. Thats 80 cents an hour from the grid, or 4 dollars an hour at the pump.

Adding 40 pounds to your total vehicle weight of 3000 (approx) is insignificant.

You want to know the difference? Try it both ways and your question will be answered.

A decent battery will give you HHO for hours, not sure if the water in your generator will last that long.

regards
gary

Thanks for the reply. I know I need to get a deep cycle battery if I do this. You're right about taking power off the grid. It would be better to do this. Plus, I can always just charge the battery at work.

Also, I've been running these cells for over 3 weeks and they're still full.

with tire pressure, most everyone I have talked to is putting to (or near) max side wall pressure. not over that level. there are a few that have pushed it a little over max side wall pressure but I am not willing to risk it.

the weight factor, I use myself as an example. I carpool with a friend to work and there are days when we must ride separate due to projects that we both have. I don't notice the difference when he is with me vs when he isn't (he weighs about 200 lbs) I do realize that there is a difference but I think it is so minute that it doesn't matter. in my application anyway. I wouldn't worry about the weight difference unless you were adding something stuid like 500 pounds or something.

also (and I am not trying to get in an arguement here) why not start a gas log? so many people claim gains with the HHO setup but very few have gas logs. if nothing else, you can keep up with your mileage and see trends. the graph on the gas log will show you a trend much better than raw numbers in a notebook.

and also, why have you replaced your clutch 3 times? I am not farmiliar with that trans but were they crap? did they have issues.

just curious.

Well, actually, "over inflation" is a very unclear term because people use it two different ways. One way it is used is to describe inflating the tire beyond the specifications on the car's recommended tire pressure/load label. The other way is to describe inflating beyond the maximum safe pressure rating stamped on the tire's sidewall.

My recommendation is always to experiment between those two numbers to find the best pressure for your preferred combination of handling, wear, soft ride, and economy (and I recommend sacrificing a minor amount of ride softness to gain in the other three areas). I do not recommend exceeding the tire's stamped maximum, not because I think it's going to fail, but because it is conceivable that after an accident caused by tire failure the insurance company could deny your claim.

Edit: On weight -- it's my observation that merely removing or adding weight has little effect unless you drive 100% dense city driving very aggressively and never coast. A lighter car can be driven that way at higher MPG because it can come from the factory with a smaller, more efficient engine or taller gears.