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This Is What Happens When You Inject Explosive Gas Made From Water Into a Diesel
Robot Cantina made oxyhydrogen (or HHO) gas through electrolysis, and fed that mixture back into the engine hoping for a change in behavior. The post This Is What Happens When You Inject Explosive Gas Made From Water Into a Diesel appeared first on The Drive.
Water injection is a tried-and-true method for cleaning up the combustion process in a diesel engine. It reduces both combustion temperatures and the resulting particular emissions. But what if you take the concept a step further and feed the engine raw hydrogen and oxygen? Did you wake up this morning wondering what happens when you try to inject a tiny diesel engine with homemade Brown’s Gas? If not, I hope your interest is piqued, because we’re diving into the deep end of this torture test while there’s still some (salty) water left in the pool.
We don’t normally think of water as a potential explosive; after all, one of its defining characteristics is its inertness. But its component atoms, hydrogen and oxygen? Different story. Hydrogen loves to combust, and oxygen loves to sustain combustion. Put them together at the right ratio, add flame and you’ll get water, but get it wrong…
Enough about space potatoes. We’re talking about an engine here, and a diesel at that. Robot Cantina‘s test bench is a 3-horsepower, 196-cc diesel engine that has seen some abuse, to put it mildly, proving that it can run on just about anything. But hydrogen? No chance; you need to add flame to ignite hydrogen. Diesel motors ignite their fuels via compression, not a flame. So this engine will still be running on diesel fuel; the HHO gas is introduced at the intake manifold.
In this case, the gas is being obtained from water being split into hydrogen and oxygen using energy produced by the engine itself. The actual splitting is done by an electrolytic separator running off the engine’s 120-amp alternator. That current is run through a brine (water mixed with potassium hydroxide in this case), splitting the molecules and producing just the transparent gases.
The results? Well, if you were expecting an outcome as spectacular as some of those from Robot Cantina’s previous efforts, you may be somewhat disappointed. But the host says there are more experiments to come; we’re curious to see what comes of them.
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The post This Is What Happens When You Inject Explosive Gas Made From Water Into a Diesel appeared first on The Drive.
