Jul 16 2008
The HHO Scam: Run Your Car on Water, Part I
Table of Contents for HHO Scam
With gasoline prices through the roof (nearly tripling in 18 months), everybody’s looking for a salve to reduce their pain at the pump. As always in the Land of the Free, this brings out the kooks and charlatans, offering novel ways to help you. Any excuse to sell you some Snake Oil.
The “HHO Gas” scam is a classic example. The Internet is filling up with click-by-night websites detailing how you can get up to 40% better gas mileage Right Now, using a simple engine add-on gizmo of mysterious means and water. (Oh, and don’t forget to send along some money.)
Okay, what are the claims, really? They are simple, and go something like this: An experimenter somewhere, untrained and unskilled in science (apparently), has found a magical principle that has been overlooked through all the decades by an intensely inquisitive scientific-industrial complex. That principle allows you to attach a small, black-box mechanism, using light-weight electrical leads, to your engine and Voila! You will convert ordinary water into “HHO Gas,” which gas is then injected directly into your fuel system. Said gas is burned with your precious gasoline, adding tremendous performance improvements in fuel economy. Claims of up to 40% mileage gains are rampant on the Web.
(I recently got “spammed” through Twitter. This site signed up for my microblog!)
This series of posts will examine this “breakthrough technology” in detail. First, though, a quick disclaimer. I have not laid my hands on one of these remarkable contraptions yet. I’ve asked for “test examples,” as I have a doctorate in physical chemistry and do thermodynamics research at a university. I’ve offered to provide validated claims, and a detailed physical and chemical rationale, if someone would simply supply a working example. So far, nada. You think one of these groups would want somebody like me to back their play!
I absolutely refuse to send my hard-earned bucks to someone I believe is scamming the public, just so I can see what’s going on inside the box. This means I can’t refute the claims in direct, validated-research ways. Yet.
That said, let’s take a look at this scam, er, technical revolution by examining the following areas:
The “Sniff Tests”
My dad used to tell me, “Son, if it smells too good to be true, then it is. Trust your nose.” That advice works here, and it’s the simplest, non-technical way to get at the heart of this matter. Let’s look at some of the assertions.
- An automotive-energy technology, overlooked by science and engineering research for decades, is found by a lone inventor, working in his garage.
Look at that carefully. Read it slowly a few times. Anybody want to take the over-under on that bet? If so, then I have some real estate we should discuss. I mean, really; there may have been a time in America when such a discovery could be made that way. I would even cede that small innovations are made by “loners” still today. But not something this big, this powerful. It’s like claiming a college kid solved the cold fusion principles. (Any such kid would already be out beyond Mars.)
- You can get up to 40% improvement in fuel economy from common water.
You have to squint one eye, close the other, and look this one over forwards and backwards. We’ll get to the thermodynamics and kinetics of this later on, but for now, I ask you: That much energy available from our faucets? Stand back when you wash the dishes!
If this innovation is real, why doesn’t everybody have one, on every gas-powered engine in their arsenal? It’s better than a license to print money, if true.
To close this portion of the refutation, uhh, investigation, I will note that a prize of $1 million (U.S.) has been offered for a proven demonstration. So far, no takers. If HHO worked as advertised, you can bet there would be a line of candidates slobbering to get at those bucks. Maybe the dollar ain’t what it used to be; a million of them still approaches Real Money.
I don’t mind crackpots and their mechanisms. After all, anyone with an idea is a nutcase until they’re proven right. The “water for gasoline” mountebanks should be shot on sight, however; they’re more dangerous than a crooked Senator…
Seeya Around the Ol’ (Overpriced) Gas Station!
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