Hydrogen Fuel Boosters

My HFB model

With the cost of fuel continually rising I decided on doing something about it. After careful researching the subject, the hydrogen fuel booster seemed the most economical and best suited for our particular situation.

 The hydrogen fuel booster separates the  hydrogen and the oxygen from the water by electrolysis. The hydrogen and oxygen gas is then fed into the engine by a plastic tube attached to the air cleaner before the carburetor. The hydrogen gas, when combined with the air gas mixture, burns more quickly and completely, thus eliminating most of the unburnt gas that normal engines spew out as exhaust.

From the internet I made a parts list and went to the local Home Depot and Princess Auto, an auto parts supply store, to pick up all the parts needed to build this unit. The assembly of the hydrogen fuel booster was quite easy and it all went together much the way that it was suppose to.

Excitedly I hooked it up to our 1986 Buick and started it up, looking for all those tiny bubbles to appear on the top of the electrolyte solution. There were bubbles almost immediately on the surface of the  electrolyte solution, but the videos on the internet showed a lot more bubbles coming off the electrodes than was coming off mine. Well we had previously tested the car's mpg and had found that it was getting 24mpg this was in the spring of the year. A little about this car: it ran rough, had no power to speak of,  needed spark plugs, new distributor wires and a general tune up at this point in time.

Vehicle Hook-up

The day of the first test was sunny and warm. After filling up the tank, off we went for a nice drive to the nearest city, about 1 hour away from where we were living. There is a big hill that we have to climb just before the city and our car always slowed down plus the transmission would drop down to a lower gear. Today though, the little car was able to hold its own going up the hill and the transmission did not shift down. Driving around town the engine seemed to be running smoother. After doing our shopping we headed home and filled up the gas tank at the same station that we had filled the tank at before we left. When I did the calculations they showed that the car was now getting 34.5mpg. What a pleasant surprise. The hydrogen fuel booster was making a difference.

I tend to work things out in my dreams when I have a problem like this. So all night I worked on how to improve the hydrogen fuel booster and in the morning I was off to Home Depot to get more parts to build my new and improved model. Then I rushed home and assembled the new unit. I added more electrodes to the bottom of the unit. The day before on the test run, I had noticed that the engine was starting noticeably better and seemed to have more power. It just was not acting as old as it had been. After pouring in the electrolyte and hooking up the battery, prior to installing the hydrogen fuel booster, the difference in the amount of bubbles coming off the electrodes was spectacular. I quickly installed the improved hydrogen fuel booster in the engine compartment and was now ready for another trial run. That had to be postponed because we had company drop in unexpectedly and had to wait for another day to try the new system out.

Wiring Diagram for the controller

The next day was sunny and warm again, a great day for a drive. We filled up first and then drove around the country for a total of 4 hours, through small towns and on the highway. Then we filled up with fuel again when we returned home. The car was acting like a young colt in the spring, lots of power, more acceleration, and running as smoothly as a new engine. What an amazing difference in how the engine was performing. I had to do the calculations 3 times as there was no way that car should be getting the kind of fuel economy it was now getting. All three calculations came to the same answer 75.62mpg. Now that was an impressive improvement in my books. This was the first time that I ever had or seen a vehicle get that kind of fuel economy in my 68 years of life. Over the next six months we found our fuel economy settled between 55 and 65mpg. The 75.62mpg was unusual, but it was nice to see!

Note:
I did find that the exhaust from the engine did not have the same smell as a typical gas engine has, whether there were less pollutants I could not tell for sure without taking the vehicle to have some tests run on it. All that I cared about was that the fuel economy had improved substantially over what we had been getting.

My next problem was that up in Canada we have a season that we call winter. It gets cold, very cold, and water turns to ice. The electrolyte solution that I was using was water-based and when the temperature dropped this solution was going to freeze. The problem was "how do I use this hydrogen fuel booster in the winter without having expensive heaters to keep the electrolyte from freezing". I came up with an electrolyte solution that did not freeze and used it all winter without experiencing any freezing. All vehicles up here in the winter experience a drop in fuel economy, and my car was no exception. I was only able to get between 45 to 55mpg in the winter. Without the hydrogen fuel booster it would have been 16 to 20mpg at best.

I was very satisfied with the results obtained from the use of my hydrogen fuel booster, an economical and easy system for older vehicles with carburetors vehicles. Newer vehicles with fuel injection fuel systems and computers need to add an electronic component to reconfigure the oxygen sensors to make the computer not want to add more fuel to the engine because it senses that the fuel is running lean (which it isn't).

Next project... the motorhome.