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I’ve removed and binned the Hydroxy generator I fitted to my Cavalier a little over a year ago. When I built it, it seemed like a good way of fitting a 6 cell Hydroxy generator into the limited space available on the Cavalier but has proved less than practical after long term use due to the inability to dismantle and clean the cells. Output from this unit has been dropping off over time and cleaning is an essential part of maintenance. We live and learn.

I’m not sure where the contamination came from. It could have been a bad bottle of distilled water, may have been the materials used as this generator was built using 304 grade stainless steel, or even contamination from glues used. What I do know is that production was badly affected by the build up of crud on the plates and the brown colour of the electrolyte. I tried cleaning the unit using distilled white vinegar and reversing the direction of the current with limited results. At the end of it’s life it was producing a lowly 550ml per minute from a 15amp current. Way down on it’s original production of 1.1 litres per minute at 12 amps.

What I have learned over the past year has convinced me that Hydroxy does benefit fuel consumption in a big way. This unit at it’s peak moved my highway mileage up to approx 70mpg, and gave me tank to tank averages close to 50mpg in mixed city and highway driving. Not bad figures for a 12 year old 2.2 litre engine.

I have also learned much from other peoples efforts and discussion in various forums. Time for a new design based on those ideas.

What I’ve learned is that larger plate area reduces the amount of contamination, that it is important to be able to dismantle and reassemble the unit for periodic cleaning, and that Hydroxy gas needs to be cleaned to avoid engine damage if using Sodium Hydroxide as an electrolyte. The idle on my Cavalier became erratic at one stage and removing the Idle air control valve showed why. The build up of crud on the valve pintle shows the damage that traces of Sodium Hydroxide in the gas caused and resulted in my needing a new upper manifold housing as the crud on the pintle was from Aluminium that had been eaten away where the pintle seated in the manifold. Expensive lesson learned, use bubblers and a filter to remove any traces of NaOH from the Hydroxy gas.

My new Hydroxy generator design uses much larger plates, set extremely close together to reduce electrolyte concentration, and I am experimenting with different chemicals for the electrolyte. One benefit of the new design is that I can use much less corrosive chemicals and still get decent output from low amps. I’m currently using a concentrated lemon juice with a small amount of NaOH added to make the electrolyte PH neutral. If I want to increase the amps and output to a higher level, NaOH or KOH are unfortunately the only way to go, but for the production level I want things are looking good so far.

Part of the reason for the old design was to keep the individual cells spaced well apart as current can pass from the edges of the plates of one cell to the next in a wet cell design. This current only heats up the unit and produces no gas so is power wasted. With the individual cells about 5″ apart this lost current was minimised and the unit ran very cool.

The new design is also known as a dry cell as the plate edges are not in the electrolyte. The plates can be very closely spaced without current loss as the only way for current to pass from one plate to the next is via the internal electrolyte which produces hydrogen on one plate and oxygen on the facing plate. Both sides of each plate also contribute to producing gas rather than one sitting idle. This gives me an effective plate area across the 6 cells (7 plates) of 384 square inches, compared to the old units 180 square inches of active surface. Running the unit at the same current levels should result in less plate contamination due to the lower load per square inch. Time will tell. Gas production is certainly healthier at 1.2 litres per minute at 12 amps.

The plates are 8.3″ X 4.3″ with 1mm gaskets seperating them, clamped between 2 HDPE ( kitchen chopping board) end plates approx half inch thick. The end plates are approx 1 inch larger than the stainless steel plates to allow bolts to be fitted around the unit to compress the cell and seal it. There are 7 plates to create 6 cells. Each plate has 2  8mm holes drilled at diagonally opposite corners, just inside the area of the gaskets and allows the generator to be mounted at any angle. These holes match up with holes in the end plates for gas to escape from the upper corner into a reservoir, and for return electrolyte to flow back into the bottom corner of the generator from the bottom of the reservoir. No pump is needed with this design so long as the reservoir is mounted higher than the generator. The hydroxy gas flows upwards along with some electrolyte and creates the flow.

Current is supplied to the 2 end SS plates via tags on the 2 corners without the input/output holes. The current flows from one end plate, through the electrolyte and the intermediate floating plates to the final plate which completes the circuit. This gives a good distribution of current to the whole cell. The reservoir is a 2 quart tank and acts as the primary seperator of gas from the electrolyte. The gas is then fed into a bubbler filled with vinegar to neutralise any NaOH in the vapour and finally through a paper filter before going into the intake duct of the motor close to the throttle butterfly.

The system is installed and working, although the mounting of the unit leaves a lot to be desired. Future changes planned are to mount the Hydroxy generator in front of the radiator, once I locate some mounting strap and build a proper mounting bracket for the reservoir to move it further away from the radiator. Also build a better looking bubbler than the vinyl tubing currently in use and add an inline fuel filter to the tube supplying the hydroxy gas to the intake.

This started out as a project based on an ebook that was being hyped all over the net a year or so back. Unfortunately that ebook has led to a proliferation of ‘experts’ selling the junk design from the ebook via ebay with no clue as to what they are doing and no conscience. It has also led to a lot of people being scammed and created a bad image for Hydroxy in general. 15 months of experimenting, learning about electronics, chemistry and the engineering involved in building a solid, high output hydroxy generator has shown me that this is still a long way from being a plug and play solution to gas consumption.

I hope to be able to produce these units at a sensible price in the not so distant future, but my conscience will not let me do so until such time as I have proved to myself, beyond reasonable doubt, that the generator will function as expected under all user conditions. The only way to do that is to control all aspects of the installation which means it will be limited to a local market or to supplying the generator or parts to hobbyists who understand the installation and implications of the system.

Whatever happens in the future, it’s been a fun, educational and money saving experience.