Hydrogen generators use electricity from the battery of the vehicle to split the water (H2O) into its basic elements of oxygen and hydrogen. The generated hydrogen is then injected into the air stream of the vehicle to improve combustion efficiency and fuel economy.

In a standard engine, the combustion cycle is very fast: 0.007 seconds. Most of the fuel molecules are too large to burn completely in this extremely limited time.

The situation is made worse by the fact that the spark plug only ignites a small percentage of the fuel. The fire generated must cascade from one fuel molecule to the next as it propagates through the combustion chamber of the engine. This wastes precious time.

Hydrogen burns and travels through the combustion chamber 10X faster than a gasoline flame. Hydrogen fills the space between fuel molecules and has the effect of making them closer together. The flame travels faster and the fuel is exposed to flame sooner and for a longer period of time. The result is a cleaner, more complete burn.

You can think of hydrogen as a giant spark plug in your engine; igniting all the fuel instead of leaving much of it unburned.

The science behind hydrogen injection has been well documented and understood. It has been known for over thirty years that the addition of hydrogen to fossil fuels, burned in internal combustion engines, will increase the efficiency of the engine.

This concept has been validated by a multitude of papers published by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE).

Read more:

Results of NASA’ s experiments with hydrogen in internal combustion engines

How to convert engines to use hydrogen as primary fuel

Design of HHO generators: importance of the number of plates

One of the most important aspects of a dry cell design is the number of electrode plates.

The efficiency of a dry cell increases with the number of plates, to a maximum of seven.

The seven plate design forms six electrolysis reaction chambers where there is one positive, one negative positive and five neutral plates. Each reaction chamber requires 2 Volts, that is why a 12 Volt car is limited to seven plates cell.

13, 18, etc. plate dry cells are simply several 6-chamber cells connected together to form one unit. Every individual cell still functions at 12 V.

It is the size of the surface of the neutral plates that is the essential for hydrogen generation and that is what makes an efficient, well-designed Hydrogen cell.

Read more: How to calculate maximum Hydrogen output

Amount of hydrogen required per size of engine

The amount of hydrogen required is determined by the size of the engine.

0.15 Litres/minute per 1L of engine size is ideal.

For example, a 3L engine will achieve best results with a generator producing hydrogen at a rate of 0.5 L/minute.

Hydrogen supplementation is subject to the law of diminishing returns.

Adding hydrogen improves the efficiency of the engine, but only to a certain point.

Tests prove that flooding the engine with too much Hydrogen DECREASES its efficiency and performance.

Read more: What happens when too much hydrogen is supplied to an engine

Electricity consumption of hydrogen generators

Only 7 to 10 amps of current are needed to create enough HHO for a standard 3L engine. This current draw is similar to turning on the stereo.

The approximate formula is: Amps = Engine Size (Litres) x 2.5

Professional dry cell HHO generators vs wet cells

In a dry cell design only a minimum amount of liquid is contained in the generator body. Most of the water for the system is stored in a remote reservoir.

Dry cells are much more efficient than wet cells as only insignificant amount of current gets wasted in electrolysis.