[ausev] Some familiar units to describe the HHO generator

[Gil Dawson]

Hi, Marv--

At 10:32 A -0500 7/5/08, m. edmund howse wrote:
>As far as energy is concerned there are 1800, roughly, gallons of 
>hydrogen in a gallon of water and pound for pound hydrogen has more 
>energy than gasoline.

I'd like to translate this into units more familiar to me.  (Somebody 
check my figures, please.)

A gallon of water weighs about 8 pounds.  If we electrolyze the whole 
gallon, we'll still have eight pounds of stuff, but now as gases 
instead of as a liquid.   (This is a theorem I learned in high school 
chemistry.  Is it still so?)

If we vent the oxygen and keep the hydrogen, that should give us 
about (Lessee now, two Hs at 1, one O at 16, that's eighteen 
altogether, of which hydrogen is two...) 2/18ths of eight pounds, or 
not quite one pound of hydrogen gas.  To sum up,

    Electrolyzing a gallon of water
    should produce
    a bit less than a pound of hydrogen gas.

Does that sound reasonable?

I can't imagine how you would measure a pound of hydrogen.  Holding a 
balloon full of the stuff while standing on a bathroom scale would 
not be very convincing.  But, nevertheless, supposing we could agree 
on how to measure it properly, the 1800 gallons of hydrogen made from 
a gallon of water must weigh -- in some sense -- about a pound, right?

Gasoline is lighter than water, say about 6 gallons per pound, so a 
pound of gasoline is 1/6 of a gallon, about 2-2/3 cups.  Let's round 
it down so that we can call it a pint.  So a pound of gasoline is a 
little more than a pint.  Sound about right?

Now, hydrogen has more energy, pound for pound, than gasoline, so, 
paying attention to the less-thans and greater-thans, we might say it 
thus:

    The hydrogen gas extracted from a gallon of water
    can produce more miles driven
    than a pint of gasoline.

That seems reasonable to me.  Does it seem reasonable to you?


--Gil