In respects to the law of conservation?
I?m having a hard time w/ the idea of HHO supplemented vehicle?  If it takes x joules to break the electron bond of H and O then combining them to make electricity via hydrogen cell would produce x joules electricity. It should be the same!  But using HHO to supplement an IC engine produces seeming substantial results.  How?  If the amount of gasoline used is the difference of power needed to produce HHO and drive vehicle and the power generated by burning the HHO. Then the difference is the power the required to operate the car? the same as it was before the HHO was introduced?  I know there is a respective gain, but I can seem to wrap my head around it.

I Wish Us All The Best
     FarLeft

As for now i am sure that one could not run a car fully on HHO,as a self sustained process.I mean on-board production of HHO by only electrolysis from car battery and alternator and not draining your battery is not doable.Simply because burning HHO will give us less work than we put into electrolysis.
Electrolysis on a level of 80% efficiency,engine on a level of 30% efficiency,alternator efficiency of 60% says it all.Having that in mind any introducing HHO as a fraction of the fuel has to be collided with the energy used for this HHO production.

Now simple example:
A car got HHO as a fraction of our fuel.HHO is being produced in an on-board electrolyser using 200W of power.Our engine will see an extra load of  333W due to alternator loses.Turning the alternator will cost our engine extra fuel equivalent to 1111W due to engine loses.
So we can speak about the improvement of the whole system,if the HHo produced can lead us to a minimum of 1111W of engine power improvement.

I believe that there is a lower and upper limit ratio of HHO that is usefull.Under the lower limit,the amount of HHO will be unsubstantial to the overall engine working.Above the upper level the amount of fuel used by our car (next to HHO ) won't be enough to support the energy for the extensive HHO production needs due to overall system low efficiency.

Although i see it is possible to achieve some extra mileage by adding some HHO to fuel of a car.H2 gives substantial capacity of improvements.Such a mixture of HHO and fuel will allow faster and more complete burn of fuel.Faster burn means:
- you loose less energy into exhaust (especially at higher rpm's burning process continues in the exhaust manifold-fuel had simply not enough time to burn inside of the cylinder and so fails to deliver usable work.Burning with HHO can also decrease average backpressure in the exhaust manifold,and allow finer wave tuning of an engine due to stronger wave amplitudes at opening of the exhaust valve.)
-less energy lost on exhaust stroke because less charge is being burned and sustaining equal or rising pressure in this stroke.
-also less thermal loses to the cylinder wall,piston and cylinder head due to reduction of time-area that comes into the direct contact with flame
-probably improved volumetric efficiency of the engine.(intake stroke can introduce more fuel/air mixture as fresh charge has slower heat build up from cylinder walls,piston,and head.)

Adding HHO would allow:
- retarding ignition timing(faster burn means faster pressure build up and less time needed for max cycle pressure to occur,that is why ignition can be started closer to the TopDeadCenter,reducing negative work done on compressing of a charge that is already burning)more torque,more mileage especially on higher rpm's.
- bringing compression ratio higher(faster burn and colder head reduces the risk of predetonation to occur)bringing higher mileage and more torque.
-finer wave tuning,more torque,more mileage.
-further lean out the charge for better mileage preserving the same power.

Let us see how introducing of HHO can affect the volumetric efficiency.H2 O2 mixture after electrolysis is being mixed with air and fuel droplets.Liquid form of fuel occupies a very little of the fresh charge volume(of course vaporisation takes place but it is time and conditions dependend)..Let us negate the liquid fuel.H2 O2 on the other hand is a gas,we have 2 times more volume of H than O.For us the most interesting gas is an Oxygen that we use to burn the fuel,less oxygen gives us less fuel that we can burn with it and so less torque.Oxygen comes with the air.Let us say we have a 100 units of air we use to run our engine 21 units are oxygen.Now suppose we introduce 3 units of HHO,that is one unit of oxygen and 2 of H.We can only suck 100units into the engine,so when introducing HHO we will suck 97units of air and 3 units of HHO.Here comes a happy part.In 3 units of air that couldn't be sucked in,there was 0.6 unit of oxygen.But in 3 units we introduced with HHO there was 1 unit of O.
It looks like introducing of HHO even in the gaseous form does not rub our engine out of oxygen.

Conclusion is that introducing HHO can improve engine mileage,but i would not expect high gains on unmodified engine.As i see it the gain will occur on high rpms when the charge fast burning rate substantially decrease the the thermodynamic loses.

well we can figure out what is going on inside it very well ( at every established university mechanics department has simulators to run the mathematics behind reactions like this).Engine is not a black box a long time already...there are tons of books about it and no magic inside.Other thing is ,what is put there on the market already by car manufacturers.They just do as much as let them to stay in balance with concurrents,it is simply not economical to innovate in this well established industry (follow not lead business strategy).

gadgets you spoke about are all about well known facts.Evaporated fuel burns faster and fully compared to the poor evaporated conditions.Another way is to spray fuel into smaller droplets.A swirl or vortex inside of the combustion chamber aids the even distribution of fuel and good mix of it with the air,next to it it makes the ignition flame to travel faster.Again faster burn and a full one,reduced predetonation risico.No magic.For example Honda is using variable lift of intake valves to introduce swirl in the combustion chamber.Spark with higher energy discharge can ignite a leaner air/fuel mixture.
nothing new and all of it aids the lover use of fuel.

  hey man chillout  i am not attacking anyone nor defending noone.I just bring some calculations and knowlegde that can be used by others here if they wish.I try to bring some systematic approach in our research to make some collective progress.I don't agree with manufacturers about innovation tempo they apply,but i understand the business is all about the money so we have to do the innovation ourselfs.

In respects to the law of conservation?
  But using HHO to supplement an IC engine produces seeming substantial results.  How?  If the amount of gasoline used is the difference of power needed to produce HHO and drive vehicle and the power generated by burning the HHO.

HHO is a trademark, but hydroxy gas combinations generated by Boyce electrolysers are not straightforward combinations of H2 and O2. It is a different gas situation, and must be used immediately or they will revert to ordinary H2 and O2. The energy equations are complex because the driving electronics, the PWM3-G board has a toroid with complicated windings, generating more power
than it consumes to fracture the water rather than electrolyse it (using the John Worrell Keely
frequency of 42.8 khz). Check out the workingwatercar YahooGroup.
Paul.

When u burn gaseous H2 in O2 u get gaseous H2O and heat.When burning fossils u release CO,CO2,H2O.Of course in both reactions in reality in ICE u get also some other gases like NOx.so fossil fuels have H2O already there when burning(just wanted to say that water vapour is not a totally new chemical in reaction).

2 volume of H2 and 1 volume of O2 produces 2 volumes of H2O(all of it accounted as gaseous because temp is above critical for water).So when seeing this partial pressures,after the burning pressure would drop(before reaction 2+1--->after reaction 2).It would drop if heat produced would be taken away(keeping the reaction with constant temperature).That heat is not removed it allows to expand gaseous H2O to take more volume than H2 and O2 had before the reaction started.

Burning of fossils ends up with more gases that u have in the beginning(so not like burning of hydrogen)+heat.So by burning up fossils in constant heat with removing excess heat u will end up with high pressure(not like burning H2 where u end up under atmospheric pressure).This extra pressure is already extra work that this gases can perform.If u account for heat produced that is normally available to further pressurise gases,the question is:

when substituting fossils with hydrogen,do i end up with higher total pressure than when using fossils only?(pressure is what is a usefull power in ICE)
To answer u would have to show that burning of hydrogen and expanding of H2O produced by it is of higher end pressure than
burning of fossils.
If u would say that hydrogen is more favourable,then u go against the fact that in practice ICE has less power on hydrogen fuel only.

that's why i stay with my opinion that fast burning rate of H2 ,O2 mixture is the main reason of added efficiency(higher peak pressure,more  complete burn of fossil fuel and less time to loose heat to the engine components).

PS:In both cases of burning there is also air that is heated to expand to do some work.

there are two ways that i know of.
1)One i know for a long time already and is so old as the racing cars itself  .Water injection was used to allow higher compression ratio's and/or to chill down the piston crowns/valves.Depending on the car (turbo or NA) water was used to prevent knocking under max load of the engine or to chill it down under high boost.In both cases water was not supposed to be a vapour until it was in the combustion chamber.How it worked?
On NA engine maximum compression ratio is set so it won't start to detonate under fully open throttle at full load.If we could get CR(compresion ratio) higher and avoid knocking,both extra power and extra fuel efficiency would follow.In racing cars power was the goal .Water droplets start to evaporate and it takes heat to do that.In that way evaporating water was chilling down the interia of the engine before the ignition.In tuning terms it meant that u can go with higher CR if u inject some water.That was a good trade,because higher pressure of gasses (following higher CR) positively outweighted loses of energy to evaporate water.It is worth to note that water wasn't injected all the time but only in the moments that detonation could occur(full load of the engine).
As i see it Injecting of water(not vapour) can have some positive effect on today's cars with detonation sensors.In this cars CPU is adjusting ignition advance,when it hears detonation start it adjusts the ignition so it will avoid full detonation.Of course timing goes in the direction of worse power and engine is less efficient in fuel.If u could inject water in the moment when detonation occurs,CPU would not change ignition settings and so a bit of power and efficiency could stay where it was.
With turbocharged cars there is more of a problem with the high thermal load on the interia of the engine.Water by evaporating cools down the hot spots,that can be a sources of knocking.Other way is to inject water on the intercooler(not into!),in this way efficiency of the intercooler gets higher and higher boost is tolerated.Those are just simple words on how it works.

In this light,adding of water into the system makes no sense if no changes to engine settings follows(higher CR,changes in ignition curves,changes in valves timing,higher boost...).

In this case water works as an enabler for changes in the engine.So extra power or efficiency is not because of the water(methanol or more fuel can replace water in its job-but both are more expensive than water) but because of the changes that are now allowed to the engine.This subtle difference should be seen.

2)something that i got to hear recently but i can not verify it ,is that water is being split into Hydrogen and Oxygen.well i had no further explanation how would it work so i let myself to come with a possible theory to back it up.I would have to check at what pressures and temperatures would it be possible to achieve it(maybe some additive to the water would be needed to work as a catalyst  ).Further if that splitting occurs close to the peak pressure of combustion it would have a very minor role in speeding up the process that is almost at its highest speed at that time . To take maximum advantage of any speed up we would have to adjust engine.Here i would dare to say that water vapour would be somehow better than water droplets used in the racing cars.The bigger the droplet the more time it takes to evaporate,in race car u don't want it to evaporate before ignition.Here u want water to be ready for splitting as fast as possible,evaporating it first can seed it up i guess.
Evaporated water already received energy form outside and won't rob us from the combustion heat(what follows pressure won't drop because of the energy put into the water to evaporate).
In this case water takes an active role in combustion as opposed to the first case i spoke about.Again any change to the combustion properties should be reflected in adjusting of the engine settings( if we want to be sure that we get all of what can be taken).


Now i can imagine that both effects take an active role in the game of a combustion  .