East Texas Hydrogen Hybrid Automobiles

HydroStar Project

 East Texas Hydrogen Hybrid Automobiles

Hytronics Hybrid Hydrogen System

Updated March 5, 2009

New! Video of the electrode tube conditioning!

There is too much involved in a project this complex to put every detail here on this page. However, our progress as well as significant details will be posted here. If there are questions you may have or information to share we welcome you at our monthly meetings or contact us directly here:

It's apparent that the plans detailed in the manual are vague and full of errors. This is not insurmountable and we feel confident to be able to get this unit working properly and even make improvements given time. Click any thumbnail view below to open a larger picture:

Update! April 12, 2009

We removed the tubes/electrodes from the HydroStar which were corroded and somewhat rusty. Appeared a lot of the corrosion coming from the 304 stainless electrodes themselves? But a peak down in the tight .045 gap seemed to show shiney and clean metal. Possible the non-abraded surfaces are dirty contaminated? A lot of time was spent, literally days, conditioning these electrodes using moderate to medium amperage current. They should have been clean. After rinsing the electrodes clean we installed them into a clear tube cell procured and fabricated for us by Jim McDonald so we can observe the action visually of these tubes. After adding distilled water the electrodes hardly did anything. Some slight foam or bubble activity could be seen rising from between the electrodes. Too slight production for any sort of volume measurement. Electrolyte provided by Monty was added in stages until the unit was drawing amperage of approximately 13 to 14. Production remained poor even though HO bubbles increased with electrical current. We debated the future of these electrodes and I felt it would possibly be better to scrap them and start over with a better design.

We connected this to a bubbler I had brought to the meeting. Unknown to us at the time, the bubbler had a slight leak and the HydroStar tubes couldn't produce enough HO to push the water away to even make one bubble. One interesting fact to note, the final amperage of the HydroStar tubes was drawing approximately the same amperage as the cell I brought that not only made lots of bubbles despite the bubbler leaking, but also was running brute force with no pulser. I believe the amount of surface area of these electrodes will require at least 20 to 30 amps before production increases. Even then without a neutral plate efficiency won't be very impressive. The bolts protruding from the bottom won't handle this sort of amperage and adding more would be extremely difficult with no guarantee of efficient performance. I felt strongly another set of electrodes needed to be fabricated utilizing neutral tubes and larger electrical connection bolts.

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The electronics of this unit, as laid out in the plans, were wrought with major errors and confusing. Lyman Eppley was able to find the problems and solutions to the problems from many sources. Once the pieces are sufficiently assembled we will be able to test this unit and work out any bugs we happen to find. I think the group we've assembled here are more than up to the task of getting this unit running at peak efficiency. I'll post progress here as we have parts of the project complete.

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