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This guy and his partner have figured out how to use WATER as fuel. Can you imagine the leaps forward with energy use this means, provided the oil companies don't bury his company in lawsuits and so forth? Get the word out about this!
This guy and his partner have figured out how to use WATER as fuel. Can you imagine the leaps forward with energy use this means, provided the oil companies don't bury his company in lawsuits and so forth? Get the word out about this!
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Date: 2006-07-31 04:14 am (UTC)I've suspected ever since Bush got into office that oil is on the way out, and the oil barons know it, so this huge leap in prices is their last gasp fortune before they all switch over the whatever we're going to be using in the future - water, electricity, etc. - and find a way to charge us horrendously for that.
Water for Fuel
Date: 2006-07-31 06:42 am (UTC)After splitting your water, mix the resulting H2 and O2 gas in a reaction chamber, add a spark, and you get a nice explosion that results in--tada--water. We used to do it in high school to be disruptive during assemblies. Fill balloons with the results of your chem lab, open them up to mix some gas with air, make a spark. Bang bang. *G*
This guy was basically just running a hydrogen torch with H2 he got from splitting water. Of course it was hot, and of course as it ran in ordinary air it made water. That's what hydrogen gas does when you burn it in air.
However, it is not nearly as safe as the gullible media reporter portrayed it. You need good, well-designed tanks to safely hold and use hydrogen. (Remember the Hindenburg!) Nor is it energy efficient. It takes energy to split water, and then to use the resulting hydrogen gas you need to provide even more energy. (The spark, at minimum, to create a quick explosion. For a continuing and regulated reaction, you need to provide further energy. Like, say, car batteries and alternators. This is how gasoline-powered internal combustion engines work, too. Basically, the experimental hydrogen-powered cars just substitute hydrogen gas and air for aerosolized gasoline and air--you still need to make sparks to get the tiny explosions that move those pistons.)
On the surface, this looks clean. However, the electricity you use in the electrolysis of water has to come from somewhere. This typically means hydroelectric, nuclear, wind, or solar power, or power generated through the burning of organic materials, like wood, alcohol, or fossil fuels. Not only do you need electricity for the electrolysis, but you also need batteries and generators to provide the sparks that keep your 2H2 + 02 +E(A) -> 2HOH + E reactions going.
It might turn out to be a decent system for those willing to take the energy and price hit like the military (the equipment of which is not known for fuel efficiency anyway), but currently for hydrogen-fueled vehicles for the masses the cheapest and most efficient means to obtain hydrogen is to get it already in the form of H2 gas.
TANSTAAFL. And I'm sorry to say that there are plenty of perpetual motion machines already patented.
-Tiffany
Re: Water for Fuel
Date: 2006-07-31 08:38 am (UTC)Re: Water for Fuel
Date: 2006-07-31 04:06 pm (UTC)The problem with it is that humans have to put energy into the system in order to get less energy back out. With the other sources I listed, nature has done the hard work of putting the energy into the system for us. Humans just have to refine it a bit. So for us it appears we are getting more energy out of the system than we put into it. In reality, a different process put the energy there already, and we're just taking advantage of it. By using even more energy. *G*
I agree it would be cool, if only those dratted laws of thermodynamics didn't keep interfering. *G*
-Tiffany