Water Fuel???

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(OUscarb @ May 16 2006, 12:11 AM) [snapback]256080[/snapback]</div>

Lordy, that's better than "cold fusion", or even "perpetual motion".

 

Thats cool. If only my Prius ran on water it wouldn't be sitting at the dealer right now

 

One hundred miles on four ounces of water????
That would be 3,200 MPG of H2O!!!

Even if you fueled this car with those 20 ounce bottles of drinking water from vending machines at $1.50 each . . . that's still 333 miles for only one dollar!

Would Evian then be considered the new “premium†fuel for snob who insist on only using only the best for their cars? :lol:

Playing Devil's Advocate:
“ . . . take water and electricity and we break it down through our very unique electrolysis process . . .â€
Yeah, but just how much electricity are we talking about???? <_<

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(OUscarb @ May 15 2006, 10:11 PM) [snapback]256080[/snapback]</div>

I bet the big wigs in the oil business are watching this, very closely

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sufferin' Prius Envy @ May 15 2006, 08:48 PM) [snapback]256101[/snapback]</div>

EXACTLY. This is why Fuel Cell Cars are such a joke as well. Of course we can make gas out of water. You just add gobs of energy. That's how we make H2, for example. This piece implies that the energy COMES FROM the WATER. BS. The energy source here isn't the water...and it sure isn't the gas that they make in their little mystery machine. All their exciting metal cutting and everything? Hell, I can do that with plain air! I just shove air through my plasma torch and add gobs of electricity, and I can cut through damn near anything. No water needed. In fact, I have to filter the water out!

One key item that slipped out... did anybody notice? He conveted his car, and they said "It will run on water alone... but this car was made to run on both gasoline and water."

OK... why, why WHY would anybody EVER fill up with gasoline if they could really drive on water alone? Especially if they could drive thousands of miles per gallon of water. Give me a break here, folks. Ha. No way. Goodbye. Game over.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bobkat21 @ May 15 2006, 08:57 PM) [snapback]256111[/snapback]</div>

More like laughing. What's to watch? This isn't anything that could possibly replace oil as an energy source.

 

You need the Mr. Fusion home energy source from Back To The Future to get the energy to break down the water.

Making hydrogen and oxygen from water, then recombining to make heat and water, is a zero sum cycle. If there were no losses, you would only break even, but of course there are plenty of losses, so it consumes energy, not makes energy.

Tom

 

I get no audio on that link.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sufferin' Prius Envy @ May 15 2006, 08:48 PM) [snapback]256101[/snapback]</div>

They also mention gasoline hybrid in with that same sentence, so I'm guessing the gasoline powers a battery which make hydrogen & oxygen and burns. Now strictly speaking its an energy sink if that's what it does (burn hydrogen) since you'll end up using more energy than you get back. But I think it's similar to an idea I've read a bit back where hydrogen and/or oxygen is injected into the fuel mix and it burns more effectively in the engine or something. I'm not holding my breath on that car, but good for him on developing some technology, why should we wait for GE, Shell, GM, and other mega-corps to develop technology, even if it doesn't pan out it could end up being a good learning experience.

Either way though that torch looks cool, I could have some serious fun with it

"Burns hotter than the surface of the sun" though... I love how news reporters who don't know squat about science tend to over sensationalize stories.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MikeSF @ May 16 2006, 09:37 AM) [snapback]256312[/snapback]</div>

Oh yeah... I meant to bring that one up as well. Gosh, it only takes seconds to go through a brick... you think a brick would last several seconds on the surface of the sun?! I sure do! But then I also think I can power my car on water.

 

What a crock. He's no doubt pumping many kilowatts of energy into that electrolysis machine. Ha! He needs a huge gasoline engine just to generate power to get any hydrogen.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(qbee42 @ May 16 2006, 05:53 AM) [snapback]256187[/snapback]</div>

Not zero. Way, way, WAY negative. But you knew that...

Again... this is just ONE of the huge detractions of Fuel Cell Vehicles. Most people hear from the media that H2 is some sort of power source. NOPE. Power sponge, maybe. But still a very poor one.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(darelldd @ May 16 2006, 03:17 PM) [snapback]256419[/snapback]</div>

Yes zero. Chemically it's a zero sum cycle. Simple thermodynamics: since matter is neither created or destroyed going either way, it's all the same. The next sentence deals with the practical reality of goading the elements apart, which is where all the losses come in. In practice it's "Way, way, WAY negative."

Tom

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(qbee42 @ May 16 2006, 02:40 PM) [snapback]256509[/snapback]</div>

Without giving the water-to-fuel guy any credit, because I think its a crock, I think all fossil fuel energy production is a zero sum cycle, isn't it? To be fair to the H2 vs Gasoline debate, I think we would have to consider all the energy required to get a gallon of gasoline. Energy is used to pump it out of the ground, transport it through a pipeline, pump it into a tanker or ship, power the ship across the ocean, pump it into storage tanks at the refinery, and then all the energy it takes to refine light sweet crude into gasoline. And then transport it to a local retailer, where it finally ends up using energy to pump it into our little Prius gas tank.

Even electric cars have this issue, as most electricity is produced by coal or oil/natural gas in this country. So there's a line of energy use going back to a mine or a well.

Isn't there a method of H2 extraction from water that relies on an osmosis type of action? Where a membrane allows the hydrogen through, but not the oxygen? IIRC, you can't generate enough hydrogen this way to power something like a car (at least not yet).

 

I hope all you doubters are wrong and his system does work. It will revolutionise the power industry. No more gas bills. No more electricity bills.
I am not sure that it is not a load of rubbish nor am I sure that it is a zero or negative sum cycle.
Once you start playing around with atoms and molecules molecular science kicks in. Nuclear fission is a good example of what can happen when we play with atoms. The only negative sum there is anything in the vicinity disappears, and that is surely negative.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ May 17 2006, 01:38 AM) [snapback]256693[/snapback]</div>

No. The hydrogen and oxygen in a water molecule are bound together and it takes energy to break the bond. Run water through a filter and you get cleaner water.

The benefit of H2 cells over oil are reduced emissions and control of supply, not necessarily energy efficiency. Of course if they find a technology to refine water (or natural gas or anything else in nature that's rich in hydrogen) that takes less energy and creates less pollution than refining crude oil and burning gasoline, all the better.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(qbee42 @ May 16 2006, 05:40 PM) [snapback]256509[/snapback]</div>

Thermodynamically, there are energy losses to entropy in the cycle.
Second law.

 

Water has been used as "fuel" for hundreds, even thousands of years.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Soylent @ May 17 2006, 11:24 AM) [snapback]256869[/snapback]</div>

Well, not quite. The fuel in a steam engine is wood or coal, not the water. The steam pressure drives the pistons. Same concept goes for nuclear power plants. The nuclear fuel heats water into steam which drives the turbines. You wouldn't say water was the "fuel" for the power plant. The water wheel is a little better analogy, but there it's really kinetic engery derived from gravity that's being harnessed. Again, water isn't really the fuel.

Still, I like the way you think out of the box.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Soylent @ May 17 2006, 11:24 AM) [snapback]256869[/snapback]</div>

Technically, neither of those uses of water fits the definition of "fuel".

It's more obvious in the case of the locomotive where the fuel is clearly coal and water is mearly a part of the mechanism for driving the wheels.

In the case of the water wheel, the water has potential energy which is extracted by the wheel but the water is not chemically altered in any way.