Motors running on water

[powerjacob]

I saw on the news sometime last week this guy who has been successful in making energy out of water. His process turned H2O into HHO. He was able to turn the gas into a flame, thus applied his technology to his vehicle so it can run on water. How does this work, how much does it cost (building, maintaining, et cetera), and how can I do it?

Any ideas?

[Q.E.D.]

It doesn't work that way. Yes, in theory you can run a car by electrolyzing water and then burning the resulting hydrogen, but since the energy you gain from burning the H2 is always less than the energy required to extract it in the first place, you still need to supply an energy source, such as a battery. In other words, what you've got there is an inefficient battery-powered car.

[friedo]

The only way to bust apart water molecules is to zap them with a lot of electricity. And the energy you get back from burning the resulting hydrogen will never be as much as the energy you put in to get the hydrogen in the first place, due to the pesky laws of thermodynamics.

In other words, it's complete bullshit.

[powerjacob]

The only way to bust apart water molecules is to zap them with a lot of electricity. And the energy you get back from burning the resulting hydrogen will never be as much as the energy you put in to get the hydrogen in the first place, due to the pesky laws of thermodynamics.

In other words, it's complete bullshit.


I knew there had to be some sort of draw back. A possible, but not feasible source of energy. What would it take to make it feasable?

[friedo]

I knew there had to be some sort of draw back. A possible, but not feasible source of energy. What would it take to make it feasable?

Changing the laws of the Universe would do it.

[powerjacob]

Changing the laws of the Universe would do it.


That's all? I'll get to work on that right away.

[Ludovic]

Well, if what Cecil (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a970905.html) says is true, you could probably make and engine that burns water and fluorine gas.

[Gary T]

I saw on the news sometime last week this guy who has been successful in making energy out of water. His process turned H2O into HHO.
HHO? And the difference between HHO and H2O is ....?


He was able to turn the gas into a flame, thus applied his technology to his vehicle so it can run on water. How does this work, how much does it cost (building, maintaining, et cetera), and how can I do it?

Any ideas?
What you actually saw was a guy who was successful in deluding observers into thinking he made energy out of water. If he did split the water molecules into separate oxygen atoms and hydrogen molecules (which do have potential energy), he did it by first applying energy from a presumably undisclosed source, and as others have pointed out, ended up spending more energy than he "made." This is not merely an infeasible source of energy, it's a guaranteed net loss of energy.

As to how the delusion works and what it costs to set it up, there are various methods, but those costs are in addition to the basic cost of splitting the water molecules, and the only possible payback is in selling the "secret process" to naive suckers.

It amazes me that news personnel are stupid enough to cover this crap.

[Q.E.D.]

HHO? And the difference between HHO and H2O is ....?
H2O is (obviously) water, while HHO is just the popular name for the mixture of H2 and O2 gasses in a 2:1 ratio. I've also seen it called "Aquygen" gas, a trademark of Hydrogen Technology Applications, Inc. (http://hytechapps.com/)

[Squink]

The only way to bust apart water molecules is to zap them with a lot of electricity.Or you can use photons to power the split, as does Photosystem II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_reaction_centre).

[Princhester]

James Randi's been talking about this particular scam in recent weeks. www.randi.org

[enipla]

Not that this is news. Breaking H2O apart is a pretty simple matter.

But, could a system be set up using solar panels to do it to make a more efficient storage device than batteries?

The hydrogen would have to be compressed which looses energy again to electricity (using electric motors to compress the hydrogen into tanks), but could hydrogen be used as a better energy storage device than batteries?

Could you break H20 all summer with solar to assist with winter heating?

It would be a complex furnace, I know. Just kicking some ideas around.

[groman]

I mean this is completely feasible with a few tweaks.

First, the car will have to carry the hydrogen (we can use oxygen from the air) which we get from the water. We get it from water using nuclear fission generated electricity, either through electrolysis at home (not yet available on required scale) or industrial electrolysis (available). For safety reasons hydrogen would probably have to be stored in a low pressure hydride instead of a high pressure gas form, to make the solid storage you would need some sort of a generator that takes electricity and hydrogen gas and generates the solid. This can be either onboard (impossible as of now) or not. Then the car can use an internal combustion engine to cleanly burn hydrogen and power a generator.

[Super Absorbant Diaper]

I mean this is completely feasible with a few tweaks.

First, the car will have to carry the hydrogen (we can use oxygen from the air) which we get from the water. We get it from water using nuclear fission generated electricity, either through electrolysis at home (not yet available on required scale) or industrial electrolysis (available). For safety reasons hydrogen would probably have to be stored in a low pressure hydride instead of a high pressure gas form, to make the solid storage you would need some sort of a generator that takes electricity and hydrogen gas and generates the solid. This can be either onboard (impossible as of now) or not. Then the car can use an internal combustion engine to cleanly burn hydrogen and power a generator.


Like this one http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/h2.htm ?

[Crafter_Man]

Here's the basic problem: Plain 'ol room-temperature tap water has no potential energy. It can't be burned. It can't be oxidized. It is already in its lowest energy state. You can't do anything to water to force it to release "pent up" energy, because there is no "pent up" energy to begin with. As a result, water is often a byproduct of other adiabatic & isometric processes, much like soot.

And this is where the First Law of thermodynamics comes into play: If water has no energy to begin with, then you cannot extract any energy from it.

[Happy Clam]

Here's the basic problem: Plain 'ol room-temperature tap water has no potential energy. It can't be burned. It can't be oxidized. It is already in its lowest energy state. You can't do anything to water to force it to release "pent up" energy, because there is no "pent up" energy to begin with. As a result, water is often a byproduct of other adiabatic & isometric processes, much like soot.

And this is where the First Law of thermodynamics comes into play: If water has no energy to begin with, then you cannot extract any energy from it.
I am asking from a position of complete ignorance, but wouldn't the lowest energy state of H2O be ice? I mean, a solid is when a substance's molecules have the least vibration and the least energy, right?

[Uncommon Sense]

Here's the basic problem:

The basic problem is; where've you been lately? Glad to see you back around these parts, yada, yada. :)
Try not to be a stranger....

[Princhester]

Ice is H20. It's just cold H20.

[Malacandra]

Zero-point energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy), I tells ya!

Hell, if it works for Syndrome...

[Musicat]

I saw on the news sometime last week this guy who has been successful in making energy out of water....His name wasn't Joe Newman, was it?

[David Simmons]

It doesn't work that way. Yes, in theory you can run a car by electrolyzing water and then burning the resulting hydrogen, but since the energy you gain from burning the H2 is always less than the energy required to extract it in the first place, you still need to supply an energy source, such as a battery. In other words, what you've got there is an inefficient battery-powered car.Yeah. Don't most oxides take a lot of energy to break up? In the case of metal oxides it's worth spending the energy to get the metal but the object there isn't to produce excess energy for use elsewhere.

And how would and HHO molecule exist? In the HH combinations (isn't that hydrogen gas?) both hydrogen atoms have their outer shell filled with the requisite number of electrons so how does the O attach?

Of course I never was any good with chemistry.

[powerjacob]

His name wasn't Joe Newman, was it?

Unfortunately I cannot remember the name. Sorry.

[Grelby]

I mean this is completely feasible with a few tweaks.

First, the car will have to carry the hydrogen (we can use oxygen from the air) which we get from the water. We get it from water using nuclear fission generated electricity, either through electrolysis at home (not yet available on required scale) or industrial electrolysis (available). For safety reasons hydrogen would probably have to be stored in a low pressure hydride instead of a high pressure gas form, to make the solid storage you would need some sort of a generator that takes electricity and hydrogen gas and generates the solid. This can be either onboard (impossible as of now) or not. Then the car can use an internal combustion engine to cleanly burn hydrogen and power a generator.

I guess that's feasible, but it sure sounds like a big waste of time. Why not use the solar panels on your roof to charge a lithium-ion battery, and use that to power a car? It would probably be a lot more efficient. Actually, looks like someone else put solar panels on the roof. Well, why not use your fission generated electricity to charge the battery, then? You'd be saving a lot of energy.

Incidentally, the thermodynamics that make this kind of solution so much better (and electrolysis so energy-intensive) are what make H2 vehicles a ludicrous pipe dream.

[David Simmons]

I am asking from a position of complete ignorance, but wouldn't the lowest energy state of H2O be ice? I mean, a solid is when a substance's molecules have the least vibration and the least energy, right?Yes, but when you turn water into ice you get 144 Btu/lb. Gasoline provides on the order of 13000 Btu/lb.

Say you start with a lb. of water at 70 F. You get 38 Btu when it cools to 32 F and another 144 Btu when it turns to ice. But how do you cool the water from 70 F down to 32 F?

And, of course, this isn't the process described in the OP. That was changing water molecules from HOH to HHO. As was mentioned above, HH is hydrogen gas and O is free oxygen moecules which I guess would rapidly turn into OO. And as was also mentioned you get hydrogen and oxygen out of water by electrolysis which takes at least as much energy as you get back from burning the hydrogen..

[powerjacob]

H2O is (obviously) water, while HHO is just the popular name for the mixture of H2 and O2 gasses in a 2:1 ratio. I've also seen it called "Aquygen" gas, a trademark of Hydrogen Technology Applications, Inc. (http://hytechapps.com/)

I've finally had the chance to go over all the posts and this one in particular was the one they were talking about. They have a link on their site that shows the news segment (http://hytechapps.com/company/press) I saw.

[Chronos]

But, could a system be set up using solar panels to do it to make a more efficient storage device than batteries?In principle, sure. But I don't think the technology is quite there yet. Nor, for that matter, is the solar cell technology quite there yet: It takes a lot of energy just to make a solar cell, and most of them don't last long enough to get that much energy out of sunlight. I hasten to add, of course, that this is just an engineering problem: There's nothing inherent about solar panels or hydrogen energy storage which violates any laws of physics, and as technology advances, we will eventually reach the point where both are practical.

[CookingWithGas]

James Randi's been talking about this particular scam in recent weeks. www.randi.orgA more specific link on Randi's site for this particular story

http://www.randi.org/jr/2006-05/052606action.html#i3

[Cardinal]

As I tell my chemistry students, water is the ashes of burning. Ever try to burn ashes?

You can also tell that water is very low energy. How? Look around. It's freakin everywhere! It must have very little reactive energy left, or it would be reacting with everything and changing itself all the time.

[Chronos]

You can also tell that water is very low energy. How? Look around. It's freakin everywhere! It must have very little reactive energy left, or it would be reacting with everything and changing itself all the time.Not a very good test. Elemental oxygen is also freakin' everywhere, and it is, in fact, very reactive. It's just being replenished as fast as it's being reacted away.

[Belrix]

Maybe if you put the water in a tank on top of the car and let it fall to bottom tank through a turbine?

Then you just wait for the rain to refill the upper tank!

Should work great in Seattle & Hawaii.

[Mangetout]

You can't burn water; it's already burnt.

[spingears]

I saw on the news sometime last week this guy who has been successful in making energy out of water. His process turned H2O into HHO. He was able to turn the gas into a flame, thus applied his technology to his vehicle so it can run on water. How does this work, how much does it cost (building, maintaining, et cetera), and how can I do it? Any ideas?A simpleton's alternative energy idea. Pure BS.
OTOH there are real engines that run on running water. They are called hydraulic turbines, water wheels, and hydraulic compressors.

[Ludovic]

You can't burn water; it's already burnt.

It can't be burned. It can't be oxidized. It is already in its lowest energy state.

Eh, I guess I shouldn't venture into GQ since my posts always seem to be ignored :(

[enipla]

Could a modern internal combustion engine be adapted to burn either petroleum or hydrogen? Or both at the same time?

I doubt that. And I also doubt that anyone would want a tank of hydrogen in their car that would be compressed to say, a scuba tank.

I sure wouldn't.

[Gary T]

Eh, I guess I shouldn't venture into GQ since my posts always seem to be ignored :(
Well, sure. That was in the rules when I signed up. ;)

Seriously, though, I didn't click on your link until just now, to see what you were talking about. The statement about flourine seemed to suggest an esoteric tangent to the discussion, so I figured "Eh, I'll check it later - maybe." It appears I'm not the only one who passed by it.

[Enola Straight]

It looks like someone re-discovered Brown's Gas

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=brown%27s+gas

Which apparently isn't hydrogen or a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen.

[Enola Straight]

It looks like someone re-discovered Brown's Gas

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=brown%27s+gas

Which apparently isn't hydrogen or a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen.

The hydrogen and oxygen in the forms we know them as, that is.

[Mangetout]

Eh, I guess I shouldn't venture into GQ since my posts always seem to be ignored :(
You're absolutely right about the fluorine thing and I was thinking about including a qualifier regarding it, but it's so unlikely that we'd see a practical fluorine/water internal combustion engine, I didn't consider it worth mentioning in my post (particularly as you had already covered it).

In practical terms, water is hydrogen that has already been burnt - we can of course get it to react some more - even in a way that can be described as 'burning' - if we use a more vigorous or concentrated oxidant, but that's probably true of other things too; the soot from a chimney is already burnt, but I bet we could burn it again in the presence of pure oxygen.

[Tuckerfan]

Could a modern internal combustion engine be adapted to burn either petroleum or hydrogen? Or both at the same time?Yup. It can be done. If you run an engine on hydrogen, however, it lacks the same "oomph" as a gas engine, since hydrogen's got a lower octane rating.

I doubt that. And I also doubt that anyone would want a tank of hydrogen in their car that would be compressed to say, a scuba tank.

I sure wouldn't.
Why not? Every gallon of gas in your tank is equal to about five sticks of dynamite. Even worse, if your gas tank ruptures, all the fuel runs out onto the ground where it can easily be ignited by a cigarette or hot spark. By contrast, if a hydrogen tank leaks, the gas travels upwards and quickly disperses. (Most of the people on the Hindenberg died from jumping not burning, and the damn thing was painted with rocket fuel, so it's no wonder it went up!)

[Malacandra]

You're absolutely right about the fluorine thing and I was thinking about including a qualifier regarding it, but it's so unlikely that we'd see a practical fluorine/water internal combustion engine, I didn't consider it worth mentioning in my post (particularly as you had already covered it).

In practical terms, water is hydrogen that has already been burnt - we can of course get it to react some more - even in a way that can be described as 'burning' - if we use a more vigorous or concentrated oxidant, but that's probably true of other things too; the soot from a chimney is already burnt, but I bet we could burn it again in the presence of pure oxygen.

No, it isn't; it's amorphous carbon plus some impurities, the result of incomplete combustion in the fireplace. You could indeed burn it in pure oxygen, of course.

[Mangetout]

No, it isn't; it's amorphous carbon plus some impurities, the result of incomplete combustion in the fireplace. You could indeed burn it in pure oxygen, of course.
OK, but a lot of other things we consider 'burnt' are also the results of incomplete combustion - like water; the result of incomplete combustion of hydrogen in the presence of oxygen, but absence of fluorine.

[Cardinal]

Not a very good test. Elemental oxygen is also freakin' everywhere, and it is, in fact, very reactive. It's just being replenished as fast as it's being reacted away.I know your point, but the kicksave on my point is that I DID say that it wasn't reacting, which the oxygen is. There's also got to be like multiple magnitudes of order more water than there is elemental oxygen on earth.

[Mangetout]

I know your point, but the kicksave on my point is that I DID say that it wasn't reacting, which the oxygen is. There's also got to be like multiple magnitudes of order more water than there is elemental oxygen on earth.I think the distinction would be lost on most casual observers, for a few of reasons:
-- water does react with things - for example, in causing metals to rust.
-- even when water isn't actually reacting, it often looks like it is, because it is such a common solvent
-- oxygen is pretty much invisible, so it's hard to see it reacting.

[Cardinal]

I think the distinction would be lost on most casual observers, for a few of reasons:
-- water does react with things - for example, in causing metals to rust.
-- even when water isn't actually reacting, it often looks like it is, because it is such a common solvent
-- oxygen is pretty much invisible, so it's hard to see it reacting.A.Water is not changing chemically to make rust. The acidic or salty water acts as a medium for the reaction, and more water is produced by the oxidation of the iron atoms. http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/redox/faq/how-iron-rusts.shtml

B. Most people don't think that water is chemically changed when it acts as a solvent.

C. Yes, it's hard to see the oxygen reacting, but by this point in the class I've hopefully beat into them that "burning" means "combining with oxygen", and they've already taken biology, so they know that elemental oxygen is involved in some very prevalent reactions.

[diggleblop]

I heard it takes a lot of energy to remove the H from H2O

[Mangetout]

A.Water is not changing chemically to make rust. The acidic or salty water acts as a medium for the reaction, and more water is produced by the oxidation of the iron atoms. http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/redox/faq/how-iron-rusts.shtmlRust doesn't consist solely of metal oxides:
From This Wikipedia article on 'rust' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust)
Rust is the substance formed when iron compounds corrode in the presence of oxygen and water. It is a mixture of iron oxides and hydroxides. Rusting is a common term for corrosion, and usually corrosion of steel.
(Graping mine for emphasis)

[Cardinal]

Having reread my link, I see that the hydroxides do come from the water. So basically (ha!) water is consumed to make rust.

But I don't get your point about metal oxides.... OHHH. The iron is oxidized when it loses electrons, which is what I was referring to. The atom has been ionized by oxidation. In chemistry nerd-land, what the iron is combined with in the end is kind of immaterial to the term "oxidation".

[Cardinal]

Steve Martin is a trustee of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

[Cardinal]

Wow, what a screwup. :smack: :rolleyes: :confused: :o