Here’s a link to a clip of a news story about a man generating power from a water base. Yes, I know the urban legend about the magic gas pill, etc, etc…, which is my question here. I’m not very scientifically adept, is there something to this, or should the guy get props for putting one over on the local news channel?
COmplete bullshit. I don’t even have to look at the link to know this. It is *impossible to get more energy out of water than you put into it. Yes, there are ways to seperate it into hydrogen and oxygen and then burn that, but as said, you don’t get as much energy out of that as you have to put into it.
Well, I kinda figured that, but even so, is that useless? Could what you get have be beneficial in certain circumstances, even if it costs you energy to produce. Hmm. I’m tired, I’m not putting this clearly. These are the lines I’m thinking along: Suppose you perfected a fusion reaction that was horribly inefficient. Say it produced less energy than gasoline…but once the reaction was started, you could fuel it with anything, and the by product was water. Such a reaction might be of minimal use as a power source, but be enormously valuable as a way of disposing of dangerous waste, see what I mean? In this case, if you could produce a clean burning fuel from water, even if the process of creating that fuel used more energy than the end result generated, might it still be useful because it burns cleanly? If you used non polluting energy sources to create the fuel in the first place-wind, solar, tidal, nuclear, etc…, and used the resulting water based fuel to replace gasoline burning engines that pollute, would that not be beneficial to the environment, including that big bad boogie man called global warming that we’re all supposed to be so worried about?
I don’t know. I really don’t. So I’m asking.
Well, all this talk of a “Hydrogen Economy” pretty much is the same as what you’re describing. It assumes that you’re using some other source of power to generate hydrogen by splitting water. That hydrogen, then, can be used as a very clean and efficient way of storing power. There are definitely technical hurdles, mostly with the storage and transport of that hydrogen. People are uncomfortable with the idea of storing an explosive gas at very high pressures, and then putting this in cars…
Look up “Hydrogen Economy” if you want to learn more.
I wonder what HHO is.
That would be hydrogen hydroxide, also known as dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO). It’s very dangerous stuff. See http://www.dhmo.org/ for details.
Umm, your link bills itself as an unbiased source, but when I see a section in the FAQ titled “What is the link between Dihydrogen Monoxide and school violence?” and they quote an “award winning scientist” in another section, I don’t know.
I’m sure you’re more familiar with DHMO than I am (wouldn’t be hard); is their information legit?
Um… you do know that DHMO is a parody, right? They’re decribing water as a Dangerous Chemical.
Dihydrogen monoxide is a well known ‘fancy pants’ name for water.
Yes, dammit, I did, and I’m insulted that you would insinuate otherwise. What idiot wouldn’t . . .
No. No, I didn’t. I’m at work and just glanced at it . . . Criminy, I’ve been wooshed. I’m so embarrassed.
Every single thing on that web page is 100% factually correct. Read it very carefully.
The hydrogen economy doesn’t get hydrogen by the electrolysis of water. It gets it by the steam reformation of natural gas. Much cheaper.
There was an episode of Scientific American Frontiers that showed a program being tested in Iceland. At a gas station was a separate building that drew electricity from the power grid and produced hydrogen from water. That hydrogen could be dispensed to vehicles built to use it instead of gasoline. It doesn’t produce any energy (and since conversions are never 100% efficient, some is lost), but it provides a means to take energy from a fixed site and use it in a moving vehicle.
I watched that clip. I can’t tell if the inventory guy is a crackpot or if the news reporters are beyond stupid.
OK, already. Jeez, and I took four semesters of chemistry. I swear, this is the last time I post from work.
I have heard something about the technology referred to in the original post, but I can’t speak to it. Have a look at the original link.
Rob
Don Lancaster Says it better that I ever could, but here is a summary:
Electrical power is about the single most expensive way to buy energy there is. It can only be created at the expense of another source, it is highly volatile (must be consumed at nearly the same time it is generated) and requires extensive capital investment and infrastructure.
Decomposition of water by electrolysis effiency is normally less than 50% efficient. The best claim I could find was a production cost of $3 /kg (~1gal gasoline equivilent) energy. Note that that is a projection, not an achieved value, and it is cost to produce, not a selling price. Acheived production cost via electrolysis is around $8/kg.
If you have a Kilowatt hr. of electricity available, the best way to convert it to hydrogen is to sell it, use the profit to buy methane, (natural gas) and reform that into hydrogen.
Thank you engineer_comp_geek, as a chemist I only hear that dihydrogen monoxide joke once a week. They think they are clever every time.
I’m suspecting that all he’s doing is electrolysing water into H2 and O2 then using that as the fuel to power his torch. His glorefied HHO is probably just H2 and O2. Technically, the water isn’t the fuel, the electricity is. It has no applicability toward automobiles since you need energy to split water into H2 and O2. You may as well just run your car with that energy directly.
Does any of that explain the alleged “coolness” of his flame, when used on flesh?
I’m actually kind of curious. I never laugh off anything that someone is willing to have subjected to public scrutiny, at least at first. Who knows? Maybe the guy has put together something so obvious that everyone figured it was impossible.
It’s the latter.