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.
Unfortunately I cannot remember the name. Sorry.
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.
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…
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 I saw.
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.
A more specific link on Randi’s site for this particular story
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.
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.
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.
You can’t burn water; it’s already burnt.
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.
Eh, I guess I shouldn’t venture into GQ since my posts always seem to be ignored 
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.
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.
It looks like someone re-discovered Brown’s Gas
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=brown's+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.
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.
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.
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!)
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.