mart360

Run Your Car With Water - water for gas

The first video is dubious,

the second, however offers some credibility


wonder how long before the idea gets bought out, or canned


Mart

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

or taxed

Dracoro

Sorry OP, but at what point did you start believing a word of it?

zip106

Would be nice to be able to say it's 100% true.

Who's going to be first to try it, then?

_Meridian_

iTrader: (1)

Apart from the fact that this is meaningless without knowing at what pressure (I assume atmospheric), what it seems to be saying is that the system turns water into water vapour?


M

TopBanana

The water is electrolysed into two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen (H2O), and then the hydrogen is burnt. So it's really a hydrogen powered car.

The problem is that electrolysis takes quite a lot of power. I don't know how much is left over to power the car.

TopBanana

Here's the original patent, and a list of patents which refer to it.

Hydrogen gas fuel and management ... - Google Patents

Unfortunately, the guy who thought of it was poisoned. Now I wonder who would have wanted to do that?

OllyK

Just a guess, unless they've found a way to circumvent the laws of thermodynamics, the answer is none. It's a variation on a Perpetual Motion Machine (PMM) getting free energy or more energy out than you put in, which can't happen.

Chelspeed

You'll need the same amount of power to electrolyse the water into hydrogen and oxygen as you'll get when you burn the hydrogen.

If you didn't then as said it would break the laws of thermodynamics and would be a perpetual motion machine.

It's a scam. Remember if it seems to good to be true then it probably is.

TopBanana

Rubbish!

Electrolysis overcomes the covalent bond of water molecules, and combustion is a completely unrelated exothermic reaction between hydrogen gas and oxygen. I don't how much energy it takes to break up the water, or that comes from burning the hydrogen, but I know it isn't the same.

_Meridian_

iTrader: (1)

No, electrolysis breaks water in hydrogen and oxygen. Burning hydrogen turns it back into water. It's the same reaction in opposite directions. Except the Second Law says you won't get quite as much energy back as you put in - you don't even break even. The energy gained from the burning is not enough to power the electrolysis completely, never mind move the car along. There has to be another form of energy input somewhere.


M

ScoobyWon't

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

You'll break even alright, that's the First Law - conservation of energy. You'll end up with a mixture of air and steam at the same temperature as if you'd just used the electricity to boil the water directly. What you can't do is get back to the exact same conditions as you started in - you can't turn 100% of the heat back into electricity.

When I see one of these 'water powered car' claims that actually refers specifically to the Laws of Thermodynamics, and either

a) explains where the energy input to the system comes from, or
b) describes an experiment that proves the Laws to be wrong by giving a counter-example

...then I'll believe it. Until then it's all just misunderstanding and/or misreporting of what's going on.

OllyK

You're correct, it isn't the same, electrolysis requires more energy than you get back.

If it was less, we'd have power plants all around the coast generating free electricity from sea water.

OllyK

You'll break even in a closed system, in the case of the car or commercial electrolysis plants you'll lose heat (caused by the electrical current through the wires etc) to the atmosphere which means you will in reality run at a loss.

what would scooby do

That's when they need to sort out their solar powered water "crackers"

Leslie

Did they mention that the water vapour in the exhaust is a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2.

Les

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

When was the last time CO2 condensed out of the air and fell as rain, then?

MJW

Les is referring to the theory that water vapour contributes to global warming :

Global Warming Supercharged by Water Vapor?

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Yes, I know - and I was referring to the fact that water vapour doesn't stay in the air until it's actively removed like carbon dioxide does. It rains.

2/3 of this planet's surface is covered with water, is anyone actually suggesting that the products of combustion by humans are significant compared to the rate of evaporation over such a huge area? (Answers with actual figures in only, please).

mart360

oh yes you can


tounge in cheek mode on:

The first test bomb ever to be exploded, at Alamogordo in the New Mexico desert on 16 July 1945, ‘the Gadget’, was an ‘implosion’ device, with a hollow plutonium core weighing about 8.3 lb (3.8 kg), compressed to critical density by about 4, 866 lb (2, 270 kg) of high explosive. The ‘yield’—the size of the explosion—was 22 kilotons. Nuclear weapon yields are measured as kilotons (each 1, 000 tons of TNT) or megatons (one million tons of TNT).


so 2.7 kg of explosive in, and 22kt out.

thats a tad more out than in wouldnt you say

tongue in cheek mode off:


Mart

Removed.

E=mc2 (Squared, can't work out how to do superscript!).

so in the example quoted above E=3.8 x 299,792,458 squared which is 3.8 x 89875517873681764 or 341526967919990703.2 Joules.

1 Joule is 2.778 x 10 to minus 7 Killowat hours, so that is equivalent to 12293987326 KW/H or 12294 Gigawatt/Hours or 12.3 Terrawatt Hours. In 2006 the TOTAL electricity consumption for the UK is estimated to have been 110 TW/H, so that bomb could, in theory, power the UK for about 41 days. Shame nuclear fission is so inefficient, and destructive. Hence the quest for fusion power, which is relatively simple(excuse the pun) and much more efficient. You could power the UK on 40 litres of water for a year.

(waits for schoolboy maths to be shot down in flames)

serega

Everything its possible, its just that we have no clue yet how to work it out...
Just look back a fair bit at the things that we didnt think would ever be possible, but are now an everyday occurance.

There are brilliant people throughout history that move industry forward one step, and then others pile in and finish/perfect the job.

Its the same with this, it will only take one brilliant mind to find a new way of doing something which have never been thought possible before...

Chelspeed

> Everything its possible

Bollocks. I agree that lot's of things are possible, many of which we don't have an inkling of at the present time.

But some things that we do know and understand are impossible. Like electrolysing water and then burning the hydrogen and water to get a net surplus of power to drive a car.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Lol I was going to talk about how the Laws of Thermodynamics have helped us send probes to Mars and given us jet aircraft and refrigeration and stuff, but I think you've summed it up there much more succintly than I could

Gav

I believe hydrogen power has already been worked out but there is a certain few people, namely oil companies who have put a stop to it as it will end everything they do.

But one things for certain, the person who holds the patent to hydrogen powered cars will be by far the richest person on the planet