Burning Water

YukonKing · May 20, 2008

Zeitgeist - The Movie

an interesting watch, warning contains religious material for and against.

have_blue · May 21, 2008

EastTexFrank said:
And there's the rub. It's not that you can't run a car on water, it's just that it doesn't make any economic sense to do it. Why would you use diesel to produce electricity to produce hydrogen to run a vehicle when it's a lot more efficient and economic to run the diesel in the vehicle in the first place. If anyone finds a free lunch somewhere give me a call.

Thank you!

With today's fuel prices, anyone that comes up with something to get you even 10mpg better mileage would be a world hero. All the stuff about inventions being suppressed is total hooey, and always have been.

You get more bang for the buck shooting hydrogen in balloons than for fuel in cars at the moment. Fuel cells could be practical for powering very small, light commuter cars some day, but they won't be helping any time soon.

barneyrb · May 21, 2008

Do a web search for Brown's Gas and it will cover this gizmo.

Eric_Phillips · May 23, 2008

This whole free ride thing. Think about the fact that you are having to put energy into a system to produce a fuel. In this case you are putting electricity, energy, into water to produce hydrogen, fuel. Crude oil is the same thing. Take some energy, heat and pressure from the earth, mix in a bunch of organic material, Mr. T-rex etc, and you get crude oil, fuel. In this case mother nature provided the added energy needed to convert something to a fuel. The people using solar energy which in itself is free, the collector cost money, can make it economically feasable. If you need to buy energy to make a different energy you loose everytime due to inefficiencies.

dixie306 · May 23, 2008

have_blue said:
Thank you!

With today's fuel prices, anyone that comes up with something to get you even 10mpg better mileage would be a world hero. All the stuff about inventions being suppressed is total hooey, and always have been.

You get more bang for the buck shooting hydrogen in balloons than for fuel in cars at the moment. Fuel cells could be practical for powering very small, light commuter cars some day, but they won't be helping any time soon.

Hooey?? Honda, Toyota, and GM don't think so, all three are working on hydrogen powered cars and GM is lagging way behind the other two, ck out all threes websites about them but here's honda's Honda FCX Clarity - Fuel Cell - Official Web Site

Egon · May 23, 2008

Iceland is doing work on developing hydrogen fueled engines.

MATR News: Iceland Opens Hydrogen-Filling Station

John861 · May 23, 2008

dixie306 said:
Hooey?? Honda, Toyota, and GM don't think so, all three are working on hydrogen powered cars and GM is lagging way behind the other two, ck out all threes websites about them but here's honda's Honda FCX Clarity - Fuel Cell - Official Web Site

By Hooey, I believe he was referring to the urban legends of car companies buying up and burying the inventions that would allow you to run cars on water. There is no conspiracy.

Yes, fuel cells and hydrogen powered cars are viable, and all the automakers are working on them. But, as it has been said, there is no free lunch. A fuel cell is little more than a battery that can store energy for later use. If you have an economical way to "charge" the fuel cell (especially via renewable energy source like solar, wind, etc.) the concept will work nicely.

BobRip · May 23, 2008

Egon said:
Iceland is doing work on developing hydrogen fueled engines.

MATR News: Iceland Opens Hydrogen-Filling Station

Iceland is using gethermal energy to generate electricity and then using that to make hydrogen. If there is some cheap or free energy source, hydrogen might be OK. But hydrogen is not an energy source, just an energy storage mechanism and not a very good energy storage mechanism. It's energy density is low per unit volume. This means big tanks or short range.

The extra efficiency of the fuel cells will help hydrogen tremendously. I think we are years (10, 20) away from an economical system. Fuel cells use to use platinum for their elements. This is really expensive stuff. Also the fuel cells that I have seen have lower power densitiy. This means that they will have to charge batteries or supper capacitors from the fuel cells to allow decent accleration. I sure hope it works out.

I think with $4 gas in America there will be some real incentive to research all of these technologies. It is probably to early to tell what is going to happen. Remember a few years back California was requiring companies to sell electric vehicles. This did not work probably because of inadequate batteries.

Boy it would be nice to have big improvements in batteries. However, at present batteries hold about %4 as much energy as gasoline of the same weight. That's a 20 to 1 disadvantage. Batteries have been the weak point of portable electric systems for at least 100 years. Many efforts have been made to improve them and they are better, but have a long way to go.

SPYDERLK · May 24, 2008

BobRip said:
Boy it would be nice to have big improvements in batteries. However, at present batteries hold about %4 as much energy as gasoline of the same weight. That's a 20 to 1 disadvantage. Batteries have been the weak point of portable electric systems for at least 100 years. Many efforts have been made to improve them and they are better, but have a long way to go.

YES. That is a good real world number after you factor in the energy you lose in making electricity from gasoline via eng/gen. Actual FULL energy from gasoline is 12.7 kiloWatt-hrs per kilogram. Best you can do with batteries is around 150 Watt-hrs per kilogram. That difference is a factor of 85. A decent amount of this difference [20vs85] can be recouped by using the waste heat from gas. Our cars do this some via the heater in winter.
larry