Water For Fuel??????????

[Copperhead]

I am often reminded of a Popular Mechanics article I read back around '72 or '73. They took a AMC Gremlin with a V8, did a propane style modification to it, fed it hydrogen instead of gasoline. Was pretty impressive. Got good power, decent economy, and only water vapor out the back end. A little NOx, but you can't avoid that since the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen anyway. I suppose it was always the infrastructure that made it to where hydrogen was not a viable fuel, but I would love to have the option of a hydrogen powered internal combustion engine. Just from my old high school science class days, hydrogen can make a pretty good boom.

 

[buickanddeere]

Some hydrogen production would be feasable with surplus off peak power. However there is not a hydrogen transportation or storage . How do store this hydrogen? Use electricity to compress H2 into HP tanks? Bulky and expensive for all the btu stored. It's always been cheaper, particularly now to strip H2 out of natural gas than use electrolysis .
H2 also tends to make everything it touches brittle. H2 is also such a small molecule that it migrates through anything eventually .

 

[tjcarguy]

Ballard power scamed about a trillion dollars out of the economy proving it don't work very well---Trevor

 

[LD1]

Otherwise the energy to break up water, at this time, costs more than the end product.

IMO, that is the most important statement of this thread.

Remember Einsteins formula.....E=MC^2

There is a tremendous amount of energy in EVERYTHING. Even water. Just because we do not posses the technology or ability to utilize it efficient YET, does not me it isnt possible.

Look at how much power comes from nuclear reaction with such small amounts of matter. I am sure at one time that would have been thought to be impossible.

 

[Rock knocker]

IMO, that is the most important statement of this thread.

Remember Einsteins formula.....E=MC^2

There is a tremendous amount of energy in EVERYTHING. Even water. Just because we do not posses the technology or ability to utilize it efficient YET, does not me it isnt possible.

Look at how much power comes from nuclear reaction with such small amounts of matter. I am sure at one time that would have been thought to be impossible.

The disassociation of water and the following combustion of those products simply follows thermal dynamics. Reaction (1) requires more energy than will be produced by Reaction (2). This will be true forever. Quantum physics has nothing to do with this.

 

[/pine]

The disassociation of water and the following combustion of those products simply follows thermal dynamics. Reaction (1) requires more energy than will be produced by Reaction (2). This will be true forever. Quantum physics has nothing to do with this.

Does it not boil down (no pun intended)...to the method/technique that causes the initial reaction (1) ?

 

[drajj5]

The disassociation of water and the following combustion of those products simply follows thermal dynamics. Reaction (1) requires more energy than will be produced by Reaction (2). This will be true forever. Quantum physics has nothing to do with this.

I am in agreement with LD1's statement.....

I also agree with you, but still like to think outside the box..... guess I like to believe that somewhere someone will take the simple rules and bend them in a way to create something magnificent. Fuel is everywhere and can be used as energy to do work. I like the 'idea' of an HHO car ran from some mason jar contraption sitting in the grill of ones car. Is it feasible, probably not. But a lot of people have taken some outlandish idea's and came up with brilliant things.

Guess what I am trying to say is - all newly invented things will come from someone trying something a little different. It just may involve a Mason jar; who knows


Just my .02

 

[arrow]

I am often reminded of a Popular Mechanics article I read back around '72 or '73. They took a AMC Gremlin with a V8, did a propane style modification to it, fed it hydrogen instead of gasoline. Was pretty impressive. Got good power, decent economy, and only water vapor out the back end. A little NOx, but you can't avoid that since the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen anyway. I suppose it was always the infrastructure that made it to where hydrogen was not a viable fuel, but I would love to have the option of a hydrogen powered internal combustion engine. Just from my old high school science class days, hydrogen can make a pretty good boom.

Copper do you recall an article that I believe was also in PM in the eighties about a car (Fiero) that Smoky Yunick built that had a "hot burn" technology? I recall him delivering his findings to GM. He was a firery kind of guy who would not stand for any corporate b.s. Because of who he was and what GM was, they soon parted ways and the engineering for a super efficient burn tech died with him. He did it with what was the 2.4 cylinder engine in the Fiero. His first obstacle was with detonation as he attempted to increase hotter and hotter temperatures for fuel burning. He over came that with valve timing devloping a camshaft with the unheard of "0*" overlap. The car produced 230hp with initial figures of close to 50 mpg as I remember.

 

[Rock knocker]

Does it not boil down (no pun intended)...to the method/technique that causes the initial reaction (1) ?

No, all reactions must obey the laws of thermodynamics, namely the conservation of mass and energy. In this non quantum reaction my earlier post sums it up.

 

[LD1]

The laws of thermodynamics are just our understanding of it at this point in time. We certainly dont know everything (as a species). As our understanding of quantum physics and the universe grow, so does our understanding of the laws that govern them.

At one point the earth was flat and at the center of the universe.

It wont happen in my lifetime. But it wouldnt surprise me if alot of the laws that we take as fact are just plain wrong. We just do not understand or know any different at this time