The car that runs on water….differently
June 14th, 2008 by steveThere are lots of claims of cars that run on water — most by burning the hydrogen atoms as fuel. The problem with this idea is the tied up in a couple of laws of thermodynamics. The energy needed to break down the H2O molecule is equal to or greater than the energy you get from burning the hydrogen.
However, these folks say they have it beat.
Note in the video that they claim to use the ELECTRONS to power the car. Not the hydrogen atoms.
Hmm…. I’d like to believe it, but many times it feels as though I’m from Missouri.
Tags: fuel
June 15th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Sound fishy to me.
A regular hydrogen/oxygen fuel cell works by having hydrogen fed in one side and oxygen on the other. There is a membrane and catalyst on hydrogen side that breaks the hydrogen molecule made of two hydrogen atoms apart into 2 hydrogen atoms and two electron, the hydrogen atoms now separated from their electrons go through the membrane to the other side. Now the other side a catalyst splits the oxygen molecule into two oxygen atoms. When the hydrogen atoms arrive two of them combine with one oxygen atom to form a water molecule. A catalyst also helps in the reaction so that the water forms without true combustion. However the electrons are forced to go around in an electric circuit so they can recombine with their hydrogen atom now a part of the water molecule. A fuel cell can be up to 80% efficient that is 80% of the energy released during the combining of hydrogen and oxygen is in the form of electrical energy, the rest of course is released as heat.
Everything in this obeys the laws of thermodynamics, the energy comes from combining hydrogen and oxygen and as long as those are fed into the fuel cell you get electricity.
It seems like it would be possible that there would be a way that when a water molecule is pulled apart into hydrogen and oxygen that the hydrogen could be sent through a membrane without its electron so the electron would have go through a circuit to get back to the hydrogen, basically a fuel cell in reverse.
Now Genepax claims the use a chemical reaction to break the water apart and use a membrane. So that sounds like that they claim to have a reverse fuel cell. I know of chemical reactions that will break water molecules apart. A simple one is just to add potassium to water; it will rip apart the water molecules to form potassium hydroxide and free hydrogen. It gives off so much energy as heat the free hydrogen will ignite with the oxygen in the air see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGqBbbECZxA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFG4Yr7lQzw . But it always takes energy to pull apart a water molecule, in the potassium plus water reaction, the forming of potassium hydroxide gives enough energy to rip the water apart and heat up the hydrogen. Plus the potassium is used up and the reaction stops. This is true in all the chemical reactions that spit water apart, there is a chemical being used up. To get the potassium back you have to supply enough energy to rip the potassium hydroxide molecules back apart. So Genepax’s claim that you can continue to get energy by just adding water doesn’t make sense that is it does not obey the laws of thermodynamics.
June 16th, 2008 at 10:44 am
This made me think about Pons and Fleischmann’s cold-fusion reactor. That’s what we need!
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/1258
June 16th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Well if Cold-fusion is real then it doesn’t violate the laws of thermodynamics, but does violate the current theories of nuclear reactions. Now there small chance that there is something wrong with the current nuclear theories which will allow cold fusion, but this chance is massively greater that the chance the the laws of thermodynamics have a mistake that allows the generation of energy purely from breaking water apart.
I only know of one revision to the the laws of thermodynamics since they were first proposed, but many revisions to the theories of nuclear structure and reactions.