Gizmodo

How long before an evil mad scientist sets our oceans on fire?

new fuel source!

THERE I SAID IT!!!

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I swear you already posted this Giz.....but what do I know?

That picture is awesome.

Wasn't you guys that posted a water powered car last year????

The car was filled wit water, and some machine transfomed the water into a GAS called HH0, Which Was the fuel to the car

Vonnegut was this close to getting it right ...

So, let me get this straight. He wants to burn salt water and harness the energy? The oceans already provide us with enough energy to keep us and the rest of the planet alive. I suppose he wants to cut down and burn trees as well.

I wonder how long it will take the oil companies to kill this guy or buy the rights to his discovery.

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still thinking this best.

Of course the radio emissions that are needed to make this happen take a lot more energy than is released by the burning of the hydrogen. But hey, who sweats the details with these 'cool' free/cheap energy inventions.

OK guys, this has got to be bunk. The energy required to break the chemical bonds will be equal to the energy gained from creating them. Since no system can be 100% efficient, it is impossible for this to produce more energy than it consumes. In fact, since producing radio waves is not 100% efficient either and producing the electricity necessary to produce the radio waves from the heat generated by the resulting flame is also not 100% efficient and it is unlikely that 100% of the generated radio waves would even enter the water, there is likely to be a substantial energy loss.

This simply can't work.

Besides, this story first circulated back in May, so it is old news.

yea...a water powered car is likely burnin the hydrogen that is in the water.

this makes it sound as tho the actual saltwater is being ignited.

if so, then i need to invest in this asap

Great! (if you conveniently ignore the energy you're putting in with the RF generator)

Can someone provide me with a little info, I know there is a lot of water in the world, but I'm wondering if we "burn" water or even turn it into hydrogen... how long will it take before the water is all gone, or how to we recreate the water? (this is assuming that water is destroyed or broken down into other compounds during these changes)

Thanks

@visionep: You beat me to it

@warf0x0r:
Producing hydrogen from water (requires energy):
2 H2O -> 2 H2 + O2

Buring hydrogen in oxygen, i.e. air (releases energy)

2 H2 + O2 -> 2 H2O

You don't need to worry about running out of water

WARFOXOR: If we're understanding this correctly, the radio-frequency breaks the water down into Hydrogen + Oxygen...and then those gases are burned. When you ignite Hydrogen and Oxygen, they reform into water.

That's why all that comes out of the tailpipe of a hydrogen-ICE or hydrogen-fuel-cell car is water.

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Radio waves don't always need insane amounts of power. I like how you instantly shoot down ideas without knowing the research behind things. Have you worked with this guy in his lab?

You really think this guy with an RF generator made out of pan pies has a 4000V hookup on his house? Whats if it uses 24v and 35W?

BY JEREMIAS AT 04:45 PM

Wasn't you guys that posted a water powered car last year????

The car was filled wit water, and some machine transfomed the water into a GAS called HH0, Which Was the fuel to the car

HHO = H2O

@Jeremias: True, it also used water as a fuel, but up until now (to my knowledge, at least), all such attempts have been based on electrolysis, which uses an electric current to extract the hydrogen and produce the power. This, on the other hand, sounds like merely subjecting salt water to certain RF frequencies can produce the same result, which may have profoundly different (i.e. better) efficiencies involved.

Link say;
"But researching its potential will take time and money, he said. One immediate question is energy efficiency: The energy the RF generator uses vs. the energy output from burning hydrogen."

So kill that enthusiasem.
For now.

This was on BoingBoing last week: link.

...the radio wave energy used to split the water exceeds the amount of energy produced by the flame, resulting in a net loss.

This method creates heat from electricity by generating RF, breaking hydrogen from oxygen, and then recombining the hydrogen and oxygen. There are probably more efficient ways to generate heat.

@Luka_Veliki:
the fact that the article points out that the energy intput vs. output is a big question makes me far more optimistic than most claims of "NEW ENERGY!"...

I will refrain from any negative or positive views until I see some numbers on power input and power output, and a reasonable estimate on the efficiency of harnessing the output

You know what this means??

Keanu Reeves was RIGHT!

(see Chain Reaction for the reference)

The question is not, "Is this free energy?"

The question is, "Does this help with the massive inefficiency of hydrogen power?"

Hydrogen power is, and has always been, a battery, rather than a fuel. You generate power somewhere, somehow, and use it to create hydrogen. You take that hydrogen somewhere (or just use it on-site) and run it through a fuel cell to get electricity, or just burn it for heat/thrust.

Even neglecting the potential for an improvement in efficiency, this could solve a major problem with the water source -- Electrolysis needs *pure* water, or the electrodes get so caked with impurities that the process halts itself. If Mr. Kanzius has found a way to electrolyze water, even at the *current* level of efficiency, he has opened possibilities for massive improvements to the desalination process:

Take seawater. Blast it with radio waves. Siphon off the hydrogen (and oxygen, no harm there) and run it through a fuel cell. Use the power from the fuel cell to offset part of the demand from the radio emitter.

I think a lot of you are missing the point. The question isn't whether it's a fuel source, it's whether it's a more efficient way of obtaining hydrogen than electrolysis. Also, what role is the salt playing? Considering the color of the flame, it seems to be part of the reaction.

@LastVigilante: if you are going to quote BoingBoing, quote the important parts....

Mark Frauenfelder (BoingBoing):
I'm guessing what's happening here is the radiation is splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The salt has nothing to do with it, and the radio wave energy used to split the water exceeds the amount of energy produced by the flame, resulting in a net loss.

@bobdobbs:
Considering the color of the flame, it seems to be part of the reaction.

Nonsense, you clearly don't understand the principle behind flame tests. You are seeing the atomic emission spectrum of sodium in the flame. It's not part of the reaction and it isn't generating any extra energy.

If this turns out to be an energy source, this guy better hire bodyguards and fast.

@Inaki: So you think they're generating free energy? It doesn't matter how much power you put in, you're not getting more out. So it doesn't matter if it's high energy RF or low energy RF.
Whether it's better or greener than any other power technology depends on where the energy is initially coming from.

@CaseyG:
Hydrogen power is, and has always been, a battery, rather than a fuel.

I'm not sure there's a difference. One is a store of energy and the other is a battery.
(for the slow: in other words they do the same thing, store energy).

when engadget post this story, it started quite the debate about what is happening. sounds like things will go the same way here.

i personally just see progress, that is how it should be preceived in my opinion.

@wjousts: Congratulations for picking out the poorly-choosen word "reaction" to focus on, but my point was what role is it playing, not that it's contributing energy. Got a snarky response for that?

Seeing as most of our bodies are comprised of saline...

Hello death ray!

DARPA is going to love this.

@Scotch_and_Soda: Ice9. Yipes!

This was reported over a month ago by TV stations in Florida. Just about all of them had live demonstrations which they made part of their report. Just do a youtube search for "Kanzius" and you'll find them.

The idea is wicked cool, but that big factor remains...can you get an efficient amount of energy versus the amount to keep up the RF transmitter. If there's enough to power the RF and still have enough to turn some wheels and move 1000 lbs in a big enough system, you have yourself a water-powered car.

That image is the same one I use on my desktop! =-D

@BOBDOBBS I totally agree. I also notice the color of the flame. It looks very much like the NaCl is burning very well along with the H2+O because of the heat of the reaction. Very cool though.

@wjousts: KK, thanks. The only thing I'd have to say is that 50 years ago people weren't worrying about running out of gas. Plus ocean life doesn't exist in oil reserves... but yes there definately is a large amount of water out there.

Reminds me of that logo in Futurama on Whale Oil. Moby

Man, that image is splendid.

Imagine that... Running your Aston Martin DBS with a combination of Evian and "fleur de sel" salt from Brittany.

Meh, I prefer Hydrogen Peroxide. At high enough concentrations, it ignites on contact with air.

I don't know if anyone said it, but someone referenced HHO. That's a magnecule. Or Brown's gas I think.

OMFG! Keanu Reeves is a freakin genius!
[www.imdb.com]

Granted it's not RF, but he uses sound to burn water. LOL! Seriously, odd co-inkydink.

Oh, one other thing, take note of the part that says "proper frequencies". It's not necessarily the amount of power being used for the RF, but the frequencies being used.

If, theoretically, those frequencies are affecting the hydrogen at the atomic resonance level, causing them to break their weak bonds with the oxygen, then as long as you have a strong enough RF signal to penetrate the volume of water to be affected (and it need not be all the gallons in a fuel tank at a time, but only as much as needed to create the necessary hydrogen for a single engine cycle), it doesn't necessarily have to be extremely high power.

In any case, this is NOT about FREE energy. What this will be about is whether the dollar cost of generating enough hydrogen in this way to travel a certain distance is less than the dollar cost of gasoline needed to travel the same distance.

All the armchair physicists and green energy proponents and nay-sayers can argue all they want, but if it helps get us off the foreign oil teat, then I'm all for it.

@bobdobbs: from the prior explanation, kinda sounds like Na+ is an innocent bystander within the flame itself, but if I understand the report correctly, this only works with salinated water, so Na+ would seem to play a role in how the RF energy gets transferred into the H2O in order to break the bonds apart.

On a side note, is this not very similar to how microwave works? Only in the case of microwave, the H2O molecule gets all 'excited' and 'hot' without breaking apart. But isn't it a similar process?

We should be focusing our money and attention on securing abundant clean energy for our today and our tomorrows imho. That means solar, wind, wave -> there's no reason a seaside desalinization plant couldn't produce the energy required to drive electrolysis or RF driven H2O splitting by utilizing wave energy. I've said so for years. It's such an easy concept (maybe it's wrought with difficulties that I'm not aware of?)

Build a strong pier, along the edge have large bouyant containers that can ride up and down with the wave action, and have them attached to the pier via a bicycle type chain/gear contraption so as it moves up and down due to wave/gravity, it drives a central screw which in turn moves a coil, makes electricity -> RF/electrolysis powered!!

dude, did you hear? there's this car, and it runs on WATER, man!

@chiujason: exactly. a 'james bond'-type supervillain with giant offshore platforms sporting tremendous radio wave generators!
bwahh hahh ha ha!!

@ackthbbft: Breaking down a water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen atoms always takes as much energy you get from re-combining them into water, i.e., burning the hydrogen, and that's assuming 100% efficiency, no matter what RF gimmicks are involved. Suggesting a machine that can self-sustain on a cycle of breaking and re-forming water molecules or even generate net output is just another disguise for perpetual motion.

What is physically possible is to use a clean energy source, say solar, in some very large-scale facility to drive this type of hydrogen production and then fuel our vehicles with the hydrogen. We don't get as much energy out of the hydrogen as we can out of the solar panels, but this might be more practical than trying to put solar panels on every vehicle.

In my opinion, since hydrogen simply does not occur naturally (for any practical purpose), unlike petroleum or sunshine, its use is limited to a medium of transferring energy, like electricity. It can be power plant->electricity->electric car or power plant->hydrogen->fuel cell car. Whether or not it's better than electricity in that role is another question.

We've got the water powered toilet, why not other waterp powered stuff too?

@TDG: HHO is bonded differently than H2O. H2O is a liquid at room temp. but HHO is a gas.

@wezelboy: NOW you're cooking with gas!!!

@ackthbbft: If, theoretically, those frequencies are affecting the hydrogen at the atomic resonance level, causing them to break their weak bonds with the oxygen

Sounds sciencey, shame it's nonsense. You are breaking a chemical bond between H and O which is worth about 110 kcal. Not weak by any means.
And I don't know what you think you mean by atomic resonance in this context, but it has nothing to do with this. It anything is resonating it would be the vibrational modes of the molecule.

@EMoShunz: HHO is nonsense proposed by a crack pot. It's not science.

TIME TO TAKE BACK THE BEACHES FROM THE OCEANS!