H2O used to power a car

brightontraveller

H2O fuel used to power welding equipment and a car just wondered what other opinions are on this seems pretty green?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyhB2ffNrzA

Paul_Herring

I'm inclined to think not. See http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=print_topic;f=56;t=002848
And http://www.mmmfiles.com/mmm/index.php/2007-05-28/70/

kaya

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, i have spent two years designing, building and testing a similar device, although we havent tried to weld with it we have sold in excess of 50 units to hauliers (mostly in the uk) which have been fitted to a number of different Diesel lorries and coaches, 98% of customers noticed between 5 and 30% fuel savings with the units fitted, we did the math and whilst it is possible to run a car engine completely on the gas produced from electrolysis( i have seen it done on a lawnmower) you would need to charge a huge bank of car batteries for 24hrs from the electricity mains supply in order to produce enough gas for a 20min drive, as a fuel suppliment for big diesel's testimonial evidence is pretty conclusive, the problem is that heat is caused as a by product of the electrolysis process so most of the units available on the market will boil after 5 mins of operation
and just inject water vapour into the engine, as will all the "cheap" plastic drainpipe designs made and sold for cars, our unit is mounted externally with a big fan to keep it cool, so it does have potential in the future but we need to harness the suns energy correctly to facilitate the electrolysis process before anyone can claim "free energy" or run a car from it for any noticable period of time

cepheus

Kaya

I presume your device electrolyses H20 into H2 + 0 through an on board battery? There are a lot of energy losses along the way, what sort of savings are achieved after allowing for the electricity to charge the battery?

If you are carrying a charged battery surely it makes more sense to run an electric motor with it.

HugoSP

There is huge potential for the welding/cutting tool purely from a health and safety angle, provided that it can be brought to the market at a reasonable cost.

Whilst I would like to think that it has the potential to reduce dependency on fossel fuels, I fear that the oil companies could make the patent holders an offer they couldn't refuse.

geordie_joe

HugoSP wrote: »

Whilst I would like to think that it has the potential to reduce dependency on fossel fuels,

Yes but we need to find a good way of generating electricity without burning fossil fuels first. otherwise we will be burning more fossil fuel to create electricity fo save us burning fossil fuels in cars.

HugoSP wrote: »

I fear that the oil companies could make the patent holders an offer they couldn't refuse.

It's always been said that if you invent a car that runs on water the oil companies would pay you a fortune NOT to market it.

You could earn billions with an engine that runs on water, but the oil companies would also buy the patent off you for billions (then bury it).

cepheus

There seems to be a lot of paranoia about oil companies restricting technologies through patents. The simple reason why water is not being used as a fuel is because it is NOT a chemical fuel, these methods simply use the hydrogen it contains as an energy carrier. The energy source used to separate hydrogen is either electricity or methane (through reforming) and there are far easier, cheaper and more ecologically sound ways of using primary energy sources than generating hydrogen from water through electolysis.