Water fuel technology

Im new here and maybe there has been posts like this before. Does anyone know about useing water to fuel engines? Like stan meyer did? Ive built fuelcells myself and make hydrogen and may have one now that will run a engine which im still working on. Ive heard lots of people building these things and men in black come in and destroy the place, maybe kill you and take anything to do with your fuel cell. Oil companies will stop you at all coast, well think about it there billions of dollars and rich lifestyle are on the line, they can afford a couple hundred grand to have you caped.

I doubt that there's any Huge Secret Plot to off people who can figure out a way to use water for fuel, because as near as I can figure out, although water for fuel is possible and has been demonstrated, it's simply not feasible. Think about it:

It takes a tremendous amount of electricity to 'crack' water into its components hydrogen and oxygen, and that electricity has to come from somewhere.

And once you get the hydrogen, it takes even more power to scrub it, compress it, store it, and transport it to re-fueling locations.

Plus, you have to re-configure a bazillion gas stations to be able to dispense hydrogen as well as existing hydrocarbon fuels; and finally, you'd have to re-build or replace any car on the road which presently relies on hydrocarbon fuels -- which is just about every one of them.

I mean, it's not like you can fill your gas tank with tap water, drop in a Magic Pill, and drive off into the sunset.

The best you are going to come acroos are hydroelectric dams which convert the flow of water into electricity and turbine engines where water is heated by a fuel source (nuclear) which turns it into steam and powers a turbine.

I am not really that technically minded, but have heard alot of people saying it really isn't feasible to power cars by water.

Could someone tell me how much water would be needed to power say... a standard 4 cylinder car? May be a silly question but just interested.

Thanks
M@

Originally posted by Disaster_Boy
I am not really that technically minded, but have heard alot of people saying it really isn't feasible to power cars by water.

Could someone tell me how much water would be needed to power say... a standard 4 cylinder car? May be a silly question but just interested.

Thanks
M@

It's not really the weight or amouint of water -- it's the fact that it gets no "bang for the buck." You have to convert the water into hydrogen and oxygen, which takes more power than you get when you burn the hydrogen to convert it to water vapor.

(so, it might take you 20 hours of house current to separate enough hydrogen out of a tank of water to carry you 15 miles. You either have to wait 2 days to get enough hydrogen to power a car, or you have to pay for the equivalent electricity for a two-story office building to get enough power to separate out the hydrogen to burn.)

You'd do better to use straight hydrogen.

Well, the first thing you would have to do is to realize that heat does wonders in making power. You can burn wood (or coal, or oil, or natural gas, or uranium) to boil water and make the expanding steam push a piston back and forth (an external-combustion steam engine, like they used to have on the old locomotives) or to spin a turbine which will generate electricity which is how we get about 90% of our electricity in the US.

Or you can mix gasoline and air into a mist and use a electrical spark to make it explode inswide a cylinder which forces down a piston which turns a crankshaft, which is how most car engines operate.

Or you can take what's called Number 2 fuel oil, and compress it very highly so that the compression itself causes it to explode inside the cylinder which forces down a piston, etc., which is what we call a "diesel" engine.

With a steam engine, the fire is outside the piston and cylinder, which is why it's called an "external-combustion" engine. In a gasoline or diesel engine, the explosion is inside the cylinder, which is why we call it an "internal combustion" engine.

Now some people might say that in a steam engine, the work comes from water, since steam is just water vapor. But that's not really true, because it's the stuff that's burned which is the fuel, whether wood, coal, oil, uranium, or what-have-you.

Now you probably remember from your basic science that you need three things for burning to take place: fuel, oxygem, and heat. Hydrogen is a great fuel, and since water is nothing but hydrogen and oxygen, you'd think that it'd be just great to use as power, because it combines a fuel and oxygen!

Except that it doesn't, of course. You can boil water, but you can't burn it!

So if you want to use water as fuel, you have to separate the hydrogen from the water (usually throwing the oxygen away, because there's plenty of that in the atmosphere anyway), and injecting compressed hydrogen into the cylinder and mixing it with air (which has the oxygen, right?) and making that mixture explode and push down the piston, etc.

You could also use the same hydrogen to power a fuel cell, which is a thing that makes electricity from hydrogen. Then, that electricity could power electric motors, which could run your car.

But the problem is how much it costs to get the hydrogen from the water in the first place -- it takes a lot of electricity, which means you have to burn a lot of something to make the electricity, so why not eliminate the middle-man and use that "something" to run your car outright?

Japan is mixing methanol and water in order to produce hydrogen. They have also been promising this fuel cell would be released to the market for laptops for almost 3 years.
www.jhuapl.edu...

Originally posted by jhh
Japan is mixing methanol and water in order to produce hydrogen. They have also been promising this fuel cell would be released to the market for laptops for almost 3 years.
www.jhuapl.edu...

I've seen reports on the technology -- there's a huge problem with the weight of the batteries. It's viable for laptops and so forth, but they only require 5 volts or less. A car's gonna require just a bit more.

Here is a site that makes the claim that it has a hydrogen on demand system that will power a vehicle using water as the fuel

peswiki.com...:Emerging_Technologies_Development_Corporation

Here is more info on Water to Hydrogen and how cheep it can be


web.archive.org...

colsislander, not to put a damper on your enthusiasm, but there are lots of sites like this which say they're On The Verge Real Soon Now of coming up with a "breakthrough" in alternative energy -- and, over the past ten or twelve years I've been following the business, they never have.

As far as I'm concerned, when they actually have demo units that anyone can look at and test -- and such tests are written up in the scientific literature -- I'm simply not going to take it seriously.

I've been burned too many times before.

I remember seeing a documentary about two years ago that was talking about using a technology based on plants. It was trying to replicate plants breaking down hydrogen and oxygen into separate particles to use as energy and would require little, if no electricity to produce. Any one else hear about this?

I cant say I have neard anythign like this, btu I would be highly interested to hear from someone who has

There is another way. When I was in college, I went to my physics professor with an idea and some information(I'm not going to say what it was) and he told me that he wanted look at my information and do some calculations. The next day he came to me and said "I think that you have something there, but you will also get another increase in power from**** that you didn't take into consideration". He encouraged me to continue looking at my idea and I have over the years. At the time, I didn't feel that certian technologies were quiet advanced enough to make my idea efficient, now I do. I'm not going to give my idea to others to make trillions of dollars from. Maybe I can get a grant one day to build it. It would make most fuel run engines obsolete and it is not some lame idea that consumes more energy than it produces.

Well, if you have something that you think might be another source of energy and you're not willing to discuss it, I suppose we'll have to wait until you do come up with something you can talk about.

An any event, good luck! I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say we hope to hear from you some day.

It IS used. On the spacecraft. It's called fuel cell technology to my understanding. The water is electrolyzed into component parts on the spacecraft slowly to generate:

a) Fuel for the space shuttle, namely hydrogen
b) Oxygen for the crew

How do you think they get their fuel in space after the big fuel tank is gone?

Originally posted by Off_The_Street
An any event, good luck! I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say we hope to hear from you some day.

I talked to a guy that I know that is an aid to a senator about a grant. He told me that they don't give grants to individuals for this sort of thing and that even though they hyped it up about alternate power sources, it was just talk. So don't hold your breath too long.

Here's an idea I've been tossing around for a couple hours.

(I'm thinking small here , like powering a home plus a little extra.)

Why not just use Solar and wind to generate the free electricity for the electrolysis, store the Oxygen and hydrogen on site , and just reverse the process with fuel cells when you need the electricity. ( or this could be done on a space station too I think.)

You can use the electricity directly from the solar and wind generators , and use the left over to power the electrolysis. If you wanted.

Fuel cells are a lot more efficient than burning the hydrogen to power a generator.

It doesn't matter how much electricity is used to power the electrolysis , because its free in this case. And theoretically by reversing the process you could get a 1 to 1 conversion, but you would have to store the gases , and fuel cells are only about 83 % efficient .

So the system might produce 50 or 60 % of the extra electricity it collects.

So the system basically converts free energy from the sun , into chemical energy that is stored for later use. It looses some of the electricity that is put into it ( It was free anyway), but it stores it until you need it .

The beauty of the system is that its all Green Power, and free , and if you can add power to the grid you get Paid!





[edit on 26-8-2005 by lost_shaman]

Originally posted by lost_shaman

It doesn't matter how much electricity is used to power the electrolysis , because its free in this case. And theoretically by reversing the process you could get a 1 to 1 conversion, but you would have to store the gases , and fuel cells are only about 83 % efficient .

So the system might produce 50 or 60 % of the extra electricity it collects.


[edit on 26-8-2005 by lost_shaman]

You won't get a 1 to 1 conversion, but it will work and is a good idea. This kind of idea is what this country needs to start looking at for the near future.

You can use pulsed electricity (I think it's around 47 Khz or so IIRC) to crack water with FAR more efficiency than just running a current through it.

www.spiritofmaat.com...

Has some info about it, but if you want to see this in action do a search for a documentary on the P2P networks called "It runs on water". It's very simple.