[LAD] OT: alternative fuel for cars [was: Re: Car engine sound emulation for future electic cars. ideas ?]

[Sampo Savolainen]

Quoting Patrick Shirkey <pshirkey at boosthardware.com>:

> Ouch. The blog is just keeping track of recent developments that have
> been made that use water as a source of fuel.
> 
> You're right that hydrogen is the actual power source but as hydrogen is
> very nicely and efficiently compressed into water it make sense to call
> water a fuel.
> 
> If you look through the archives you will see that there are people
> running motors with water. Straight out of a bottle and run through this
> new circuit that you label childish with enough power to charge a piston
> and spin a rotor.

What bothered me about these experiments that there was absolutely no
description of what they were doing.

You've been able to run cars on hydrogen for decades:

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

"Enough power to charge a piston and spin a rotor"? Where is that power
coming from exactly? If you use water as the fuel, you need an alternative
energy source to extract the oxygen and hydrogen. By the laws of
thermophysics, you will need _more_ energy to do the extraction than what
you will get from burning the hydrogen (as burning hydrogen is the exact
opposite reaction).

If they would actually be using water as a fuel for an internal combustion
engine - they would have invented a perpetual motion device as their exhaust
would be the same stuff as their fuel. And we all know that's not possible,
right?

What they are doing is electric motor conversion using hydrogen as a medium
to use old style engines. I guess that has it's uses. That seems to be what
the company Jack Nicholson was promoting was trying to do.

> The people doing the research and experimentation are doing it open
> source style with limited funding and resources usually in the garage at
> home. It may look unprofessional at first glance but if you look deeper
> you will see there is some very professional work being achieved.

Don't get me wrong. I want nothing more than get rid of our dependency on
gasoline and other fossil fuels and have non polluting options.

I'd like more details than videos of bubbling canisters and "exposions".
Open Source means, open source, I just see videos and no explanation to what
they are doing and _how_. Without explanations the videos look like playing
around with dangerous things (electricity, hydrogen) for no good reason.

The MIT stuff is way cool though. That looks like it could (and should)
change the way we power our lives. But that's using solar energy as the
energy store, using water as a battery and hydrogen as a fuel.
 
I'll try to stop now.

 Sampo "OT" Savolainen