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

[Patrick Shirkey]

On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 13:09 +0300, Sampo Savolainen wrote:
> 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


According to one resource the first ever piston engine was run on
hydrogen as oil hadn't been discovered when it was built back in the 17
hundreds. I haven't verified this claim though it does seem plausible.

There were also perfectly good electric cars manufactured by ford in the
1920's that were eventually taken out of production apparently because
there wasn't enough demand.

> 
> "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?

No one is claiming the over unity prize yet. What they have found is a
way to instantly split a water atom and burn the hydrogen at the same
time. It's clearly a very revolutionary concept and appears at first
glance to go against the 2nd law of physics. But there is more to it
than that and the details are only just emerging. However several people
have claimed they understand what is going on and that it is perfectly
within the laws. I'm not at that point yet but I will make a concerted
effort to understand it so that I can post it on the blog to save others
some time.

> 
> 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.
> 

This is slightly different but along the same lines. In this case there
is no need to store hydrogen as it can be instantly extracted from water
using this new circuit.

> > 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.
> 

Thanks for this feedback. I will try to provide more details. The blog
is only a couple of weeks old so there is still lots of room for
improvement.

> 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




-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd