Posted on 05/13/2006 7:14:51 AM PDT by Neville72
Take a look a this amazing news report on the local Fox Channel 26 in Clearwater, Florida on local inventor, Denny Klein and his water powered citting /welding torches and HHO/gas hybrid car.
Video on the technology:
http://www.freeenergynews.com/Directory/BrownsGas/WaterFuel.wmv
Amazing stuff at first glance. I'd love to hear some of our Freeper energy experts weigh in on the potential of this.
Hydrogen is one of the most expensive ways of powering a car. See:
http://media.popularmechanics.com/documents/Fuel_of_the_Future-e852.pdf
Its hard to argue with the video...impressive.
Mythbusters tried it last week on their show, and busted it flat. You simply cant produce enough hydrogen on board a car, to power the car. Its easy to produce hydrogen, in miniscule amounts, but enough to power a car? Nope.
You can't create energy, and so the person who made the news story was blissfully unaware of the all consuming question that everyone would have... "where does the energy come from to 'crack' the water into H and O?"
The story would lead one to think that he's invented a way to use less energy seperating water into H and O, than is recovered when you burn the H and O back into water. Sounds like a perpetual motion machine to me.
The report conveniently omits to mention how much electricity is required for the electrolysis process. What we need to know is how many BTUs in (for electrolysis) vs. how many BTUs out (when the resulting HHO gas is burned). The former must at least equal the latter (else we would have a perpetual motion machine in violation of the laws of thermodynamics). What we will find is that HHO is not a fuel, but an energy storage medium. Therefore, it will not reduce demand for conventional fuels.
"Cap'n, Ah kinot git BLUUD from a RRRRRRock."
How was he heating and cutting the metal?
How was he holding the tip of the torch as it was burning?
How and why did he receive a patent on the technology and a contract from the American military to outfit a Hummer with his new technology if it is bogus?
Those are a few of the many questions this report raises.
I'm no expert, but that would have been my guess too. Freshman chemistry taught me that equations have to balance. On one side, we have water, on the other side, we have the same amount of water, recombined at the tailpipe after combustion. Energy is produced to move the car down the road, so how much energy (electricity) must be input in order to balance the equation?
Even if it weren't expensive, it has other problems such as the safety and size of tanks needed for vehicles. That said, however, hydrogen could be produced cheaply if we got over our taboos of nuke plants.
From the web site:
The HHOS has been tested in two different vehicles (the current prototype, which is a 1994 Ford Escort Wagon, and a 1998 Ford Ranger pickup) and fuel economy increases have ranged from 22.9% to 100% depending upon the amount of electrical energy (amps & volts) that are available for the production of Aquygen™ Gas.
Looks like the details aren't as impressive as the video.
>You can't create energy, and so the person who made the news story was blissfully unaware of the all consuming question that everyone would have... "where does the energy come from to 'crack' the water into H and O?"
>The story would lead one to think that he's invented a way to use less energy seperating water into H and O, than is recovered when you burn the H and O back into water. Sounds like a perpetual motion machine to me.
...then why is Hummer building with it?
...then why is Hummer building with it?
What are you talking about?
A battery is an energy storage medium as well. How you "charge" the battery will determine if you can reduce the demand for "conventional" fuels. If you use nuclear energy, fission today, maybe someday fusion, converted to electricity, do the charging, then you could indeed reduce the need for "conventional" fuels, such as oil or coal. Of course coal is nothing to sneeze at either. It can be converted to liquid or gaseous fuels, or burned in a central power plant. Much of the electricity generated now is from coal.
He says in the report I've linked to that his electrolyser cost 70 cents per hour to operate
http://www.tampatrib.com/MGBKD7YQIGE.html
I would have liked to see him drink the water before he put into the tank...
It looks like he made a small, portable hydrogen cracker, which I think would be very valuable in the field where gasoline/diesel might be scarce. Soldiers could use this machine to crack hydrogen from water and use it to power their Hummers, and that has obvious value.
Cracking hydrogen from water is not a new science or a novel idea, but it does take a lot of energy (electricity) to do it. In fact, with today's technology, it takes more energy (electrical) to crack hydrogen from water than the energy (chemical) it produces, so it's not viable as a mass energy process. However, in situations like battlefields, under the right conditions (water and electricity is available), it's a great idea.
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