"Fuel" from Salt Water?

Treehugger -Science & Technology ^ | 9/11/07 | Jereny Elton Jacquot

[ckilmer]

The initial reports about this came out back in June. For a more detailed account including patent info see desalination research-Saltwater-into-fire

[Bat_Chemist]

So I’m sitting here, reading this post, thinking “Aw, geez, not THIS crap again,” when I smell something, as though something is burning in my house. I go into the kitchen and discover that the dishwasher is on the “dry” cycle, so I open it and immediately I find that a wooden spoon has fallen onto the heating element and now has a big char mark on it...

Maybe I can get a government grant to research using wooden spoons as an alternative energy source!

[Colorado Doug]

There is no question that the good professor, Rustum Roy has indeed proven the concept of Free Energy.

Let me see if I have this straight. John Kanzius invents this contraption that does something and Roy declairs that Kanzius may be on to something. Kanzius gets nothing and Roy gets big fat grants and contracts form DOE and NASA.

That sounds like something for nothing to me. Amazing! How much energy is in a half million dollar government grant?

[Colorado Doug]

There is no question that the good professor, Rustum Roy has indeed proven the concept of Free Energy.

Let me see if I have this straight. John Kanzius invents this contraption that does something and Roy declares that Kanzius may be on to something. Kanzius gets nothing and Roy gets big fat grants and contracts form DOE and NASA.

That sounds like something for nothing to me. Amazing! How much energy is in a half million dollar government grant?

[aruanan]

aruanan, what part of this science don’t you get?

There is nothing about this story that seems unreasonable. There is nothing that contradicts any known physical law.

Nothing in this story makes sense.

This is just your way of saying, "I don't see how this could possibly happen, therefore, it cannot."

Nothing passes the smell test.

Then your olfactory sense is probably defective.

[from occupied ga]

This is the third time that I've seen this POS artile posted

A big not this sh!t again bump

Oh and btw for the third time this is nothing except a variation on perpeutal motion of the first type

[aruanan]

Oh and btw for the third time this is nothing except a variation on perpeutal motion of the first type

If your science is as good as your spelling, it's not difficult to see how you'd think this is similar to a perpetual motion machine.

[from occupied ga]

Yeah, join all those naysayers of Edison and the Wright brothers

I'm curious. Tell me in your own words what the first law of thermodynamics means to you.

[from occupied ga]

drivel ... spelling ... drivel

Is that your best shot - a typo? You militantantly ignorant types are SO BORING.

[dinodino]

Sorry, aruanan, but just because it doesn’t contradict any known physical law doesn’t mean that it can be employed for any practical benefit. You need to consider the energy required to excite the vial of salt water.

[NavyCanDo]

There forgetting the most important element, “radio frequency”. Talk radio is more important than we thought.

[aruanan]

I'm curious. Tell me in your own words what the first law of thermodynamics means to you.

You can't get any more energy from a system to do work than there already exists in the system or in its constituents. Some people mistakenly state this as, "You can't get any more energy out of a system than you put into it." This is an imprecise statement because there are already plenty of examples where more energy is released from the system than the operator adds to it. This is because the operator has found a way, using a relatively small amount of energy, to liberate a larger amount of energy inherent in one of the constituents of the system he has made. A nuclear explosion is one example. The amount of energy released vastly exceeds anything put in by the creator of the bomb or the materials used to detonate it. It remains true, however, that one cannot get from the nuclear explosion any more energy than that already inherent in the materials.

In the case of the hydrogen from salt water, the claim is that the dissolved salts weaken the chemical bonds between oxygen and hydrogen and the radio waves at a particular frequency finish the job. It's incorrect, however, to say that there could be no more energy in the amount of hydrogen to be burned than there was in the radio waves used as part of the process to liberate it. You may as well say that a rock rolling down a hill cannot have any greater force upon impact somewhere below than the amount of force used to start it rolling. The basic principle of energy generation is to find some technical means to liberate the energy inherent in something. It's true that the usable energy was already there for reasons other than the manipulations of the operator, but it's false to claim that no more energy can be released than that expended by the operator in the set up or operation of his system to release it.

[Bat_Chemist]

Did you watch part 2 of the video? If so, you saw a bright yellow-orange flame. Do you know why the flame was that color? It wasn’t the burning Hydrogen...it was the sodium from the salt water. Guess what happens after the sodium gives off those yellow photons? It recombines with Chloride and forms salt (just like two H2 and one O2 recombine to form 2 H2O). Tell me, sir, how do you get rid of all that salt? Or are you just going to leave it to build up inside whatever engine is used?

It ends up taking more energy to make the pretty flame than what is produced by that same flame because of all the other things going on.

Let me say it this way: if it takes X amount of energy to go from 2H2O to 4H + 2O, then recombining 4H + 2O to get 2H2O gives off exactly X amount of energy. But that assumes a perfectly efficient reaction chamber. I hope someone can eventually come up with one of those, but thermodynamics laws are notoriously difficult to overcome.

[Bat_Chemist]

The problem is that there is NO weakening of H-O bonds in water when salt is added to it. This is a simple chemical dissociation/combination reaction. There is nothing else to it.

[aruanan]

Sorry, aruanan, but just because it doesn’t contradict any known physical law doesn’t mean that it can be employed for any practical benefit. You need to consider the energy required to excite the vial of salt water.

From what I've read so far, the idea is that the dissolved salts weaken the chemical bond between hydrogen and oxygen and the radio waves finish the job. There's nothing implausible about this. And it's not necessary that the amount of energy in radio waves used to liberate the hydrogen be equal to or exceed the amount of energy in the hydrogen.

[aruanan]

Let me say it this way: if it takes X amount of energy to go from 2H2O to 4H + 2O, then recombining 4H + 2O to get 2H2O gives off exactly X amount of energy.

Unless, of course, you have a system that reduces the energy required to go in one of the directions. This is why all sorts of chemical reactions that would normally take huge amounts of energy at extremely high temperatures and pressures are able to take place under the relatively mild physiological conditions in the human body.

[aruanan]

The problem is that there is NO weakening of H-O bonds in water when salt is added to it. This is a simple chemical dissociation/combination reaction. There is nothing else to it.

The simple chemical dissociation/combination reaction is what's happening to the salt, not the water.

[from occupied ga]

It's incorrect, however, to say that there could be no more energy in the amount of hydrogen to be burned than there was in the radio waves used as part of the process to liberate it

You were doing well up until this. TO use your rock analogy, you can't get any more energy out of the rock at the bottom of a hill that you put into it rolling it up the hill in the first place. Water is the equivalent of the rock at the bottom of the hill. Now plants reverse this process all the time, but they use the energy in light to do it. There isn't any more available energy in burning the H + O to H2O than was used in reversing the process from H2O to H + O. Less in fact because of inefficiencies in both directions - entropy

One of three things going on here. Either the guy who came up with this is a complete idiot, or he's looking for some "investors" (suckers) or trying to get some government grant money for a phony project.

[dennisw]

Are people so dumb?
Most I have is high school chemistry and physics but it’s obvious to me this is not a new energy source. The water is split by powerful radio waves then the hydrogen that is liberated is burned......

The power needed to split the water into O2 an H2 is greater than than the energy obtained from burning H2