Posted on 06/13/2008 11:18:59 AM PDT by HAL9000
Wait a minute. Either the car reaches the speed of light this way or we run the oceans dry. Back to the drawing board...
The size of the car puts the lie to their claims.
If it runs on water that is essentially free and nonpolluting, why is the car built so small? Just put a water tank on the back of a F350 or condense the exhausted water vapor back into the “fuel” tank and drive to your heart’s desire.
Yep I can see it now in ten years.The msn will be reporting big water excs on the hill today being grilled over the price of water and all that damm humidity.
This car needs to be BANNED NOW! It produces MASSIVE green house gases. Imagine, if widely adopted the shear massive upsurge in water vapor! This is a recipe for disaster on a global scale. Global warming will be significantly impacted.
Ban this car NOW!!!
[/IRONY]
We've seen plenty of promises about water-powered cars (among other things), but it looks like Japan's Genepax has now made some real progress on that front, with it recently taking the wraps off its Water Energy System fuel cell prototype. The key to that system, it seems, is its membrane electrode assembly (or MEA), which contains a material that's capable of breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen through a chemical reaction. Not surprisingly, the company isn't getting much more specific than that, with it only saying that it's adopted a "well-known process to produce hydrogen from water to the MEA." Currently, that system costs on the order of ¥2,000,000 (or about $18,700 -- not including the car), but company says that if it can get it into mass production that could be cut to ¥500,000 or less (or just under $5,000). Head on past the break for a video of car in action courtesy of Reuters.
Hey wait a minute. I saw a car that looked exactly like that in Galveston just a few weeks ago.
Hey wait a minute. I saw a car that looked exactly like that in Galveston just a few weeks ago.
GMTA! That was my FIRST thought!
I recall an article about this system posted to FR, a home hydrogen electrical generating unit, that provided electricity and hot water. There was a photo on the thread, of a Japanese guy adding water to one that was powering his own residence, it was a box about the size of a home heat pump or a/c.
Lets assume for the moment that this is real. How long before the environmental wackos attempt to get it banned because people are “using to much water” to get around and we need to encourage mass transit?
Does the MEA act as a catalyst or is it chemically consumed during this operation. I could do the same thing by hiding blocks of pure zinc and pure copper in the box. Add impure water and you get the equivalent of the "potato battery". That electricity can be used to break water into hydrogen and oxygen. The problem is that the copper and zinc are combined with other elements to make other compounds. (Sorry, I'm too lazy to track down the exact reactions). Once the pure copper and zinc are consumed the electricity stops.
An excerpt:
Oxyhydrogen is a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen gases, typically in a 2:1 atomic ratio; the same proportion as water. At normal temperature and pressure, oxyhydrogen can burn when it is between about 4% and 94% hydrogen by volume, with a flame temperature around 2000 C.
Oxyhydrogen will combust (turning into water vapor and releasing energy which sustains the reaction) when brought to its autoignition temperature. For a stoichiometric mixture at normal atmospheric pressure, this is about 570 C (1065 F). The minimum energy required to ignite such a mixture with a spark is about 0.02 millijoules.
To keep the cost of the vehicle down, probably. They adapted an existing system designed for residential use, that costs over $18,000.00 at current levels of production. They say they think it can be mass produced for $5,000.00.
Mr. Fusion
“I've got one on backorder, man...”
Yeah. And I have a fireplace that burns on nothing but ashes, and lately I've started breathing nothing but carbon dioxide.
It’s a scam.
Water is a less excited state than free H2 and free O2 -— you get to H2 and 02 by adding energy, which is basically held in potential (less waste — typically heat) until combined back into water.
Somewhere in the loop (probably a charged membrane) there is energy going into the process, run by a battery of some sort.
Unless there is cold fusion (! itself probably a scam) going on, scam-o-rama.
You hit the nail on the head.
I think it's unlikely that they're using an alkaline metal reaction like this, though, because you'd burn up the metal really fast. You can probably extract some decent power from it, but your total energy capacity would be tiny. You could go really fast (especially in such a small car) for, um, half a mile. I can do that with a bullet. :)
If their little fuel plant is powered with some energy input, though, then it's just performing an electrolysis reaction. Whoopie. It's not a bad thing per se, but it's important to recognize that it's not "powered by water". It's not even powered by hydrogen, per se. It's powered by electricity, and is using water as a source of hydrogen, which it's using as an energy storage mechanism. In other words, the hydrogen tank that holds the water electrolysis products is just a battery of sorts. But, of course, that's what all hydrogen fuel-cell technologies are.
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