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Here’s the deal: I was an Economics major and not a brilliant chemist. From my understanding, RF waves are not the same as electricity. Correct me if I am wrong on that.
You can say it is the same theory but RF waves and electricity are not the same. Please show me (since this is such common knowledge) where someone has previously used this method to the same effect. Rememeber - not electricity but RF.
I would like to see this come out in a scientific jounal as well and maybe we will.
Cynicism is not the same as critical thinking, of which I am more than capable of doing, thank you. But there seems to be quite a tendency at FR to show others just how brilliant and knowledgable one is on any given subject. I find it very interesting and a bit odd as well as a sign of deeper issues concerning one’s self-image.

“Here’s the deal: I was an Economics major and not a brilliant chemist. From my understanding, RF waves are not the same as electricity. Correct me if I am wrong on that.”

I too am an Econ major (long time ago).

Just how do those RF waves get created? Could there be some electrical source doing that? Or, are those RF waves just coming from the sun or somewhere else “free”?

I’m hoping that someday someone figures out that if you drop some common metal into the solution, it will do the work for us. However, if such a thing exists, we’d see mass discharges of O2 and H2 whenever that stuff got wet in the wild.

Bottom line — no matter how you break apart those little atoms, it takes energy. And, it takes more energy to break them apart and to promote combustion than we get when they’re recombined.

Here’s the deal: I was an Economics major and not a brilliant chemist. From my understanding, RF waves are not the same as electricity. Correct me if I am wrong on that.

They have a magnetic component as well as an electrical component. Where things begin to unravel is the condition where people forget that the conversion of electricity into RF is never 100% efficient, and the ability for RF to do actual work with a conductor is never 100% efficient. Thus, there are two stages of energy loss (expense) in addition to the amount of energy it takes to dissociate water by simply putting electrodes and DC into the water. And even simple electrolysis is a losing proposition in supplying hydrogen as "Fuel", starting with the fuel to generate the electricity and the associated inefficiencies, transmission losses, etc.

The only reason a microwave oven is faster in cooking is because a wavelength is chosen that resonates with the water dipole. It is not particularly more energy efficient than a hot plate, with a 100% efficient heating element. It just gets the energy in faster.

Thermodynamics reduces to "There is no free lunch". It's "slow and cheap" or "fast and expensive". a 700 Watt microwave, or a 200 Watt hot plate-Both do the job.

go-dubya-04 said: "Please show me (since this is such common knowledge) where someone has previously used this method to the same effect. Rememeber - not electricity but RF."

Inductively coupled plasmas generated using RF signals are routinely used in vacuum deposition systems for creating semiconductor products of many types. None of them violates the basic laws of thermodynamics; that energy is neither created nor destroyed. (If nuclear processes are involved, then it is the total of energy and mass which is conserved.)

You must understand that there have been NO violations of this principle scientifically demonstrated during the century in which the principles have been understood. And this, despite chemical and nuclear processes being used in many tens of thousands of applications.

The amount of energy released when hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water is well understood. That same energy is released when the water is broken down into hydrogen and oxygen. But there is no practical way to capture ALL of the energy during either chemical process. Since the idea is to "burn" the hydrogen by combining it with oxygen, the energy released CANNOT be greater than the energy which is initially used to separate the water molecule.

There is absolutely NOTHING remarkable contained in the posted article, with the possible exception that the authors have attempted to suggest that the energy balance might violate energy conservation. But you will note that there are no numbers to justify such a conclusion.

Furthermore, the article states:"This is the most abundant element in the world. It is everywhere," Dr. Roy said of salt water. "Seeing it burn gives me chills."

Suggesting that salt water is an "element" is nonsense incompatible with possessing a degree in chemistry. Also, assuming that hydrogen is being generated, there is nothing in burning it that would cause any scientist to have "chills".

Also, you should recognize that there is an agenda behind publishing articles like this. The agenda is to keep alive the notion that science is at the verge of a breakthrough that will permit a dramatic reduction in the use of fossil fuels and that mankind will then be able to reduce greenhouse gases and the world will be saved from catastrophic warming.

There is no such breakthrough expected. Adopting the reductions in use of fossil fuels being urged by the alarmists will destroy western economies.

“Here’s the deal: I was an Economics major and not a brilliant chemist. From my understanding, RF waves are not the same as electricity. Correct me if I am wrong on that.
You can say it is the same theory but RF waves and electricity are not the same. Please show me (since this is such common knowledge) where someone has previously used this method to the same effect. Rememeber - not electricity but RF”

The issue is energy efficiency. Man-made radio frequency waves are generated by electricity. There are losses in the process of generating RF. In order for salt water process to be viable, the power output from the salt water device must exceed the total power used to generate the radio frequency, which includes some conversion losses. The coupling of the RF to the sea water will not be 100% efficient, so there will be some losses there as well.
Energy out versus energy in is the test for viability.

Perhaps he could do what Dr. Mahlon Loomis proposed in the late 1800’s, and harness atmospheric electricity as a free energy source. /s

>>Here’s the deal: I was an Economics major and not a brilliant chemist. From my understanding, RF waves are not the same as electricity. Correct me if I am wrong on that.
You can say it is the same theory but RF waves and electricity are not the same. Please show me (since this is such common knowledge) where someone has previously used this method to the same effect. Rememeber - not electricity but RF.<<

Bear in mind I’m not knocking the coolness of the experiment. I’m helping build a science lab in a few weeks and this would be an excellent demonstration.

And its a valid area to be looking at at. We need ways to produce, store and distribute hydrogen. Even though all current methods, including this one, are inefficient, work continues. For theoretical reasons you probably don’t care about this one will never create new energy but if fine tuned the losses might be small enough to be useful.

Without more info I can’t tell you if this exact method has been used. There are a number of patents of extracting elements, including hydrogen from compounds, including water using RF. Chang Yul Cha holds several of them but his patents reference patents back to the 80’s and work on RF hydrogen production going back to the 60’s.

Here is one that is semi-straight forward.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6783632.html

Now whether this is different enough to be distinct from previous work I don’t know. BTW RF is also used on fossil fuels to extract hydrogen but as with water the losses from converting electricity into RF and then zapping the gas are not practical, yet. Good question though.

Let me put it this way. To generate RF, you have to have an harmonic circuit such as a coil possibly coupled to another coil that is the antena. You put in the correct A/C (modulated if you want information over the carrier wave) into the correctly tuned coil. The RF energy is the result of the coil’s inductance being the same as the frequency of the A/C pumping it. You then get an RF wave that can be picked up by another coil/antenna and you can get the A/C signal back.
Pardon my oversimplified scenario but A/C energy and RF are related. You could probably inject the A/C signal driving the RF being injected into the salt water and it would probably work without the loss of the conversion to RF.