Water Cars: Turn on your BS detector
Oil prices are high, and everybody's looking for a quick fix. People in the media know about this, so they are scrambling to find "energy" stories, and as always, many unscientific ones make it through.
In recent days, a "water-powered car" made by Genepax, a Japanese company, has been making the rounds, and even Reuters featured it.
I think it's important to explain why it is almost certainly not what it claims to be, or at least why with such extraordinary claims, we should wait for extraordinary evidence before being convinced that this is real.
Water is not an energy source, nor is hydrogen
So lets talk about water. Everybody knows it contains hydrogen, and that hydrogen can be burned or used to generate electricity in fuel cells. But what few people seem to realize is that hydrogen is not an energy source, at least not here on Earth. If we could go out and mine some pure hydrogen somehow, that would be an energy source. But we can't find any in pure form on this planet, so we either have to reform natural gas (and so here the energy source is fossil fuels, not the hydrogen itself), or we have to break up water molecules via electrolysis, a process that uses more energy as input than you can then get out of the hydrogen as output. That means that the hydrogen is just a carrier of energy - like a battery - and the real source is whatever you used to power the electrolysis process (so if you use wind power, your hydrogen car is actually powered by the wind via hydrogen).
Are they trying to sell us a perpetual motion machine?
Here's another way to think about it: When you burn a gallon of gasoline, none of the atoms in that fuel just disappear. They are only rearranged, so to speak, and that's what comes out of the exhaust. Carbon atoms combine with oxygen to form carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, hydrogen combines with oxygen to form water vapor, sulphur forms sulphur oxides (SOx), etc.
"Water car" makers claim that you pour water in the tank, the car drives around, and the only thing coming out of the exhaust is water. So either all the water that goes in comes out of the exhaust, in which case why not loop it back straight to the water tank and voila, you've just raped the first law of thermodynamics and you have a perpetual motion machine! Or if less water comes out than goes in, where does the rest go? Is it destroyed? Do they claim to have a large particle accelerator in there? It just doesn't make any sense.
How they probably do it: Metal Hydrides
So how do they fake it for the television cameras? Some have probably just hidden batteries in the car, or a tank of hydrogen. But the most clever way to do it is with metal hydrides. If you are curious about them, I explain a bit more about they work, as well as why these stories create false hopes, real apathy and hurt the green movement, in this article: Genepax Water Car: Too Good to be True? Yeah.
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By the way, are you just playing troll, or are you actually unaware of the difference between what happens in a ICE car burning hydrogen, a fuel cell consuming hydrogen and a H bomb fusing it? Really are there actual adults who are allowed to graduate high school, vote and have children and do all kinds of 'grown-up" things without knowing this? Really?
Because if this is the typical level of understand
...Fuel cells cannot store energy like a battery, but in some applicatio
…The world's first Fuel Cell operated and certified passenger ship was the "HYDRA" (see picture). Mr. Christian Machens was the founder of the company "etaing GmbH" and realised this project with a small team of young engineers in Leipzig. It was christened in June 2000 in Bonn. The Fuel Cell System (AFC type, 6,5 kWel net output) was built in Wurzen near Leipzig, the hull was built in Hamburg and it was certified by the Germanisch
….The molecular hydrogen needed as an on-board fuel for hydrogen vehicles can be obtained through many thermochem
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But what about salt water as an energy resource? As shown in the video below, by the man who discovered sea salt will burn:
http://www
Mr. Salt Water is just superheati
Yes it does (but only a little, it mostly flies on solid rocket fuel), and that is probably the only thing the science illiterate public knows. What they don't get is that hydrocarbo
My best guess is that most Americans could not explain these simple facts and if their lives depended on it. Sadly, it looks like our lives do depend on it... and we are trying to undo decades of failed science education in a few short years while the illiterate are running around like headless chickens.
What's carbide, and can it be made into a fuel source w/water?
A full descriptio
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As far as being an energy source here's the money quote:
"Carbide of calcium is manufactur
CaC2 + 2 H2O → Ca(OH)2 + C2H2"
Looks like its another energy carrier not an energy source. Clearly it takes a LOT of energy to 'get' the acetylene into the lime.
Remember the American auto companies actually DID stake their future on SUV's. Assuming sensible behavior from big auto companies is a dubious premise.
Takahashi seems to be a fuel cell freak. Fuel cells are a pointlessl
By the way can somebody give me some SCIENTIFIC
No, but they'll gladly take a billion bucks from Bush for hydrogen "research"
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