Water as feul! WOW!
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Mintmaster
Veteran
That's really neat. It's like the metal is some sort of catalyst for recombining the electrolysis products.
What I don't get is how he manages to store the gas in a car. Does it have a lot more energy density than hydrogen? Is this some sort of a replacement for conventional hybrids where gas is burned to do the electrolysis? Maybe the gas can be compressed into liquid form and is more stable than alternative gases.
What I don't get is how he manages to store the gas in a car. Does it have a lot more energy density than hydrogen? Is this some sort of a replacement for conventional hybrids where gas is burned to do the electrolysis? Maybe the gas can be compressed into liquid form and is more stable than alternative gases.
Mintmaster
Veteran
I was going to reply by pointing out powerplant generation is more efficient than the internal combustion engine, but surprisingly I'm wrong (possibly because of the fuels used). From Wiki it seems a gas engine consumes 0.3 kg / kWh, but coal generation is around 0.5-1 kg/kWh. I think both gas and coal have similar kg CO2 / kg fuel ratio too.zsouthboy said:and obviously, he uses electricity to split the water in the first place which means fossil fuels at the electric plant
Then you have to worry about the fact that this technology requires combustion, so converting the energy in the gas back to mechanical energy will lose a lot of efficiency. Hopefully the high ignition temperature, and hence high Carnot efficiency, will allow for fairly efficent conversion to mechanical energy.
Still, I think centralized energy generation is much better than burning fuels in your car around the city. Especially if the generation is renewable or nuclear.
Water is not a power source.
The chemical reaction that is being done is that first you spend energy to split the water up into its components (I believe in this case hydrogen and hyrogen peroxide), then you recombine them sometime later to get that energy back.
Since a fair amount of energy is lost in each conversion, this is not a power source, but rather a possible means of transporting energy. But I don't think it's going to turn out to be as efficient as oil.
But the application to welding looks pretty cool. Since water/hydrogen combine not far above room temperature, the flame can indeed be cool. But it will gain in temperature very quickly as you add more fuel. This is probably what's happening with the torch: when the torch is run at minimum, the flame will not be much hotter than the combustion temperature of hydrogen/oxygen. But step up the fuel and it'll heat up very quickly.
The chemical reaction that is being done is that first you spend energy to split the water up into its components (I believe in this case hydrogen and hyrogen peroxide), then you recombine them sometime later to get that energy back.
Since a fair amount of energy is lost in each conversion, this is not a power source, but rather a possible means of transporting energy. But I don't think it's going to turn out to be as efficient as oil.
But the application to welding looks pretty cool. Since water/hydrogen combine not far above room temperature, the flame can indeed be cool. But it will gain in temperature very quickly as you add more fuel. This is probably what's happening with the torch: when the torch is run at minimum, the flame will not be much hotter than the combustion temperature of hydrogen/oxygen. But step up the fuel and it'll heat up very quickly.
Mintmaster
Veteran
I don't think that's what's happening here. He's trying to point out that it's low temperature even at the operating rate of fuel ejection. This is what I found at the website:Chalnoth said:
It really seems like the metal surface is assisting the chemical reaction in one way or the other. I don't know if it's hydrogen peroxide or something else, but it's definately quite interesting. It would be quite amusing if the solution to cheap, dense energy storage was lying in front of our face all this time.
Mintmaster
Veteran
Okay, I found a little more info here and here. Not much of a breakthrough at all. The car applications seem to be Fox doing it's usual hyping and misinterpretations.
I also made an error before. He wasn't touching the flame, he was touching the tip of the welder from the sides. If you put your hand there it would get badly burned.
I also made an error before. He wasn't touching the flame, he was touching the tip of the welder from the sides. If you put your hand there it would get badly burned.
This seems more of a novel way to weld than a new energy source.
The video claims that the water is split into HHO, implying a hydrogen and hydroxy radical. That's pretty unique, would like to know how to do that as water normally splits into molecular hydrogen and oxygen. I guess the guy read in a book some where the specific energy needed to break water in that way.
If the radical species are the by product of his special hydrolysis reaction, the "burning" of the metals may merely be the oxidation of the materials occuring very quickly. Being an exothermic process, the surrounding material gets super heated as the material oxidizes... Just a thought really.
This may explain why in that one case the flame produces water since it's unreactive to the surface of the material and reacts with itself...
The video claims that the water is split into HHO, implying a hydrogen and hydroxy radical. That's pretty unique, would like to know how to do that as water normally splits into molecular hydrogen and oxygen. I guess the guy read in a book some where the specific energy needed to break water in that way.
If the radical species are the by product of his special hydrolysis reaction, the "burning" of the metals may merely be the oxidation of the materials occuring very quickly. Being an exothermic process, the surrounding material gets super heated as the material oxidizes... Just a thought really.
This may explain why in that one case the flame produces water since it's unreactive to the surface of the material and reacts with itself...
Blazkowicz
Legend
I've got a great idea for use of water as an energy medium in a car.
we could have a boiler, heated by burning whatever (gas, coal, wood, ethanol, biodiesel). the resulting steam would then power some kind of engine that ultimately makes the wheels turn and the car go forward.
water as a fuel, it's possible!
we could have a boiler, heated by burning whatever (gas, coal, wood, ethanol, biodiesel). the resulting steam would then power some kind of engine that ultimately makes the wheels turn and the car go forward.
water as a fuel, it's possible!
Blazkowicz_ said:I've got a great idea for use of water as an energy medium in a car.
we could have a boiler, heated by burning whatever (gas, coal, wood, ethanol, biodiesel). the resulting steam would then power some kind of engine that ultimately makes the wheels turn and the car go forward.
water as a fuel, it's possible!
LOL, I'll take "What is a train?" for 500 Alex!
Blazkowicz_ said:I've got a great idea for use of water as an energy medium in a car.
we could have a boiler, heated by burning whatever (gas, coal, wood, ethanol, biodiesel). the resulting steam would then power some kind of engine that ultimately makes the wheels turn and the car go forward.
water as a fuel, it's possible!
The first cars were steam powered. Jay Leno has a few.
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