Run your car off salt water

[Telco]

This is still in its infancy but this guy figured out a way to burn salt water. Eventually they might be able to get all energy generation from burning saltwater. Interesting, if they can make it work. Right now, it works in the lab.

[bbgobie]

Haven't read the link yet (at work). But water is already more expensive than gas... Gas is one of the cheapest liquids to buy...

+ rust. + what is the energy capacity of salt water?

[MorningGaser]

Originally Posted by bbgobie

Haven't read the link yet (at work). But water is already more expensive than gas... Gas is one of the cheapest liquids to buy...

+ rust. + what is the energy capacity of salt water?

Only bottle potable, drinkable water is more expensive then gas....if salt water could be used, it would be dirt cheap.

[88HF]

that is so AWESOME!!!

[DaX]

Very cool stuff, and a very humble guy.

[Telco]

Not so much, it takes more energy to break the hydrogen/oxygen bond than you get by burning the hydrogen and oxygen. Still, UNIVAC took many rooms in 1960, and couldn't compete with the computer in today's average wristwatch, so while it isn't viable today one day it might be.

Incidentally, water is only more expensive than gasoline if you are buying it by the bottle of Aquafina. For example, this site quotes water as being 4.45 per 1000 gallons. That would be 50 full tanks at 20 gallons a tank, for a cost of about 9 cents per TANK of "fuel". Plus whatever the salt costs.

[88HF]

Or you could just drive to the ocean and fill up. Hurricanes do it.

[landspeed]

I reserve the right to be sceptical at the present time.

I believe that the laws of physics will be broken (because, they are not the 'laws' of physics, merely laws that we have presumed are present!). We will have 'warp drive' one day. We may even have 'free' energy (maybe by turning mass to energy in a more controlled fashion than nuclear power).

But I'm not saying they have been broken just yet.

(But, if I posted that I just got 63.4MPGus for a 49 mile round trip, people on 'normal' car forums would probably say I couldn't do that without breaking the laws of physics!)

P.S. I will wait for the video to download now it is taking ages

[lunarhighway]

i'm wondering how much energy that machines uses and how much it can produce... or in other words if the technology where to power itself, how much water would be needed for a given amount usefull energy.... maybe we'll all have to drive hummers just to be able to carry our fuel around!

i do like the stirling engine however! i think one day it may finally become more popular... afterall most energy forms can easily produce heat, so you could run it of whatever best after oil runs out.

[landspeed]

It does look interesting! I think the next step is to say... How much energy does it take to run the radiofrequency generator? And, are you getting more energy out via the flame, then you are putting into the generator?. If you work out the most efficient radiofrequency generator you could make, does that allow you to 'produce' energy via this flame?.

Some interesting points to note.

(1) The flame is actually burning with the characteristic Sodium colour (like orange sodium streetlamps, and also dropping salt into a gas-cooker flame). This might just be due to the water 'fizzing' at the top however.

(2) More importantly, the closing statements, as it fades out, is 'Looking into making this process more efficient'. What does that mean? That at the moment the RF generator uses more energy than it produces? If so, how do they assume it will end up using less energy than it makes?

[DaX]

Originally Posted by landspeed

(2) More importantly, the closing statements, as it fades out, is 'Looking into making this process more efficient'. What does that mean? That at the moment the RF generator uses more energy than it produces? If so, how do they assume it will end up using less energy than it makes?

Remember conservation of energy - energy in + potential energy stored = energy out + remaining potential energy. Energy out can be broken down further as "usable energy" + "loss" - where loss is typically waste heat through friction or deformation in a physical system. If you had something that produced more energy than it used, it would be a "free energy" (perpetual motion) machine and you'd be a billionaire!

Just by the looks of that RF generator and seeing what it can do, it looks to be very heavy duty and probably takes a lot of power to run.

[cfg83]

DaX -

Originally Posted by DaX

Remember conservation of energy - energy in + potential energy stored = energy out + remaining potential energy. Energy out can be broken down further as "usable energy" + "loss" - where loss is typically waste heat through friction or deformation in a physical system. If you had something that produced more energy than it used, it would be a "free energy" (perpetual motion) machine and you'd be a billionaire!

Just by the looks of that RF generator and seeing what it can do, it looks to be very heavy duty and probably takes a lot of power to run.

Since he was talking about a "cancer killer", I was thinking it was sized to target a whole human body. Maybe a car-sized one could be more focused. If it was used to "crack" the sea water into hydrogen for fuel cells, then maybe it could be smaller.

I kept listening for them to talk about the amount of "energy-in" and "energy-out", but that seemed to be missing.

What is the "Jet-TV" logo in the lower corner of the video? I couldn't find it on the web.

CarloSW2

[baddog671]

Energy can be made from anything, so this one doesn't surprise me that much. Once I read an article in a legit magazine (cant remember which) about a guy that made a motor that ran off of metal shavings. Kinda ironic I thought...

[baddog671]

Hek, dont be a smartass:P you know what I meant..

[88HF]

I think he meant released from anything.

[cfg83]

Hello -

Here's another article :

Salt water as fuel? Erie man hopes so
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07252/815920-85.stm#

For obvious reasons, scientists long have thought that salt water couldn't be burned.

So when an Erie man announced he'd ignited salt water with the radio-frequency generator he'd invented, some thought it a was a hoax.

John Kanzius, a Washington County native, tried to desalinate seawater with a generator he developed to treat cancer, and it caused a flash in the test tube.

Within days, he had the salt water in the test tube burning like a candle, as long as it was exposed to radio frequencies.

His discovery has spawned scientific interest in using the world's most abundant substance as clean fuel, among other uses. ...

CarloSW2

[skewbe]

Your article says "One immediate question is energy efficiency: The energy the RF generator uses vs. the energy output from burning hydrogen."

And old boy doesn't give a straight answer, yet everyone is talking about it as fuel? I guarantee that the fuel aspect is a shady deal, though the hydrogen release from a ton of rf energy input (that machine goes up to 1400 watts and is probably not very efficient) is quasi interesting.

And what cancer patient wants to be used for fuel anyway?

P.S. Gotta love the all the conspiracy comments about it:
http://donklephant.com/2007/05/28/tu...ter-into-fuel/

[trebuchet03]

The fuel, nothing more than saltwater.

And this giant radio wave generator.

I hate news media.

Water is already a pretty low energy state substance. The only way a fuel is feasible is if you can find a way to take it from it's current state, to even even lower energy state. Raising it's state VIA a process -- not sustainable.

[VetteOwner]

lol saltwater kills the outsides of cars id hate to find out what happens inside an engine! if you continuously ran the engine it would work maybe cuz no time for rust to form...

[Dynamically Aero]

Burning Water and Other Myths

[DaX]

Originally Posted by Dynamically Aero

Burning Water and Other Myths

Good read from a counterpoint.

[cfg83]

Hello -

The salt water stuff has made it into the November 2007 issue of Motor Trend :

Technologue: Oceans: Four - If we could just burn salt water, we'd never run out of fuel
http://www.motortrend.com/features/e...11_technologue

... Kanzius's lab demonstration offered little to convince me otherwise. Sure, a test tube of pure water sat there in his radio-wave gizmo with nothing happening, then a quarter teaspoon of Morton's salt was added and, presto, the radio waves prompted it to catch fire. The gauge on the radio-wave generator read 200 watts, but there was no telling how much heat was coming off the flame or how much power was coming out of the wall, so I had no way of knowing whether this was an energy-losing parlor trick or a breakthrough.

Then I contacted Dr. Rustum Roy, an authority on the structure of liquid water at Penn State University, which houses one of the foremost microwave research labs. He hadn't met Kanzius, but his enthusiasm for the concept was palpable. No hard research has been conducted as yet -- it's only been a few months since the water first caught fire -- but Dr. Roy speculates that because the 13.56-MHz radio frequency is a harmonic of the natural frequency of sodium ions, the waves are causing these positive ions to vibrate intensely. Van der Waal's effects attract the oxygen end of water molecules to the positive sodium ions, and the vibration shakes the oxygen molecules hard enough to break the hydrogen bonds, freeing the hydrogen gas, which then ignites and burns. If true, the radio waves may be giving us electrolysis at a deep energy discount, allowing the flame to produce a net energy gain without breaking any thermodynamic laws.

The pure salt-water flame is fairly weak, but Kanzius has researched doping the salt water with various undisclosed substances that generate a much more intense flame. I'll postulate that it's some sort of alcohol, which mixes well with water, but it could be something else entirely. Years of research lie ahead, but he suspects that his doped salt-water could pack sufficient punch to power an internal- combustion engine, with a ceramic "window" in the top of the cylinder through which radio waves would enter to ignite the mixture. ...

CarloSW2