Welding with....WATER???

[Greg Perkins]

I found This Documentary on my local tv station's website. This man has "perfected" (or at least pretty darn close to it) a process which turns water into a gas. Imagine this technology in your car??!!?! I would love 50+ miles per gallon in my focus.

What do you all think?

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Greg Perkins

What do you all think?

I think we've discussed it before. Although I think this is a slightly different video that perhaps explains it a little more. Still probably bogus though.

[oaktown1188]

We watched that in our robotics class.
I think it's amazing and it will help save earth. We're depleting our resources too quickly so finding alternative ways to fuel tools and cars would be helpful.

[Matt H.]

This is a fraud. The discovery of a miracle gas from water has been reported numerous times (search for Brown's Gas). Normally this is born from a misunderstanding of the properties of oxygen and hydrogen mixtures. Most if not all information on these gasses is found on websites with titles such as Freeenergynews.org. No scientific institutions have accepted its existence nor has it ever been proven to be anything other than a mixture of Oxygen and Hydrogen. Advocates of the technology refuse to run a mass spectrum test on the substances stating that it is not necessary.

[Greg Perkins]

Originally Posted by Matt H.

This is a fraud. The discovery of a miracle gas from water has been reported numerous times (search for Brown's Gas). Normally this is born from a misunderstanding of the properties of oxygen and hydrogen mixtures. Most if not all information on these gasses is found on websites with titles such as Freeenergynews.org. No scientific institutions have accepted its existence nor has it ever been proven to be anything other than a mixture of Oxygen and Hydrogen. Advocates of the technology refuse to run a mass spectrum test on the substances stating that it is not necessary.

How about you give us some actual data proving this before making erroneous claims.

[Kevin Sevcik]

I saw the same piece a few days ago here in Houston. Must be syndicated. Or, more likely, a PR piece from the company itself.

At any rate, I did a little googling on it.
An informative link:
http://www.phact.org/e/bgas.htm
Wikipedia's entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown's_gas

You'll notice they're a little sceptical. The documentary notes that they get their gas from a special fuel cell. Right there you can just jump straight to the assumption that they're working with a plain stoichiometric mix of hydrogen and oxygen. To suggest anything else is a huge scientific leap. Hydrogen and oxygen exist in just a few stable states at our kind of pressures and temperatures. You have water, hydrogen peroxide, and diatomic gases. You can't arrange a gas to somehow produce more energy in combustion just because of how you make it. You could make the same mixture with seperate bottles of gases and good regulators.

That said, hydroxy mixtures are useful. They've been used in "water torches" for decades. Electrolyze some water, pump out the gases through a torch, and light them. You get a nice, small, cool flame with no storage of volatile gases. They're great for jewelers that don't need much heat.

Using the gas for a car is something else again. Your choices are to generate and store the gas, or make as you go like with the torch. Storing a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen that only needs an ignition source to combust is asking for trouble. Meanwhile, if you're making it as you go, you'll need a bank of batteries and a nice heavy fuel cell. At which point you have to ask yourself why you're not just using the batteries to run a nice efficient motor instead of an inefficient combustion engine.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Greg Perkins

What do you all think?

Alright, let's see if math backs up their claims...

At least this video gives us a few numbers to work by. In the video, it is stated that it costs 70¢ per hour to run, and in that time frame it produces 1500 L of hydrogen. The only thing missing is what pressure this 1500 L H₂ is being generated at. Since 1500 L seems a bit high, I will assume that this is at 1 atmosphere of pressure.

After doing a little Googling for more information, I found that this company is from Florida. According to the EIA, in 2003 the average price of one kWh (kilowatt hour) of electricity in Florida was 8.55¢. (This is the most recent data I could find.) 70¢ of electricity per hour divided by 8.55¢ per kWh comes out to 8.18 kW being used. So if their facts are right, it takes 8.18 kWh of electricity each hour to make 1500 L of H₂ at what is assumed to be standard pressure.

Since they claim they have "perfected" the process of extracting hydrogen from water, I thought I would compare their data to a reputable company from my hometown. Proton Energy has recieved millions of dollars from various government agencies to work on hydrogen generators, and they have developed several products.

If we look at one of their spec sheets, we can see all the data about their S- and H-Series H₂ generators. The hydrogen generator in this video made 1500 L in one hour. Converted to cubic feet, that comes out to 52.97 cubic feet of H₂ at 1 atm. If we compare that to the Proton Energy spec sheet, we see that their S40 model comes close in H₂ output at 40 CF/hr. Looking at the speec sheet, the S40 uses 17.6 kWh to produce 100 CF of H₂ at 1 atm.

To make 1500 L of H₂ at 1 atm (which is what the Klein/HHO company supposedly does) it would take 9.32 kWh of electricity using the S40. Factor in the price of electricity (8.55¢ per kWh), and we get 79.7¢ to make an equal amount of hydrogen using Proton Energy's S40.

So the grand difference of "perfecting" the process of electrolysis resulted in a net gain of 9.7¢ per 1500 L of H₂ produced at 1 atm, as compared to a similar scale generator from a reputable company. That is only about a 13% increase in the efficiency of hydrogen generation. So all this hype boils down to is a slightly more efficient hydrogen generator, and nothing more.

* Note: These calculations don't figure in the energy it takes to pressurize the hydrogen - they just calculate the cost and kWh needed to split water into H₂ and O₂.

[Qbranch]

I shouldn't be doing a happy dance or anything, should I?

I mean, this is still just electrolysis, maybe with some real fancy electrodes and gas condensers, but that all it is, right?

They make it sound like it "restructures the hydrogen and oxygen".

Now, last time I checked, 2 hydrogens and an oxygen only go together one way due to the theory of Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion (VSEPR). So, basically they mean that they keep the split H<SUB>2</SUB> and O<SUB>2</SUB> molecules in the same tank.

Unless...... maybe the electorlysis produces some random ions / wierd ionic bonds?

I think some of you have spent a lot more time researching this than I have. Did I miss anything / not give enough credit?

[Dan Petrovic]

Something about just seems... fake.

I'm not a chemistry expert or anything like that but I think it's a complete lie.

Although it would be amazing if this so-called HydroTechnology could really be used to drive our cars.

Feel free to say "I told you so" to me if this does start showing up in cars.

[Sean Schuff]

I saw a news piece come across my email about 2 weeks ago about this very thing. I'm always an optimist so my hope (although not scientifically founded) is that this is a plausible energy alternative.

After reading the debate here about the feasibility of such an idea I am reminded of a quote I have hanging in my office. It says "Every original idea is first ridiculed, then vigorously attacked, and finally taken for granted.
- Arthur Schopenhauer" Consider your reaction if this were an interview with a denim-clad man espousing the virtues of an invention that simultaneously produces electricity and potable water.

I await the future with baited breath...

Sean

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Sean Schuff

I saw a news piece come across my email about 2 weeks ago about this very thing. I'm always an optimist so my hope (although not scientifically founded) is that this is a plausible energy alternative.

After reading the debate here about the feasibility of such an idea I am reminded of a quote I have hanging in my office. It says "Every original idea is first ridiculed, then vigorously attacked, and finally taken for granted.
- Arthur Schopenhauer" Consider your reaction if this were an interview with a denim-clad man espousing the virtues of an invention that simultaneously produces electricity and potable water.

Art's analysis above wasn't aimed at ridiculing or attacking, or even debunking, the claims in the documentary. He was just showing, with simple calculations that don't require a deep understanding of the underlying science, that the actual benefit claimed is only an incremental improvement over commercially available technology. Clearly the idea presented is not original, nor do the results demonstrate that anything has been "perfected".

I hope no one here is interested in ridiculing or attacking ideas. Art should be commended for his clear analysis of the overstatements made in the documentary.

And as to the comparison with Dean Kamen's developments -- please! Dean certainly has a reputation for advocating technologies that need some work to attain commercial success, but he would not claim to have "perfected" a process if in fact he'd only improved it marginally.

I await the future with baited breath...

Sean

That's bated (short for abated, or shallow) breath. Don't hold your breath for this idea.

[David Brinza]

Here's a website where a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen is produced by running an arc discharge with carbon electrodes in water:

http://jlnlabs.imars.com/bingofuel/html/aquagen.htm

As far as "rearranging" the atoms in water (i.e. H-O-H to H-H-O), that just cannot happen (atomic hydrogen has only one electron and can only form one covalent bond).

Another consideration in this claim is how much energy is put in versus how is available. The laws of thermodynamics state not only can you not gain energy but you won't "break even". Any combustible products generated are going to require more energy (perhaps MUCH more) than will be released upon combustion.

On the more serious side of addressing energy needs, there's a lot of work going on with fuel cell research (hydrogen vehicles, etc.) see, for instance: GM Advanced Technology.

There's no "magic" answer to technological problems, just clever solutions developed by people with a good grasp of the fundanmentals, creativity and inspiration.

[LightWaves1636]

I heard about the whole electrolysis thing in my math class yesterday. My math teacher showed us the video on his computer and it showed FOX 26 doing a news report on it and we watched it burn and melt a bunch of substances and then there was the car. The guy said the car could go 100 miles on 4 ounces. But then hearing HHO, gas with the stability of water, I'm kind skeptic about it. Hydrogen vechicles just sounds a bit too dangerous for the public or anyone for that matter.

[Nuttyman54]

Anyone wanna bring this to their chemistry teacher and ask about it?

[jgannon]

All these posts, and not one person has mentioned that welding with water would be fantastic for repairing our robots during next year's water game? *ducks*

(I'm sure that Dave is holding his breath for "welding with Jello".)