[Aksannyi]

Don't know anything about this saltwater biz, but my Psych teacher was talking about how her car is modified to run on cooking grease. Like, go to the local Chinese restaurant and get their icky leftover grease, filter it somehow, and put it in your gas tank. Apparently, the car needs diesel to start but once you have it running you flip a switch so it burns your grease.

She said it's a lot of work to actually get your car to run this way, but it must save a ton of money.

At any rate, I'm sticking with gasoline, despite the expense. At least for now.

[Amele]

Originally Posted by IfritnoItazura

Totally different issues; the TV stations in video are claiming that salt water is an energy source by "burning" it using this magical radio wave emitter.
The amount of power would be tiny; radio waves lose energy proportional to 1/(r^2), where r is the distance between source and receiver, IIRC. Instead of reclaiming energy by taking it from AM/FM broadcast, it'd be much better to use lower power transmission and switch to digital format, if the energy used by radio stations is an issue.

yeah, I knew the formula, I meant that: depending on application you don't need much EM radiation to get enough energy to do the work you want to get done (I don't think it'll be enough for the purposes here) what he's basically created is another hydrolysis process - so the real question that anyone looking to buy the patent (and not apparently this TV station) should've been asking is: how much energy does it take per kg of h2?

as for the efficiency of H2+O2 burning and HOH electrolysis cycles. it's less about finding a self-sustaining solution and more about finding a solution that is more efficient than gasoline.

a litre of refined regular gasoline has approximately ~34.8 MJ of energy, and costs an average price of ~.80$ litre in the united states, approximately 76% of which is actual production cost* the rest being distribution and tax.

the tank to wheel efficiency of a typical modern gasoline engines is approximately 20%* so this gives us a tank to wheel cost of approximately 8.735 cents / MJ.


HOH electrolysis generates 1 kg of H2 for approximately every 50 KWh of energy expended (standard production) at 0.08$ KWh electrical grid costs, this means that 1 kg of H2 costs approximately 4.00$ to produce. there are cheaper methods (primarily HTGR and steam reforming) which would reduce this cost to as little as 1.50$/kg (HTGR) or ~2.70$/KG (steam). additionally, increased usage of nuclear or geological energy sources (wind/hydro/thermal) would reduce the cost of a KWh from the electrical grid, reducing the production cost via normal electrolysis. we'll use 4.00$ for our example.

a typical hydrogen fuel cell engine system is 40% efficient tank to wheel, and you get 143 MJ of energy from 1kg of hydrogen, so you're looking at approximately 57.2 MJ per 4$ production, or a cost of 6.993 cents per MJ.

so if his process is more efficient than 50 KWh / 1 kg H2 then he's onto something, since he'll reduce the cost per MJ at the wheel even further than gasoline.

(all of this with a 0 emissions vehicle if you close loop the condensate; or pure water steam if you don't. )

all of this pales in comparison to the energy costs of a battery electric vehicle using Lithium-Polymer cells though; 93% efficient, production cost of .022 cents per MJ, so a total cost of approximately .165 cents per liter gasoline equivalent (0.001646$)

amazing what infrastructure does to the likelihood and speed of moving to a better fuel source, isn't it?

[Malacite]

But, if that explanation is on the mark, that means we're taking saltwater, the source of all life on the planet, and turning it into caustic sodium hydroxide and mustard gas to create energy. The environmentalists are gonna love the hell out of that. I can just see some James Bond villian turning his giant satellite radio transmitter on the world's oceans.

[IfritnoItazura]

Originally Posted by Taskmage

I was thinking though, what if he only told a half-truth? What if it isn't the H-O bond that the radio waves are breaking, but the Na-Cl bond instead? Sodium ions react exothermically with water to form sodium hydroxide, liberating hydrogen in the process. The hydrogen will recombine with free oxygen in the air to reform water, but if there's a difference between the bond energy of sodium cloride and sodium hydroxide, that leaves the possibility of actual generation of energy, even if the part of the reaction involving the hydrogen we see burning is actually circular.

Well, as I've said, I sucked at chemistry, so won't embarrass myself going through the equations. (Thankfully, at least the first law of thermodynamics is easy to understand: "You can't create or destroy energy.")

Still, Sodium Hydroxide is NaOH, right? To form that in by breaking down water, you'd be left with an extra H and Cl, which sounds like HCl. NaOH is a base, HCl is acid, so they'd immediately combine and neutralize? (In fact, they should neutralize and release energy... That makes me think H2O + NaCl has less energy than HCl + NaOH--making it a net energy loss if we can prevent HCl and NaOH from combining.)

I also want to say NaCl is probably a low energy molecule, and it's only something like 3.8% of sea water by weight, but I'm not really sure. Seriously need someone with real chemistry background to post the science involved, beyond the conservation of energy. >_>;

[Taskmage]

Well, I'm no chemist myself. I just assumed the free hydrogen would recombine with atmospheric oxygen to create new water molecules, which is what we had been interpreting the red flame in the video to be. I didn't account for the presence of the chlorine; I just assumed the leftover would bond with eachother to make Cl2.

But you're right, if HCl and NaOH were the products they would simply recombine to form .. water and table salt. So again we'd have a circle and no possible energy gain. That doesn't seem to be consistent with the presence of the flame though.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

I no longer have any idea what you guys are talking about, but I'm sure Geordi LaForge could explain it to me in ficticious technobabble.

[eticket109]

Originally Posted by Omgwtfbbqkitten

I no longer have any idea what you guys are talking about, but I'm sure Geordi LaForge could explain it to me in ficticious technobabble.

lol

I stopped trying to figure it out when Ita casually belittled most everyone else in the thread.

In the end most of this is moot. Even with media saturation as heavy as it is, you'd be lucky in most areas to run into 2 or 3 people out of 100 that will have heard about stuff like this. The public awareness isn't high enough yet to prevent these breakthroughs from getting swallowed up by the oil conglomerates. Eventually when everyone realizes we're at the point of no return, all these 'hidden' technologies will start to pop back up again.

[Taskmage]

Originally Posted by Omgwtfbbqkitten

I no longer have any idea what you guys are talking about, but I'm sure Geordi LaForge could explain it to me in ficticious technobabble.

/sigh We've modulated the auxiliary phase converter to project a waveform that destabilizes the covelant structures that make up saltwater, triggering a cascading reaction that releases the latent energy of the dihydrogen lattice.

Honestly, it isn't rocket science.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Originally Posted by Taskmage

We've modulated the auxiliary phase converter to project a waveform that destabilizes the covelant structures that make up saltwater, triggering a cascading reaction that releases the latent energy of the dihydrogen lattice.

See, that made a lot more sense.

[IfritnoItazura]

A little light on details, but this guy claims he's a real scientist. (I can't find any fault with what he said, so he knows more about the science involved than I do, at least.)

http://variablefragment.com/posts/bu...fuel-your-car/

"Don't get distracted by salt", is what I'd say. That blogger is more diplomatic, and more detailed:

It’s interesting that he’s able to make this happen with RF. Basically by shooting radio waves at the water you can cause the water to split apart, but you are doing this by adding energy to the water. It may be that there’s some nifty catalytic interaction with the salt that allows the RF to work, but the sad fact is that catalysis can’t change the overall energy accounting

...

The other option is they are getting the excess energy from the salt somehow. That means that the water is ending up as high energy hydrogen and the salt is ending up at a lower energy state somehow. By which I mean:

“high energy salt” -> “some other stuff” + energy

There’s no “some other stuff” that I can think of that you can turn salt into which gets you energy. Salt is already a very low energy kind of molecule. It’s not a terrible stretch to say “that’s why they call it salt.”

And, about this being a possibly efficient means to obtain hydrogen gas:

Some people say “but it’s not about getting free energy, it’s about a better way to make hydrogen!” This is also silly. Consider the energy path: You convert electricity to radio waves. The radio waves are converted into chemical-potential energy by splitting the water into hydrogen. So your net product is the relatively high energy molecular hydrogen. Perfectly fine. However, converting electricity to radio waves has an efficiency penalty, as does converting radio waves to hydrogen (i.e. the water doesn’t absorb 100% of the radio waves).

The other option would be boring old electrolysis where you just stick the red and black wires into a glass of water and hydrogen comes out. In this case 100% of the electrical work is used to make hydrogen (excluding some small losses in the wires which are turned to heat, but that would be the same in your RF generator).

The entire blog entry and comments on it make for a good reading.

[Murphie]

Originally Posted by eticket109

lol

I stopped trying to figure it out when Ita casually belittled most everyone else in the thread.

That's when I stopped reading as well.

I do appreciate the levity added by Geordi tho. He always managed to explain (TV) science in a way that didn't make me feel like a moron.

[IfritnoItazura]

Originally Posted by eticket109

lol

I stopped trying to figure it out when Ita casually belittled most everyone else in the thread.

Should have been more diplomatic; my apologies.

It just so frustrating not able to convey some relatively simple ideas because many people lack basic science knowledge, and misunderstand science to the point of using words like hope/wish/believe/don't believe in discussing the concepts involved... /sigh

Edit:

Please do read the blog entry I posted earlier; I think it really does a good job of explaining how a scientist analyze such a "new discovery" without heavy terminology.

[Raydeus]

Originally Posted by Taskmage

/sigh We've modulated the auxiliary phase converter to project a waveform that destabilizes the covelant structures that make up saltwater, triggering a cascading reaction that releases the latent energy of the dihydrogen lattice.

Honestly, it isn't rocket science.

Fun stuff.

[Taskmage]

The comments on the blog are much the same ... The first guy is saying maybe if you take a joule of energy and make a flame with it, then use the flame to heat some water or something, then maybe you can convert that energy into even more than a joule. It's like saying maybe if we take these five robot cats and form voltron, then after we defeat the monster then maybe there will be a sixth cat, and of course we won't know for sure until we try it. I hereby name this line of reasoning "green ranger thinking" or the principle of Schrodinger's mecha.

[Mhurron]

Originally Posted by Taskmage

It's like saying maybe if we take these five robot cats and form voltron, then after we defeat the monster then maybe there will be a sixth cat, and of course we won't know for sure until we try it. I hereby name this line of reasoning "green ranger thinking" or the principle of Schrodinger's mecha.

But the energy expended by Voltron is going to be at most equal to the combined energy of the 5 cats, not greater to it and even that will only be under perfect Anime conditions.

On top of that, the DVD insert tells us that there were only 5 keys to activate Voltron making the wish that there would be a Sixth cat to increase Voltrons power beyond that of the potential energy of the 5 cats nothing more then that, wishful thinking.