On Water Power
From time to time, I get questions from people who listen to my podcast, This Week in Science, asking me to discuss topics that they feel are being ignored by the mainstream media. Most of these questions revolve around either climate change or free-energy.
The climate change questions usually contain some hope that I will dig up some evidence against human-induced, carbon dioxide-linked climate change. And, I do try to report on any relevant stories that arise. There just aren’t as many of them as my questioners would like, and sometimes I do miss new developments. The result is that I become a biased, censoring cog in the media machine. Evil, just like the rest of them… but, enough about me. On to free-energy.
The free-energy questions usually include a video of a car mechanic who has created some amazing car, which can run on a gallon of water for ever. Then they ask me to tell everyone about the discovery of this amazing new compound, HHO gas, which has the potential to revolutionize transportation.
“HHO? Don’t they mean H2O?” I asked myself the first time I got one of these questions. So, I got to thinking about the electro-chemical reactions taking place, and realized that the common term for this gas is a misnomer. HHO is causing a lot of confusion for people who aren’t versed in chemistry. It’s getting peoples’ hopes up that cheap energy is around the corner when in fact it is not (at least, there’s no cheap petrol replacement on the horizon).
The reality is that in most of the amazing water-based developments you’ll find on YouTube, someone has set up an electrolysis system. Through the process of electrolysis water can be split by the power of electricity into the component hydrogen gas (H2) and oxygen (O). You would think that H + H + O = HHO. But, it doesn’t.
A single hydrogen atom can only form one bond with another atom. Oxygen all by it’s lonesome is highly reactive. It loves to combine with other molecules. You’ll be hard pressed to find it as a simple oxygen atom when you have hydrogen and other oxygen atoms around. So, in the mix people are calling HHO, you’ll find hydrogen bound with hydrogen – H2 gas, oxygen bound with oxygen – O2 gas, and two hydrogen atoms bound to oxygen – H2O vapor.
The energetics of which atoms bind to others makes the formation of HHO highly unlikely. While you can have H-H, H-H-O is less energetically stable than H-O-H. H-H-O is likely to become H-H-O-H, and simultaneously lose the dangling H to become the more stable HOH.
HHO is also called Brown’s gas. The isolated hydrogen and oxygen components allow it to burn incredibly hot, and so it is used for cutting and welding. The amount of energy available once the water has been split is obvioulsy very high, but to date no one has developed a system to release the energy held in those atomic bonds that uses less energy than it creates. Electrolysis is energy intensive, and that energy comes from somewhere… usually a coal-powered power plant or a gas engine.
Water cars do work. Of course they do. But, the claims of cheap energy that come with them are dubious at best. Besides, I haven’t heard anyone talking about tackling the rust problem that would inevitably occur. In addition, the water doesn’t look to be the best resource on which to pin our energy solution hopes (more on that topic and the climate shtuff later).
There are more elegant solutions out there waiting to be developed.
I’m more interested in the possibilities of trihydrogen trioxide gas. Skeptics say that there’s no such thing, but I have it on good authority that a simple sleigh, given the proper weather conditions and possibly the assistance of a few caribou, can accomplish amazing feats when driven by the HOHOHO engine.
I’ve never heard of ‘HHO’ either – it must be an ‘exotic’.
Back in 1998 I built an electrolysis exhibit for a science center.
Press a button and you see bubbles appear on two platinum electrodes; the bubbles rise in the solution (12 to 30% sulfuric acid by volume in water does nicely) and are trapped in individual glass tubes. About 10ml hydrogen (H2) is trapped in one tube and 5ml oxygen (O2) is trapped in the other and the stoichiometric ratio is accurately represented in the size of the gas columns trapped in each tube.
Press a second button and valves open to allow the acid solution to push the gases into a stainless steel chamber. The chamber is open on the top but there’s a little rubber ball sitting on top of it as a plug.
Press a third button and a sparkplug ignites the gas mixture thus converting some of the hydrogen and oxygen back into water (a lot of the H2 simply escapes without burning and the residual O2 just mixes into the air). The rubber ball shoots up about 2 meters with a loud ‘bang!’.
The impressive bit: a single teaspoon of water will launch that ball over 300 times.
The F1 rocket motors used in the Saturn V rockets burned an awful lot of oxygen per second – something like 500 liters of liquid oxygen per second and 1000 liters of kerosene. What’s the energy equivalent in teaspoons of water per second? I never did the calculations, but it will be some incredible amount.
I can’t recall offhand how much energy was needed to get my 10ml of H2 and 5ml of O2 from water; it’s a surprisingly large amount though. The director of the science center originally suggested that I use a hand-cranked generator, but after calculating the energy requirement I told him it just wasn’t sensible to expect someone to do the required work (and that’s for less than 1/300th a teaspoon of water!). So, yes, if you electrolyse water to produce hydrogen and oxygen, there’s an awful lot of chemical energy stored in those gases.
For proponents of hydrogen powered vehicles as a ‘green’ alternative to petrol consumption, hydrogen has to be produced by some chemical or electrochemical reaction. The only ‘green’ source would be electrolysis using power supplied by, say, water turbines or wind turbines. Other commercially viable sources (such as high temperature reaction of water with carbon) will produce carbon dioxide in large quantities and unless you can dispose of that CO2 somehow, the hydrogen used by your car won’t be ‘green’ at all.
Now I just can’t help but take a shot at claims of human-induced climate change. The modelers make all sorts of fantastic claims about how the world will end (some say the world will end in fire, others say in ice … Robert Frost). But getting back to *real* science, the onus is on the climate modelers to convince the scientific community that their predictions are valid. Unfortunately the climate modelers seem to have chosen to be snakeoil salesmen and gone for poor Joe Public via the national press. The world is warming; climate is changing; there is pretty much no doubt about that much. What is dubious are the estimates of the human contribution to that warming and the predictions of the magnitude of future warming.
Now if you’ll all excuse me:
THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!
MadScientist, I don’t know which ‘modelers’ you are speaking of, but all the ones I know professional and personally do not do ‘science by press release’, and none of them have produced the doomsday predictions you complain about. The is a strong concensus (98%) among the scientific community that global warming has a major anthropogenic contribution. I think you need to look at some scientific resources (i.e. peer reviewed papers and journals related to earth and climate science) and not just the popular media.
This would have made a fantastic xmas article
“H-O-H, H-H-O, H-H-O-H,”
@LovleAnjel
“The is a strong concensus (98%) among the scientific community that global warming has a major anthropogenic contribution.”
Statements like that always infuriate me. Science is *not* about consensus; a billion fools believing the same thing are still fools. Any hypothesis must have a basis consistent with what is already known (and also consistent with most discoveries in the future). Hypotheses must be testable (or else they have no value). Any models must also be testable; one of the oldest models people are familiar with is Newton’s laws of gravitation. The laws are not perfect but their limitations are understood and people who have to deal with it can switch to more sophisticated models if they need to.
I cannot see the evidence for this “major anthropogenic contribution” that you mention. That’s the problem here – how much of the estimated warming can be attributed to humans? What is the error in the estimate on that and how was this error itself estimated? The models still fail the absolutely basic test of providing verifiable predictions with quantifiable errors, so why should we accept them? Hell, even different groups come up with different results which is only more evidence that they are *not* credible. So the challenge to modellers remains: come up with something better than a tarot reading.
Now climate modelers can form their own little cliques and ‘peer review’ other climate modelers, but this does not make what they do a ‘science’. Why should all other scientific endeavors have to withstand the scrutiny of scientists outside their field while climate modelers are somehow exempt?
Looks like someone’s confusing a scientific consensus with an argumentum ad populum. Actually, it looks like Kirsten’s offhand comment about global warming touched a nerve on someone’s sacred cow. I like the scare quotes around “peer review” and dismissing specialty journals as “little cliques,” though … pretty clever denialist tactics.
@bob:
You seem to subscribe to nonsensical propaganda about ‘denial tactics’ and are all too willing to call people ‘deniers’ simply because you do not agree with them. There is nothing sacred in science. What is utterly foolish and unscientific is to subscribe to Ipso Dixit on the basis of ignorance: “I am not an expert in that field so I shall swallow expert claims hook line and sinker.” You conveniently entirely avoid issues mentioned such as:
– what is the magnitude of human-induced climate change and how was that estimated (including evidence in support of the claim)
– what predictions do the models make, how can they be verified, and perhaps most important, when the hell will anyone produce a verifiable result?
Facts and successful scientific models do not depend in any way whatsoever on a ‘consensus’. For example, there is absolutely no consensus on Newton’s laws of gravitation – that model stands on its own merit. Things which cannot be tested or at least supported by rigorous mathematical proof remain conjecture; historically there are instances of conjecture which have since been proven correct (such as predictions of elements not discovered in nature at the time), but so far no cigar for climate modelers. Reading through climate publications just makes my blood boil – weasel words abound as do untestable claims.
My own opinion is that an appeal to a ‘consensus’ is a stark indication of woo to follow because there is no need for consensus in legitimate science; facts and models stand on their own merits, not on some consensus within any community.
Dismissing anyone’s statements simply because “they are not an expert in that field” is utter nonsense; people are not wrong simply because they don’t belong to the right clique. My challenge to modelers to make verifiable claims still stands; until they can do so, I will treat their projections as I would the claims of any tarot reader.
I am a climate change agnostic. I’m not convinced that global warming or climate change is manmade, but I don’t think that pumping the atmosphere full of (pardon the term) green house gasses is a good thing.
A couple things that make me question the idea of man made climate change:
Even the IPCC(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that they are only 90% sure that climate change is man made.
Isn’t Venus having an unexplained runaway green house effect going on right now?
Water is an ash — it is what is left over from the combustion of H2 and O.
If someone came up to you and said that by applying a small electrical current through the ashes of your fireplace, they could create several cords of wood, you would kick them out as a (justifiable) fraud.
Why this fascination with water?
One need not know any chemistry to deduce that cars running on water are pure fantasy. The laws of thermodynamics are sufficient to refute these claims.
i love soup, But rarely eat it.
“You seem to subscribe to nonsensical propaganda about ‘denial tactics’ and are all too willing to call people ‘deniers’ simply because you do not agree with them.”
You are falling into the old trap of thinking that scientists believe they are infallible. Science has, and will always, occasionally be wrong. The important thing to remember is consensus is important, new ideas come along and are tested using the scientific method, and are accepted or rejected. Is science occasionally wrong? Sure, but the truth will out.
To put it another way, you are willing to believe the minority view because science hasn’t “proven anything.” Okay, your prerogative, but it is no different than the anti-vaccine crowd that rejects the current consensus simply because they don’t want to here the truth. Could science be wrong about vaccines? Sure, but the scientific consensus makes it far less likely. And as a non-scientist, I have to believe that climatologists are not just going along to get along.
The debate can be made whether the cost involved in positively affecting climate change is worth it, but the debate about anthropomorphic climate change is done. Move on.
Peace, Frank
@Frank Paulson
First of all, ‘consensus’ does not make something right and never has. If you ask people if they believe Newton’s laws of gravitation are correct (and it is very successful) people will agree and you can call that a ‘consensus’. However, Newton’s laws don’t work because everyone agrees they do but because for many applications no one can fault them.
Now you say I’m willing to believe “the minority view”. Who is the minority, what is that view, and how did you establish that it is a minority? If you bothered to read my posts, I’m not even saying that there is no anthropogenic contribution to warming; I’m saying there are no reliable figures on it (as opposed to figures on warming over the past century) and that there is no valid reason to believe any of the model results. There is no firm foundation for the global warming hysteria which currently abounds and the IPCC’s modernized version of Pascal’s Wager would be funny if it weren’t causing such hysteria.
First of all, let me apologize if I thought you were saying something that you weren’t.
Second, I meant anthropogenic not anthropomorphic.
Third, what I meant by consensus is that the preponderance of peer-reviewed evidence suggests a man-made element to the current climate change. I did not mean people, scientists or not, simply believing something. I realize that consensus does not make something true. I was simply saying that the current evidence suggests that humans contribute. One can choose to believe the contrary opinion if one wishes. It may turn out to be wrong, however there is little reason to believe that at this point. We humans love an underdog, but the underdog is quite often wrong.
Fourth, I’m glad you brought up Pascal’s wager because there is a bit of that here. The difference being that getting off of fossil fuels, using less energy overall, finding more efficient ways to live, etc. will help us in the long run whether science is right or wrong about climate change. A win-win if you will.
I agree that there is a bit of hysteria about all of this that needs to be toned down. I think we live in a society that gets its collective panties in a bunch too often, but the consequences of being wrong about this are, well, huge. For humans anyway. ;-)
Peace, Frank
“It may turn out to be wrong”
I meant it may turn out to be right.
Here’s how to get real power from water, namely seawater, namely boron from seawater.
Nuclear fusion or bust!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
“Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.” – Michael Crichton
while it takes energy to make hidrogen for running cars and that energy might come from fossil fuels, that’s not necessery the issue.
I don’t know the numbers but I wonder. Let’s say we burn petrol(or any other fossil fuel) at a power plant and use the energy to make hidrogen which we later burn in a car. This might be more efficent. A power plant might be able to extract more energy out of the same amount of oil. Also the power plant can probably take care of the CO2 better, pumping into the ground or some other scheme. The cars themselves would only issue water. That water should be pure so if we use salt water in the proccess we end up with secondary water desalination. And what about the cars, if hidrogen is lighter(for the same amount of energy) than petrol and the engines lighter than we have cars with less mass and thus more efficent.
Again, I don’t know the number but just thinking about the bigger picture. If any of those points raised is true it might be a good idea to switch to hidrogen economy.
As a scientist who publishes in peer-reviewed journals, I find the apparent ignorance with respect to the peer-review process, uncertainty, and scientific consensus. The peer-review process, by definition, is a review by ones peers. In economic geology (my field of practice) we would not ask an evolutionary biologist to review a paper on the genesis of layered intrusions in South Africa. It is necessary, to some degree, to have papers in a field reviewed by other experts in the field. My research experience is not in layered intrusions. However, I am qualified to review papers dealing with the chemistry of those deposits. Likewise, in the field of climatology, there are numerous qualified reviewers who will spare no quarter when reviewing a paper dealing with climate change. It is their job as a reviewer to find every possible fault, rather than to become a member of a ‘mutual admiration society.’ Secondly, science is wrong nearly 100% of the time. In fact, in science, NOTHING IS EVER PROVEN. A hypothesis may only be disproved. Each time a competing idea is disproved, the certainty that a competing hypothesis is correct increases. In science, the confidence interval, or the likelihood that a specific test is accurate, is considered to be acceptable at 95%. This would be a high degree of confidence. Confidence is arrived at by statistical analysis (a rigorous mathematical treatment). I am no expert, but many of the climate models I have examined, most of which point to 30-70% of current warming being anthropogenic, contain statistical analyses that indicate confidence at the 90th or higher percentile. Again, a good indication that humans are changing climate. We are not the first species to do so, nor will we be the last. Photosynthetic bacteria created global atmospheric change ~2.8 billion years ago. We are likely the only species that is AWARE of the changes we create. Finally, scientific consensus does not guarantee that an idea is correct. However when reasonable scientists agree on explanations, in most cases those explanations are so well-supported by the evidence that it is impossible to ignore. The idea of continental drift, first touched on by Francis Bacon, and later detailed by Alfred Wegener did not achieve ‘consensus’ until sometime in the 1970’s. Consensus generally comes only after even the most skeptical members of the field can no longer find alternative hypotheses to test. It is my humble opinion that we are nearing that point with human-induced climate change.
In closing, let me say that it is my fault, and that of my peers, that peer-review, statistical uncertainty, and ‘consensus’ are not part of the common lexicon. We have a responsibility to educate and we are doing a poor job. For more on consensus, I recommend you read Michael Shermers excellent 1997 book, ‘Why people believe weird things.’ There is a significant amount of information on the convergence of evidence (which is happening with human-induced climate change) providing support for a particular hypothesis. Compare the arguments that currently are used by human-induced climate change deniers to those used by deniers of other phenomena we know to occur. The similarity is remarkable…
“Convergence of evidence” can be the result of the evidence actually existing thus, or it can be due to those collecting said evidence experiencing file drawer, data selection, and other problems.
“Convergence of evidence” was the primary support of the alien abduction nutjobs.
Citing convergence of evidence supports nothing and debunks nothing. As always, it is about the evidence, and as regards anthropogenic global warming, that jury remains out.
Here’s what scientific consensus looks like.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686
“The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.”
“The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it.”
Pascal’s wager was mentioned. While nowdays the wager is brought up as, because of the god argument, as being a bad wager. That is because it only works with about a 50% chance, while the probability of the existence of god being much lower.
With the issue of global weather change, when calculating the possible costs of unchecked global warming versus the costs of trying to do something about, what should the chances of global warming being antropogenic need be in order to make the wager viable?
It is a complicated issue on a huge scale making certitude difficult. What we do is wait for the evidence to fully come in.
I just found this interesting thread and thought I’d add to the commentary. At the end of my little information piece, I’ve included some fossil fuel replacement technology that is change we can believe in (not the Obama kind).
Kirsten wrote:
The part about it ‘running forever’ or even “creating a car” cannot be true. I don’t know if it’s your error or your mysterious emailer’s mistake, but nevertheless it’s not true. I have never heard of anyone claiming that a car could run forever on “HHO”, or even just run on HHO alone.
What I have seen reported on are stories where some mechanic has built an on-board HHO delivery system that supplements the fuel that the vehicle already uses for the purpose of increasing mileage and burning the fuel cleaner.
So, allow me to share what I’ve learned about the whole HHO thingee, on converting water into supplemental fuel for gasoline powered vehicles.
Disclaimer: I am not an HHO seller, inventor, or proponent. I just prefer opinions based on facts rather than half-truths, innuendo, lies of omission, outright lies and agenda promotion.
So, what would I know about it and why?
I became interested in HHO because I drive an ’03 Chevy Avalanche 55 highway miles each weekday to work and back. The truck is paid off and I do not want a new monthly bill, even for a more efficient vehicle, in this uncertain work environment, so I’m keeping it. Besides, it’s very handy. I try to improve my mileage by going slower and not using it for around town driving. The mileage used to be about 20 MPG before ethanol was forced into regular unleaded gasoline. Now the mileage is 16 MPG (10% or less ethanol. Thank you environmental wackos and green weenies). When gas jumped to $4.00 a gallon, I became really focused on saving gas. So, I looked into the HHO method and learned quite a bit.
I found detailed instructions posted to mininova.org in a .pdf file (reputedly for sale at $89 or so elsewhere) and downloaded it.
Some facts about it.
HHO is a commercial term, not a chemical term. So let’s bury that nonsense now. The retail store “Best Buy” would be a good example of something named for marketing purposes as opposed to its actual description. I’m going to use the inaccurate term HHO to save some typing.
HHO is a supplement to the fuel system, not a replacement in these systems. There is no one that I know of no one who is seriously marketing HHO as a replacement for fossil fuel. The claims are that it will improve gas mileage by 15-25%. And a SlapChop will make your life more exiting.
The electrical power used to produce HHO from water is provided by the vehicle’s charging system. It does not come from a coal fueled electric power plant located miles away and producing gobs of evil CO2.
A typical setup would have a water tank and pump somewhere on a vehicle with a tube to transport water to the conversion chamber mounted near the engine. The conversion chamber with electrodes, electrical power, tubes to bring the water into the chamber, a low water sensor (turns on the pump to keep the unit supplied with water), a tube leading to the intake manifold/carburetor spacer/injection port, a set of pressure gauges and a potentiometer to adjust the amount of gas being produced. Ideally, the device would produce an “on demand” amount of gas to make an improvement in the gas mileage.
Whether the electrical power is enough to produce a worthwhile amount of HHO is unanswered in the data I’ve seen. That, along with the device’s size leads me to believe it would not produce an adequate amount to be useful. In the do-it-yourself instructions, the device’s conversion chamber is made from a 12 inch length of 4 inch diameter schedule 80 CPVC pipe and with the caps, about 15 inches long. That is about 188 cubic inches of volume. Of course when the guts (electrodes, fill sensor and other small parts) are added in it makes the volume even smaller. How much can it be converting? It can be made bigger by adding to its length, but it needs to fit in the engine compartment. The 15 inch by 4 inch unit might fit in the Avalanche’s engine compartment, but it would be tight.
When I read the directions for building one of these contraptions, I learned that it could be built and installed for about half of what kit would cost ($250-$400 depending on options). The one expensive part is the engine adapter/connector that costs between $200-$300 and is not included in the kits that I saw.
So there you have it. Maybe it works as advertised, maybe it doesn’t. I can’t say at this point because there has been no followup since gas prices came back down.
I did see the Mythbusters episode where they “tested” an HHO system and it failed. The episode was funny and entertaining, but they did not build the thing correctly. They did what they usually do; made assumptions and ran with it.
The good news is that there are alternatives to replace fossil fuels in current vehicles. It’s cheaper and lighter than lithium batteries, smarter than hybrid vehicles, less expensive than ethanol, and provides longer range and more power than any of those choices with no co2 emissions.
It’s called hydrogen. That’s right, more energy from water. But read on.
Another disclaimer: I do not represent the company that manufactures this system and I receive no payment for spreading this information. I simply believe that hydrogen is the way to go and this one is the best I’ve seen. There is none of that evil CO2 that is produced making batteries, ethanol and hybrids. BTW: I’d be happy yo learn about other makers of similar systems.
Basically, this system allows you to produce and store your own hydrogen and refuel your own vehicle for free once the thing is paid for (about $11K that last time I looked). The system in their words…
If you want to know more about this system, check it out HERE.