End of our gas woes

[iCe]

This is a complete farce but I thought it was funny...

http://drivewater.com/

[kenmyers70]

What happens when you try to order the product?

Even more dangerous to the public is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiKa4nOkHLw

This guy (and the scientifically illiterate media) just don't understand conservation of energy.

[iCe]

Dunno... It came as SPAM and it left as SPAM should

I've seen it before... the short version is that it adds hydrogen from the electrolysis of water to the intake... except the weight of the water and electricity used in the process far outweigh the nearly imperceptible gain that a tiny bit of hydrogen might give. Water is a very stable molecule. The O's love it's H Ain't no free rides...

[kenmyers70]

Lets see...
1. Use X amount of energy to convert water to H2 and O2 (Note that X is greater than necessary because no process is perfectly efficient)
2. Store the H2 and O2 for a while.
3. Burn the H2 and O2 to create H20 recovering Y amount of Energy in Heat. (Again, Y is less than ideal because the process is not perfectly efficient-Your engine gets warm, for example)
In a perfect world X=Y so no energy is available to do work. In the real world, X>Y due to inefficiencies. Therefore whatever you do, this scheme only costs more energy.

Water in, Water out? Where does the energy come from?

The guy in the video I posted above is really interesting and the results are very deceptive, because he is using radio waves to both separate the H2 and O2 from the H20 and to ignite the H2 gas. The flame produced is impressive, but still contains less energy than the amount put in via the radio waves. Net energy is still lost.

Can you tell that it really bugs me to see stories like this on the news. They unfounded hype is perfect fodder for the scam artists out there...

[dbphotos]

Drivewater looks like a scam (photoshopped box cover), but the You Tube video is interesting. I don't know if it can be used as fuel, but the science that makes it do what it does is interesting.

[iCe]

Originally Posted by kenmyers70

Can you tell that it really bugs me to see stories like this on the news. They unfounded hype is perfect fodder for the scam artists out there...

Yeah... but I'm right there with you.

David- The problem with the salt water video is that he does not tell you how many watts (X) he's putting into the RF generator vs how much heat energy (Y) he's getting from the puny little flame. For sure X>Y as Ken noted. The "engine" that he was running hasn't got ANY practical use... and if you put more power into something than you get out what you have is (1) Normal and (2) if the ratio is too high, useless.

[kenmyers70]

I wouldn't say it has no use. You could always use it as a space heater. I could think of uses where you want to selectively vaporize water in industrial processes or cancer therapy or whatever. You just cant use this to efficiently get mechanical energy out.