Water powered cars? (Full Version)

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Consecrated2God -> Water powered cars? (6/22/2008 3:18:01 PM)

I was at a baseball game a couple of weeks ago and I overhead some of the dads there talking about a news story about a water powered car that was on the news. I came home and tried finding information about it on the internet, and I found several sites on the idea, but I'm not sure what's truth and what's fiction on the internet sometimes.

Some sites sold a kit that you can upgrade your engine to run on part water and part gasoline. It's supposed to improve your mileage. Other places claim they can get 100 mpg out of 4 oz. of drinking water. I told my husband about it, and he said that water would ruin the engine, but these sites say they use the electricity from the battery to extract the hydrogen from the water, so the water itself doesn't go into the engine.

Today I was talking to my sister-in-law, and she said her dad has done that, and that he's tinkering with his truck trying to get it to run on just water.

Anyone else heard anything about this? Is this fact or fiction? Anyone actually tried this?



blessedinnyc -> RE: Water powered cars? (6/22/2008 3:25:02 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Consecrated2God

I was at a baseball game a couple of weeks ago and I overhead some of the dads there talking about a news story about a water powered car that was on the news. I came home and tried finding information about it on the internet, and I found several sites on the idea, but I'm not sure what's truth and what's fiction on the internet sometimes.

Some sites sold a kit that you can upgrade your engine to run on part water and part gasoline. It's supposed to improve your mileage. Other places claim they can get 100 mpg out of 4 oz. of drinking water. I told my husband about it, and he said that water would ruin the engine, but these sites say they use the electricity from the battery to extract the hydrogen from the water, so the water itself doesn't go into the engine.

Today I was talking to my sister-in-law, and she said her dad has done that, and that he's tinkering with his truck trying to get it to run on just water.

Anyone else heard anything about this? Is this fact or fiction? Anyone actually tried this?

Water doesn't have any energy content in an oxygen and nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Given that we have a rule called "conservation of energy", it's difficult to understand how adding water (which doesn't have any energy) can give your car more energy to go farther.

There are hydrogen powered cars which use fuel cells to convert oxygen and hydrogen into water. Honda has recently released the Honda FCX, which leases for $600/month (they're not selling it) and can be filled up at a handful of gas stations in California.

But unfortunately, until we manage to defeat the laws of thermodynamics, you will always have to put energy in your car to make it run. And unless your car has a fusion reactor in it (that scientists won't be able to make commercially viable for probably another 50 years), water really doesn't have any energy.



SonInMe1 -> RE: Water powered cars? (6/22/2008 9:23:54 PM)

You can burn hydrogen...correct?



solo_soprano22 -> RE: Water powered cars? (6/22/2008 9:29:06 PM)

Sounds interesting. I haven't known anyone to make the car run on water, but I've seen someone get his car to run for sixth months on cooking oil. Maybe I can ask him to try water... Lol. I don't know know him; he's a professor here that I've run into a few times. :)



blessedinnyc -> RE: Water powered cars? (6/22/2008 11:58:01 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: SonInMe1

You can burn hydrogen...correct?

Hydrogen can be burned in two ways. The chemical burning of hydrogen is basically the burning of H2 in the presence of O2 to make H2O. However, there isn't a lot of H2 on this planet, so in order to "burn" H2, we first need to separate it from water. If we switch to a "hydrogen economy", the system will be largely dependent on this chemical reaction.

The other option is the nuclear "burning" of hydrogen to make Helium via nuclear fusion- this is the process that happens in the hydrogen bomb.

Controlled nuclear fusion reactions with commercial applications are likely 50 years off.



OneJohn410 -> RE: Water powered cars? (6/23/2008 3:06:40 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: solo_soprano22

Sounds interesting. I haven't known anyone to make the car run on water, but I've seen someone get his car to run for sixth months on cooking oil. Maybe I can ask him to try water... Lol. I don't know know him; he's a professor here that I've run into a few times. :)


There was an interview with someone today on the news that had converted his diesel car to run on heavy cooking oil- like would come out of a fast food restaurant. His engine was delivering 80 mpg, and he had to spend 500 or so $$ to do this. He wasn't wearing a McDonalds FryGuy costume- those looked like living Koosh balls back in the day. Pull up behind something like that and have an irresistable urge to go get a carton of fries. He didn't say how much all that oil cost, only that he could drive 740 or so miles before the next fueling. I wonder what would prevent a grease fire with that, and don't forget about the static electrical shock hazard.

OneJohn410



mapachito13 -> RE: Water powered cars? (6/23/2008 5:34:12 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: blessedinnyc

There are hydrogen powered cars which use fuel cells to convert oxygen and hydrogen into water. Honda has recently released the Honda FCX, which leases for $600/month (they're not selling it) and can be filled up at a handful of gas stations in California.

But unfortunately, until we manage to defeat the laws of thermodynamics, you will always have to put energy in your car to make it run. And unless your car has a fusion reactor in it (that scientists won't be able to make commercially viable for probably another 50 years), water really doesn't have any energy.


Do the cars fill up on hydrogen and oxygen gas? What is the fuel?

Water has no inherent energy, just the mechanical energy used by the hydroelectric plants.



Consecrated2God -> RE: Water powered cars? (6/23/2008 9:26:09 AM)

Here's a portion of one of the articles I read:
quote:


First off, let's separate the fact from the fiction. You can't yet run your car on water alone. Many people have tried to extract enough Hydrogen from water to fuel a car engine, but nobody has achieved a practical solution. This is why most people think that running your car on water is a scam. But what IS achievable right now is to extract HHO gas (Hydrogen and Oxygen mixed - also known as Brown's Gas) from water, and feed it into your car with the regular gas. This has been proven to increase vehicle gas mileage by as much as 100%, although the research I've done shows that 40% - 60% is more realistic. Either way, those are very impressive figures!


Whole article here: LINK



redeemedsaint -> RE: Water powered cars? (6/23/2008 1:33:40 PM)

I saw this on the news the other night. I believe it was a Honda running on Hydrogen and it was made in China.



Zhi -> RE: Water powered cars? (6/23/2008 2:22:29 PM)

Water itself is for all practical purposes not flammable. Its components (hydrogen and oxygen) are flammable, but as with any reaction, you must introduce energy to split the atoms out of their "happy state" of being in a stable H2O (water) molecule. Generally the energy introduced is in the form of electricity (the process itself is called H2O electrolysis, which you can do pretty easily at home on a small scale with a cup of water, some wire, and a small battery). Problem being that electrolysis, like most things, is not all that efficient, so it will take more energy to produce the electricty to perform the electrolysis than will be produced by the combustion of the electrolysis products. This, of course, is offset by the fact that if you perform electrolysis on a large scale, you can use centralized sources of energy such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, etc.

Yes, hydrogen burns in the presence of oxygen. Really well. Remember Hindenburg? That well. But, the end result of burning hydrogen with oxygen is... water again. If you did manage to get a container full of the separated components of water (two hydrogen atoms, one oxygen atom), I would strongly suggest that you set the bomb down very, very carefully, get to a safe distance, and call the authorities.



iluvatar -> RE: Water powered cars? (6/23/2008 8:51:32 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Zhi
If you did manage to get a container full of the separated components of water (two hydrogen atoms, one oxygen atom), I would strongly suggest that you set the bomb down very, very carefully, get to a safe distance, and call the authorities.


It wouldn't be all that dangerous. You can buy a tank of propane at any hardware store and can dispense gasoline into any approved plastic container. While a tank of pressurized gas may have more initial bang, a can of gasoline will burn longer and present more of a fire hazard.

quote:

Whole article here: LINK


Looks like a scam to me.

-Dan.



Zhi -> RE: Water powered cars? (6/23/2008 9:21:20 PM)

quote:

It wouldn't be all that dangerous. You can buy a tank of propane at any hardware store and can dispense gasoline into any approved plastic container. While a tank of pressurized gas may have more initial bang, a can of gasoline will burn longer and present more of a fire hazard.


You can buy propane at a hardware store because the propane tank contains only propane, not oxygen. It's the combination of the two that makes it potentially explosive.

Gasoline is less explosive because it has a higher vapor point than hydrogen. Hydrogen is vapor at "normal temperatures". So, if you're capturing the results of the electrolysis of water, you have a 2 to 1 ratio of hydrogen to oxygen. That's an extremely volatile mixture, many times more volatile than gasoline, even more volatile than natural gas. We worry about static electricity around mere gasoline, so imagine how much more worrisome a mixture of fuel and accelerant that is vapor at normal temperatures is. There are tons of videos on YouTube of people blowing up their HHO experiments (some on purpose, some not so much).

Take this video for instance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8UovQFDRco
Keeping in mind that that's not a closed system, it's not pressurized, and it probably didn't contain that much HHO.

This is a rather more famous example of what happens when you mix hydrogen with oxygen and introduce a spark. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8UovQFDRco



Jhud -> RE: Water powered cars? (6/24/2008 1:19:08 PM)

Actually, we had vehicles that ran on water as long ago as the 19th century. They were called 'trains'.



mapachito13 -> RE: Water powered cars? (6/25/2008 8:02:13 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jhud

Actually, we had vehicles that ran on water as long ago as the 19th century. They were called 'trains'.


You forgot the other component. The wood or coal used to heat the water.

Cars cannot run on water alone unless.... you squirt it out the tailpipe with enough force....[;)]



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