Water powered car (no kidding)

[Fatman]

Unless this new 'generator' uses some form of catalyst or a radical new technology to rapidly break down water into its components, I'm very skeptical about this car. I might be 'mis-remembering' (nod to GeeDubya) but generating hydrogen from water uses electricity - not generates it - and generally is a relatively slow process in small containers.

Any active chemists or engineers more up on this?  

[alfsauve]

Unless this new 'generator' uses some form of catalyst or a radical new technology to rapidly break down water into its components, I'm very skeptical about this car.

Me, too.  Skeptical.   There's been a lot of bluster about fuel cells and photocells, but little real improvements.

Plus if they have found someway to efficiently produce electricity directly from water, in usable quantity, without outside inputs, cars would be one of the lower priority items.

[m25operator]

" Plus if they have found someway to efficiently produce electricity directly from water, in usable quantity, without outside inputs, cars would be one of the lower priority items. "

I agree with that, power my house 1st.

[twyacht]

Survivability rate in an accident?

ZERO!!!!

I like the used cooking oil in old Mercedes Diesels better. Kits available online, super fuel filter, and high pressure fuel pump.

Exhaust will make you hungry....

[Ocin]

Can hydrogen burn hot enough to generate the horse power of a gas or diesel engine ?

Actually, the most promising with hydrogyn is not to burn it like gas or diesel. I wouldn't know if hydrogyn contains the same amount of chemical energy like diesel, but burning it as a fossile fuel would bring the same problems with efficiency as fossile fuels: with a gas powered vehicle you get some 20-30% efficiency, with diesel it can be up to some 50% at best.

However, use hydrogyn to power an electric car: you use some type of catalic converter to add hydrogyn and oxygen into, well, yes, water, and electricity will be released. It is possible to increase efficiency up to close to 100%. True, these systems are still barely at the prototype level, but possibilities are close to limitless: Impregnate for example a piece of carbon with hydrogyn and you get a fuel cell: small enough to power your cell phone for longer then the electronics in the phone will last or put a larger piece in your car and all you have to do is replace that piece of carbon during service.

Just imagine how "pleased" the oilsheiks would be. They can then buy our milk for $100 a barrel, and if they think that is too expensive, well, they can still drink their oil, can't they? 

[Sponsor]

[Texas_Bryan]

I'm no scientist, but doesn't this seem abit to good to be true.  A self sustained chemical reaction converting water in to fuel?  I think the Japanese are misleading everyone.  100% efficiency in the water conversion with energy left over to move a vehicle?  No, more like, plug your car into the wall, all the while its converting water and storing the broken down fuel, then drive around on that fuel while a battery continues the process and tries to keep up.  It the same idea as pure electric only with little batteries instead of huge ones.  Not convinced.  It still doesn't fix the major problem of electric vehicles, which is 300 million people and business plugging their cars into an already stressed energy grid.  Now if cars ran on misleading lies, these boys would be in business.

[fightingquaker13]

Indeed. This why even as a Libertarian, I'm not all that vexed about carbon taxes. We moved from wood, to charcoal, to coal to oil, not because of great breakthroughc, but because the cost and scarcity made the technology cost effecient and then the market led to more break throughs. Its why Malthus was and always will be wrong, he assumed technology was static. Building hydrogen cells costs lots of R@D money that no one will spend with cheap oil and an in place oil infra-structure. Oil gets pricier and the R@D money looks like a better investment. Given that our dependence on foreign oil is our largest long term security threat, I'm glad to see this kind of breakthrough. By security threat oil does two very bad things. We have to buy it from people that hate us, and since its an import we use foreign reserves that are currently owned by the Chinese (who also hate us) to do so. A lose lose situation. The one thing we've never lacked is the ability to innovate mechanically. Its good that there are financial incentives to kickstart that.
FQ13

[warhawke]

Conventional electrolysis uses more energy than it produces, however, there have been a number of designs which have shown that this is not necessarily required. A dentist in FL has a system that uses soundwaves to do the same thing and you get several orders of magnitude more power out than you put in.

As far as hydrogen itself, hydro-carbons have moderately higher yields, but you cannot release 100% of the energy in either in any kind of mechanically useful system so the useful energy release is likely to be similar. The problem with hydrogen is production which requires newer more effective technologies and hydrogen embrittlement which means that metal exposed to burning hydrogen gets brittle and fails after too long. Fuel-cells are simpler but you have to store it in quantity which means high-pressure/low temp. or you run out of power fast, not to mention they are made out of things like platinum which drives the cost through the roof.

This vehicle seems to use a single-stage fuel-cell that simply strips the O2 from the H and collects the stray electrons from the process. Detroit tried a single-stage Hydro-carbon cell that worked ok but still needed gas. I see no reason that something like this cannot work well or at a much higher power level than this, I figure the people behind it hope to slide it in by showing it is no threat to the hydro-carbon industry and then, once it is accepted they will ramp it up to more useful power/size levels.

P.S. A guy in Ohio built something like this back in the '70's. He dropped dead outside a restaurant and his 'water-powered car' (a VW dune-buggy) was lost in a fire. Remarkable things like this seem to happen when you mess with a multi-trillion dollar industry.

[Ocin]

Conventional electrolysis uses more energy than it produces, however, there have been a number of designs which have shown that this is not necessarily required. A dentist in FL has a system that uses soundwaves to do the same thing and you get several orders of magnitude more power out than you put in.

 

That is correct. It is not possible to "create" energy, it has to come from somewhere. The energy stored in oil is in fact solar energy stored by plants as chemical energy millions of years ago and then over time fossiled into oil.

One of the major bottlenecks with hydrogyn is the storage and transport of that hydrogyn. It takes quite an amount of energy to compress it and that energy is basically wasted during the entire process. However, creating hydrogyn is indeed a simple process of electrolysis, which can be achieved by using renewable energy sources like wind and solar energy. All we need to figure out is how best to store and distribute it...

[tombogan03884]

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_08_09-2009_08_15.shtml#1249999709


 [1]General Motors claims its new Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid will
   get a whopping 230 miles per gallon in city driving, over four times
   more than the current leader, the Toyota Prius. GM readily admits that
   the Volt will not perform as well in highway driving, when the vehicle
   will rely more on its engine on such trips, so its overall mpg will be
   lower, but it could still be the first vehicle to obtain triple-digit
   mileage numbers.

   A car with triple-digit mpg? What's not to like? Even with tax
   credits, many will find the cost to be a bit high. When the Volt
   appears in showrooms next year, it will sell for for approximately
   $40,000. In addition, there are still questions about battery life and
   range. 230 mpg in the city won't be much to shout about if the vehicle
   can't travel that far on a single charge. Nonetheless, the Volt does
   appear to be a significant breakthrough in vehicle technology.

References

   1. http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2009/08/gm_says_volt_plugin_hybrid_to.html