has any one done this before because water is only two parts hydrogen with one part oxygen (h2o). can it be done to separate the hydrogen from oxygen. I remember a expariment in science at school electrolisys i think its called.

A prgramme on Discovery called Mythbusters tried it - they got the hydrogen to separate but it was not anywhere near enough!

If you find a way of doing it please let me know. I promise I wont run off with the idea and make billions.
Steve.

This guy is always trying out crazy things and there is a BingoFuel project which seems to be the closest (allegedly reproduceable) thing to what you want.


BingoFuel

JLN Labs

Even in a perfect reaction you will use exactly the same amount of energy to separate the H and O as you will release when you burn them to recombine. I'm afraid that's a pretty fundamental law of physics! It the real world no reaction is 100% efficient so you will always use more energy to perform the 'split' than you will get back in the reaction.

Just like you cant take CO2 out of an engine, separate it into Carbon and Oxygen and then burn it again! If you could then we'd just keep doing this within the car and never have to fill up, never run out of fossil fuels and not get any greenhouse effect

[Edited on 15/5/07 by matt_claydon]

but if you were not burning hydrocarbons the co2 will go down

you still need a primary source of power to seperate the h2o. Some would say nuclear power is suitable.

What you say isnt new though, it is usually reffered to in the media as 'fuel cell technology'. Some versions use catalysts to convert the seperate parts back to water in a cool manner, producing electrical potential.

............making it a reasonable way to store energy, but not feasible for generating it to start with.

I was just comparing what you suggested with the more familiar carbon example. At the end of the day if it were possible you could just keep taking the water from the tailpipe, separating it again and reburning over and over again - this is clearly impossible without knowing anything about chemistry or physics as you simply can't get something out of nothing.

As Joel says, turning water into hydrogen and oxygen using another (clean and non-scarce) power source such as nuclear and then getting the energy back out again at the point of use (such as the car) is the way science is already heading with fuel cells etc. Point is hydrogen can only be regarded as an energy store, like a big chemical battery; you still need to generate energy from somewhere else to produce the Hydrogen in the first place.

some reading later, apparently fuel cells were concieved in 1838 and first built in 1843, so definately not new! All the recent talk is caused by improved designs and more demand. Efficiency ranges from 17% in a car to 90% if you capture waste heat, probably in a lab.

17% is worse than an internal combustion engine, however, efficiency of a normal engine doesnt include making the fuel from scratch! The 17% figure is apparently power station to car wheel, which is quite impressive really.

[Edited on 15/5/07 by JoelP]

But then if you used nuclear, how do you quantify the efficiency of generating the power to start with?

If you include all the energy expended building, running and decommisioning the plant.................................

you can make a simple reactor with a set of stainless steel plates the negitive will produce hydrogen and the positive side will produce oxygen, you can separate the oxygen from hydrogen easily. you will allway recive 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxgen.

There have been several products released to -supposedly- increase your fuel economy by electrolyzing water and running that into your intake manifold.

Problem is - you're using your inefficient alternator to power the electrolysis, then burning the hydrogen and oxygen in an inefficient engine. You can ONLY lose power in these types of reactions.

There is no net gain in fuel economy, only a loss (sometimes quite significant). You're also running your engine harder and wearing out your alternator belt faster.

"vortex generators", "water fuel", magnets... They're all scams. There was a test done on a whole bunch of these things some time ago - some of them actually set the car on fire.