i don't think fox realizes that it is phisically impossible to get more energy out of water than the electrolysis process consumes, otherwise we would have had perpetual motion 60 years ago. if anything, the water engine would decrease efficiency. It seems to me that the government is just trying to pool government money into a bullshit project and then receive it back in campaign contributions. it's like a money laundering scheme.

I was trying to grasp the concept for the mini fridge, but the concept for this is too complex for my tired, weary brain to wrap around this morning. Will tackle it later on today when I feel more alert and see if I am more successful in understanding the concept.

From the Fox News story: //Has patented his process of converting H20 to HH0?//

wtf? I don't get it. Aren't H2O and HHO different ways of indicating the same thing? Namely water. Or am I missing something here?

"If somebody has decided to believe something - whatever the evidence - then there is nothing you can do about it."

One of life's little lessons.

I was able to find the Wikipedia article on HHO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HHO

It seems to make more sense to just use hydrogen. shrug

maybe its not great for fuel (i dunno), but the water-run blow torch is amazing.

I think I can safely say that no one understands quantum mechanics. -Richard Feynman

Ugh, and this HHO garbage. It reminds of a classmate a few years ago who asked me "If scientists are so smart, why haven't they invented a carbon dioxide engine?"

I wanted to beat him to death with a thermodynamics textbook. Alas, they have none in high schools.

Did anyone else get hijacked to Wikipedia when coming here this afternoon? I got a republican Congressman’s page, then the featured articles page, then I came here on third try.

Hydrogen is just H on the periodic table...HHO is an unstable gas of split water molecules.

It wasn't until half-way through the IRAQIS FLEE IRAQ - AMERICANS NOW MAJORITY article that I realized it was satire. Good thing I read the article, and didn't leave here pseudo-believing that nonsense unconsidered.

On reflection, the math alone should have made it immediately obvious, but I just woke up.

If it sounds too good to be true, it is. If only the government checked wiki before throwing money at this project...

@max: totally agree, it really seems that both the reporters of Fox and the "scientific experts" in the government are more into BS than into real science... I still have to see that HHO engine work alone, without any other power source.

It's almost unbelivable the amount of crap these idiots throw at the general public per day :(

the other problem with using hydrogen or water for fuel for cars is that water vapor is a greenhouse gas. so using water wouldn't really cut down greenhouse gasses, it would just switch from a large amount of one to a large amount of another.

Man, I am getting so sick of trying to explain conservation of energy to people who send me that video.

The sad thing is, the news will never follow up when they (and potentially Congress and the military, assuming the guy isn't lying about that) realize how thoroughly they've been had. So for the rest of time we'll have to listen to people whine about how some dude invented a water-powered car and it was on the news and everything before Big Oil and the Gub'ment hushed it up.

blair> the other problem with using hydrogen or water for fuel for cars is that water vapor is a greenhouse gas. so using water wouldn't really cut down greenhouse gasses, it would just switch from a large amount of one to a large amount of another.

While water vapor in the atmosphere may act as a greenhouse gas, keep in mind that the hydrogen used in fuel cells almost certainly came from electrolysis of water in the first place. (Hydrogen is not an abundant, naturally-occurring fuel source, unlike, say, natural gas.) So the net change in the water content of the planet from these two processes (electrolysis of water plus subsequent recombination of hydrogen and oxygen in a fuel cell) is zero.

There is a natural limit to how much water-vapor the atmosphere can hold before it precipitates out (the water cycle), and this limit, the saturation vapor pressure of water, depends on the ambient temperature. The saturation vapor pressure of water increases with increasing temperature, leading to a potential vicious circle of positive or runaway feedback.

Also, hydrogen fuel cells are only as clean as the processes used to generate the hydrogen in the first place. If the electricity used in the electrolysis comes from power generators that burn fossil fuels, then you haven't made much of a dent in greenhouse gas emissions. Just as with electricity, it is best to think of hydrogen as "energy currency" rather than as a fuel source.

So what's going on with controlled fusion these days?

It is true what inwit said* about hydrogen, which is where all the bullshit lies, according to wiki the process to create hydrogen is 94% efficient, it would be more efficient to just charge a battery directly in an electric car. I think rather than pooling money into creating hydrogen, the government should spend money expanding our zero emissions power plants (wind and solar technologies) developing lithium batteries that are cleaner to make and easier to dispose of. The sad thing is i'm still a minor and I came to this conclusion by myself.

While there is no such thing as 'free energy', there may be more interesting ways of leveraging existing technology and increasing efficiency.

For the masses: Electrolosis is the fine art of sticking two electrodes into water and running current. This breaks water (H2O) into two bubbling gasses (H) and (O). You can use little cups underwater to capture these components seperately. Used together again, these two gasses like to burn. By product is water vapor.

It takes a bit of energy to break these little buggers up, though. You can make the process more efficient by using carbon coated electrodes or by using screens instead of electrodes for example (though this results in mixed gasses).

In all known cases, it takes more energy to break the water up than you can recoup by burning the hydrogen. However, as these two processes are seperate, it may be possible to make electrolosis so efficient that there is very little lost energy and the resulting vehicle would be a lossy hybrid-esque vehicle.

A friend of mine likes to argue that Electric Cars are far worse for the environment than Gas powered cars. Why? That Electricity comes from somewhere. The dam with turbines turning makes electricy that runs along lossy power lines and makes heat that plugs into your lossy batteries with toxic, sometimes explosive chemicals inside. This is remarkably inefficient.

The H2O -> HHO car would suffer from the same issues as electricity to start the process would come from somewhere, however it would be a higher energy density (H2O) than even the latest batteries and thus more efficient.

A process I can imagine working (in a Mad Max world) would be a windmill farm bringing up well water and powering electrolosis. The H and O would be stored in tanks and transferred like gas. Unfortunately this car wouldn't win any speed trials and this process would need a BUNCH of windmills per car.

Electric Car is environmentally friendly and appeared in the 1980s. Anyone who had one wanted to keep driving it.

Unfortunately, u think the oil companies will not intervene.

There's a goodd movie on it in 2006 by Sony Pictures Classics

"It was among the fastest, most efficient production cars ever built. It ran on electricity, produced no emissions and catapulted American technology to the forefront of the automotive industry. The lucky few who drove it never wanted to give it up. So why did General Motors crush its fleet of EV1 electric vehicles in the Arizona desert?"

Who Killed The Electric Car?

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/whokilledtheelectriccar/hd/

I liked General Motors EV1 as this Electric Car comes with a classic sporty design, much like the old Porsches, Pontiac Trans Am (Knight Rider), De Lorean DMC-12 (Back to the future).

No offense but US cars have so much individual appeal in the 1970s and 1980s.

Now all of them looks Japanese : <

Sorry for the typos but I'm typing one-handed while munching on a sandwich and talking to a friend : >