Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

Mods: if this should be in the science section plz move, I figured the vast importance of the subject to be worthy of the thinktank that is OOT.
As reported by Yahoo News and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

ERIE, Pa. - An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the "most remarkable" water science discovery in a century.John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.
The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.
Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, has held demonstrations at his State College lab to confirm his own observations.
The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.
The discovery is "the most remarkable in water science in 100 years," Roy said.
"This is the most abundant element in the world. It is everywhere," Roy said. "Seeing it burn gives me the chills."
Roy will meet this week with officials from the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense to try to obtain research funding.
The scientists want to find out whether the energy output from the burning hydrogen — which reached a heat of more than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit — would be enough to power a car or other heavy machinery.
"We will get our ideas together and check this out and see where it leads," Roy said. "The potential is huge."


This was on the front page of Yahoo yesterday, yet was not reported by any major news outlet from what I can find. WTF? This could be the most important discovery of our lifetimes (think never ending clean energy source) and nobody cares?
Is there some big bad organization trying to stuff this under the rug?
FWIW: I would still trade the discovery for an Iphone.

Lost

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

Bye bye lostinvegas

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

What does burnt hydrogen turn into? Water.

Perpetual motion machines don't work.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
What does burnt hydrogen turn into? Water.

Perpetual motions machines don't work.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure that I understand this argument in this context...

But this was posted a long time ago. My first search on youtube found something posted in May http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGg0ATfoBgo

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

A guy once came up with an automobile-like transportation device that was powered by compressed air. OMFG MAN! COMPRESSED AIR! But nobody cared, because the thing was a piece of [censored] and wasn't very useful.

It's too early to pass judgment on this discovery, but it's very possible this turns out to be a piece of [censored] also.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What does burnt hydrogen turn into? Water.

Perpetual motions machines don't work.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure that I understand this argument in this context...

But this was posted a long time ago. My first search on youtube found something posted in May http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGg0ATfoBgo

[/ QUOTE ]

The idea is that, at a bare minimum, you have to pump in enough energy to the water w/ the RF radiation to break the two O-H bonds. Then, when you burn the hydrogen, you get water right back, and the energy you release is exactly equal to the energy in two O-H bonds. In other words, as a best case, the energy you get out is exactly equal to the energy you have to pump in. Furthermore, according to the laws of thermodynamics, you're never going to be able to achieve this best case. Instead, energy you're pumping in will be lost along the way due to heating the environment, so the energy you spend is going to be greater than the energy you get out, resulting in a net loss.

Now, this would be acceptable if somehow we got the RF radiation for free, say, from the sun. However, we don't exactly get a whole lot of RF radiation from the sun. Instead, we get a lot of IR, UV, and regular old light, and that's not what we need here. To power this guy's RF source, he's using electricity, energy we've already taken great pains to produce. Thus, this system represents a pretty significant net loss in energy. He's found a cute substitute to electrolysis, the process in which you break the O-H bonds in water with straight electricity, but he's not found a miraculous source of energy. Any junior physics or engineering major could tell you this guy's a crackpot.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

The key law of thermodynamics is that no process will ever release more energy than it embodies. The key will be developing an efficient process to extract the hydrogen from the water.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What does burnt hydrogen turn into? Water.

Perpetual motions machines don't work.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure that I understand this argument in this context...

But this was posted a long time ago. My first search on youtube found something posted in May http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGg0ATfoBgo

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm just saying that you're not getting more energy out that you're putting in. The energy required to split the hydrogen is greater than the energy the hydrogen produces. Otherwise you could violate conservation of energy and build a perpetual motion by having salt water in an enclosed container.

So it's not clean energy at all, but a mere transfer of energy from the coal or nuclear power station to the hydrogen, with some loss in between. Basically less practical than commercial hydrogen fuel, which has massive problems since hydrogen has very low energy density.

edit: wookie beat me to it. Also, how did this not tip the OP off?

[ QUOTE ]
he happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer.

[/ QUOTE ] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What does burnt hydrogen turn into? Water.

Perpetual motions machines don't work.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure that I understand this argument in this context...

But this was posted a long time ago. My first search on youtube found something posted in May http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGg0ATfoBgo

[/ QUOTE ]

The idea is that, at a bare minimum, you have to pump in enough energy to the water w/ the RF radiation to break the two O-H bonds. Then, when you burn the hydrogen, you get water right back, and the energy you release is exactly equal to the energy in two O-H bonds. In other words, as a best case, the energy you get out is exactly equal to the energy you have to pump in. Furthermore, according to the laws of thermodynamics, you're never going to be able to achieve this best case. Instead, energy you're pumping in will be lost along the way due to heating the environment, so the energy you spend is going to be greater than the energy you get out, resulting in a net loss.

Now, this would be acceptable if somehow we got the RF radiation for free, say, from the sun. However, we don't exactly get a whole lot of RF radiation from the sun. Instead, we get a lot of IR, UV, and regular old light, and that's not what we need here. To power this guy's RF source, he's using electricity, energy we've already taken great pains to produce. Thus, this system represents a pretty significant net loss in energy. He's found a cute substitute to electrolysis, the process in which you break the O-H bonds in water with straight electricity, but he's not found a miraculous source of energy. Any junior physics or engineering major could tell you this guy's a crackpot.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yea, makes sense.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Now, this would be acceptable if somehow we got the RF radiation for free, say, from the sun. However, we don't exactly get a whole lot of RF radiation from the sun. Instead, we get a lot of IR, UV, and regular old light, and that's not what we need here.

[/ QUOTE ]

You forgot about the abundance of RF flying around the atmosphere that the CIA uses for mind control. There's more than enough to go around.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What does burnt hydrogen turn into? Water.

Perpetual motions machines don't work.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure that I understand this argument in this context...

But this was posted a long time ago. My first search on youtube found something posted in May http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGg0ATfoBgo

[/ QUOTE ]

The idea is that, at a bare minimum, you have to pump in enough energy to the water w/ the RF radiation to break the two O-H bonds. Then, when you burn the hydrogen, you get water right back, and the energy you release is exactly equal to the energy in two O-H bonds. In other words, as a best case, the energy you get out is exactly equal to the energy you have to pump in. Furthermore, according to the laws of thermodynamics, you're never going to be able to achieve this best case. Instead, energy you're pumping in will be lost along the way due to heating the environment, so the energy you spend is going to be greater than the energy you get out, resulting in a net loss.

Now, this would be acceptable if somehow we got the RF radiation for free, say, from the sun. However, we don't exactly get a whole lot of RF radiation from the sun. Instead, we get a lot of IR, UV, and regular old light, and that's not what we need here. To power this guy's RF source, he's using electricity, energy we've already taken great pains to produce. Thus, this system represents a pretty significant net loss in energy. He's found a cute substitute to electrolysis, the process in which you break the O-H bonds in water with straight electricity, but he's not found a miraculous source of energy. Any junior physics or engineering major could tell you this guy's a crackpot.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ahhhh...who says oot can't, make you smarter.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

Well they're saying it's salt water * RF -> hydrogen -> fresh water. The loss of salt make any difference to perpetual motion?

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Well they're saying it's salt water * RF -> hydrogen -> fresh water. The loss of salt make any difference to perpetual motion?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, my above argument still holds. I believe that the salt's contribution will be negligible to relevant energetics of the system. Now, might this be a more efficient system of desalinization? Possibly, but it's really hard to compete with shining sunlight on a big vat of water, evaporating it, and then condensing pure water. It's hard to do on a large scale, but that system is still pretty darn close to being free, at least after the startup costs.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

all of your arguments and the above article are missing the guy's point. the only people arguing he's made some great source of energy are internet idiots and the media. the guy who made it wants to kill cancer cells with it.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/951/

rebuked here

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

Interesting thread. I love this crackpot stuff. Reading it is kind of like playing the lottery. If it only works out one time ...

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

These crackpot discoveries keep popping up. Last year, there was similar hype around a company called Hydrogen Technology Applications. I emailed their PR person to ask, "Has your company heard of the first law of thermodynamics?"

Two weeks later, he responded, "gee, no, please edu-ma-cate us."

That was 8/31/06. It doesn't look like they've done anything since.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[But this was posted a long time ago. My first search on youtube found something posted in May http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGg0ATfoBgo

[/ QUOTE ]

The funny thing is that you can even see in the video that the small test tube is in between some huge radio frequency producing machine. Anyone with a half a brain would look at that and realize that the machine is requiring much more energy to run then the little flame in the test tube is producing.

It's like the people that think ethanol from corn is "free energy" because corn grows from the sun.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
A guy once came up with an automobile-like transportation device that was powered by compressed air. OMFG MAN! COMPRESSED AIR! But nobody cared, because the thing was a piece of [censored] and wasn't very useful.

It's too early to pass judgment on this discovery, but it's very possible this turns out to be a piece of [censored] also.

[/ QUOTE ]

you are very very wrong. The car is being produced as we speak, in India. You can see it on the streets of India in the summer of 2008. Check This Link This Link

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[But this was posted a long time ago. My first search on youtube found something posted in May http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGg0ATfoBgo

[/ QUOTE ]

The funny thing is that you can even see in the video that the small test tube is in between some huge radio frequency producing machine. Anyone with a half a brain would look at that and realize that the machine is requiring much more energy to run then the little flame in the test tube is producing.

It's like the people that think ethanol from corn is "free energy" because corn grows from the sun.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yup, takes more energy to grow, harvest, transport and refine corn than you get out of it at the pump.
Sugarcane is the cheapest to produce and is far more efficient, but the aggricultural (corn)lobby make inporting sugar so expensive that it becomes cost prohibitve for the US to use it.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

1) Quit being pussies and switch to nuclear power plants.
2) Electric cars.
3) Cleaner air and cheaper fuel.

Edit: I don't much about this stuff, so please explain why this plan sucks.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

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Of course, the Air Car will likely never hit American shores, especially considering its all-glue construction.

[/ QUOTE ]

Teehee.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[But this was posted a long time ago. My first search on youtube found something posted in May http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGg0ATfoBgo

[/ QUOTE ]

The funny thing is that you can even see in the video that the small test tube is in between some huge radio frequency producing machine. Anyone with a half a brain would look at that and realize that the machine is requiring much more energy to run then the little flame in the test tube is producing.

It's like the people that think ethanol from corn is "free energy" because corn grows from the sun.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yup, takes more energy to grow, harvest, transport and refine corn than you get out of it at the pump.
Sugarcane is the cheapest to produce and is far more efficient, but the aggricultural (corn)lobby make inporting sugar so expensive that it becomes cost prohibitve for the US to use it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Has it been actually proved that it takes more energy to produce than it can provide? I've read a lot of stories saying that there are studies going both ways and it varies wildly on how and what the researchers include. I remember reading about one study counting what the workers on the farm and factory ate for lunch each day as energy to produce and such things.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

Also, you have to figure the theft of corn kernels into the cost.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Has it been actually proved that it takes more energy to produce than it can provide? I've read a lot of stories saying that there are studies going both ways and it varies wildly on how and what the researchers include. I remember reading about one study counting what the workers on the farm and factory ate for lunch each day as energy to produce and such things.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's probably slightly positive in energy terms, maybe 1.3x or so, from the synopses I've seen. For tropical crops like the Oil Palm that numbers is much higher. If the growers are not using mechanised farming then it's yet higher.

Practically speaking there just isn't enough arable land to supply the amount of biofuel we would need to replace diesel and petrol.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

First law of thermodynamics: Conservation of energy (You can't get something for nothing).

Second law of thermodynamics: Entropy always increases (You can't even break even).

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

It should be noted that hydrogen could be of some use in an energy economy based on renewable or nuclear energy, not as a source of energy, but as a means of storing and transporting energy. Whether this RF thing is more or less efficient than electrolysis (passing a current through water with an electrolyte added) is an important consideration. The other interesting aspect of this is that when you pass a current through salt water, you get more chlorine than oxygen. I can't say for sure this isn't happening here, but I tend to think not, because no one is coughing their lungs out from the chlorine, or the hydrogen chloride that would be produced if the hydrogen reacted back with the chlorine. Both are pretty nasty, even at a few parts per million.

The other thing that's kind of depressing is how many people are getting excited about this. It seems that knowledge of basic science is getting rarer and rarer.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]

The other thing that's kind of depressing is how many people are getting excited about this. It seems that knowledge of basic science is getting rarer and rarer.

[/ QUOTE ]

No [censored]. New Scientist, the UK's top science magazine, had a special on space last issue and talked about antimatter propulsion. According to them the antimatter annihilates to produce gamma rays, which are magnetically channeled out the back of the space craft. And they travel at almost the speed of light! [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

Things are only set to get worse here though. They're changing the physics GCSE to remove all mathematics - now it will be a bunch of group hugs discussing how the students feel about nuclear power stations and crap.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

How can you even have physics without math?

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Well they're saying it's salt water * RF -> hydrogen -> fresh water. The loss of salt make any difference to perpetual motion?

[/ QUOTE ]

If anything, going from sea water to concentrated brine or solid salts + pure water will consume energy, but it would be a small percentage compared to the energy consumed and released by splitting water and recombining.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Interesting thread. I love this crackpot stuff. Reading it is kind of like playing the lottery. If it only works out one time ...

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I had high hopes for cold fusion. But I haven't seen even the few remaining believers claim that they've managed to power a even light bulb.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Practically speaking there just isn't enough arable land to supply the amount of biofuel we would need to replace diesel and petrol.

[/ QUOTE ]
Actual, algae farms in the desert can provide all US fuel needs, using only a fraction of US desert area. It's a viable project, produces cheaper fuel than imported oil, has massive economic benefits and zero CO2 emissions. There are some technical hurdles but everyone agrees they are all solvable - this is a less difficult project than the Manhattan project to build a nuclear weapon. There's no reason not to do it.

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

The trouble with the hydrogen car you linked is that it's not commercially viable, and it doesn't solve any of our energy problems or issues with CO2 emissions. The problem is that hydrogen fuel has a low energy density and really severe storage requirements. At 700x the pressure of the atmosphere (a viable but expensive storage scheme for a car) it has 4.7 MJ/L, compared to gasoline with 40 MJ/L. This means you need 10x the storage space or accept 10x less power/range. All for a massively higher price tag due to the complex power generation engine and storage requirements. Not to mention, you have to convert an entire country full of service stations, cars, trucks and factories with very expensive equipment to be able to begin using it.

Contrast this with algal biodiesel, which runs in cars exactly the same as normal diesel, already has cheap, mass produced engines in existence (basically, normal diesel engines) and fills up from the pump using existing storage and transport mechanisms. There's no comparison between the two.

Hydrogen is a pipe dream with zero practical application.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Has it been actually proved that it takes more energy to produce than it can provide? I've read a lot of stories saying that there are studies going both ways and it varies wildly on how and what the researchers include. I remember reading about one study counting what the workers on the farm and factory ate for lunch each day as energy to produce and such things.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's probably slightly positive in energy terms, maybe 1.3x or so, from the synopses I've seen. For tropical crops like the Oil Palm that numbers is much higher. If the growers are not using mechanised farming then it's yet higher.

Practically speaking there just isn't enough arable land to supply the amount of biofuel we would need to replace diesel and petrol.

[/ QUOTE ]
How about jatropha? Its apparently half the cost to produce biofuel from it as corn, and less than sugar cane.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The trouble with the hydrogen car you linked is that it's not commercially viable, and it doesn't solve any of our energy problems or issues with CO2 emissions.

[/ QUOTE ]

Also, they explode when you get into an accident.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
New Scientist, the UK's top science magazine

[/ QUOTE ]

Just an observation about New Scientist...I've been a casual reader for a couple of years and some of their articles are absolutely ridiculous and show little understanding of the actual science they're reporting on. It seems like a *science* tabloid more than anything. Anybody else feel that way?

disclaimer: I really only read articles about physics, so I may just be cherry-picking all the stupid articles somehow.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

I guess other people feel the same way, open letter written by Greg Egan

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/...scientist.html

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

So if this of any value at all?

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Practically speaking there just isn't enough arable land to supply the amount of biofuel we would need to replace diesel and petrol.

[/ QUOTE ]
Actual, algae farms in the desert can provide all US fuel needs, using only a fraction of US desert area. It's a viable project, produces cheaper fuel than imported oil, has massive economic benefits and zero CO2 emissions. There are some technical hurdles but everyone agrees they are all solvable - this is a less difficult project than the Manhattan project to build a nuclear weapon. There's no reason not to do it.

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

[/ QUOTE ]

I can't be arsed to look up the data right now but I've been through this one before and it turns out to be complete bs. The figures they use for oil per hectare are based on production under laboratory conditions. This means perfectly even illumination, no microfauna predators and so on. The best anyone has ever gotten from a field trial is about half the yield per hectare of the oil palm. It's also not for lack of trying. Algae are a dead end.

yah I know sucks, I was super-excited too when I first heard about this. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]