Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?

[Lostinlasvegas]

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

[David H]

Bye bye lostinvegas

[Phil153]

What does burnt hydrogen turn into? Water.

Perpetual motion machines don't work.

[N 82 50 24]

[ 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

[doucy]

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.

[MrWookie]

[ 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.

[UbinTook]

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.

[Phil153]

[ 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]

[N 82 50 24]

[ 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.

[J.A.Sucker]

[ 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.