quack science gets picked up by major news outlets

Uh, did you read post 18? Two above this one ?

 

i remember the saying "propose, don't oppose"

 

wow its already on wikipedia!

the inventor says the frquency generator uses way more power than the energy released, so the laws of thermodynamics hold true.

however, if solar/wind is used to generate the electricity to run the frequency generator, we have "free" energy. although it would probably take a loooooong time to produce enough hydrogen to drive a car down the street.

i think this technology is definately worth developing further. i just hope the oil companies stay away. you know if they buy this technology, itll be burried and we'll never hear of it again.

 

We might one day have much more efficient ways of harvesting wind, solar and water power.

 

Notice the guy will also be talking to the Department of Defense? We'll be torching opposing battleships on the high seas, maybe setting people on fire?

 

Yes, use radio wave weapons to set enermy on fire, self combustion!

 

Well if that is the case, they would generate hydrogen and chlorine gas. Remember electrolysis of of salt water gets you hydrogen gas, chlorine gas and sodium hydroxide. It is a standard industrial process to manufacture chlorine gas and sodium hydroxide. They did not mention any thing about chlorine gas which is extremely poisonous and was used in WWI as a chemical weapon. The burning of hydrogen gas in their experiment would then involve reaction of hydrogen with oxygen from air to produce water and reaction of hydrogen with chlorine to produce hydrogen chloride which is another highly hazardous gas. If this is true, they are playing with their lives from the way they did their experiment depicted in the video.
By the way to induce current in salt water, you still need an anode and a cathode in the solution and connect them from outside, otherwise you just build up an electric field in the solution without current passing through. And to induce current with radio frequency waves in the solution, even very very high powered ones, still does not seem plausible to me. From my limited knowledge, the electrolysis theory does not seem quite right in this case.
But no matter what theory is behind their experiment, to say their process can produce extra energy is laughable and to use their process to produce hydrogen is economically stupid.

 

For someone who rails about open mindedness you seem very closed minded on this issue.

That said I am very skeptical of claims of this being an energy source although it might prove to be a good producer of hydrogen to store energy from renewable sources that aren't consistent like solar and wind. There might be some other interesting applications to this too as noted by the other poster if this is a way of producing hydrogen from water with less toxic products.

I would be interested to see some more study on this process.

 

You're the only one anywhere that has claimed that net energy is being created by this process. And then you're railing on your own nonsense.

 

This was actually the first thing that I thought of when I read the story. But the DoD does have an extremely large amount of money that they invest in energy saving technologies and alternative energy. The logistics of providing fuel for our technology dependent military is staggering.

For instance, in Iraq the army has converted large numbers of the standard tent air conditioning systems to partial solar, mostly because transporting gasoline for generators was a large enough drain on logistics that it was causing shortfalls elsewhere.

 

I know, no one is saying it is creating energy out of nothing......just that it is cool and should be studied.

DD

 

1.21 JIGGAWATTS????!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Hmm. People who are dismissing this find out-of-hand are missing the point.

I don't think anyone, including the "discoverer" of the phenomena, are claiming that it's a limitless supply of energy, or that even that it has immediate and obvious beneficial applications.

However, it is important in the sense that we know that one of the most stable, chemically useful, and abundant molecules in our immediate vicinity has become a potential source of energy.

For example. Everyone's making a big deal about how, thermodynamically speaking, you wouldn't be getting a net energy gain from this reaction. Of course not, burning gasoline is no different, only the system isn't closed in the sense that the energy input was <x> thousand/million years ago, in some swamp. I thought you guys all learned that when they were teaching you about fossil fuels in 8th grade earth science.

The big deal isn't the burning of water per se.
It's about finding a new way to convert energy that we can produce (radio waves of whatever frequency and intensity the guy is using), into another, formerly difficult-to-obtain energy (burning water).
Poo-poo it all you want, but all you need is to find a material that phosphoresces that frequency/intensity radio waves when exposed to - say, sunlight - and all your energy input needs in the equation magically go away.

And whoever said some crap about chlorine gas - do you have proof that it was produced? Chlorine may be in the solution but there's no mention anywhere of electrolysis. Without a current passing through the concentration of HCl/Cl2 will be marginal at worst.

I think more testing should be done before concluding whether this is a mere curiosity or something worthwhile - what degree of salinity provides the best efficiency? What frequency, or other (resonances) might be employed? Perhaps another salt could be used instead, in order to reduce the potential hazards of electrolysis? Remember that the salt is there (in all likelihood) only as a catalyst. My guess is that without chlorine's electronegativity competing for the hydrogen bond, the activation energy of the hydrogen burning reaction is greater than its yield.

 

Hum, I meant to type that, but something went wrong

 

NewYorker you're a fool if you think H2O doesn't have energy in it.

Remember "E = mc^2"? Unless you're telling me H2O has 0 mass, don't give me that.