I met this fellow at the music camp I just got back from who told me about this man who re-figured Einstein’s theories and his predecessor’s theories and came up with a different solution that will crack the current energy debacle wide open. Evidently he has figured out a way to compress hydrogen molecules into energy rich plasma. Little bits of it can power cars for a year and supply power needs for homes and industry. I’m not a scientist so I can’t assess the whole thing very well. I’m going to study this site and see what I can muster. I’m hoping the brilliant minds here on the C&F will help. This sounds like a joke, but I’m serious. Maybe I’m falling for a hoax… who knows. I am suffering from severe sleep deprivation at the moment.
Yeah, Martin’s right…the big reason that Hydrogen has not caught on big time is it takes so much energy to produce the fuel to begin with that you reach a point of diminishing returns. The most effective way I know to make hydrogen power a car is to convert your engine into a water/hydrogen combustion electrolysis engine. It is totally possible; I made a water powered lawn mower as a physics project in college…the major drawback is the ammount of electricity needed to power the electrolysis effect; I needed two car batteries and a large water tank to make the mower work…It was bulky and near unusable, but it did function. It also had to charge for twenty four hours prior to use, and even then it would only get and hour or so of useful power. It takes longer than that to mow my lawn, especially with something that heavy.
The process would be much easier to do in a car because of the ammount of energy that we can produce and store with different apparati on automobiles these days. The engine conversion process is rediculously complicated though, due to the ammount of water-proofing you have to do to various parts of the engine (because one of the biproducts of the hydrogen combustion engine is a small ammount of water, and since the engine functions on slightly sodium rich water, you’d rust your internals very fast, thus bringing you back to the point of diminishing returns much faster). If I can find a way to harness enough electricity from a large-capacity alternator I would like to produce a hydrogen powered classic Mini Cooper, because the engine is so small and easy to rebuild. If I could get someone to give me enourmous funding I could make one work easy enough. It used to be near impossible to do without having to plug your car in every night to charge, but with the recent discoveries in harnessing energy that is normally wasted during activities like braking, i believe it is possible to create a self-contained water/hydrogen combustion powered car.
As far as Hydrogen Plasma, I wonder, after the scientist uses all that energy to produce the plasma, how will he keep it in a useable state indefinately. One of hydrogen’s cheif characteristics is it is extremely volatile and unstable. It would have to be storeable for at least small ammounts of time in a stable form, like we store gasoline in our tanks now (not that gasoline is neccesarily stable, but it can at least be contained for small ammounts of time).
Also, from what I remember of physics, you cannot create energy from thin air; energy exists as potential energy and it takes a reaction to harness that energy. For example, a great deal of potential energy exists in gasoline in liquid and vapor form… that potential energy is released by combustion and transfers to motion (inertia, energy transfer) via the pistons, drive shaft, transmission, etc etc…now your car is in motion…when you depress the brake to slow down, you are transfering that energy to the brake system which converts that same energy into heat; this energy is traditionally dissepated into the air where it becomes potential energy again, but there are some autos that can harnes the energy that is normally wasted in the braking process and transfer that into electricity to power the vehicle again…these vehicles are usually gas/electric hybrids.
Sorry to ramble on, but energy transfer in order to get more energy is not always beneficial; sometimes you waste as much energy and spew as much pollution in the process of making cleaner fuels as if you were burning them yourself in your auto.
I have tried to find it again, but come up empty handed, but did anyone else catch that University study where they discovered that it takes more energy to refine biodiesel than gasoline?
To make a long story short, I think someone was pulling your leg JG. the only way I am familiar with to compress hydrogen to the levels expressed would be to bring it to absolute zero, and I dont even know if that is entirely possible…maybe it is, I dunno. It’s totally possible to power a vehicle on compressed hydrogen (cleaner in the short run too, have no idea about the long run and whether or not energy waste would outway the benefit) and possible to create your own water/hydrogen combustion car (though it would be extremely time consuming and expensive, again it may or may not be worth it over the long run) but we do not yet know the overal environemtal imact that type of technology would have in the long run. To me, a mechanic and automobile afficionado, I would love to be able to create my own hydrogen combustion vehicle (more horsepower potential from hydrogen )and to study it’s effects, but also as one who has dabbled in physics off and on during my education, I personally feel that hydrogen deserves and needs more study on the long term impact on the environment…for example…lets pretend we have successfully created an entire industry out of water/hydrogen combustion vehicles. They run better with a bit of sodium in the water, so we use ocean water to power our vehicles. How many gallons of gasoline do we use now? I honestly dont know, but it takes about 1.7 times the ammount of gasoline to seperate enough hydrogen to create the neccesary combustion (to the best of my knowlege, anyways). How much water do we have? Can we condense it artificially from the atmosphere efficiently and reliably enough to power our vehicles. Again, we run into the energy transfer issue.
Is it worth it to try to find a way?
I think so, absolutely.
Will it take time?
Again, yes I think so.
But whatever we do, I also believe that, at least with hydrogen, we will run into more energy problems down the road, mayhaps not for several hundred years, but we will. Whenever you take something out of the environment and create energy with it and return little or nothing useful back to the envoronment you’ll run into trouble eventually. I dont even know if the water biproduct of hydrogen combustion can be reused in combustion, so that would decrease our return to the environment even more if, for some reason, it wasn’t useable.
Hydrogen is labeled by some as a pancaea, when, in reality and the long run, it may not be. It is a temporary alternative, though, at least until Martin develops Dilithium crystals !
Anyhow, sorry if I started to diverge from the original question a bit.
Did anyone who’s commented read the website or glance at any of the papers cited? The people at Blacklite claim to have found new quantum states in the hydrogen atom. It’s not about fusion or conventional H-O recombination. So I don’t think the guy was pulling Jack’s leg. They also claim to have a very efficient plasma-forming process relying on a low-voltage, catalyst-driven discharge.
I glanced at a couple of the papers they cite, and they’re not complete crackpots. However, I don’t find any evidence of the fractional quantum states that they claim to have discovered, nor would that even back up the claim that they’ve found a way to run a car for a year on a few grams of water. (Back-of-the-envelope indicates that they might achieve 10-100 times what we get from gasoline if the claim about the fractional quantum states is true and it runs at remarkable thermodynamic efficiency. Quite remarkable if they can do it, but not anywhere near what they’re claiming.)
A couple more points. Their implication that their new theory has been subjected to peer review does not appear to be backed up by any of the references on their website – I couldn’t find any papers that depend on their theory. Also, when a medical doctor with one year of graduate engineering work claims to have found a major new theory of physics that overturns theories that have been thoroughly tested, I’m skeptical.
All that said, they DO do some good work – some of the papers I looked at were quite impressive, and their low-voltage catalyst-assisted plasma generator is really nifty.
True or not, seems to be alittle more than a simple prank.
Most scientists are…uh… “not convinced” but he seems to have a couple supporters.
With such stacked odds, debunking is usually an easy job, so Mills’ tenacity befuddles his harshest critics.
“I guess I am surprised it’s lasted this long,” said Robert Park, a spokesman for the American Physical Society and professor at the University of Maryland. Park targets Mills, among others, in his new Oxford University Press book release, Voodoo Science, the Road from Foolishness to Fraud.
Um..yes I did thanky very much…
The folks at the U of U who thought they’d discovered cold fusion also discovered new quanum states in the hydrogen atom too…
but I’m sure you knew that…
Thanks guys… especially Tyler and Chas. My knowledge on physics is non-existent, but this research and resulting discovery has potentially profound ramifications. If anyone else cares to peruse the technical papers on that site and can offer an educated response I’m still very interested. Thanks again.
JG,
If you have any interest in auto mechanics at all and how you can convert a gas combustion engine to a water/hydrogen combustion engine, there are TONS of sources on the net…just google it. Many pretty much have the same info.
I have an engine from a Mini that seized last year that I’d like to try a conversion on, but first I want to see about heat-scavanging breaks in order to recover as much electricity as possible. Hopefully I can make something like that work on somthing this small…My Minis average about 40-50 mpg as it is, and that will be cut in half or so using water, but when you figure that the cost of water is damn near free (if I fill up using my neighbor’s garden hose in the middle of the night ) that’d more than quadruple my temporary savings… The conversion might even pay for itself in a couple of years or so…
"The energy released from this process is hundreds of times in excess of the energy required to start it.’
Snort snort. And I also have a lovely bridge here I would be willing to part with…
The science has already been addressed. I would just add that, don’t you think if there were one tiny bit of a real idea here that these guys would be overun by every energy company and every governmental energy agency in the world? They would have all the research funding they could ever use. This is almost exactly the same type of crap that surfaces every few years and finds some gulible folks to give them money.
)and to study it’s effects, but also as one who has dabbled in physics off and on during my education, I personally feel that hydrogen deserves and needs more study on the long term impact on the environment…for example…lets pretend we have successfully created an entire industry out of water/hydrogen combustion vehicles. They run better with a bit of sodium in the water, so we use ocean water to power our vehicles. How many gallons of gasoline do we use now? I honestly dont know, but it takes about 1.7 times the ammount of gasoline to seperate enough hydrogen to create the neccesary combustion (to the best of my knowlege, anyways). How much water do we have? Can we condense it artificially from the atmosphere efficiently and reliably enough to power our vehicles. Again, we run into the energy transfer issue.
!