Hydro powered engine

[Chatha]

Why can't we make motor engines based on water, it sure has hydrogen in it? it would be a lot cheaper than converting to electricity or hydrogen. Alternatively we may build some sort of electrolytic system in hydro engines to seperate the elements, then all you'd have to do is pour water in as fuel. Maybe someone's about to make a lot of money on hydrogen.

[Bluenoise]

uhhh

[Skye]

It takes alot of energy to electrolyse water.

[H2SO4]

its not as easy as it seems. Ive pondered this also.

[Bluenoise]

It has nothing to do with it being easy or not. It's just not a way that you can generate power.

You're talking about using electricity to seperate water so you can then combine the products to generate electricity in process. And what do you get when you combine hydrogen and oxygen? WATER.

And somehow energry is supposed to magically just spit out of the process.

So if you had 100% efficiency you be generating 0 power, and that's the best case senario.

Really think about this logically. Power isn't just made. It comes from somewhere. So if it's coming from creating a chemical bond between Oxygen and Hydrogen wouldn't you think that an equal amount is used up in breaking this same bond?

 

 

I'm sorry if I sound a bit cynical but this is the 3rd time this sillyness has been asked in these forums to my knowledge and I've only been posting here a month. So really if you had taken half a second to do a search here or even on google you would have found out why this doesn't work.

[DrTom]

Word up, Blue.

[Chatha]

No, you seperate the elements by creating and collecting Hydrogen and oxygen in two seperate capsules, the hydrogen is what's used to power the vehicle and the oxygen is the waste product. The problem is only how to generate power for the electrolysis process in the first place, though I think a simple battery can fix that problem.

Doesn't sound too ludacris now, does it? Help

[Molotov]

The energy required to create enough hydrogen from electrolysis to power any sort of vehicle effectively would be enormous. It would be way more efficient to just use the said energy source directly.

[Skye]

No, you seperate the elements by creating and collecting Hydrogen and oxygen in two seperate capsules, the hydrogen is what's used to power the vehicle and the oxygen is the waste product. The problem is only how to generate power for the electrolysis process in the first place, though I think a simple battery can fix that problem.

Yes, you would need power to electrolyse the water, and the amount of power needed for that would be MORE THAN the amount of power generated by the hydrogen motor. Unless the hydrogen motor was much more efficient than an electrical motor (very unlikely), the process would be less efficient than simply running an electrical motor.

[mmalluck]

But the energy you get back from combining the hydrogen back with oxygen will never be greater than the amount of energy the battery used to split the water.

 

Lets do this as a formula:

 

2(H20) + energy from battery => 2(H2) + (O2) + wasted heat

 

The total energy on the right (both kinetic and potential) equals the total energy on the left.

 

Why the Wasted heat? During electrolysis, the water will heat up. That's just a fact of life. There's no perfect way to split up oxygen and hydrogen molecules. Some of the energy always becomes heat. You can make the process rather efficient, but you'll never be 100% efficient.

 

Lets give this equation some numbers for the energy totals.

 

We'll say the 2(H20) has no particular energy content (water is rather inert) and we'll say the battery supplies one unit of energy.

 

On the other side of the equation we'll say that the 2(H2) + (O2) has an energy content of .9 and .1 is wasted as heat.

 

0 + 1 = .9 + .1

 

Everything is nice and balanced as it should.

 

 

Now lets turn our O2 and 2(H2) back into water to get our energy out.

 

O2 + 2(H2) => 2(H2O) + energy

 

How much energy go we get back? Lets go back to the energy units we used earlier.

 

O2 and 2(H2) become .9 units of energy and 2(H2O) become 0, so

 

.9 => 0 + energy

 

Energy must be .9, but we put in 1 whole unit from our battery to split the water in the first place!

 

Even if your battery was recharged by the engine, it would still run down over time due to inefficiency of splitting water molecules. Any kind of energy transfer will result in wasted energy and that's why there's no perpetual motion machines.

[Chatha]

The only other problem is that you are going to need a bigger battery, or maybe we can harness some of the heat energy. Seems feasible thus far

[Bluenoise]

No' date=' you seperate the elements by creating and collecting Hydrogen and oxygen in two seperate capsules, the hydrogen is what's used to power the vehicle and the oxygen is the waste product. The problem is only how to generate power for the electrolysis process in the first place, though I think a simple battery can fix that problem.

Doesn't sound too ludacris now, does it? Help[/quote']

 

No now it just sounds twice as ludicrous because all you did was repeat yourself.

Think of a fuel cell as electrolysis in reverse. What you're proposing is spending energy to do the electrolysis then you're reversing it and expecting greater energy then what you spent to come out, it's a complete imposibility. Oxygen is NOT a waste product, and it can't be one. It is needed for the fuel cell to run. The fuel cell works by oxidizing the hydrogen to produce water. It just doesn't matter if your oxygen comes from the water or the air, there's plenty of it around. It's simulair to combustion of hydrogen in oxygen except that it's controlled and much more efficient.

 

What you're proposing is like rolling a ball up a hill and then pushing it down and expecting the force from that to propell it up an even bigger hill. Even if it was completley efficient you could only get just as high as from where you started.

But in this case water in the low energy state of the ball at the bottom and seperate hydrogen and oxygen are the high energy states at the top. And gravity is supplying the energy insteat of electrical potential.

 

Don't worry I completely understand what you're trying to say.

And so I don't have to repeat myself again please reread my last post or the one by mmalluck, he just presented a rock solid proff of exactley what I was saying.

 

Now if you were to come up with a better oxidizer then oxygen that would form stronger bonds with hydrogen then oxygen would, well then you might have something. Slim chance of finding anything practicle that wouldn't be worse for the environment though.

[Callipygous]

No' date=' you seperate the elements by creating and collecting Hydrogen and oxygen in two seperate capsules, the hydrogen is what's used to power the vehicle and the oxygen is the waste product. The problem is only how to generate power for the electrolysis process in the first place, though I think a simple battery can fix that problem.

Doesn't sound too ludacris now, does it? Help[/quote']

 

oxygen is not a waste product. hydrogen is a fuel, it requires oxygen to burn so your waste product would be H2O, because after you release the energy by combining them its just plain old water again.

 

the problem is that you have to put in energy to seperate them. the amount of energy to seperate them is the same as you get from recombining them.

[Chatha]

Hmm...thanks fellers. Is it cheap to harness Hydrogen in large supply, will Hydrogen gas be cheaper than Gas? I guess it should.

[mmalluck]

Yes, probably sometime off in the future.

 

How about any time soon?

 

I wouldn't count on it. I won't happen until we exhast all the other fuel sources we have. The difference between hydrogen and coal or oil is that hydrogen is merely a form of energy storage, where as coal and oil are actual fuel sources.

 

Huh? So how are they different?

 

Well you can dig up coal or drill for oil, but you can't exactly go out and dig up some loose hydrogen.

 

But we can make hydrogen!

 

Ah, but to make the hydrogen you have to take a molecule and split the hydrogen off of it. This takes energy, more energy in fact than what you get back from burning the hydrogen.

 

But don't you have to use energy to make coal and oil?

 

No, no energy is actual used to make coal or oil. The only energy used is in finding it, getting it, and cleaning it. It's true that some energy is used in the processing of oil and coal, but nature has provided us with carbon-hydrogen bonds that contain the energy in the fuel. No energy has to be spent making the fuel. The chemical energy is already there.

 

The difference between fossil fuels and hydrogen is the difference between finding a dollar by the side of the road and that of going out and working for a dollar. Which do you think people will go with?

 

/end psycopathic thread mode/

 

There, I've covered all the bases all by myself.

Thread Over!

[nomadd22]

OK. Without the math. You're describing the equivilent of generating energy by rolling a ball down a hill and carrying it back up again. Maybe God can create energy out of nothing, but I suspect that even he follows the rules. Changing free hydrogen and oxygen into water by burning it and taking it back apart again is perpetual motion. It don't work. And oil and gas and coal are all stored solar energy. They were made through photosynthesis a long time ago.