Is this for real?

Can't bring it down to your level Wolfie, or even mine, however imagine if they could somehow harness methane that might be produced within a vehicle and use that as an alternative safe energy source. Of course, my vehilce is deficient of said methane, unless callum's onboard...but from past experience, I reckon you could harness enough from some that would break the land speed record....LOL

Lyn

No its another fitch (although they have put more thought and some scientific reseach into this) The problem is the coil, needs to supply alot of heat to the water. the energy to supply that much heat would be in excess of what is reqiered to power the vehicle anyway. the supply of hydrogen cant in itself heat the coil to provide the hydrogen to heat the coil - coz thats perpetual motion the holy grail that cant be achieved

who cares..its out of my finacial range...and swmbo's .....but i had better check

Me thinks this is the next stage in money scams, now that everyone has been caught by those Nigerian buggers.

I don't think it's impossible. Zinc is more reactive with oxygen than hydrogen is, so the reaction would be exothermic. Whether it could produce enough heat to be self sustaining is the question.

Their claim about being able to refine zinc from zinc oxide using solar heating is really interesting. It's the very sort of technology we should be developing here in Oz. Zinc is a highly available metal, but it is expensive to produce zinc from zinc oxide. We've got the sun in abundance.

Cheers Frank.

Wolfie.
This is very similar to a unit that was developed in france, the main difference is that the heat to brake down the water was provided by electric current flowing through the coil to an anode in the water, the system failed for the reason already stated by others, i.e. it takes more energy to create the hydrogen than you get out of the motor. but these guys claim greater eficiency, I think I will not invest just yet.
Eric.

Hmmmm ........ I wonder why no one has taken up the idea that Kurt Johansson of Alice Springs had, with his wood-fired gaspowered car. He actually drove the car from Alice to Brisbane and back burning wood collected from the side of the road.

Kurt Johansson is well known for developing the first self tracking road train.

I am not supporting this by a long shot but, everyone always forgets about the heat that is produced by the combustion process which has always been a problem to get rid of . My point is that once an (alternate!!! ) engine is up and running the heat produced would/should figure significantly in the whole process . Above posts are right that anything that suggests some sort of perpetual energy would have to be a farce. Always keep an open mind but don't ever invest in this stuff unless you are 100% sure.

Just my 2cents worth

Cheers Dave L.

The basic science behind the principle sounds reasonable. All they are doing is effectively burning the metal, which is essentially the same chemical reaction as rusting (oxidising), just at a much faster rate! And, surely most of us remember from high school how well 00 steel wool burns in the busen burner or, iron fillings or Magnesium ribbon? - very exothermic (heat producing) reactions.

In this case instead of producing the heat of burning, they claim to be producing Hydrogen. They don't mention what form the Hydrogen is in, but if it follows the rules of high school chemistry the first step will be to produce a hydrogen ion - in other words Acid... Could be interesting for an alloy engine!! But I am sure the chemistry is much more complex and something else is produced - I assume it will be Hydrogen gas. Chemical reactions don't always have to produce heat in the first step.

Now I don't know this for sure but the heating of the tip may be a similar principle to a sparkplug. Where a small amount of heat energy is needed to trigger a larger amount of energy to be released. In this case it won't be a spark, just a continous flow of energy (like a glow plug??)

The use of catalysts may further reduce the amount of energy (heat) needed to trigger the reaction.

So, I see no reason why, in theory, the concept would work. Certainly it does not appear to break the laws of thermodynamics (perpetual motion if you like). The weight of the fuel is an issue, as is the efficency of the overall process.

No, I would not invest my money in this yet - but it still has potential.

Justin

can you imagine in ten years time pulling up at a servo & asking for ' ten metres of wire thanks' & watching it being automatically fed into the fuel cap or going on a trip & having a few spare coils in the boot, me thinks its a lot of hot air especially after they asked for investors.

It might get heat and also hydrogen from some sort of chemical reaction. I can remember when I was a kid we would inflate balloons with Hydrogen by dropping pieces of Aluminium into a bottle of caustic soda solution and stretching the neck of the balloon over the neck of the bottle, the bottle had to stand in a bucket of cold water from the start because it would become very hot. Try it yourself, put some caustic in a tin the drop in a bit of Aluminium. BE CAREFULL caustic will burn your skin,eyes etc.
Scrubcat.

If it actually worked it would be a far more efficient burn process with less engine wear with a condensor to remove the water before it entered the engine.
It would probably need petrol to super heat the fuel cell to produce the hydrogen!!!
NickR

Lone Wolf
It's unreal just like plastic flowers

Richard

I don't know about the hydrogen car but I do know for sure that during WWII a great many cars were running on charcoal. As a kid my dad help my Great Uncle collect wood for and operate a charcoal production plant that he'd set up on his farm. Made a small fortune selling charcoal and he wasn't alone in that. I have a copy of a "How To" manual that the Vic govt. distributed to farmers during this time as they actively encouraged people to produce charcoal as an alternative power supply during petrol rationing.

It must still be possible on modern cars because a couple of years ago at the local shopping centre I parked next to a Ford Falcon that had a big sign on it saying "This car is powered by charcoal. Ring this number XXXXXX to find out how to convert your car". Rather sorry I didn't considering to price of fuel now.

:o( Melissa

Not that I'm a sceptic however if it were for real I think the oil companies, with a vested interest in these concepts not getting off the ground, would be hard at discrediting it.

If I did think it were a possibility and wanted to invest some money, I would be looking for a major magnesium producing company and invest in that. At least if you did all your dough you wouldn't look quite as stupid as investing in the car company.

Does anybody remember Sir Joh investing millions of Qld tax payers money into the water powered car?