Slashdot Mirror
Making Fire From Water
LexNaturalis writes "Gizmodo has a story out about a new product that makes fire from water. Gizmodo explains how it works: 'Ordinary tap water (preferably distilled) is supplied to the fireplace through a pipe or tank, a 220 volt electrical service then separates the hydrogen and oxygen atoms through electrolysis, the Aqueon ignites the hydrogen, and ta-dah, fire! The oxygen is then added for color and brightness, while the rest is released into the room. It doesn't require venting because it doesn't produce any harmful emittents like carbon monoxide -- just water vapor.' The manufacturer's website has more information on the science behind this new product. While splitting water to get hydrogen and oxygen is not new, this product will likely make the technology more accessible to the masses and might hopefully show that hydrogen is a more attractive fuel than petroleum-based fuels."
Fire from water? Thats easy! I use to do it all the time with a block of sodium. Cats didn't like it to much though...
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
Damn I thought this was some new drink for us.
I wanna run my car on that!
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The price tag is $49,999. They only expect to sell about five this year.
I was under the impression that hydrogen flames were only visible in infared. Am I wrong, or are they burning something else as well here?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Yeah, fire from water, and ... 220V.
That's like making wine out of water, and oh, yeah, some grapes and stuff.
This technology is over a century old, the only reason its being looked at is because of the "running out of oil" hype. If this had caught on when it was first discovered global warming would have been much less noticeable then it is now.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
We could have light in northern Finland during winters
But on the serious side, I would love to get one of those gadgets at home. Clean fire is always welcome in my home. Altho one incident with zippo gas brought me a month's worth of sickleave, this fireplace would have MUCH safer fuel... yeah, hook me up with one of these!!
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
Using electricity to convert water to hydrogen to create flame is a round-about way of making things more complicated than they have to be. There are better ways to make heat and light with electricity, after all. And there are better ways to make electricity with water. And if you need fire, burning a tree is simpler still. :)
Seriously, didn't everyone see this as a demonstration in high-school chemistry? This isn't exactly that new or exciting...
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
What good is this, for anything?
I bet that's energy efficient.
How much does it 'cost' in electricity to generate 1J of heat energy this way? Is there a net cost liability compared to using say natural gas? How cheap is electrolysis?
(I just rememeber that natural gas heaters are pretty darn cheap to run)
Cos if it takes more energy to split the water than the split water produces in heat output, ESPECIALLY if you consider the ineffeciency of generating and delivering the electricity to you (40-60%) effeciency, then better to just use natural gas heaters no?
(Isn't this the whole argument behind the hydrogen econonmy being a big farce?)
It doesn't require venting because it doesn't produce any harmful emittents like carbon monoxide -- just water vapor.'
Doesn't that produce humidity?
60 Amps? To run a fireplace? Yes I know it takes a lot of power to split water - but my hottub doesn't draw that much power at full blast. Much as I'd love a clean burning fire in my fireplace - drawing 8-9kW to do it is nuts
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Water Heater
Stove.
Cant justify a space heater or house heating due to the amount of water vapor that would be released..
http://mirrordot.com/stories/03cb144f72720cdd95618 f661e7e9f8e/index.html
I remeber back in highschool chemisty I came up with a smaller version of this, basically about the size of a large candle. Showed it my chem and shop teachers to see how feasible it would be to make it. They both said it would never work and it was a stupid idea. I coulda been rich damnit!
That is so going in the "sex room" of my legion of evil!! 4 of them all around my hot tub.
Oh, snap, I'll have all kinds of water right there too!
It seems that just using electricity directly would be the most efficient.
MINNEAPOLIS (April 06, 2005)Hearth & Home Technologies wants to inform consumers of possible safety risks associated with the continued use of 7,815 Heat & Glo(TM) brand GEM 36 and GEM 42 gas fireplaces sold since July 2002. The fireplaces can, under certain circumstances, accumulate gas prior to burner ignition, causing the glass window to shatter and presenting the risk of burns or cuts from broken glass.
"The safety and welfare of our customers is of the utmost importance to us," said Brad Determan, president of Hearth & Home Technologies. "We are asking customers who own one of these products to turn off the gas flow to the fireplace and stop using it until we can send someone to their home and correct the problem at no expense to them."
Determan explained that company representatives are notifying customers as quickly as possible, either directly and/or through dealers and distributors who sold the fireplaces. Heat & Glo gas fireplace owners can determine if they own a GEM 36 or GEM 42 by checking the rating plate in the bottom of the unit located on the base pan in front of the gas control or by calling Heat & Glo Customer Care at 1-800-215-5152, between the hours of 8AM to 5PM CST. If an owner has not yet been contacted, they can call Heat & Glo Customer Care at the number above or go to www.gem3642.com for more information. This safety alert also includes Gem 36 fireplace owners that recently received a replacement burner assembly.
"We very much regret the concern and inconvenience this may cause our customers, dealers and distributors and will do all we can to make this repair process as easy as possible for them," said Determan.
Hearth & Home Technologies is a leading provider of hearth products for the home.
Small fragments of glass in your face, anyone?
-Copyright law #69:Whenever Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain,copyrights get extended by 25 years.
Combustion in air, of almost any fuel, produces nitrous oxides (NOx). Air contains mostly nitrogen, which although nonreactive at room temps, will react at elevated temperatures. It is responsible for elemrnts in photochemical smog. One reason for catalytic converters on modern cars.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
I had this idea back in 6th grade. Too bad they beat me to making it into a sellable product. I was taking it a step further and trying to figure out a way to make a generator out of it, though.
"...It doesn't require venting because it doesn't produce any harmful emittents like carbon monoxide -- just water vapor..."
So the occupants of the house only have to ventilate their house to get rid of all the entrained moisture. Sounds like this will take off big!
I think the poster misunderstood the benefit of this... this is nothing more than a fancy electric room heater!
This is NOT an alternative energy source, it's a wasteful energy consumer...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I'll pass on something that makes my house humid and uncomfortable.
...and coal, and atoms, and hydro.
"might hopefully show that hydrogen is a more attractive fuel than petroleum-based fuels."
With 220v input, that's a lot of electricity being generated (most of it using fossil fuels), transmitted long distances (which, of course, wastes electricity) and then being used to... split water so it can burn. Great. You'd actually be incurring a lower energy load with a natural gas fireplace.
Hydrogen doesn't grow on trees - it takes power to make hydrogen. Hydrogen as a fuel is a boondoggle brought to you by the unlikely bedmates of ultra-environmentalists and big energy business - the latter who consider water the only acceptable emissions, and the latter who realize that pinning everyone's hopes on the ultra-shiny-modern "Hydrogen" genie is a good way to keep making money in the meantime.
It takes MORE energy to get the hydrogen-oxygen bonds to release than you get back when you recombine them through burning.
GEEZ. You might as well take a solar powered light and shine it on itself.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The oxygen is then added for color and brightness, while the rest is released into the room.
The rest of the oxygen is released in the room? Granted, that going above 20% oxygen in a room won't harm you, but it does make combustible things more so. How much oxygen is this device creating? It might not be a good idea to smoke near this thing?
"This product ... might hopefully show that hydrogen is a more attractive fuel".
A *fuel* eh? Just like my lead-acid car battery is a fuel.
Wake up folks; water is the most stable chemical form of hydrogen and oxygen. Breaking water to form hydrogen is an inefficient (wasteful) process.
The only potentially viable way to generate hydrogen is to "burn" biomass or mined gasses/oils. Biomass has to be grown, thus putting a strain on farmland and possibly promoting world hunger (we'll burn their food for energy). There are cleaner, more efficient ways of extracting energy from petroleum than converting it to hydrogen.
Hydrogen is merely a "cool" idea for porkbelly projects. As a non-naturally ocurring fuel, it is a non-starter.
No, what this shows is that hydrogen is simply a derivative of fossil fuels, and is in fact an extremely expensive, inefficient and almost useless way to store and transport energy.
Let's see, we start with huge lumps of coal, convert them to steam, convert the steam to electricity, and then use the electricity to make hydrogen which (in a fuel cell) we can convert back to electricity. Energy is lost at every step along the way. In particular, compressing the hydrogen from atmospheric pressure to storage tank pressure loses about HALF the total energy, so even if the fuel cell is 100% efficient, you've still lost HALF the energy you started with.
But commercial hydrogen is not produced by electrolysis. It's produced from natural gas and steam. So let's see, we start with natural gas, a product which has the following properties:
- Cheap
- Easy to store and transport with widely available equipment
- Can run through cheap, widely available engines
- Fairly clean burning (compared to diesel)
- High energy density in compressed tanks
and we convert that to hydrogen which has the following properties:- Very very expensive
- Very difficult to store. The only real-world proven way to store it at a high density is to liquify it. That will never be a practical option outside of aerospace industry
- Can be burned in regular engines, with regular engine efficiency, or can be burned in extremely expensive fuel cells. There is no realistic possibility of fuel cells becoming cost competitive in the foreseeable future.
- Low energy-density for real-world storage (compressed tanks, etc). Fuel cell cars have a range of less than 200 miles usually.
- Oh, and it's clean burning! Finally after all the bad things about H2 we come to one good thing!
- It makes the whole global warming and oil dependency problems worse becomes it takes so much energy is wasted in the process of converting fossil fuels into hydrogen.
The one thing that could help is that you can make hydrogen from clean nuclear energy and from clean solar energy, but given that hydrogen electrolysis is not cost-competitive with even cheap fossil fuel electricity, why should it be cost competitive with much more expensive solar electricity?I regret that our government is involved in subsidizing this whole boondoggle, but I have no worries that it will continue in the long-term. Some small improvements in lithium batteries, and some reasonable production economy in lithium batteries will make electric cars competitive with plain old ICE cars, and the hydrogen fuel research pork programs will shrivel up and die.
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The electrolysis requires energy in the form of electricity and that electricity is produced by fossil fuels...
Its funny seeing all these 'new' and 'exciting' products which pop up every now and then and which are aimed at reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. All this, when the simplest way to reduce our dependence is to consume less. Not only will we live a healthier lifestyle, but we will give our children something other than smoke and ruins to live in when we pass away.
Staying one step ahead!
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Hydrogen is not a replacement fuel. The best you can do with it is store some of the energy you used to extract it. You still need some source of energy to produce the hydrogen in the first place, and currently it's likely that source is fossil fuels.
It also sounds like it takes godawful amounts of power to generate enough hydrogen to produce a useful flame. Better to use that directly to heat your house, light your house, charge your electric car, etc..
Probably fossil fuels! Especially because of the bad rep that nuclear power, a clean and effecient power system, has..
I agree, it's quite silly to claim this is a clean burning fire.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
If you burn something in air, if you get the air hot enough then you combine some of the nitrogen in the air with oxygen.
Hydrogen burns pretty hot.
I wonder what steps these folks have taken to prevent or minimize emission of nitrogen oxides.
I also wonder how they're getting color in the flame, since the usual cheerful yellow comes from incandescent soot particles.
Maybe when they designed it they were under the influence of firewater.
I know, I know, it is usually silly to try to produce a fire (I mean real flames) with electricity being the sole energy source. However, if I really want to do such a thing (possibly for decorative reasons), electrolysis seems to be a reasonably simple way to do it.
Except for the inefficiency that almost every other post is pointing out, increasing indoor humidity might be useful in winter in addition to conventional heaters which just heat the air without adding moisture, effectively lowering humidity to an uncomfortably low level.
Tag lost or not installed.
Reduce consumption? Well sure that would help, but it isn't a real solution. Even fairly low human tech and population numbers have considerable effects on the ecosphere of a planet. The only real way to get zero effect is to migrate everyone off the planet. That way both the ecosphere and humans can go their own way and do whatever they want.
(PS, I know this isn't going to happen any time soon, if ever)
My score to whoever assigns scores: 1.
It didn't seem to be April 1. Surely they're pulling our legs. I can think of no good reason for this thing. Just using the electricity to produce heat is way more efficient. I've seen electric fireplaces that give an amazingly good simulation of flames. How about a natural gas fireplace. They heat the room up well and add useful heat and do a reasonable imitation of a wood fire.
It's a long time since I've seen such a pointless waste of money.
might hopefully show that hydrogen is a more attractive fuel than petroleum-based fuels.
Given how much energy electrolisis takes, I don't be thinking so, not in this case.
Well well, we can tell who's a right winger.
There are a billion and two ways to get atomic hydrogen, and this is just one of them. Sure, it's ineffecient, but so is burning carbon fuels.
Besides, electricity can be derived from anything these days. Put a few solar panels on your roof, and you've got a self contained hydrogen producer. Step it up another notch with rain water collection and filtration and it's competely autonomous.
But oh, I guess you'll argue that photovatalics are terrible and that silicon hurts the environment and that oil's the best fuel we got.
Next up, Biofuel. It's cheap! It's effecient! And if you were truly worried about the world farmlands, you'd be *advocating* this. The more biofuel that goes into production, the more the need for farmlands, and farmlands will grow in size. Thus, overall food output will increase and we will be able to transport that same food further, for cheaper than oil.
I know, I know, it's rough I don't wanna give up my old beater jeep either, but the fact is that oil is unsustainable and the sun IS sustainable. Well, unless you want to get pedantic on me and say the sun will go away in 5 billion years.
Hydrogen's a great idea as long as it's implemented correctly, which is where the research is currently going on. Oil was a terrible idea; just look at the middle east today!
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Generally, it is quite difficult to pass current through distilled (and especially deionized) water. In fact, pure water is such a good insulator that it is used in the high voltage switches (for example at electric generating plants) to suppress arcing while contacts are being opened or closed.
about the excess moisture. Who said you had to run the thing at full output, 24/7? It's a *decorative* heater/fireplace. If I had one, I would use it for that purpose... Light it when guests come over, or when we're alone, snuggle with the wife on some cold winter evenings.
Willie...
I am using as much as I damn well please, to help get us to the point where it is gone, and we can get on to the next thing. Just to stop the whining about how we are running out!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
That sounds like an incredibly energy efficient system. Not. Let's burn fuel at the power plant to make electricity, so that we can put electrical energy into the inefficient reaction to break chemical bonds to make hydrogen and oxygen which we then combine again to make a pretty flame. Not to mention the wear and tear on electrodes.
I'll just stick to burning the fuel directly to make my flames.
Sheer geekiness aside, how much does this thing cost to run?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
compared to what running this thing will do to your electric bill!
Tag lost or not installed.
Sure it makes hydrogen but it uses something on the order of 4kw. Lets all remember you don't get something for nothing people.
For only $50k you too can impress your friends by pretending to embrace alternative energy sources while you squader a disproportionate amount of electricity.
ok, so we end up with a flame and water vapor. Now does anyone think this is a good idea for a humidifier/heater in a cold country? A post above mentions Finland. In the winter, the air gets very dry there (at least it was when i was there at X-mas), and one of those guys would:
1 heat the home (flames heat)
2 humidify the air (produces water vapor)
Now don't drive the thing too far or you'll think you're in a tropical jungle, but still, it could be pretty useful that way as well.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
With some mumbo jumbo about future fuels to sell it to people. In reality it's an electric heater. Almost all uses of electricity are electric heaters, and unless they affect things outside the room, they're mostly 100% efficient electric heaters. It's easy to be 100% efficient at turning useful energy into heat, after all. (furnaces are not 100% efficient because they must vent waste gas outside, along with some heat.)
This just happens to turn electricity into heat in an amusing way, at a high price. There are, of course lots of other interesting ways to turn electricity into heat. My computers are doing plenty of that right now.
If they really were pitching this as a way to heat the house, it would be as bad an idea as any other electric heater. They are way poorer in total "well to home" efficiency than gas furnaces, but often used because they are cheap to install (expensive to run), very easy to meter (for landlords), and on the positive side, can be easily individually controlled on a room by room basis, which sometimes can make them more efficient than heaters that either heat the whole building or nothing at all.
But I doubt this is meant as such a heater. It's meant as an art piece, to wow your fellow millionaire friends.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
My invention uses 220V to make hydrogen which is burned to heat water which drives a turbine that generates electricity.
Clean energy!
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
- Is Electricity Fire?
- Yes!!1111
Confusing us with facts.
This is a very cool science step. To be able to be able to make a household product that has the ability to convery hydrogen to fire is very cool. But they shouldn't try to sell this. You could buy the exact same object except powered by natural gas and it would cost you a lot less. The only people interested in this would be rich nerds. And I don't even think those exsist. Now that you have made this. On to the more useful invention!
What a load of bullshit about marketing alternative fuels. This sounds like a great geek toy, a fabulous special effect, even an interesting way to have open flames inside without toxic fumes needing exhaust. Isn't that enough?
Because as an "alternative energy" demo, it's a travesty. Thermodynamics means that all the energy released in the fire had to be put into the O2 and H2 cracked from the water, by the high-voltage electricity. Which electricity had to be generated far away, losing at least half its power in the transmission. Then the cracking inefficiency, and the power consumed in moving around the gasses, all make this a terribly inefficient waste of power. Which is generated, no doubt, by burning petro fuels. Which are not only running out (the relatively clean and cheap stuff, anyway), but which are pumping lots of pollution into the air at the plants - even when you we don't see them.
This toy is clearly a much bigger waster of power than even the worst home heating systems that rely on electric baseboards. Because it does what they do, then a bunch more stuff, before the heat is released. What we have here is a sick little example of "greenwashing": covering up an environmental destruction with PR about how it's good for the environment. If we convert all our heating, all our toys, to these greenwashed little wasters, our environment will consist of entirely simulated nature - for those of us who survive the detachment from the food chain, clement weather, and our current civilization.
--
make install -not war
There is a great war looming over who will control oil.
There is a bigger war looming over who will control the fresh water resources on our planet.
We will be building a LOT of nuclear power plants long before anyone starts burning water.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
The F'ing Article certainly doesn't say so. I don't see any comments saying it is. In fact, the only discussion I see about whether this is or isn't a fuel source is... your comment right here.
Given the power requirements of such a setup, I bet burning a plain old Duraflame log is going to be better for the environment.
Besides, if you want something even more clean burning, why not use natural gas?
I'm Trappped at Berkeley.
Bad, bad example. Go sit in the corner.
t m
Okay, now where were we?
Yes, hydrogen CAN be extracted from some hydrocarbon fuels, butwhile looking around for articles on it, I got the impression it's not much more cost or fuel efficient than plain old electrolysis.
There's this article:
http://www.batteriesdigest.com/hydrogen_extract.h
but I don't think I can trust an article where different sentence fragments were apparently written by people who didn't coordinate well with each other (this is an actual sentence from the above webpage):
"Electrolysis of water, the oldest known way to prepare hydrogen, is not new."
Tag lost or not installed.
At least, if you believe their PR: Clickie Clickie
I'm not a physicist or chemist and am too lazy to look for a mirror. How much heat would this produce? Is it enough to heat a room and replace a wood burning fireplace or is it just a piece of *bling* like a hotel novelty fireplace, like the one Side Show Bob wanted to blow up Selma after MacGuyver?
(yes, I did say "bling")
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home/make-fire-from -water-116027.php
The flame is tiny, well the hydrogen flame is anyway, the damn flame sculpture is huge in comparison! I guess they realized producing a real fire from electricity and water was a little much.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Ok, lets add energy to water in order to split it into hydrogen and oxygen...then lets combine the hydrogen and oxygen back together again. And...we'll get all the energy back that we put into the system in the first place - no more and no less (ok, a little less back since nothing is ever 100% efficient).
I believe you get more energy back than the 13.2 kW/h invested... all the electricity is converted to heat in the process, plus you get to burn the hydrogen.
What does your rant against hydrogen have to do with a toy electric fireplace for rich people? The toy burns hydrogen. You have a political axe to grind against hydrogen and fuel cells. Of course it's on topic! Or maybe this is just a pre-written rant for use whenever hydrogen is mentioned. That fuel cell cars and the whole "hydrogen economy" under consideration by policymakers has nothing to do with the topic at hand is irrevant. Lame.... --M
Your sig hmmm, "He's Dead Jim, Dead Jim, Dead!"?
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Here's a guy that made fire from ice, and it didn't even require 60amps: Tracker Trail
Some old houses have 60 Amp service -- if they use gas stoves.
Stoves and clothes dryers are commonly wired to 40 amp circuits (each), so these units are going to eat 50% more power than my stove with all burners and the oven on.
It'd probably be cheaper to buy 20 P4s as space heaters, plus 2 more to run a really nice display.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
The first part of the process:
2H2O->2H2+O2
The second part of the process:
2H2+O2->2H2O
And we're going to get net energy out of this how exactly?
Somebody ought to tell these people about the laws of thermodynamics.
Physics is good
Since when is nuclear energy clean? Accidents aside, nuclear powerplants produce radioactive waste, which is anything but clean. And in fact, there is no way to dispose of it at this time.
I seriously doubt they can produce flames in air and fail to produce nitrous oxide. When they add oyygen to the flame there's no fucking way.
We could harness the power of the slashbots by having them sit on stationary bicycle power generators, and use that electricity to electrolyse water!
We could probably also set up some kind of methane collector seat to increase the efficiency of the system.
Just imagine all that untapped energy stored as fat that we could use for the benefit of all mankind!
To all you complaining about the inefficiency:
The electroysis of water is certainly not nearly 100% efficient, HOWEVER, did you happen to consider where this wasted energy goes? That's right, it heats up the water, which in turn heats the air in the room.
If it were burning coal->boiling water->generator->light bulb, then yes it's very, very inefficient.
However, when the last steps are "electrolysis of water" and then "burning the hydrogen", there's additional energy input, namely, those come from the water/hydrogen - it is not merely a "fire transfer system" anymore.
I think you've mistaken this for "to create hydrogen particles using the electricity without water, then burn those hydrogen"
I get your rant about the proposed hydrogen economy, but all this product appears to do is separate hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis and then let them recombine to produce flame. The part about adding oxygen "for color and brightness" is moronic, and the device is obviously not a demonstration of hydrogen as an alternative fuel, or anything else. It's just a cute little expensive novelty item.
Yeah, I was wondering when people would realize that the challenge of the hydrogen infrastructure is bullshit.
I mean...you can get hydrogen from water. I've never seen a gas station that lacks water OR electricity...so how hard is it REALLY to supply hydrogen at every gas staion in america?
Ordinary tap water (preferably distilled) is supplied to the fireplace
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but wouldn't the electrode that does the splitting get plated with all the crap from tap water fairly quickly? I understood that distilled deionized water had to be used for electrolysis because the electrodes used are very susceptible to getting clogged by things like calcium and magnesium in our water.
http://www.heatnglo.com.nyud.net:8090/products/fir eplaces/aqueon/AqueonScience.asp
:-/
Mirrordot doesn't get you past the first page
Fuel Cells actually combine water and hydrogen, not the other way around, this product splits them and burns them. Thats why fuel cells only produce H20 as a waste product. This is also why fuel cells are so expensive (about as much as a car to put them in), and burning hydrogen from water happens every year in highschool physics. This whole clean fuel thing well be back again when power plants and cars have turned many once dry places into swamps ;)
The way to figure wattage is to multiple voltage by amperage. In this case 22 * 60. If you plug that into a handy dandy calculator you'll come out with 13.2 kW. If you figure that electricity costs run about $0.08 per killowatt hour (rough national average) then 13.2kW * 1hour * $0.08 = $1.056 per hour to run. You know what? I hate chopping wood so much (not to mention the time involved) that it's worth a buck five to me to run this thing.
Jeremy Logan's Website.
"While splitting water to get hydrogen and oxygen is not new, this product will likely make the technology more accessible to the masses and might hopefully show that hydrogen is a more attractive fuel than petroleum-based fuels"
what fuel do you think powered that electrical service, dude? not hydrogen.
"Other bands play, but Manowar KILLS"
Now, when the power goes out, I can sit in front of my ecological fireplace....no, wait.
but if both hydrogen and oxygen are flammable, what isn't water flammable?
Woah, the thing releases a 1/2 gallon of water vapor every hour.
That'd make the room hot, humid, and sweaty quick.
Excelent...
Okay, so rather than burning a renewable source of energy like wood in my fireplace, I'm going pay $50K to obtain the ability to burn hydrogen. Hydrogne is good and pure and not oil so that's good right? Oh yeah except for the fact that in order to make my fireplace work I need 220 current which is coming FROM DEAD DINOSAURS.
*SIGH*
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Way to deplete our precious water supply!
Not much will be produced without a chimney. All that "water", aka superheated steam, will stay in the room and turn it into a sauna. There should be enough moisture in the air to cool the flame down in short order. Of course, you might prefer a chimney to sweat soaking furniture, but I digress.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Somewhat OT but something I wanted to complain about. I just saw a documentary on hydrogen powered cars, on Nova's "Science Now" show. Sounds great, but one point they raised is where the world is going to get all this hydrogen from. All good points etc until the end when they ruined it.
He says eventually we will have cars powered by water. Someone needs to beat him with a ClueBat. Whatever energy you get out of burning the hydrogen with the oxygen is going to be equal to or less than the energy it required for your car to break up the hydrogen from the oxygen (in the water) in the first place. Unless you can violate some laws of physics, you are making a perpetual motion machine, since the hydrogen car's waste product is water... if it RUNS on water, then it is powered by its own waste product, and THAT is a perpetual motion machine.
Idiots.
I'm done now. Continue talking about splitting and recombining H and O.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Just read this Toshiba press release entitled "Toshiba's New Rechargeable Lithium-Ion Battery Recharges in Only One Minute"
Take special note of item #3 .
Highlights:
1) Excellent Recharge Performance
The thin battery recharges to 80% of full capacity in only a minute. Total recharge takes only a few more minutes.
2) High Energy Density
Small and light, the new battery offers a high level of storage efficiency. The prototype battery is only 3.8mm thick, 62mm high and 35mm deep and has a capacity of 600mAh.
3) Long Life Cycle
A prototype of new battery (a laminated lithium ion battery with 600mAh capacity) was discharged and fully recharged 1,000 times at a temperature of 25 degrees centigrade and lost only 1% of capacity during the test.
4) Temperature
The new battery operates well in extremes of temperature. It discharges 80% of its capacity at minus 40 degrees centigrade, against 100% at an ambient temperature of 25 degrees centigrade, and loses only 5% of capacity at temperatures as high as 45 degrees centigrade after 1,000 cycles. These characteristics assure the wide applicability of the battery as a power source for products as diverse as hybrid vehicles and mobile phones.
5) Eco-friendly Battery
The new battery can quickly store energy produced by locomotives and automobiles. This speedy and highly effective recharge characteristic of the battery will support CO2 reduction, as the battery can save and re-use energy that was simply wasted before.
So long as this doesn't have a chimney, it will heat no less efficiently than an electric radiator. Both convert 100% of the electrical energy input to heat.
Granted, this fireplace makes some noise, so it radiates acoustic energy - but this is just absorbed by and therefore heats the surroundings. It also produces some visible and infrared light, but the same is true of these: they're absorbed by the room. The only POSSIBLE way in which energy is lost is, say, if the thing is visible through your window, so some light is escaping without being absorbed by the room! That would be absolutely negligible.
Nearly everything is a 100% efficient heater. Your computer is no less efficient at heating the room using the electrical energy that it consumes than the electric radiator next to it is. The computer just happens to DO SOMETHING with the energy during its trip to high entropy.
When I want to heat a room, sometimes I just turn on incandescent light bulbs. This may shock you as an example of incredible inefficiency, but it isn't. You wouldn't feel guilty about using an electric heater to achieve the same thing, would you? Well guess what: light bulbs are just as efficient.
It's true that heat-pumps heat more efficiently, but they're completely, completely different. Depending on context, sometimes heat-pump efficiencies are reported as >100% to reflect this [which is true even if the heat pump's actual performance is low. Even the worst heat pump is better than any heater. At 0% performance, a heat pump becomes just an electric radiator.])
In the movie "Chain Reaction" Keanu Reeves managed to separate the hydrogen out of the water using electricity and his sampling keyboard.
Obviously the new technique is more advanced as it doesn't seem to require the keyboard. Probably good because Keanu's method accidently destroyed eight city blocks.
Coding Blog
There should be something similar to the Darwin Awards for completely pointless inventions.
I tried this (when i was 12) with a glass test tube, rubber stopper, tap water, REALLY long cord and 220V AC. DuDe! this thing lit up as bright as a flash bulb but for much shorter period of time. It blew the cap off and spilled water all over. :)
It would have worked perfectly fine had I not used AC current instead of DC. Getting a AC-to-DC transformer wasn't one of the options available to me(being 12 and in Soviet Russia..)
Had I used 2 test tubes (full of water, submerged in the same body of water, upside-down) and put + electrode in one and - in another, I would have ended up with one test tube full of O2 another of H2. Possibly some ozone as well.not sure
From a financial standpoint, it would be cheaper to heat the house with electrical radiant heat instead of a fireplace that broke H2O into hydrogen and oxygen and then combined them again (burned)
With the right ratio of hydrogen to oxygen, this mixture becomes explosive so I wouldn't recommend roll-your-own hydrogen fireplace to any slashdot readers.
Hey, Cleveland did this years ago! let's give credit where credit is due - the "mistake on the lake"!
No, really, the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. That's a miracle if i've ever heard one. some info. Cleveland's main river caught on fire in 1963 due to excessive waste dumping and allegedly a lit cigar being thrown onto the surface of the river.
So not only does it allow us geeks to explain it all to the nubes, but it helps those of us needing a humidifier too.
I remember my electrolysis experiments. There are issues with this product:
(1) High power usage.
(2) Residue. I just couldnt find ways to keep the water clean enough beside distilling it. The chemistry textbook suggested a few drops of h2so4 but that worsened things.
(3) Bad marketing. It claims oxygen will be released in the room. In fact no net oxygen will be produced if all the hydrogen is burnt.
(4) Ignition is ALSO required.
A better product might be maybe somthing that further compresses the gases in a rocket and you get a hydrogen-propelled rocket. Or possibly combine both the H and O in a container and ignite for a nice pop.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Uses 1/2 a gallon of water per hour - which it converts to hydrogen and oxygen - which it then burns and thus recombines - thus creating half a gallon of water again, only [temporarily] in vapour form.
I pity the poor bastard who leaves this thing running, in his poorly ventilated home, for two weeks, while on vacation only to find what 168 gallons of water in vapour form does once it cools down.
Though, granted, given how inefficient the thing is, his cleanup bills will be as nothing compared to his electricity bill.
And before anyone tries arguing that only some of the oxygen is recombined with the hydrogen, remember this is nearly as misguided as the website's claim that it "provides beneficial oxygen". Hydrogen on its own doesn't burn - try filling a container with some and sticking a lit taper in, it'll go out. It needs oxygen to combine with it to make it burn. Sure, not all of the split oxygen is being recombined - but it's leeching the exact same quantity back out of the air. Thus you're not gaining any oxygen, you're just trading some of what you already had for some newly split stuff and a huge energy bill. In exactly the same way, as every two hydrogen atoms recombine with an oxygen atom from the air, you'll get exactly the same volume of water back - it'll just be in vapour form until it finally cools down and helps fungus grow throughout your home.
People are always referring hydrogen as an "energy source", but hydrogen is not an energy source at all because there is currently no way to get hydrogen without expending more energy than you can obtain from burning the hydrogen you get. As a result, hydrogen is currently at best an energy storage medium, and NOT an energy source.
This will be the worst heater ever because
It will be humid as hell inside with this @#$@#$ on!
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
You, sir "Doc" Ruby, are spreading lies.
m ission for details. Electrical power generation is very efficient, and overall pollutes far less than most small-scale energy production operations.
Electrical transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 7.2% in 1995. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_trans
Secondly, "nothing is created, nothing is lost". When you're trying to heat up a room with electricity, waste heat is a good thing. This hydrogen fire device has multiple conversion stages, all of them inefficient - in that they release waste heat. In the end, all of the energy that goes into the system is converted into heat.
In fact, most of the heat of the device probably comes from the electrolysis rather than from the burning. But in the end, it's meant to be a room heater, and is doing a fine job as that. It is as efficient a furnace as a normal heater, or as a beowulf cluster. That's right, a beowulf cluster is a very good way to heat your room, and it's just as efficient as a purpose-made heater.
Do you know about heat pumps ? Those devices are basically air conditioners acting in reverse, taking heat from the outdoors, during the winter, and pumping it inside. At first glance, it doesn't make much sense: pumps and compressors are very inefficient devices, aren't they ? Plus, there's not much heat outside... But then you realise that the waste heat of the whole heat pump is a good thing - it's kept inside the house and used to heat it up. So all the heat pump has to do is extract a little bit of energy from the outside and spit out lots of waste heat, hence making it a tad more efficient than a device which merely spits waste heat.
Any electrical devices that doesn't move outside air around is an efficient heater. Your toaster, your computer and your electrical chainsaw are just as efficient as your room heater, when it comes to producing heat.
Anyway, your post is a travesty of science and logic. You were inspired by a hampster and your reasoning smells of elderberries.
Imagine a self-lighting bong. It just makes fire out of the water! Maybe that fire would smell a little worse though if it was coming from bong water...
But anyway, I'm sure we all can agree, the next step is making weed out of water!
Keep up the good work, scientists!
Ordinary tap water (preferably distilled) is supplied to the fireplace through a pipe or tank...
The manufacturer's site actually specifies deionized water. As we all learned in high-school chemistry, pure water is a lousy electrical conductor. In fact, it's an excellent insulator. Water needs ionic impurities to conduct current, so distilled water can't be used for electrolysis without adding a pinch of salt. I'm assuming that ordinary deionized water has sufficient impurities to allow enough current for electrolysis to occur, but few enough so that the device doesn't get mucked up with the residue.
If you're going to heat your house with electricity, it doesn't really matter how you do it. Almost any electrical appliance is a perfectly efficient electric heater. The only waste would be in light or sound that goes outside your house. In this case, the heater is also using water to add an aesthetic appeal. Where I live, water is cheap and plentiful, so that is not a drawback.
Abolish Copyright. Restore Freedom.
At least until you have an unlimited source of electricity that isn't causing a lot of polution.
I wonder when we are going to get desperate enough for power that we have to make tons of nuclear power plants.
Of course this is probably the solution to Fermi's Paradox... death by polution.
Sigh.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
The whole point of hydrogen as fuel is to shift the pollution and get the smog out of the cities, but clueless politicians and snake-oil salesmen are trying to pretend that it is the answer to a lot of other questions.
Hydrogen has a lot of indusrtrial uses and is available in a lot of places - you can already buy tanks of the stuff if you really wan't to burn it in your fireplace.
It costs a little more on that energy bill at the end of the month but boy-o daddio don't it ever feel good inside to know that I'm only spendin' my bread with the happy good people making juice from Mommy Nature's windy teats.
So why don't you just go and settle on down and buy YOUR energy from those hip and happenin' folks down on the Wind Farm, eh bucko?
You wouldn't want to be one of those sourpuss fuckwit scumsuckin' Trolls now would ya?
Be a good egg and get your juice from the Good Guys.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
...of adding water vapor into the air. Just what I need in Seattle!
Actually I did read the summary. When hydrogen burns it combines with oxygen. Two hydrogen atoms for each oxygen atom. There's an excess of oxygen due to the oxygen dissolved in the air, probably enough for the hydrogen to burn on its own. Adding more oxygen won't do anything at all, chemically.
In other words, either the hydrogen will all oxidize, or some of it will, but I don't see how that would change the color, unless the heat is high enough to cause visible black body radiation.
Either way, you're still an idiot. I did read the summary, but it didn't make sense to me, because I had a high school education (unlike yourself, apparently).
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
How is it that your comment was modded 1, while this idiot got a +5.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Im getting so darn sick of everyone using misleading language when talking about water as a fuel. You are really making fire from ELECTRICITY. Sure Hydrogen and Oxygen, extracted from water is a great way to STORE energy, but WATER IS NOT AN ENERGY RESOURCE! Please Slashdot Authors, dont use false language luering people into believeing such flat out LIES. And another thing..... Your only byproduct being water vapor is flat our BS too.... You will still be burning this fuel in the presence of our atmosphere which will intruduce various Oxides of Nitrogen, Chemicals currently considered to be "green house causing", not that this technology would be a considerable source of pollution, but still, dont lie about it and say it doesnt exist, because it does, unless you have the fireplace totaly sealed in a vaccum somehow?
Can you make the hydrogen and oxygen during the day and burn it at night?
That 220 volt 60 amp feed may have something to do with the heat. Betcha that could make fire out of a lot of things...
"While splitting water to get hydrogen and oxygen is not new, this product will likely make the technology more accessible to the masses"
"Accessible?" You mean until they get their power bill! I have my doubts about this technology's ability to compete on a kWh/kWh basis with an electric space heater, which is what this device seems to be marketed to replace.
"and might hopefully show that hydrogen is a more attractive fuel than petroleum-based fuels."
Why? The H2 is made and consumed on-site, there's no storage or transportation of the H2 involved. It's a farce to call it a fuel in this instance, the energy source is the electricity.
All in all, like most fireplaces, it's designed more to be a pretty light show than to actually put out heat. Of course, if you had it in a system that used forced-air convection, you woudln't that interested in trying to use O2 content to tweak the color of the flame. Coming to a Sharper Image catalog near you!
With electric energy you can run a heat pump, so e.g. you use 1kW of electricity to provide 3kW of heat to your room, 2kW of which coming from outside (i.e. it makes the outside even colder). Ordinary heaters are less efficient since they unnecessarily generate entropy by making heat flow from a high-temperature place (the heater) to a low temperature place (the rest of the room).
i think two phase has an imaginary component of power. what's that unit? the size/phase is V.A (not watts)....hmmmm....Volt-Amps-Reactive, or VARs. does it rectify or just use the 220 AC? I wish i'd read the article. ROTFLMAO
geez am i high.
Currently coal/gas/nuclear power plants all converts chemical/nuclear energy into heat then into electricity, and the latter step is quite inefficient and generates a lot of waste heat at the power plant site, where the heat is unneeded. If you just burn the fuel in your room with a gas heater, you have moved all these waste heat into your room, making it much more efficient. Of course, for ultimate heating efficiency, use a heat pump. You may run the heat pump on the power grid, or you may put a generator in your room and use it to run the heat pump, and which one is better depends on the efficiency of your generator, which for a given amount of fuel generates less electricity (thus less heat pumped from outside) but keeps the waste heat in the room, and it also depends on practical difficulties (noise, safety, etc.).
Yes, but that really IS the point. The Dubya regime's loathing for non-politically correct (in their venue) science creates a spin that makes electricity from nuclear power plants pollution-free. Just like the conversion of hydrocarbon petroleum products into hydrogen for fuel cells is (NOT!) a viable long term solution, and an environmentally friendly advance in power technology.
The petroleum and nuclear power industries would like to thank you for continuing to support their monopoly status with your taxpayer dollars and consumer pocketbooks, as well as your failure to thoughtfully agitate for environmentally friendly and/or renewable energy sources.
Just for giggles and grins, go to AutoByTel and lookup, say, the top three most requested SUVs, and then the top three mini-vans. You might be suprised to find out that for city driving, the "gas-guzzling" SUVs get better millage.
The SUV is just today's station wagon and family vehicle, its size needed when a NASA shuttle couch has nothing on a set of standard baby car seats.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
... of perfectly good electricity.
Around here they sell quite a lot of gas powered hot water systems. Hot water on demand, no waste, etc.. Saves space, and you're not heating water just to have it disperse the heat uselessly.
Anyway, those hot water systems need a power plug to light the starter flame to ignite the gas. That adds $100 to the cost as well as one of the main causes of failure. But a relatively new invention is to use the cold water pressure to start the starter flame. More specifically, cold water pressure to turn a turbine to generate a spark, but the end effect is fire from water and all that (oh, and no external electricity either).
I suspect that it's not "a wasteful energy consumer" but that it's simply exactly as efficient as any other electrical source of heat and light.
The laws of thermodynamics are like that when you're increasing entropy - "wasted" energy is converted into heat, but wait, heat is what you wanted in the first place.
There's no where for energy to go in this equation except into heat and light.
Now if you were venting hydrogen unburned, then you could be wasting energy (you spent energy breaking the bonds without getting it back), but why would you design this to burn incompletely?
Oxygen and hydrogen, combusting in your living room? Is anyone else reminded of that Simpsons episode, in which Homer and Burns are hurtling down a mountain in that cabin, and homer says "Oh lord, bless this rocket house and all who dwell within the rocket house."
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
my fireplace is matter-antimatter with a bit of holograms thrown in for color, the main problem is that it's a bit touchy, turn it too far down and you get nothing, too far up and you blow a giant hole in the side of the planet...
"The oxygen is then added for color and brightness, while the rest is released into the room."
Oxygen added for color?? You must burn oxygen and hydrogen in the same ratio as they are in a water molecule: H2O
Wich "rest" is relased in the room?
At a guess, they add a pinch of salt to the electrodes (which will need replacing once in a while anyway). Then you have ions, then it conducts.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Unless this product is producing chemical bonds OTHER than the water (which I suppose is possible in a flame) or unless it's venting gas without burning it, it's not wasting any energy at all.
Get it straight, this is how physics works, all of the energy expending is creating heat or light, where else is supposedly going??!!! You can't destroy energy therefor there is nothing inefficient about this round-about way of creating heat and light.
So all of the grousing about this being "innefficient" just shows that slashdotters don't know their physics.
Physics is so perfectly zero sum that a spinning top is heavier than a stationary one, because just as the energy stored in the atoms and their bonds has mass, so does the energy of the spinning. And you can calculate it different ways (using the increase in mass from motion in relativity for instance) and you end up with the same number.
Ok, I suppose you could lose a little heat in this contraption if it does some work, pushing open a valve or something, but that work would be unmeasurably small compared with the heat and light.
...and nifty toy for rich people...
let's do the math-
220V x 60amps = 13.2kW = ~45,000 btu's. According to their website, this device produces about 31,000 btus/hr, so that makes this ~69% efficient.
BUT... that kind of heating capacity usually comes from a gas furnace or a heat pump, which usually require insulated ductwork, or a fireplace, which loses a lot of its heat out the chimney.
This thing can (at least theoretically) go in the middle of a room, provide the ambience and heating ability of a fireplace, and doesn't lose any of its heat out a chimney. Probably a solution looking for a problem, but you gotta admit it's kinda cool...
It would be even cooler if the water were incorporated into design- like having a sheet of water flowing over the base or something...
It'd probably be cheaper to buy 20 P4s as space heaters, plus 2 more to run a really nice display.
of a fire rendered in 3D on your 150 inch plasma display which you were still able to set up for under the retail price for the fireplace...
i hate pansy republicans
Nobody made you buy that fancy house far from your work. Try living closer or risk having your home destroyed to make way for the hyperspace bypass.
signature pending slashdot approval
Dr. Professor Karl Kleinz here. This is good schtuff, but it can go bang! Vitness Hindenburg.
We're all doomed - kill this infernal device before it's too late.
Agreed , the value of the new thingy is that it's a pretty cool heater.
But just to put the umlaut on the i, in a closed system it's pretty hard to have inefficient heating. If the heat is not going out a chimney, yield is 100%. It's just that 30% of the heat is generated while splitting the water in hydrogen and oxygen. If this part of heat generation happens in the same location, there are no losses.
It's a bit of an entropy sin to take electricity to create heat though.
Unless its run on distilled water this will leave a thick, gunky residue of chlorine salts, calcium, limescale and anything else that's in solution in the local water supply
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
If you take the hydrogen and burn it with air(80% nitrogen 20% oxygen) it will burn satisfactorily, but maybe the light will be too dim.
If you take the original hydrogen and oxygen and recombine them, the reaction will be fastest - a tiny bright flame.
Apparently they have an 'open air' combustion, but beef it up with part of the oxygen that was generated from the water.
Nope, low wages and lack of job security mean I can't afford to move closer to work and that work will move around. Thanks for your concern. And I already pay £4 per gallon, thanks again.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
just turn up the heat a bit more and it will dry up again.
No, wait..
Good...fire from water and electricity ! Next post...water from air...
So basically, this thing creates an open flame while pumping pure oxygen into the room surrounding it. That doesn't sound very safe.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
enforce a law that puts all people on a methane maximizing diet? Did you think of the health hazards this will bring? Will you still take the subway?
We are already desperate enough for power that we have to make tons of nuclear power plants, we just haven't faced up to it yet. We will start building once the situation passes beyond critical into brown-out, the situation will be so desperate that the new plants will be shoddily made and badly thought out whilst still costing more than if they had been built over the last decade.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Just a thought, what about combining this with a personal wind turbine? Could you get enough energy for a real fire, with nothing more than water as the fuel source, effectively for free on the electricity side?
Sensible forms of heating aside, the conclusion seems to be this is an expensive, geeky art piece to wow your millionaire friends with.
So how about turning the concept into an inexpensive, geeky imitation art piece to wow your Slashdot friends with...?
The principles seem quite understandable with high school science. Any pointers on where to get started?
Apart from the fact that one needs a lot of elictricity to get tat wonderful "fuel" hydrogen and that electricity has to come from somewhere, it is bullshit that the burning does not produce "any harmful emittents": since hydrogen flames are very hot, quite a lot of NOx is produced and if the water is not distilled/deionized but ordinary tap water, chances are that electrolysis will set free the chlorine that is present in some of the often naturally occuring chlorides and also in some of the substances sometimes added articifially to preserve the water.
Depending on the size of the flame there is a non-zero hazard associated with it: ultraviolet radiation. naked hydrogen flames are generally considered to be bad things to be avoided because most of their radiation is released in the UV.
what you actually calculated is still relevant.
imagine a box with a flame on top of it. You calculated what part of the heat comes from the flame, and what fraction comes out of the box.
One would prefer a lot of degrees from the flame on top of a cool box, over a box with a lot of degrees, with a little candle on top of it.
I think the poster misunderstood the benefit of this...
The poster didn't say there was any benefit.this product will likely make the technology more accessible to the masses and might hopefully show that hydrogen is a more attractive fuel than petroleum-based fuels.
Somehow I doubt this uber expensive toy for the techno nerd is going to do anything to advance the cause of alertnative fuels.
Does anyone else find this funny?
Let's see - water splits into 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom...hydrogen in the presense of oxygen can be ignited to produce water vapor, which contains...umm...2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, leaving...ummm...nothing?
What excess oxygen are they talking about? Sure, the hydrogen could combine with the oxygen in the room that's already there, and therefore there would be excess from the original separation, but we are talking a net zero gain...it's no like we're adding oxygen to our home, which really has no benefit...
rm
Sci-Fi Storm
So basically, this thing creates an open flame while pumping pure oxygen into the room surrounding it. That doesn't sound very safe.
Could be worse. Imagine an attachment that pipes some of the oxygen to a face mask. The proud owner could take big hits of pure O2 while gazing into the hypnotic depths of the fireplace. Add a fondue pot to this tableau, and you've got the makings of home-cooked decadence!
-kgj
-kgj
Probably worth mentioning is the free but mandatory service call every 1000 hours of operation to collect the Deuterium Oxide (Heavy Water) which will accumulate due to continuous enrichment by electrolysis. Waste not want not.
BBQ promotes Global Warming
I found a bbc article about this. It seems that Iceland plans to do away with fossil fuel altogether in a few decades.
A latent existence
... and you get not only hydrogen and oxygen but chlorium too :)
:P
don't try this at home unless you have a death fetish, pure chlorine is highly poisonous
Doesn't anybody know that the resulting product of burning hydrogen is dihydrogen monoxide. It's very poisonous!
do it with salt water, then we'll talk.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
It's a way of storing energy. You have to produce the hydrogen somehow and you need another form of energy to do it.
This fire is a joke.
Power stations are inefficient. Most of them are around 40%, there are a few types like combined cycle gas turbines that make it up to around 60% efficient. That means electric heating is no more than 60% efficient. That sounds OK till you realise that the power station is throwing away gigawatts of "waste" heat.
If this "waste" heat was pumped round houses, buildings and used to heat them instead of the electricity then the electricity could be used for something else instead. Closer to 90% efficiency rather than 40% or 60%. It's called District Heating and has been round for decades.
Deleted
H20 ->splits to 2H + 1O ->burns to H2O What extra oxygen?
See, when I saw this, I thought it was cool. Not because it was all wonderfully clean, green and good for the environment, but because it sounded easier for me.
I can have a nice little fireplace in my house without having to construct a chimney. I can have a smokeless fire, which is always nice. I can turn it on with a switch, and I don't have to spend time and money buying and splitting firewood. The only downside seems to be no glowing embers to look at.
Then again, on the environmental note, 220v coming from a commercial power plant is probably cleaner than the equivelant amount of wood being burnt, if you care about that sort of thing. And if this sort of device replaces fireplaces (can't see it happening, but let's just say) then if and when our industrial coal-powered plants are switched to a cleaner method, then all our fireplaces automagically become environmentally friendly. Whereas on the other hand, if we still had our normal wood-fed fires, we'd still be burning up trees and pumping smoke up our chimneys.
All that said, for $50k I'd buy a nice new atmosphere-polluting car, and pay off a nice chunk of my mortgage rather than buy a fancy new gadget.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
well you could get a bank of solar cells and betteries to run this for you. Totally uneconomical at this point, but wait until Natural Gas costs $20/m^3.
I'm thinking an arc welder and a puddle. Stand back and have a beer.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
Most of them burn some flavor of alcohol gel. They burn clean enough that no chimney is required. They do create excess water vapor which, in the winter, is usually a good thing. (Unless of course, your house has humidity problems, in which case, this will make an existing problem worse.)
How feasible are the use of ocean currents that makes and stores electricity? What is the efficiency of that? What are the enviromental consequences of such industrial equipment? Can you electrolyze ocean water and split it up to hydrogen directly? Except for the enviromental repurcussions I don't see too many pitfalls, there would be an around the clock energy source as opposed to solar power and I could see near total automation except for maintenance which could be very low with the right mix of sensors and clever engineering. The transport of hydrogen an issue but perhaps there could be an option of a hyrogen pipe that connects to a city. Also, instead of talking about using electricity to produce hydrogen, how do we increase the efficiency of burning hydrogen to overcome the initial waste of energy? Any links on if such a project exists?
It has been awhile since I have done any chemisty or physics, so my knowledge is a bit rusty, but would it be possible to use mains to kick start the process and then divert some of the hydrogen to generate more electricity?
While yes, the process would never be self-sustaining, it would need mains power to keep it going, it should reduce the use of mains power.
Further refines could be made by catching the waste water vapour, condensing it and then feeding it back into the system.
Given that not all electricity is generated by fossil fuels (wind mills, nuclear, solar also contribute to mains power generation in some places), this has the potential to become a cleaner way of creating fire.
On that, one other refinement could be to hook it up to solar panels (I have no idea how many you'd need) instead of the mains, which more cut fossil fuels mostly out of the process (there would just be the use of fossil fuels in the construction of various components).
Just something to think on.
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." - HL Mencken
But the point is the current will, eventually, come from renewable resources (or nuclear power) rather than burning fossil fuels.
So, you are right, at the moment you're just moving the pollution. But you have to start somewhere.
I would rather it looked like a traditional red-brick fireplace, than some cold peice of modern art. When I am at home, I want to *not* be reminded of modern society. But that's just me
Assuming that this technology can be refined to a point where it's more efficient and less expensive, there are quite a few practical applications for it.
For example, how about a stove that uses electricity, but still creates a real flame on the burners like a gas stove? Anyone who cooks will tell you that there's no substitute for a gas stove: electric takes too long to heat up and to cool down, resulting in bad cooking. In homes like mine where there is no gas utility available, we have to resort to a propane tank in the backyard to provide fuel for the gas stove. But with this technology, we could run it all on electric!
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Now if they could make water out of fire, then I'd be impressed. Maybe.
>Oh yeah except for the fact that in order to make my fireplace work I need 220 current which is coming FROM DEAD DINOSAURS.
I'd expect better from Slashdot readers than to associate "electricity" with "oil".
Ever heard about wind, solar and hydro energy sources?
There's also perpetual motion machines. They do exist, but they're still in the Q&A stage (it's taking forever to test, apparently).
Yes, I've heard of them and they provide a mere sliver of the energy we use on a daily basis. I think this is a neat gadget, but it drives me nuts when people talk about how environmentally friendly Hydrogen power is. Hydrogen is only as environmentally friendly as the process used to get it in the first place.
In the end, assuming that most of your power is coming from fossil fuels anyhow, you're fireplace would probably be more environmentally friendly if it was burning natural gas. The electrolysis process is terribly inefficient.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
You're right about the relative efficiency of electrical power transmission, and I was wrong. Modern power transmission losses are indeed around 7.5% overall, sometimes even less: the UK claims about 2%, New Zealand claims about 3.5%. Rural electricity raises the average losses, as power transmission really hits an efficiency wall after some distance.
That 7.5% is, of course, significant: it's over 1/7th the power, as if one or two rooms to be heated in a house remained cold, at the full cost. Natural gas delivery has much less loss.
You're also mostly right, and I was mostly wrong, about the device's inefficiency in power conversion not mattering, because the "loss" in the home is generating heat, which is the desired product. I'm looking for more details on how the device works mechanically, to compare to the very efficient heat delivery of insulated gas-fired heaters. But until then, I'll assume that the efficiency differences are negligible there.
So thanks for setting me straight on how efficient is this new toy. I posted after coming back from tinkering under my car's hood after driving, and wondering how much inefficiency my (1ton/25MPG) car generated from its gasoline in the form of heat and noise, especially with the air conditioner running. If I had thought more about how to capture that wasted energy, maybe for use in heating my home later, I might have realized that this device is using that waste product for use, too.
But I do stand by one point I made in my rant. This device doesn't provide any greater efficiency because "it uses hydrogen as fuel". It isn't as bad as I said, but it's less efficient than piped-gas heat. The "hydrogen revolution" should include a shift in our thinking, which has conflated the fuel with the energy. This toy runs on petro fuels just as much as does the piped gas, powered by electricity generated almost entirely by burning petro fuels. The hydrogen in this toy is not the energy, but just the carrier. Since it is generated in the home, then consumed, it can only represent more waste, however tiny. Generated by consuming electricity, the power from which is transferred to the higher-energy state H2 and O2 by cracking the water. And that 7.5% transmission loss does matter, though not as much as I erroneously stated. The energy in either heating system came from the Sun, was collected biologically, and is released now by burning. Either at the plant, or in the home. With higher efficiency centrally at the plant, balanced by transmission losses as electricity to the home. The hydrogen in the toy certainly doesn't represent any better fuel, in terms of conservation. It might be a marketing win, getting masses of people to eventually accept hydrogen piping and/or storage, because this cute toy has already gotten them over that hump, but that's not science - it's just some kind of marketing logic.
Finally, elderberries played no part in my original post, nor in this apologia. In the interest of maintaining my integrity, and protecting my (mostly) anonymous sources, I will say no more about the hampster.
--
make install -not war
Oh yeah except for the fact that in order to make my fireplace work I need 220 current which is coming FROM DEAD DINOSAURS.
Depends where you live. In my state, over 85% of our electricity comes from hydroelectric dams, which (last I checked) don't consume dead dinosaurs.
It's not our fault you live in a place that needs to burn dead dinosaurs to make electricity. For you, even having your computer on to read slashdot is burning DEAD DINOSAURS.
"..., I'm going pay $50K to obtain the ability to burn hydrogen."
No, -you- are not going to pay $50K but someone else with more money probably will. So what's your point?
Okay, so rather than burning a renewable source of energy like wood in my fireplace, I'm going pay $50K to obtain the ability to burn hydrogen. Hydrogne is good and pure and not oil so that's good right? Oh yeah except for the fact that in order to make my fireplace work I need 220 current which is coming FROM DEAD DINOSAURS.
*SIGH*
I remember when a computer used to cost $49,999. In 1960s dollars.
Technology does tend to get cheaper over time, you know.
Hopefully people will soon realize that electricity is a better energy source than petroleum.
Except for one : biodiesel...
It uses the fats wastes we produce to make fuel.
The processing is quite simple and inexpensive.
Where do you live? I've never seen gas measured in cubed meters before.
Okay, so rather than burning a renewable source of energy like wood in my fireplace, I'm going pay $50K to obtain the ability to burn hydrogen. Hydrogne is good and pure and not oil so that's good right? Oh yeah except for the fact that in order to make my fireplace work I need 220 current which is coming FROM DEAD DINOSAURS.
Yeah, what they should do is run a copper coil through the fire, and heat up some water, and use it to drive a steam turbine to make the electricity to run the system! That would be just awesome!
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
I don't know where the GP poster lives, but here in ON, Canada (and probably most places using the metric system), Natural Gas is charged /m^3...
Fire from water! Finally, science has laid to rest the idea that fire, water, earth, and air are indivisible elements. The alchemists won't have a leg to stand on now! We have proof!
Now if only we could do something about creationism. Well, maybe in a few hundred more years.
I had no idea. I figured they'd use liters of grams.
Hi there,
don't know if someone has mentioned that yet. Apologies if it has been discussed already.
My chemistry teacher taught me that water is H2O, two atoms hydrogen and one atom oxygen. When you split it using electricity you get these three atoms. If you burn the hydrogen, you recombine it to water. Meaning you need two atoms hydrogen and on atom oxygen.
Now I wonder how they claim, this apparatus
* replenishes Oxygen in the home
As I can't see where the excess oxygen comes from. Especially as it releases water vapor as a by-product and nothing else such as carbon monoxide (which would lead to excess hydrogen) and nitrous oxide (which would also lead to excess hydrogen).
I also don't see how oxygen (which is needed to burn the hydrogen in the first place) can turn the usually colorless (light blue) hydrogen flame into something more colorful and bright. This is one of their explanations on the science behind this.
Is anybody here to contradict my chemistry high school teacher? Could there be anything to their claims?
Looking forward to some enlightenment.
K
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
Ever heard of nuclear power? Or hydro? Solar or geothermal? Wind? Dead dinosaurs don't have a monopoly on electricity.
Hydrogen is not a more attractive fuel than fossil fuels (except in deep space) because it takes more energy to produce it than it delivers.
But here on the home planet no non-nuclear means is known to make terrestrial hydrogen that does not consume considerably more energy than it delivers.
Political arguments aside, hydrogen pollutes more not less because using it consumes more energy than it delivers.
On their web site, they state that the device "replenishes oxygen in the home". Well, AFAIK, recombining the hydrogen and the oxygen that have just been split takes exactly the amount of oxygen that originally came out of the water. So, where does the extra oxygen come from?
While distilled h2o is used in some circuit breakers, that method is obsolete.
There are issues with keeping the liquid contaminant free - there is some arcing every tiem you open or close the breaker. This is the reason this type of CB is only used on relatively low voltages, too.
Other, better methods of quenching the arc include Blasting compressed air through the gap, immersing the contacts in mineral oil, and immersing them in pressurised SF6 gas.
When I left the electricity generating industry, SF6 was pretty much the standard.
-- You can't give it, you can't even buy it, and you just don't get it!
Electrolysis is 2 * H2O -> 2 * H2 + O2 But, as Grove discovered, it can be performed in reverse, combining hydrogen and oxygen to generate an electric current, plus water as a by-product: 2 * H2 + O2 -> 2 * H2O Fuel cells are based on reverse electrolysis. With so many developments being done these days on fuel cell technology, could one day, this simple process be used to combat fires? I mean, fires feed themselves from oxygen, now if you could just trough them some hydrogen, it would consume the oxygen and create water! I know, I know, it's not a closed environment and thus, besides the oxygen source being endless, the hydrogen wouldn't work. It's good to dream, thought.
!!! NOTICE !!!
The following is for educational purposes only and should not be attempted. The author accepts no legal or fiscal responsibility for the use or misue of the information or any device built with said information which results in injury, fire, damage, or death, to the experimentor, bystanders, or property. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, DO NOT ATTEMPT!!!
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Google around a bit on the terms "hydro boost" and "hydrogen injection", in relationship to automobiles. Basically, it is an attempt (perhaps even a scam?) to increase the octane of the gasoline being used in your automobile by injecting hydrogen (actually, Brown's gas - more on that later) into the intake airstream, where it is supposed to later combine with the fuel-air mixture and boost the octane before it is burned, thus lowering your fuel emmisions, increasing your mileage, etc. Which is why it sounds like a scam. Basically, an attempt to get a cheap form of nitrous/propane injection (with the knowledge that it doesn't give as much of a boost, but is cheaper to build/install).
Ok - well, from these "plans", which you can find without paying for (a lot of people are selling "hydro boost" stuff, just check ebay), you can get the idea of how to generate the hydrogen and oxygen. Most of these systems use steel threaded rod as the electrodes, and car battery systems for the high current DC needed (since they are in a car, no problem). Furthermore, since most of the designs are inside a single cylindrical water chamber, they generate Brown's gas (discovered in the 1800's by a man named "Brown" for industrial usage, a purpose to which it is still put today, mostly for welding), which is just the mixture of the generated hydrogen and oxygen (which doesn't recombine into water immediately because you need the chemical reaction energy of rapid oxidization - ie, burning - to get them to combine), which is then fed into the air stream (with a little help from engine vacuum). For a simple system like this, it is easy to build. However, you can't regulate the oxygen feed. I would expand upon the previous systems by creating a "W" chamber - where you have PVC T-joint at the bottom of a larger "water fill chamber", and the two ends of the T-joint are connected to 90 degree elbows which are in turn connected to the gas generation chambers, which are larger pieces of PVC pipe with caps at the ends thru which the threaded rod electrodes are passed (thru threaded removable end caps). The upper ends of the generation chambers should also be fitted with nylon or similar barbed tubing fittings, to attach tubing to use the generated gases. This device thus forms a "W" shape.
Sit the device upright vertically with the ends pointing up (attach it to a secure wooden base using pipe clamps or something), fill the central column with water (perhaps with a little salt - sodium chloride - in it to help the electrolysis), until the water level is about an inch below the end caps on the generation chambers. Cap off the filling chamber, and attach hoses to the generation chambers. On the end of each hose securely attach two differently colored rubber balloons (I would choose red/orange for hydrogen, and blue for oxygen). Attach a source of high current DC to the ends of the threaded rod electrodes (the best way to get such a source is thru use of a high current AC/DC welding rig. Another way is thru the use of charged car/marine/rv deep-cycle batteries). The positive side of the DC source should be connected to the electrode on the chamber connected to the balloon color coded to hold oxygen, the negative (ground) side should be connected to other side to collect hydrogen.
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!!! DANGER !!! !!! DANGER !!! !!! DANGER !!!
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU CONTINUE IN THE PRESENCE OF OPEN FLAME. EXTINGUISH ALL SOURCES OF FLAME IN THE VICINITY OF THE DEVICE. FAILURE TO DO SO PRIOR TO THE OPERATION OF THE DEVICE CAN PROVE TO BE UNSAFE AND POSSIBLY DEADLY.
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Connect and turn on your DC source. You should shortly see your balloons
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I totally agree this is ugly, but modern?
This is like the worst piece of kitch I have ever seen. The company probably never bothered about hiring a designer (from outside the US) at all. This sucks.
Bottled hydrogen is sold in Finland, I don't know about elsewhere. The gas in the bottle is either an industrial by-product that would otherwise have been burned away, or produced electrolytically with power generated at the gas vendor's own hydroelectric plant, using no dead dinosaurs in the process. (Distribution is another matter.)
Finnish-speakers can check out
http://www.woikoski.fi/
Unfortunately the English pages are pretty much content-free.
Also, ready-to-use fuel cells and metal hydride hydrogen storage tanks can be bought at a relatively low price: http://www.hydrocell.fi/en/index.html
(Not associated with either company.)
The implied use of fossil-fuels doesn't apply to everyone though. Here up in Canada quite a lot of places have energy supplied by less polluting methods such as Hydroelectric dams, etc.
Given that the cost of gas is also a fair bit up on the cost of electricity around here, if it cost less to setup (which it probably would over time) the hydrogen-seperation method of making gas might actually be a pretty good option. Depending on whether the burning hydrogen is more efficient at producing heat than just an electric heater.
It would also be quite useful for places where it's hard to run gas-lines, such as the island communities Victoria, BC where dense rock ground makes running gas lines pretty implausable.
A simple bit of "hot" glass (UV blocking) would be all thats needed.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.