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Japanese Company Says Laws of Physics Don't Apply — to Cars
Fantastic Lad, among many others, points out another in a long series of claimed "powered by water" cars, this one by a Japanese company called "Genepax," which interestingly enough does not have so much as a Wikipedia entry. What's scary is the uncritical, even serious-sounding, presentation by Reuters of such extraordinary claims quite unbacked by extraordinary evidence. "Almost sounds too good to be true" isn't the half of it; if cars could be made which would run as "long as you have a bottle of water inside" to pour into the fuel tank ("even tea," repeats this report), not only would you know about the car, but you'd notice the long lines of people buying generators, laptops, and power tools that run on the same technology. The snippet Reuters is carrying says "Jun. 13 — Japanese company Genepax presents its eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but water. The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car's tank. The generator then releases electrons that produce electric power to run the car. Genepax, the company that invented the technology, aims to collaborate with Japanese manufacturers to mass produce it." Fantastic Lad, deadpan, goes on: "Check out the Reuter's story and accompanying video. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there some sort of conservation of energy thing happening in the whole 'separating hydrogen from water' game? I wonder what the real story is on this. Investment fraud? Magic?" Show your work; bonus points if you use Haiku.
The amount of energy required to separate the molecular bond is equal (or greater after losses) to the amount of energy you get back when you run them back through a fuel cell, you don't gain anything. The question is where are they getting the energy to separate things from.
It costs more to produce hydrogen through the electrical method than by reforming natural gas to make hydrogen, so almost all hydrogen the world currently uses is made by reforming natural gas.
So water may not be the only thing fueling this car. They use a chemical reaction to crack the water, and then use the hydrogen from the water and oxygen from the air to run a fuel cell. The real questions are: What is in these membranes? How long do they last? What does it cost to renew the membranes?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
What idiot modded the parent a troll? Check wikipedia if you don't believe water injection can help car performance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_injection_(engines)
... because there are none in TFA:
WES system (Google-translated)
Genepax homepage (English)
There is exactly one way by which you can make hydrogen extraction from water a net power gain: if the hydrogen extracted is used for nuclear fusion. Assuming any remotely efficient fusion (i.e. worth bothering with), the energy gain from fusion should vastly exceed the cost of splicing water, separating out deuterium, etc. For combustion in oxygen, no... water is already the ash of that process.
You could theoretically burn hydrogen in a fluorine atmosphere and get more energy out, but that assumes a ready supply of elemental fluorine (doesn't exist) and something to do with the hydrogen fluoride that results (HF will corrode glass.)
Yes, it is a fuel-cell. Here's an article some pictures as well.
Haiku is 5-7-5, not 5-5-7.
-- Soruk
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/ has an excellent write up of why this is not possible in the way it should work according to the description.
The problem is that when you "use" hydrogen to create electricity, the hydrogen recombines with oxygen to become water once again. So let me use some fictional numbers here to demonstrate why your suggestion is impossible:
1. Assume it takes 1 joule of energy to split a water molecule.
2. Assume you get back 2 joules of energy when you "use" the hydrogen.
3. You now have the same water molecule you started with, and a surplus of 1 joule of energy.
Where did that energy come from? It'd be one hell of a magic trick if you could pull it off! That's why no process which splits water will ever generate more energy than it consumes.
Yes, but when you split an atom you're actually destroying that atom. Once the process is complete you don't have the same atom you started with - instead the atom is gone, and you have a surplus of energy.
And for the other type of nuclear reaction - fusion - you actually fuse two hydrogen atoms into one helium atom, so you end up with a different form of matter than what you started with. THAT is where the energy comes from.
See the difference?
in other words, it's just like lead-acid bateries work. if you still have sulphuric acid in the bottom of the batery, all you have to do is add distilled water to make the solution touch the lead plates, and the reaction gives energy.
What ? Me, worry ?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
No, you're absolutely right. Every few months someone comes out with this "running cars on water" thing, and every time it's the same technology. Notice the following quote in the article:
"The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car's tank."
This device isn't an energy generator at all, it's a device which requires electricity in order to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen. (I think this is called hydrolysis?) The end result is that you end up expending more energy trying to get at the hydrogen than you get back from burning it. The stories about "water cars" in the popular media always gloss over this little detail.
So yes, it's perfectly possible to make a car that uses water as fuel, but the chemical reactions required to make it work require a lot of electricity which presently is neither cheap nor clean.
The energy doesn't have to be 'magicked' out of thin air, you just need some way of obtaining the energy that already exists in something. In this case, the 'news' bit seems to be that they have developed a better fuel-cell electrode. The basic power generation mechanism of the new system is similar to that of a normal fuel cell, which uses hydrogen as a fuel. According to Genepax, the main feature of the new system is that it uses the company's membrane electrode assembly (MEA), which contains a material capable of breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen through a chemical reaction.
Everyone can see that. Can you not see that the person you're replying to insisted that this isn't a closed system?
It's a poorly explained system. It's probably something like this. In any case, a system like this is perfectly workable and does not violate any physical laws. The process to create the hydrogen uses less electricity than the process of burning it. That's not magic, that's chemistry. Eventually, you pay for it when you recycle the aluminum in the linked case. Not sure how it works in the Genepax system, but doubtless it's something similar.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
That link you've sent might have the answer to this problem. They're using an alloy of aluminum and galium that breaks the water molecule, generating aluminum oxide. But then the energy comes from this reaction of Al -> Al2O3 and therefore there's no magic here. In this case you will have 'extra' energy, that will be consumed when reverting the oxidation of the aluminum.
Also, hooray for Professor Pirate! That was worth it just for the eye patch.
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