QUIRKY IDEAS and STRAY STUFF
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The Water-Powered car ~ A Dream No Longer?
The Water-powered Car, in Two Parts
. . . . .
The Water-Powered car ~ A Dream No Longer?
The Water-powered Car, in Two Parts
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First draft written by Stan way back in May, 2009, on a whim.
Part 1. Thoughts on the water-powered car.
Part 2 (scroll down) Occam's Razor applied to the water-powered car.
Part 1: Thoughts on the the water-powered car (or more precisely, the water-powered internal combustion engine).
I had first heard of the so-called "water-powered" car as a child in the 1950s, and how the idea was supposedly "suppressed" by the "big oil companies". Every few years, this idea has been conveyed to me.
But, when in my 30s, in the 1970s, after I had heard of this alleged conspiracy by the big oil companies only a couple of dozen times (mild sarcasm), I decided to take a small but serious look at it.
I did a few experiments, I did a lot of speculating, and perhaps, just maybe...
All the physics textbooks available in the New Zealand school system at that time, stopping where university level started, indicated that the electrolysis of water could split it into its constituent elements, with the rate of hydrogen and oxygen production being proportional to the current flow - and that was all the books said. Nothing was said at this level of books about the required electrical energy input, which would be indicated by the required voltage across electrodes to push the electrical current through the electrolyte.
Pure water is an effective insulator, at least up to 20,000 volts in my professional industrial experience. Therefore, to make it conduct electricity and thus produce gas at the electrical terminals, typically an acid or a salt is dissolved in the water and this solution is termed the electrolyte.
I learned by experiment, in conventional electrolysis of water at ambient room temperature, that one must apply what is possibly a characteristic voltage for a specific electrolyte.
But this same electrolyte, when brought to near boiling point, appeared to need about half the voltage to make the same amount of gas than the voltage needed at ambient room temperature. In other words, at elevated temperatures, a reduced amount of electrical energy could be used to produce the same amount of gas (this could be indirect confirmation of a basic and very rough chemical rule-of-thumb: the warmer the absolute temperature of the reaction, the more active is the chemical reaction).
The experiment for gas production efficiency with an electrolyte under pressure (which raises the temperature at which the electrolyte can remain liquid) and highly elevated temperatures (hopefully to increase efficiency even more in the still-liquid electrolyte) has not been done, to my knowledge.
One wonders what efficiencies could be achieved with a carefully-chosen electrolyte under optimum temperature and pressure.
Among other conclusions or topics of discussion from my small number of experiments aimed at running a car on "water", I decided there was no truth in that old story that the oil companies had suppressed an invention whereby "you just fill your tank with water and drop a 'pill' in it, and drive away".
Starry-eyed enthusiasts who insist that the above is true have been completely unable to furnish me with the "pill", or a real car that one could drive with a tank of water with this magic pill in it. I will believe in this persistent rumour on the day that a believer drives up to me in his water-powered car - or gives me one of those "pills" to try out in my own car - or both.
Part Two: OCCAM'S RAZOR applied to the water-powered car.
A Different Perspective. Thoughts from Stan.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries an industrial-level method of producing flammable gas with a high calorific value from water was well established. City gasworks, when faced with unexpected cold weather and with a coal-gas production system which had inherent hysteresis, could instantly, and apparently routinely did, manufacture what was termed "water-gas" to meet these unexpected temporary shortfalls in rate of gas production from the gasworks. This gas was made by spraying steam over red-hot coke, which created a chemical reaction. Gasworks had industrial amounts of red-hot coke to hand on a permanent basis. The water-gas produced was a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide (carbon monoxide is flammable). The action is endothermic, so to keep the coke hot, the production of water-gas was alternated with producer gas using the same coke bed. Producer gas is an exothermic reaction and is produced by blowing air over the red-hot coke, thus producing carbon monoxide. Producer gas is a mix of carbon monoxide and nitrogen and so is a low-calorific gas. By contrast, water-gas is a high calorific gas, ie it is a gas with plenty of energy available from its use.
Coke is essentially industrial-grade pure carbon, which is one of the two reactants in the production of water-gas. As it stands, the water-gas production method described above is intrinsically environmentally hostile as coke is a fossil fuel, it is made from coal. Today, water-gas production could perhaps be undertaken using charcoal, which could, similarly to coke, be easily produced as another form of industrial-grade carbon. This would make the water-gas production environmentally friendly by being carbon-neutral: the tree which grew the wood which made the charcoal would already have given carbon credits to the atmosphere. Water-gas-powered cars and industry of the future could well be considered carbon-neutral as they eventually took back the carbon credit in the same geological time frame, so long as only trees were used to obtain the carbon for the water-gas process.
Finally, so long as trees grew, this fuel would be available forever.
Sounds ideal, doesn't it?
Somebody needs to begin tests of an in-car-sized gas production system. Can such a system be made small enough, light enough, and produce enough gas to fulfil modern expectations of the automobile? Included in possible tests of such a proposed system would be an evaluation of how much energy would be required from the car battery to initially heat up a portion of charcoal to critical temperature. Then perhaps it could be seen if water-gas production was sufficient to allow a proportion of it simply to keep the endothermic reaction hot enough and still produce enough to run a car engine. Perhaps if a battery could not do it, a small reservoir of gas, saved from the previous trip's production, could be used to initially heat the charcoal.
The idea of making water-gas is not patentable, it has been around for centuries. Besides, I have put it in the public domain here which also ensures it is no longer patentable. But the possible in-car systems to control gas production may well be patentable. You better hurry, or I will do it first and make the gazillion dollars…
On the other hand, maybe somebody has tried this decades ago..., or have they?
Part 1. Thoughts on the water-powered car.
Part 2 (scroll down) Occam's Razor applied to the water-powered car.
Part 1: Thoughts on the the water-powered car (or more precisely, the water-powered internal combustion engine).
I had first heard of the so-called "water-powered" car as a child in the 1950s, and how the idea was supposedly "suppressed" by the "big oil companies". Every few years, this idea has been conveyed to me.
But, when in my 30s, in the 1970s, after I had heard of this alleged conspiracy by the big oil companies only a couple of dozen times (mild sarcasm), I decided to take a small but serious look at it.
I did a few experiments, I did a lot of speculating, and perhaps, just maybe...
All the physics textbooks available in the New Zealand school system at that time, stopping where university level started, indicated that the electrolysis of water could split it into its constituent elements, with the rate of hydrogen and oxygen production being proportional to the current flow - and that was all the books said. Nothing was said at this level of books about the required electrical energy input, which would be indicated by the required voltage across electrodes to push the electrical current through the electrolyte.
Pure water is an effective insulator, at least up to 20,000 volts in my professional industrial experience. Therefore, to make it conduct electricity and thus produce gas at the electrical terminals, typically an acid or a salt is dissolved in the water and this solution is termed the electrolyte.
I learned by experiment, in conventional electrolysis of water at ambient room temperature, that one must apply what is possibly a characteristic voltage for a specific electrolyte.
But this same electrolyte, when brought to near boiling point, appeared to need about half the voltage to make the same amount of gas than the voltage needed at ambient room temperature. In other words, at elevated temperatures, a reduced amount of electrical energy could be used to produce the same amount of gas (this could be indirect confirmation of a basic and very rough chemical rule-of-thumb: the warmer the absolute temperature of the reaction, the more active is the chemical reaction).
The experiment for gas production efficiency with an electrolyte under pressure (which raises the temperature at which the electrolyte can remain liquid) and highly elevated temperatures (hopefully to increase efficiency even more in the still-liquid electrolyte) has not been done, to my knowledge.
One wonders what efficiencies could be achieved with a carefully-chosen electrolyte under optimum temperature and pressure.
Among other conclusions or topics of discussion from my small number of experiments aimed at running a car on "water", I decided there was no truth in that old story that the oil companies had suppressed an invention whereby "you just fill your tank with water and drop a 'pill' in it, and drive away".
Starry-eyed enthusiasts who insist that the above is true have been completely unable to furnish me with the "pill", or a real car that one could drive with a tank of water with this magic pill in it. I will believe in this persistent rumour on the day that a believer drives up to me in his water-powered car - or gives me one of those "pills" to try out in my own car - or both.
Part Two: OCCAM'S RAZOR applied to the water-powered car.
A Different Perspective. Thoughts from Stan.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries an industrial-level method of producing flammable gas with a high calorific value from water was well established. City gasworks, when faced with unexpected cold weather and with a coal-gas production system which had inherent hysteresis, could instantly, and apparently routinely did, manufacture what was termed "water-gas" to meet these unexpected temporary shortfalls in rate of gas production from the gasworks. This gas was made by spraying steam over red-hot coke, which created a chemical reaction. Gasworks had industrial amounts of red-hot coke to hand on a permanent basis. The water-gas produced was a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide (carbon monoxide is flammable). The action is endothermic, so to keep the coke hot, the production of water-gas was alternated with producer gas using the same coke bed. Producer gas is an exothermic reaction and is produced by blowing air over the red-hot coke, thus producing carbon monoxide. Producer gas is a mix of carbon monoxide and nitrogen and so is a low-calorific gas. By contrast, water-gas is a high calorific gas, ie it is a gas with plenty of energy available from its use.
Coke is essentially industrial-grade pure carbon, which is one of the two reactants in the production of water-gas. As it stands, the water-gas production method described above is intrinsically environmentally hostile as coke is a fossil fuel, it is made from coal. Today, water-gas production could perhaps be undertaken using charcoal, which could, similarly to coke, be easily produced as another form of industrial-grade carbon. This would make the water-gas production environmentally friendly by being carbon-neutral: the tree which grew the wood which made the charcoal would already have given carbon credits to the atmosphere. Water-gas-powered cars and industry of the future could well be considered carbon-neutral as they eventually took back the carbon credit in the same geological time frame, so long as only trees were used to obtain the carbon for the water-gas process.
Finally, so long as trees grew, this fuel would be available forever.
Sounds ideal, doesn't it?
Somebody needs to begin tests of an in-car-sized gas production system. Can such a system be made small enough, light enough, and produce enough gas to fulfil modern expectations of the automobile? Included in possible tests of such a proposed system would be an evaluation of how much energy would be required from the car battery to initially heat up a portion of charcoal to critical temperature. Then perhaps it could be seen if water-gas production was sufficient to allow a proportion of it simply to keep the endothermic reaction hot enough and still produce enough to run a car engine. Perhaps if a battery could not do it, a small reservoir of gas, saved from the previous trip's production, could be used to initially heat the charcoal.
The idea of making water-gas is not patentable, it has been around for centuries. Besides, I have put it in the public domain here which also ensures it is no longer patentable. But the possible in-car systems to control gas production may well be patentable. You better hurry, or I will do it first and make the gazillion dollars…
On the other hand, maybe somebody has tried this decades ago..., or have they?