Salt water as fuel?

[Drewcifer]

For obvious reasons, scientists long have thought that salt water couldn't be burned.

So when an Erie man announced he'd ignited salt water with the radio-frequency generator he'd invented, some thought it a was a hoax.

John Kanzius, a Washington County native, tried to desalinate seawater with a generator he developed to treat cancer, and it caused a flash in the test tube.

Within days, he had the salt water in the test tube burning like a candle, as long as it was exposed to radio frequencies.

His discovery has spawned scientific interest in using the world's most abundant substance as clean fuel, among other uses.

Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, held a demonstration last week at the university's Materials Research Laboratory in State College, to confirm what he'd witnessed weeks before in an Erie lab.

"It's true, it works," Dr. Roy said. "Everyone told me, 'Rustum, don't be fooled. He put electrodes in there.' "

But there are no electrodes and no gimmicks, he said.

Dr. Roy said the salt water isn't burning per se, despite appearances. The radio frequency actually weakens bonds holding together the constituents of salt water -- sodium chloride, hydrogen and oxygen -- and releases the hydrogen, which, once ignited, burns continuously when exposed to the RF energy field. Mr. Kanzius said an independent source measured the flame's temperature, which exceeds 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, reflecting an enormous energy output.

As such, Dr. Roy, a founding member of the Materials Research Laboratory and expert in water structure, said Mr. Kanzius' discovery represents "the most remarkable in water science in 100 years."

But researching its potential will take time and money, he said. One immediate question is energy efficiency: The energy the RF generator uses vs. the energy output from burning hydrogen.

Dr. Roy said he's scheduled to meet tomorrow with U.S. Department of Energy and Department of Defense officials in Washington to discuss the discovery and seek research funding.

Mr. Kanzius said he powered a Stirling, or hot air, engine with salt water. But whether the system can power a car or be used as an efficient fuel will depend on research results.

"We will get our ideas together and check this out and see where it leads," Dr. Roy said. "The potential is huge.

"In the life sciences, the role of water is infinite, and this guy is doing something new in using the most important and most abundant material on the face of the earth."

Mr. Kanzius' discovery was an accident.

He developed the RF generator as a novel cancer treatment. His research in targeting cancer cells with metallic nanoparticles then destroying them with radio-frequency is proceeding at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and at the University of Texas' MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Manuscripts updating the cancer research are in preparation for publication in coming months, Mr. Kanzius said.

While Mr. Kanzius was demonstrating how his generator heated nanoparticles, someone noted condensation inside the test tube and suggested he try using his equipment to desalinate water.

So, Mr. Kanzius said, he put sea water in a test tube, then trained his machine on it, producing an unexpected spark. In time he and laboratory owners struck a match and ignited the water, which continued burning as long as it remained in the radio-frequency field.

During several trials, heat from burning hydrogen grew hot enough to melt the test tube, he said. Dr. Roy's tests on the machine last week provided further evidence that the process is releasing and burning hydrogen from the water. Tests on different water solutions and concentrations produced various temperatures and flame colors.

"This is the most abundant element in the world. It is everywhere," Dr. Roy said of salt water. "Seeing it burn gives me chills."

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07252/815920-85.stm

There's also a video on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf4gOS8aoFk

It will be interesting to see if this becomes something big, or is just another really cool but useless laboratory oddity.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I know a company in Ireland has made a device that uses magnets and gives out more energy than you put in without having it connected to anything else.

I see big things in that too. They just need those millions from gulli-... venture capitalists, I mean.

[Feil]

Okay, so he's figured out a way to do electrolisis-at-a-distance, which would be awesome, if there wasn't an absurd free energy claim in there. Guess what, media dumbasses - energy is conserved; if you get potential energy by separating oxygen and hydrogen atoms, you have to pay for it, joule for joule. And, guess what else! That good old second law of thermodynamics dictates that you inevitably must pay more for it than you get back by burning it, because there is no such thing as 100% efficiency.

The 'super-hot flame' is plasma, as anyone who's played with ionized gas under a microwave or radio source ought to know. The extra energy is coming from the emitter.

Honestly, anybody who payed attention in high school chemistry should be able to realize why this can't work for fuel.

[Drooling Iguana]

It just seems like a more complicated, indirect way of doing what's already done by sticking electrodes into the water. Seeing as how they avoided the subject of whether or not this device consumes more energy than it produces, despite the fact that this sort of thing would be trivially easy to measure, makes me pretty much certain that the media is making a big deal about nothing.

[Sea Skimmer]

Of course you can burn salt water, you can burn anything, burning simply requires the use of heat to break atomic bonds. C4 explosive can burn through steel, and the graphite fire at Chernobyl burned the water that was initially sprayed on it, forcing the Soviets to smother it with sand and lead dropped from helicopters.

The real question is, can an object be burned to create a significant net gain of energy, and I’d be very confident that you cannot do that to sea water. It sounds like this guy just had an absurdly over complicated electrolysis machine running. Turning electricity into the required radio frequency isn’t exactly an efficient process to start with.

[Drooling Iguana]

Well, it's pretty obvious that the device shown in the video would not produce a net gain in energy, since it's just electrolysis. However, I wonder if this might be a feasible method of getting energy from solar power satellites down to Earth. Have the satellite send a high-power RF beam down to an offshore facility which would then either collect the hydrogen generated and return it to shore or use it to run a steam turbine on-site.

[Feil]

Well, it's pretty obvious that the device shown in the video would not produce a net gain in energy, since it's just electrolysis. However, I wonder if this might be a feasible method of getting energy from solar power satellites down to Earth. Have the satellite send a high-power RF beam down to an offshore facility which would then either collect the hydrogen generated and return it to shore or use it to run a steam turbine on-site.

Or you could just shoot an infrared laser at a parabolic mirror, and generate steam that way....

[Drooling Iguana]

Well, it's pretty obvious that the device shown in the video would not produce a net gain in energy, since it's just electrolysis. However, I wonder if this might be a feasible method of getting energy from solar power satellites down to Earth. Have the satellite send a high-power RF beam down to an offshore facility which would then either collect the hydrogen generated and return it to shore or use it to run a steam turbine on-site.

Or you could just shoot an infrared laser at a parabolic mirror, and generate steam that way....

The parabolic mirror would have to be angled fairly precisely, which would require a ground-based installation that might run into trouble from the NIMBY folks. An offshore hydrogen collector would just require a dome made of a material transparent to RF rays but impermeable by hydrogen to be placed out in the ocean somewhere. Just bombard it with radio waves until it fills up with hydrogen, then pump the hydrogen out.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I was going to post this, but you beat me. They'll blow up the ocean!

[Jadeite]

The parabolic mirror would have to be angled fairly precisely, which would require a ground-based installation that might run into trouble from the NIMBY folks. An offshore hydrogen collector would just require a dome made of a material transparent to RF rays but impermeable by hydrogen to be placed out in the ocean somewhere. Just bombard it with radio waves until it fills up with hydrogen, then pump the hydrogen out.

What about microwave transmission to a rectenna?

[Drooling Iguana]

Again, that would need a sophisticated setup on the ground, while all an RF-based hydrogen collector would need is a partially submerged enclosure with a hose attached.