Burning salt water to create energy

Tasel

Filed under OMG...

Kanzius was testing his radio wave machine he created to treat cancer on salt water to see if it would desalinate it, and instead the water ignited. Basically the radio waves caused the salt water to separate into oxygen and hydrogen (like electrolysis but using a prince of nanoparticles), and then ignite the hydrogen. So long as the machine was on and pointed at the salt water, the process continued. This is still in the experimental lab phase, however the experiment has been duplicated and possesses a huge amount of potential as salt water is the earth's largest resource. The only problem is at the moment it is rated at about 75% efficiency, so at the moment it uses more energy than it produces, but the potential is enormous. Apparently they first released some info about this as far back as February 2007, so my apologies if everyone has already seen this.

More info over at PureEnergySystems Wiki

Apreche

Yeah, this smells fishy (pun not intended). Remember, if it's too good to be true, it's probably false. Even if it is true, I highly doubt that it will ever be efficient enough. The energy it takes to power the machine will almost certainly always be greater than the energy you get out of the water.

Neito

I heard about this in the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast.
From what they said, saying the potential is enormous is an overstatement. Basically, you're trying to get free energy. The laws of physics don't allow that.
I wouldn't hold my breath, personally.

GreatTeacherMacRoss

Yeah, the whole 'consuming more energy than it expells' thing is sort of a wrench in the works. Still, we can cross our fingers and hope for something awesome.

cosmicenema

From what they said, saying the potential is enormous is an overstatement. Basically, you're trying to get free energy. The laws of physics don't allow that.

You wouldn't be breaking any laws of physics here. You're using salt water as a fuel so there's nothing "free" about it. It costs the salt water to run it. The key here is to get the power plant using less energy than it produces. Every power plant in existence uses less electricity then it produces.

I, however, will also not hold my breath. Still kinda cool though. I want a gun that sets water on fire!

Andrew

The key here is to get the power plant using less energy than it produces.

This is impossible.

Tasel

I'm not going to hold my breath for them to make it efficient enough. We'll at least not this guy. He's a cancer researcher and he said if someone wants to buy the tech they are more than willing to sell it to fund more cancer research. Hopefully someone with more drive to make energy will start working on it.

As for it being impossible to create more energy than something uses, this is not entirely true. Otherwise we would have 0 energy. The difference is in using less energy in a process to convert matter into more energy. Free energy can't be done as it breaks pretty much all the rules we've observed in science. They reference another technology that creates about a 7x energy output from water, but I don't know the specifics. It probably requires some special type of "clean" water.

Jason

Every power plant in existence uses less electricity then it produces.

This is incredibly, incredibly false. No power plant uses less energy than it produces. Power plants merely take one form of energy and transform it into electricity. The potential energy in coal and gas, the kinetic energy in running water, the unstable energy in radiation - all the ways that we produce electricity merely take one input and translate it into an output.

cosmicenema

Every power plant in existence uses less electricity then it produces.

This is incredibly, incredibly false.

Oh holy crap. Will you guys settle down. I said "electricity" not energy. Energy must be conserved in any system (E=MC^2 and whatnot) but that isn't what we're talking about. Power plants harvest energy from a source.

Let's say I have a power plant that produces 100 kwh a day (using whatever method you want, it doesn't matter). The amount of electricity the power plant uses or consumes (you know, on that little meter on the side of every building) is 1 kwh a day. This means 99% of the electricity the power plan produces is sent to other places to be consumed there.

No laws of physics are broken here.

Now, in the case of the 'burning water' example it looks like the hypothetical 'power plant' would create 100 kwh a day but would consume a whopping 75 kwh a day leaving only 25% of it's electricity elsewhere. This also does not break any laws of physics, however it does break a few laws of capitalism.

HMTKSteve

Now, in the case of the 'burning water' example it looks like the hypothetical 'power plant' would create 100 kwh a day but would consume a whopping 75 kwh a day leaving only 25% of it's electricity elsewhere. This also does not break any laws of physics, however it does break a few laws of capitalism.

What in the world are you smoking? I think you have your numbers reversed in that it takes 100 kwh of energy to "burn" salt water which releases 75kwh of energy.

If you had a machine that took in 75 kwh and had an output of 100 kwh you would be amazingly rich! We call that a "perpetual motion machine" and they do not exist!

cosmicenema

If you had a machine that took in 75 kwh and had an output of 100 kwh you would be amazingly rich! We call that a "perpetual motion machine" and they do not exist!

We aren't talking power (joules) here, we're talking usable electricity. The system isn't "perpetual motion" because it's getting the energy from a fuel (in this case water but it could also be nuclear, coal, oil, garbage, gravity). The equation looks like this.

Electricity gained from fuel: 100 kWh
Electricity lost in fuel extraction process: -75 kWh
Electricity left over for community use: 25 kWh

This is not a perpetual motion machine, it's an energy conversion machine. The amount of energy is conserved and its efficiency is what we're discussing (which is what makes it viable as a business). There were 100 kWh of energy in the fuel before the extraction process, and there are 100 kWh of usable electricity (and wasted efficiency in the form of heat/noise/etc) after the process.

Tasel

I think you have your numbers reversed in that it takes 100 kWh of energy to "burn" salt water which releases 75kwh of energy.

He is correct. According to the article (unless I'm also misreading it) it takes approximately 100 kWh of energy and produces 75kWh (75%). In the article it also references another water technology that creates 7 times (or basically 100 kWH in, and 700 kWh out + fuel). The trick is to use less electricity than you create through means of fuel, which in this particular case is salt water. Once you cross that 1 to 1 ratio, you start to have a system that benefits you (so long as the cost of the fuel < the cost of the electricity supplied).

cosmicenema

According to the Carnot cycle of heat engines, efficiency η is defined to be:

where
ΔW is the work done by the system (energy exiting the system as work),
ΔQH is the heat put into the system (heat energy entering the system),
TC is the absolute temperature of the cold reservoir, and
TH is the temperature of the hot reservoir.

In our case we know delta W and delta Q. The hypothetical water burning power station in my example the work would be 75 kWh and the heat into the system (from the fuel) would be 100 kWh which means the efficiency is 75%. This is my model and I couldn’t find a mention of efficiency or it’s method of calculation in the OPs linked article.

Keep in mind that this is an ideal hypothetical situation where 100% of the energy from the heat generated by ‘burning water’ is used to produce electricity. This is in fact, not the case but I simplified the formula. The Delta W in a non-perfect system (where friction and heat loss exist) would be Work done by system + Heat Loss.

The business model of 75% efficiency doesn’t work because you won’t make enough money off selling that much energy at today’s prices to cover the other costs associated with running an electric utility (infrastructure maintenance, building maintenance, bill processing, marketing, etc).

Tasel

Didn't the article say it was around 76 percent of Faraday's theoretical limit? Or is that the same as efficiently? I'll have to admit being a newb when it comes to electricity itself beyond it in principle by going "oh cool!" about certian things. The only thing I could find was this pdf, but I couldn't figure out if that was related to efficiency.

cosmicenema

I do not know what Faraday's Theoretical Limit is and neither does Google which leads me to believe it's bunk. The article, when describing the "other methods" of extracting energy from water, used the notation "7x" which could mean either "seventy something percent" to keep in line with the rest of the sentence or "seven times Faraday's Limit" which doesn't make a lot of sense as limits are usually, er, limits.

cosmicenema

This is the wiki article on the guy who claims to have invented this. After you read the part about how the experiment was "successfully reproduced by his business partner" I'm sure you'll find it bunk. Also, "It has not undergone any form of traditional peer-review."

Apreche

Thisis the wiki article on the guy who claims to have invented this. After you read the part about how the experiment was "successfully reproduced by his business partner" I'm sure you'll find it bunk. Also, "It has not undergone any form of traditional peer-review."

effect has been successfully reproduced by his business partner Rustum Roy, an emeritus materials scientist and homeopathy practitioner

Case closed.

navelfluff

I'm not an expert on physics, but I understand this much: This process uses energy to split hydrogen and oxygen from H2O. This energy is now stored in the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. When hydrogen and oxygen reunite (burn), they release the same amount of energy that was put in them in the first part of the process. In a hypothetical 100% effective process, you would get the same amount of energy out as you put in. The salt may interfere a little bit with this principle, but I can't see how it could add a significant amount of output energy.

Don't give this guy your money. You won't get it back, and you won't help humanity either.

Tasel

Sigh. Another dashed hope. Oh well.

HMTKSteve

Rebuttal Link

Symmetry

Yeah, this is in fact total bunk. But there are really cool things you can do to extract energy from the diffusion of salt from the sea into a stream of fresh water. If we didn't particularly care about the horrible, horrible environmental consequences and were able to accomplish the necessary engineering we could satisfy the US's electricity need just by using the flow of the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico.

mkg12

 
I heard about this in the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast. From what they said, saying the potential is enormous is an overstatement. Basically, you're trying to get free energy. The laws of physics don't allow that. I wouldn't hold my breath, personally.


Great Show.
Of course the news outlets disappoint when reporting on such items.