[Wichita-SCCA] Water Power

[Greg Laws]

Hi Lawrence,

You were correct to be skeptical of HHO "power from water" claims.  Known as "Brown's gas" from it's original discoverer, the HHO gas is actually  the combination of H2 and O2 gasses.  This combination gas does indeed do much of what is claimed in the video that I ran from your attachment.  The tip of the welder does stay cool enough to touch even while cutting metals and this can be a terrific safety advantage for some industrial situations.  The byproduct of the burning gas is indeed just water.  Yes, it will run in a car engine.  Fuel from water -- sounds good!  What's the problem?

The problem is that the electrical power needed to split the water is equal to or exceeds the power one gets when recombining the gasses in a flame.  A further problem is that unless one wants to store hydrogen under pressure before burning it, the gas has to be produced and  then instantly used.  Finally, the electrical process needed to split the water is very, very slow.  All of the above makes vehicle use impractical in the real world.  Could nuclear energy be used to create clean burning HHO gas for use in vehicles?  Sure, but it would have to be on a huge industrial scale and then transporting the hydrogen, refueling safety, and on-board storage of the gas in a vehicle would create all sorts of new problems to overcome.  

HHO gas will likely have some industrial applications and even some home shop applications, mostly in the area of light-duty cutting of metals and such.  Other than that it is just a curiosity at present.  I can't see a future for HHO as a vehicle fuel -- the overall system of dealing with it just gets too complicated for that.

One interesting thing about HHO is that it doesn't "cut" metals or other materials by burning them as a typical oxygen-acetylene torch would.  Instead it instantly causes the material to reach that particular material's melting point and that's where it stops.  It never gets hotter than that.  If one material melts at 1200 degrees then it causes the material to reach 1200 degrees.  If another material melts at 900 degrees then that's where the temperature stops.  No one knows why this happens.  This limitation keeps it from being good for welding but it does make for a nifty cutting tool if you don't mind having melted edges in your cut instead of sharp corners.

Enjoy,
Greg Laws




  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Lawrence 
  To: Wichita-SCCA at wichitascca.org 
  Sent: Monday, May 26, 2008 3:17 PM
  Subject: [Wichita-SCCA] Water Power



             
             

       

  I was very skeptical when I heard about this.





  Lawrence



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