Re: A car that runs on water? http://aquygen.blogspot.com/
- From: "jcon" <cirejcon@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 1 Jun 2006 13:19:38 -0700
jmurph wrote:
The intent of this blog is to consolidate media coverage and public
interest in Aquygen, a gas that is claimed to have the atomic power of
hydrogen with the stability of water. Seeking posting comments with
links to relevant discussions.
The blog has links to video, newspaper coverage.
http://aquygen.blogspot.com/
This crap was covered by the local Fox station. Nice to see
they do as good a job with science as with politics:
http://www.zippyvideos.com/6233971865113236/waterfuel/
It's an investment scam, pure and simple, and not
even a very original one.
First of all, there's nothing mysterious about the torch. You
just separate water into H2 and O2 in an electrolysis cell,
and then ignite them. In this case, "once thought
impossible" is a euphemism for "well understood
since the 19th century". It takes a fair bit of power to generate
enough for a torch, but their machine looks pretty beefy.
The coal thing is a nice bit of theater. Once the coal
starts to burn, it will react directly with the Oxygen
in the jet and burn like all hell, as shown in this way
cool video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox1ZFIgMmps
The effect can be very handy - if you need to burn holes in
charcoal, that is.
An electrolysis-driven torch might well be a handy invention,
although the uses of Hydrogen welding are limited. Also,
people have known how to build one for over 100 years,
and for some reason, no one has.
When they get to the car, things start to fall apart. Just
ask yourself this: "If a car can run on only water and can go
100 miles on four ounces, why on Earth would you build
a gas/water hybrid, or a car that would run on gas OR water?!?".
Was this bad reporting, or was it an investment scam?
Since it was Fox News, it's not surprising that it was
an investment scam badly reported.
I went to their website
http://hytechapps.com/applications/HHOS.htm
Their claim is that their electrolysis cell doesn't produce
H2 and O2, but rather "Aquygen(TM)", which they
claim is a single gas which burns. The advantage, according
to their "science" page
http://hytechapps.com/science/index.html
is that it produces a higher volume of gas for the same
power as normal electrolysis. The problem is that normal
electrolysis can be more than 80% efficient, so the
only way to make dramaticallly more is to VIOLATE
CONSERVATION OF ENERGY. They try to explain
it in this "scientific paper"
http://hytechapps.com/science/Santilli.htm
which claims that it involves a new type of atomic
bond, that effectively creates "gaseous water".
Now if *I* discovered a new type of atomic bond,
I'd probably take a break to collect my Nobel Prize
before building novelty torches, but that's just me.
The paper reads like nonsense to me, but
then chemistry was my worst subject. After all, it
was written by "Professor Santilli", at the "Institute
for Basic Research"
http://www.i-b-r.org/index.htm
Eh, where is that exactly? That's hard to say. It
has only four faculty members:
http://www.i-b-r.org/ir00021.htm
and each lives in a different place (in fact,
each lives in a different *continent*).
Florida:
http://www.i-b-r.org/Ruggero-Maria-Santilli.htm
Italy
http://www.i-b-r.org/Quartieri.doc
Kazakstan (huh?):
http://www.i-b-r.org/aringazin.htm
and Nigeria (well *there* you go!):
http://www.i-b-r.org/animalu.htm
Seems I've seen "investment opportunities" from Nigeria
before, but I could be remembering it wrong.
Their publication list
http://www.i-b-r.org/index.htm#announces
is a bunch of pseudoscientific gobbledegook written
support a veritable smorgasbord of investment scams around the
world - from free energy to nuclear waste disposal.
In the end, this isn't even an original scam. "Aquygen" is just
a repackaging of "Brown's gas"
http://www.phact.org/e/bgas.htm
which was used to bilk investors a number of years ago, and
which you can still waste your money on today:
http://www.eagle-research.com/
The water burning motor is an old and venerable scam,
dating back at least to the "Keely Motor" in 1872:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/keely/keely.htm
It was thoroughly debunked over 100 years ago, but there are
*still* believers.
There's a whole industry in free energy scams, going back
hundreds of years.
http://www.phact.org/e/dennis4.html
The Mythbusters (one of my favorite
shows) investigated a number of current schemes (episode 24)
and concluded "Never have so many myths been so thoroughly
busted".
Word of caution: If Fox News is right, Aquygen is a fantastic
new discovery. If the known laws of physics and chemistry
are right, it's mixture of ordinary H2 and O2, which is
INCREDIBLY dangerous, particularly if you were to try to
compress it. In other words "Don't try this at home".
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
-jc
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