Japanese Company Says Laws of Physics Don't Apply — to Cars 736
Fantastic Lad, among many others, points out another in a long series of claimed "powered by water" cars, this one by a Japanese company called "Genepax," which interestingly enough does not have so much as a Wikipedia entry. What's scary is the uncritical, even serious-sounding, presentation by Reuters of such extraordinary claims quite unbacked by extraordinary evidence. "Almost sounds too good to be true" isn't the half of it; if cars could be made which would run as "long as you have a bottle of water inside" to pour into the fuel tank ("even tea," repeats this report), not only would you know about the car, but you'd notice the long lines of people buying generators, laptops, and power tools that run on the same technology. The snippet Reuters is carrying says "Jun. 13 — Japanese company Genepax presents its eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but water. The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car's tank. The generator then releases electrons that produce electric power to run the car. Genepax, the company that invented the technology, aims to collaborate with Japanese manufacturers to mass produce it." Fantastic Lad, deadpan, goes on: "Check out the Reuter's story and accompanying video. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there some sort of conservation of energy thing happening in the whole 'separating hydrogen from water' game? I wonder what the real story is on this. Investment fraud? Magic?" Show your work; bonus points if you use Haiku.
Re:High School Science Class... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:High School Science Class... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:High School Science Class... (Score:3, Informative)
It costs more to produce hydrogen through the electrical method than by reforming natural gas to make hydrogen, so almost all hydrogen the world currently uses is made by reforming natural gas.
How it works (Score:5, Informative)
So water may not be the only thing fueling this car. They use a chemical reaction to crack the water, and then use the hydrogen from the water and oxygen from the air to run a fuel cell. The real questions are: What is in these membranes? How long do they last? What does it cost to renew the membranes?
Re:Screw water (Score:3, Informative)
It is basically a water-based fuel cell, and it's supposedly using technology that already exists - it's just able to produce energy for a longer time than current fuel cells.
It doesn't seem like "free energy" - there are obviously costs involved with a fuel cell system - but it would be a major improvement in all areas over a standard combustion engine. Whether it would compete with plug-in electric cars, I don't know. Whether it's even possible, I don't know either, but the point is there are a lot more details out there to look at than just what's in the "non-critical" Reuters summary that we're all being pointed to here.
Re:Running cars on water? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Water & Pure Aluminum (Score:3, Informative)
Some links ... (Score:5, Informative)
WES system [google.com] (Google-translated)
Genepax homepage [genepax.co.jp] (English)
Nooklear Wessels (Score:5, Informative)
There is exactly one way by which you can make hydrogen extraction from water a net power gain: if the hydrogen extracted is used for nuclear fusion. Assuming any remotely efficient fusion (i.e. worth bothering with), the energy gain from fusion should vastly exceed the cost of splicing water, separating out deuterium, etc. For combustion in oxygen, no... water is already the ash of that process.
You could theoretically burn hydrogen in a fluorine atmosphere and get more energy out, but that assumes a ready supply of elemental fluorine (doesn't exist) and something to do with the hydrogen fluoride that results (HF will corrode glass.)
Re:Water & Pure Aluminum (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Screw water (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How it works (Score:5, Informative)
It may be related to a 2005 discovery [sciam.com] published in the Scientfic American [sciam.com] that combine organosilanes [wikipedia.org] with water in the presence of a rhenium [wikipedia.org] based catalyst to produce hydrogen.
Re:Screw water (Score:2, Informative)
The impossibility of a water based fuel cell is very simple. I will try to explain it briefly here, hopefully you accept this as proof.
A hydrogen fuel cell works by removing electrons from hydrogen molecules. Generally, you cannot simply remove an electron from an atom, but you can with hydrogen because it can bond easily with so many other atoms, such as oxygen. Two hydrogen atoms can cling to an oxygen atom by sharing it's electrons, this allows the hydrogen atoms to give up their own electrons. These electrons are collected by the fuel cell giving you electricity. In our example of bonding with oxygen, you also end up with H2O, or water. This is the most common result in a fuel cell because oxygen is so abundant.
The second thing to understand is electrolysis and how Water is separated into hydrogen and oxygen. As explained above, Water is formed by a lack of electrons to have hydrogen and water separately. Electrolysis works by adding excess electrons to water so that it must separate into component parts to remain stable. By adding 2 electrons to a single H2O molecule, the Hydrogen is forced to separate, giving you 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen again.
As you probably realize at this point, you must add exactly the same number of electrons to the H20 to separate it as you get by forming the molecule in the first place. This means that if you could operate this at 100% efficiency (an impossible feat in itself), then you would simply be looping the electrons in and out. It is impossible to have a net gain. Because fuel cells do not operate even near 100% efficiency, you will actually always have a significant net loss.
DISCLAIMER: My only formal chemistry education is "Chem 140: Applied Chemistry I", but I believe that this explanation is sound.
Re:How it works (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Screw water haiku (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Screw water (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Screw water (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that when you "use" hydrogen to create electricity, the hydrogen recombines with oxygen to become water once again. So let me use some fictional numbers here to demonstrate why your suggestion is impossible:
1. Assume it takes 1 joule of energy to split a water molecule.
2. Assume you get back 2 joules of energy when you "use" the hydrogen.
3. You now have the same water molecule you started with, and a surplus of 1 joule of energy.
Where did that energy come from? It'd be one hell of a magic trick if you could pull it off! That's why no process which splits water will ever generate more energy than it consumes.
Yes, but when you split an atom you're actually destroying that atom. Once the process is complete you don't have the same atom you started with - instead the atom is gone, and you have a surplus of energy.
And for the other type of nuclear reaction - fusion - you actually fuse two hydrogen atoms into one helium atom, so you end up with a different form of matter than what you started with. THAT is where the energy comes from.
See the difference?
Re:Screw water (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not saying it's credible at first glance.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not saying it's credible at first glance.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Screw water (Score:2, Informative)
You can obviously move large amounts of heat with little energy. In fact, one responder was even wrong to suggest that you need energy to "move" heat. Thermal energy moves by itself. According to the laws of thermodynamics, it will move from higher heat to an area of lower heat.(i.e. Your coffee gets colder the longer you leave it sitting there).
Going back to computers. Technically you need no energy to cool a computer. The chip will get hot, and because it is warmer than the surroundings it will radiate heat.
However, the amount of heat that can be dissipated into the surroundings is fairly simple to calculate. It is a result of the heat of the chip and the heat of the surroundings. If you wish to move heat at a higher rate, then you will need to input your own energy into the equation.
This is very basic thermodynamics.
Now, lets go back to this car in question. They are claiming that water can be used to "create" energy. This is impossible. Water is the RESULT of energy release. It requires energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
So, according to the company making this false claim...
Water + NO energy = Hydrogen and Oxygen
Hydrogen + Oxygen = Energy + Water
This would essentially be a formula for unlimited energy. This is why they are claiming that this is impossible. It doesn't violate some nerds limited knowledge of physics, it violates some of the most basic principles of physics.
Re:Screw water (Score:5, Informative)
"The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car's tank."
This device isn't an energy generator at all, it's a device which requires electricity in order to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen. (I think this is called hydrolysis?) The end result is that you end up expending more energy trying to get at the hydrogen than you get back from burning it. The stories about "water cars" in the popular media always gloss over this little detail.
So yes, it's perfectly possible to make a car that uses water as fuel, but the chemical reactions required to make it work require a lot of electricity which presently is neither cheap nor clean.
Re:haiku (Score:3, Informative)
Cap'n I canna
Break the laws o' physics, but
Genepax seems to
Re:It's only magic if they are frauds (Score:4, Informative)
The energy doesn't have to be 'magicked' out of thin air, you just need some way of obtaining the energy that already exists in something. In this case, the 'news' bit seems to be that they have developed a better fuel-cell electrode.
Re:Not saying it's credible at first glance.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not saying it's credible at first glance.. (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone can see that. Can you not see that the person you're replying to insisted that this isn't a closed system?
It's a poorly explained system. It's probably something like this [isa.org]. In any case, a system like this is perfectly workable and does not violate any physical laws. The process to create the hydrogen uses less electricity than the process of burning it. That's not magic, that's chemistry. Eventually, you pay for it when you recycle the aluminum in the linked case. Not sure how it works in the Genepax system, but doubtless it's something similar.
Re:Nooklear Wessels (Score:1, Informative)
I don't know who is pulling your chain, but you should get some education before you go hacking off body parts...
Re:Running cars on water? (Score:1, Informative)
Water injection is a real effect, and it is used in real engines (primarily big high-output engines). It takes some care to do it properly, so you don't usually see it in small engines.
Note that water injection has nothing to do with this Reuters article. [begin rant] This Reuters article demonstrates the complete lack of intelligence by most of the world's journalists, particularly when it comes to science. Anyone who passed high school physics would know this magic car is a hoax. You can't get energy out of nothing: thermodynamics won't let you. Of course, I don't expect every journalist to be familiar with everything, but if you don't know something, ask someone who does. [end of rant]
Water injection is not adding water willy-nilly to gas, it's adding water in tightly controlled amounts at a very specific point in the combustion cycle.
In a normal 4-cycle gasoline piston engine, the gas-air mixture is compressed by the piston, then detonated by the spark plug near the point of maximum compression.
When any gas is compressed, the gas will get hotter (this is basic thermodynamics). If the gas-air mixture gets too hot, it will spontaneously detonate, usually at the wrong place in the combustion cycle. This is called "engine knock", and it's very bad for the engine. High-octane fuel (ie premium gas) is more resistant to spontaneous detonation.
What if you put in a small amount of water? Water has a high specific heat, much more than the gas-air mixture. That means it takes a more heat to make water rise in temperature than the gas-air mixture. So, with a small amount of water, the gas-air/water mixture is at a lower temperature, and engine knock is eliminated. That's good(TM).
Now, what happens when the spark plug goes off with a regular engine? The gas burns, turning into CO2 and water vapor, releasing a lot of heat & pressure. The pressure pushes the piston down, which turns the crankshaft and makes the car move.
So, what happens to the gas-air/water mixture when the spark plug goes off? The gas still burns, turning into CO2 and water vapor, releasing a lot of heat & pressure. The water is rapidly raised above its boiling point, turning into steam. The phase transition from water to steam generates a LOT more pressure which pushes the piston down much harder, generating more mechanical energy for the same amount of fuel. That's good(TM).
So, water has two big benefits.
BUT it has to be tightly controlled because:
- adding water makes it easier for everything to rust
- too much water will make the gas-air/water mixture not detonateable
Re:Not saying it's credible at first glance.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Running cars on water? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Water & Pure Aluminum (Score:4, Informative)
Also, hooray for Professor Pirate! That was worth it just for the eye patch.
Re:Running cars on water? (Score:2, Informative)
Not quite. The idea is to squirt atomized water into the intake, which will vaporize when it's heated during the compression stroke. Since vaporization will absorb energy, it helps cools the compressed fuel/air mixture, thus preventing predetonation. Mixing meth in with the water improves it further. It's even better if you can directly inject the water/meth mixture during the compression stroke, but that requires engine design changes. Injecting into the intake can be done on almost any car.
The net effect is like running higher octane gas, allowing you to run higher boost or compression. I've heard quotes of around +20 octane equivalent with intake injection.
Re:Running cars on water? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Screw water (Score:3, Informative)
You're probably thinking of splitting molecules, a chemical process.
Since creating water from hydrogen and oxygen creates energy, you have to add energy in order for this process to occur. A catalyst can only work as long as the state after the reaction has less energy that the state beforehand, which isn't the case here.
Re:Running cars on water? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Screw water (Score:1, Informative)
A deuteron has 3.34x10^-27 kg of mass, while an alpha particle (He2+) has mass 6.64x10-27kg. (Particle Masses [uottawa.ca]).
The mass of two deuterons is hence 0.04x10-27 kg more than the mass of an alpha particle. Equivalently, less than 0.6% of the mass of input Hydrogen mass is converted to energy. Pure matter-to-energy would be 167x better than H->He fusion.
Conservation laws would prevent a simple direct conversion (and also spontaneous "evaporation" of matter, thankfully). But, one might dream of more clever ways to do this...
I found photos... (Score:3, Informative)
FYI the video that's been going around is a bit misleading. The guy talking in Japanese doesn't say the car ONLY needs water. He says with water, the car can keep running, not denying there are other factors. The translator made news where there really wasn't any, and the company obviously benefited from the mistranslation. They were probably even counting on it.
Any claims from the company carefully state their system, WES, uses water. And they never say WES doesn't need maintenance.
The company does repeatedly emphasize how the car doesn't need gas, and they basically lead anyone to think that: no gas + water = water powered car. Although, like many here have noticed, they never claim water itself is powering the car.
I don't have time to look for them, but apparently, like all inventions made public, there are already patents on file regarding this technology. And they are along the lines of using aluminium.
Hopefully there is innovation here in performance or efficiency, although it might be the case where they put some previous invention in a car for the first time.
I do like the idea of having the main tank only needing water though. Like maybe have aluminium powder cells recycled every few weeks, while filling the tank every few days with water. Assuming the cells take less space, we could have them shipped to us, and stack them in our basement. That would end the need for gas stations and gas to hydrogen station conversions (which I doubt will ever happen).