QUESTION: I received a video clip from a friend that deals with the use of water as an alternative to fossil fuels. Does it seem plausible to you? It seems too good to be true.
– Bob Pattison, San Diego
ANSWER: The water-as-fuel hype comes around again and again. For instance, there was the Indian chemist who convinced the local government that he powered his scooter on fuel made by boiling herbs in water. Then there was Stanley Meyer's “water-powered car.” An Ohio court ordered Meyer to repay investors after it found him guilty of “gross and egregious fraud.”
One of the latest incarnations of water hype is a story on YouTube by a Cleveland-based television reporter about burning water. No, it is not the famous fire on Cleveland's once grimly polluted Cuyahoga River that helped spur the environmental movement. The video shows clean saltwater going up in flames.
The demonstration is not a hoax, but saltwater is not going to reduce our dependence on other sources of energy. The old adage “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” makes good sense. In order to burn, the water must be exposed to a strong, focused field of radio waves. When the field is turned on, the water will burn. When it is switched off, the water stops burning.
In other words, unlike fossil fuels, water requires a constant input of energy to make it burn. No one has yet published an analysis that compares how much energy is recovered from burning the water versus how much is used to create the radio-frequency field. However, it is impossible to extract net energy. That would violate the laws of thermodynamics and provide the basis for a perpetual-motion machine.
Water burns in the radiofrequency field because it is being dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen, which are re-combined by burning. The exact mechanism by which the field breaks bonds in water is under dispute, but the result is similar to conventional electrolysis. Electrolysis uses an electric current to produce hydrogen and oxygen at separate electrodes, and more energy is used than is produced by burning the resultant hydrogen.
If using a radio-frequency field to split water turns out to be more efficient than electrolysis, the discovery could be of practical interest. Producing hydrogen from water is a way to store energy. If the sun is the source of energy to liberate hydrogen from water, the result is a clean-burning fuel produced by a renewable energy source.
Sherry Seethaler is a UCSD science writer and educator. Send scientific questions to her at Quest, The San Diego Union-Tribune, P.O. Box 120191, San Diego, CA 92112-0191. Or e-mail sseethaler@ucsd.edu. Please include your name, city of residence and phone number.
