Salt Water as Fuel

[Hector]

Did you guys see this story yet? This guy made a chance discovered that when RF energy is applied to Salt Water it releases hydrogen and oxygen easier than direct electrolysis.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07252/815920-85.stm

[Wilfried Heil]

This must be from April 1st and just took a few months till it ended up in the Post-Gazette news. The good news is that you can decompose seawater with RF. Who'd a thunk it?

I see no reason and also no evidence why a well known RF arc should somehow liberate more energy than was put into it. In any case it can be a flashy demonstration, because the sodium vapor in the arc makes it look like "fire". Without this the plasma would be just as hot, but nearly invisible. A nice street artist's trick which works well with an alcohol flame.

Seawater does contain a lot of untapped energy, in the form of uranium, thorium and deuterium, though we can not make much use of it presently.

[Carl Willis]

The Kanzius water-burner has been mentioned before here.

It's fairly evident to me from the videos that it's just an RF arc such as can be created in home microwave ovens with grape slices, burning toothpicks, etc. As such, it wouldn't induce chemical changes in the water to any appreciable degree, and it would be expected to be a net energy consumer, of course, making raw heat of low thermal quality from electricity.

Whoever professor Rustum Roy is, he's either secretly in on the project and is shilling for it, or he's just been duped and seriously needs to get his wig on straight. Here's his website:

http://www.rustumroy.com/

As we can see, he is into homeopathic medicine, "Whole Person Healing," various alternative therapies--fields that tend to be heavily under the sway of pseudo-science. My guess is that he's not a neutral third-party investigator.

-Carl

[Hector]

He seems a little more legitimate than the negative undertone you seem to be portraying him in. So just to be clear are we talking about the same guy? The one on the link below? Or do I have this backwards?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/ ... ch_3246430

[hauris]

Dr. Roy is an eminant scientist and founder of one the best materials research labs in the world (Materials Research Lab MRL at Penn State). There is no question of his scientific credentials. He happens to also be interested in religion, art, and healing. I do not think this detracts from his credentials in any way. Jon

[hauris]

see following for bio on Dr. Roy
http://www.rustumroy.com/general%20biography%202007.htm

[Carl Willis]

I think John Kanzius (the inventor of this water burner) has legitimately stumbled onto something that is new. To him, that is--probably not to people who have hands-on experience with high-power RF and the sort of arcing it can cause. Nothing suggests that Kanzius is trying to obfuscate or mislead. From his standpoint, this is an amazing new phenomenon that defies simple explanation.

Rustum Roy is the university materials-science researcher who is really giving legs to this story because, as a degreed professional scientist, he has "confirmed" the invention and is now announcing that it involves "the most remarkable in water science in 100 years." In science, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The hype suggesting that this apparent monopolar RF arc discharge exhibits dramatically new properties of water, is capable of being an energy source, and so forth is incredibly premature and reflects credulity and wishful-thinking-syndrome on behalf of professional scientists like Dr. Roy who are rushing forward on those conclusions.

It just smells like bad science.

-Carl

[Carl Willis]

The guy has credentials. This is probably why the water-burner story got legs in the media, and it's also why I think he should be taking a more analytical and cautious approach instead of hurrying to extraordinary conclusions. The conclusions are being sent to the presses before any discussion of research methods or results. This pattern always raises red flags.

I mention Dr. Roy's involvement in homeopathy and "alternative medicine" simply because there is a high noise-floor to overcome in these fields due to rampant quackery. In concert with the aforementioned conclusional rush on the water burner, these fields of interest fit a pattern that is quite common (and well-noted) on the fringes of science. I just don't see any reason to trust the conclusions at this stage.

-Carl

[AFW]

If Dr Roy is involved in homeopathy he is not a serious scientist, no matter how impressive his degrees. Homeopathy does not have "a high noise floor due to rampant quackery". It consists of nothing but rampant quackery. Someone involved with it is exactly the kind of person who you'd expect to come up with an idea for obtaining energy by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Tony Webb

[Frank Sanns]

If for the moment you leave the people completely out of the equation then what conclusions can be made.

1. RF energy puts energy into a medium in a non-uniform way. Evidence of this can be seen in a common microwave. Look at some of the sustainable plasmas that can be seen with microwave ovens. Do a video search on google and you will see arcs all over. It is what RF does and it does it with far more materials than salt water. Concusion is that there is nothing unique here.

2. All of these arcs including the salt water arc do not produce energy. They simply manifest a small portion of the input energy as another phenomenon; in this case an arc. Conclusion is that this technique does not provide any energy gain nor does it provide any novel way of storing the energy. At best, It MAY be that the arc produced by this method MAY have some unique use but there are already many sources of arcs including but not limited to both plasma and water plasma arcs.

3. The idea of using micro antennas that may migrate to a tumor and may absorb and larger amount of the RF input and heat up and kill off a tumor may be plausible (or not). The claims of providing clean free energy and the like make belief in this last point more tenuous since the other two claims are false or at least highly exagerated.

Before I would invest, I would need to see way more clinical data with blasting tumors. Show me the data and I shall believe (well, tetatively anyway!).

Frank S.

[Nanos]

I thought the jury was still out on homeopathy and water imprinting ?

[AFW]

Only if it's still out on Astrology and faries at the bottom of the garden.

[Chris Trent]

There is potentially a terribly useful purpose for a system like his.

If you'll notice the plasma arc is disassociating the water into its constituent atoms, and that the atoms are then recombining at the upper edge of the plasma as water once more. If you add some carbon to the mix you have what would seem to be a simple, high density, syngas generator.

No surplus energy is created of course, and the efficiency is questionable, but it is a novel conversion method.

[Richard Hull]

It all boils down to hype and absolutely no presented data from controlled tests. This is the stock and trade of the new energy freaks. The ones that do supply data have often used the wrong instruments in a wrong manner or botched the test in any number of ways.

Richard Hull