Burning sea water

[jpl1nh]

Just wonderin what Big Oil would do with this one? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070910/ap_on_sc/burning_seawater

 

[wg_bent]

But the power input from the radio frequency generator must be huge. They don't mention that. I'm sure it was a neat discovery though.

 

[Gibbonboy]

Umm, you can already electrically seperate Hydrogen out of water, or at least I did it in High School a couple times. The net energy loss is significant, can't see what practical application this would have. Unless we're talking about the same government that claims ethanol will save us, I could see them giving subsidies to "Sea Water Irradiation Research". Not to mention the hazards associated with high-energy RF.

 

[smirnov3]

I think a reporter that flunked Highschool science must have written the story.

It only takes one person to start an urban legend.

 

[rhetoric]

Is it possible that radio waves separate the hydrogen more efficently than the electricity method (from school experiments)? He IS burning hydrogen, right -- not the salt. Hydrogen IS stored energy. And the sun doesn't, of course, violate those nasty laws of physics -- it's not plugged into anything (besides the hydrogen it's made out of). So isn't it true that a more efficient way of extracting the hydrogen could prove fruitful? Of course, till we know how fast his electric meter is spinning, we can't really know if he's on to something.

 

[jpl1nh]

Another question I have is whether the salinity of the water, and perhaps the unique form of salinity of sea water, has anything to do with increasing the availability of free hydrogen when exposed to the radio wave frequency they are using. Also, is the composure of the salinity of sea water variable from ocean to ocean and from place to place within a given ocean?

 

[Gibbonboy]

I would guess that supposedly, the RF either excites the minerals in the seawater, or those minerals increase the conductivity of the water, allowing it to break down more quickly/with less energy. Regardless of how efficient the process is in relation to straight electrolysis, it still is not an efficient way of extracting energy from water. Why not just use the solar energy to either generate voltage, or to heat water to steam and drive turbine generators with that? This is the big hangup with hydrogen-powered vehicles: it takes so much energy to extract hydrogen, it's just not feasible. I've seen plans to locate hydrogen fuel generators at every fuel station, making the fuel from natural gas onsite. Just too expensive, at least until gas hits 8 bucks a gallon.

And yes, salinity varies greatly in the oceans/seas. Ask any submariner, they use the differing areas of salinity to their advantage due to the varying conductivity of sound energy and the "barriers" between those areas. Water ranges from brackish in some coastal areas to the Dead Sea, where people generally float due to the super-concentrated salts. I just watched "Blue Planet" last weekend, they were talking about a "lake" in the deepest areas of the ocean where the water was so salty and dense, that the submersible couldn't dive into it, kept bouncing off.

 

[Bill]

I was watching the Science channel this past weekend and it showed the inventor of this machine. They took his machine to I believe a Pennsylvania University and 30 engineers said it works and thought it was a great invention. It creates a very hot fire. Not sure if it's practical for anything, but check your local listing and watch the program for yourself.