There were many attempts in the past to run a car on water. What is the reality? Can a car run exsclusively on water?
Is it a myth or is there some fact behind the story?
Short answer - no, certainly not as raw water.
Long answer is that water is chemically stable at STP and takes a lot of energy to convert into a fuel.
Converting to fuel can be achieved by splitting the Hydrogen from the water, using it as a fuel. This can be achieved by electrolysis-, catalytic- or thermal dissociation. All of these require large amounts of energy.
The other alternative would be extracting the heavy water and using the deuterium as fusion fuel. I think we still have a long way to go before we achieve fusion in a controllable, compact and energy positive way.
The third option, I can think of now, is to have the water react with something, e.g. sodium- or potassium metal, aluminium (with the addition of sodium hydroxide) to produce Hydrogen, otherwise Calcium Carbide, to produce acetylene.
Water injection into internal combustion engines is used to inhibit detonation in high compression machines. I think it was first used in WW2 to allow for higher compression ratios to achieve higher ceilings (maximum altitudes). The high compression ratios was required to compensate for pressure drop, and corresponding power loss, with increasing altitude. .Water in an internal combustion engine dissociates (thermally) and recombines again (there are limits to this), but does not act as a fuel. I suspect this use of water in IC engines was probably the source of the hoax.
Theoretically yes, water have to be exploited with the electrolysis to produce hydrogen to feed PEM fuel cells...
As with hydrogen, batteries etc, the question is not which is a possible energy CARRIER, but which is your energy SOURCE: in a sense, water is similar to natural gas: you can make hydrogen from it.
The difference is the energy content: since water has a very low energy content, you would need an external energy source (solar, wind, ...) for electrolysis. Running a car on the chemical energy content of water seems impossible to me.
The most promising approach for using water to make fuel is photoelectrochemical water splitting.
I agree with you Jan, that is why I am developing the photoelectrochemical water splitting technology for automobiles fuels.
No, but you can make money selling books about it to idiots, because there is an inexhaustible supply.
You can make hydrogen gas from water, but that is just storing electricity chemically using water as a feedstock.
Possible? Yes, but beyond good and evil! And it would be a very heavy car and with big problems. Here is a funny page about trains in 19. century: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/soda/soda.htm. The water is the reaction partner with soda.
(at the moment I have no access to this one: Engineering 27. Februar 1885)
Water as the only fuel: never.
Yes. using to hydrogen gas from water, removing the oxygen from it.
In few words run a car with water in the way to use water as fuel is not yet feasible because it is necessary to convert it to H2 and to do this in required more energy than the energy produced by released H2.
Use water as addittive is possible and make sense: it is known as water injection and allow to save up to 30-40% of fuel. In this case water is injected as aerosol in the aspiration and the droplets when arrive to the engine combustion chamber, because of the high temperature released by fuel combustion and evaporate; the steam produced increase the pressure in the chamber but in the same time absorb heat; there is a peak for the water added; in fact too little has little effect, too much quench the combustion. It was used in some WW2 fighters airplanes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_injection_(engines)
Other technologies get increase in performance using a mixed fuel, gasoline + some hydrogen/oxigen mixture made from water electrolysis mixed and burned together in the engines; energy is got from the engine electric energy generator when not needed to charge the car battery.
yes u may...by using fuel cell technology in which water react with some chemical for example MgH, when water react witch such chemical; liberates the fresh hydrogen. hydrogen reacts with ambient oxygen .this reaction is exothermic reaction. this reaction heat can be utilize to power the engine.
Yeah, it could be possible to use water as fuel for running vehicle. The research is going on to produce that amount of H2 from water which could be able to run the vehicle. Some are working in photoelectrochemical process and some are using different photocatalysts. Lets see when we will be able to success in this field.
Good Luck to all who are working in this field.
Pure water cannot be used as a fuel. If you want to run a car fueling ONLY with water, you should have at least two kinds of water. For example, mix water and antiwater. Or realize thermonuclear fusion using deuterium–tritium fusion reaction based on the corresponding two types of enriched water. Other options need external sources of energy or presence of other compounds but in a such case water could not be considered as a fuel.
Yeah. Its true that pure water can't be used as fuel for vehicles. As hydrogen energy can be used in place petroleum fuel, there needs a sacrificial agent in water splitting which can trap oxygen.
Short answer - no, certainly not as raw water.
Long answer is that water is chemically stable at STP and takes a lot of energy to convert into a fuel.
Converting to fuel can be achieved by splitting the Hydrogen from the water, using it as a fuel. This can be achieved by electrolysis-, catalytic- or thermal dissociation. All of these require large amounts of energy.
The other alternative would be extracting the heavy water and using the deuterium as fusion fuel. I think we still have a long way to go before we achieve fusion in a controllable, compact and energy positive way.
The third option, I can think of now, is to have the water react with something, e.g. sodium- or potassium metal, aluminium (with the addition of sodium hydroxide) to produce Hydrogen, otherwise Calcium Carbide, to produce acetylene.
Water injection into internal combustion engines is used to inhibit detonation in high compression machines. I think it was first used in WW2 to allow for higher compression ratios to achieve higher ceilings (maximum altitudes). The high compression ratios was required to compensate for pressure drop, and corresponding power loss, with increasing altitude. .Water in an internal combustion engine dissociates (thermally) and recombines again (there are limits to this), but does not act as a fuel. I suspect this use of water in IC engines was probably the source of the hoax.
The closest practice so far is to generate H2 from water using the battery power of an IC engine and inject the H2 into the combustion chamber to assist combustion efficiency by burning the unburned carbon. Many claims it is a perpetual energy as the energy is drawn from an internal energy storage system. Meaning, battery life would be affected. For on-board H2 generation for ICE or fuel cell use, the practical key could be in harvesting the downstream waste energy and convert it directly to useful electrical energy for the electrolysis. But how much waste energy can be tapped and regenerated is a great technical challenge.
There's an article about Water Injection in SAE Journal June 1945 'Alcohol-water injection' A T Colwell. Full issue available at $15 in www.sae.org Salut
Yes it´s possibly by ad some small amount of Al. Tested successfully by Bmw 1981, whit good result.
Good Prospect! The combination of a photocatalytic or solar powered water electrolyser combined with a PEM fuel cell could be a very sustainable idea. Electrolyser uses water to produce H2 and O2 which are given to the fuel cell to produce water and power for the vehicle. H2O from the fuel cell goes back to the electrolyser. Simple to say, but a lot of work here!!
Dear Arun,
I also think that this would be an extremely good prospect!
Solar power flux is about 1.3 kW/m2. If you have on your car a solar panel of ~ 2 m2 and overall energy efficiency is
http://youtu.be/GfVz00QLpKc
http://youtu.be/Kt9uIErs7-M
http://youtu.be/3thJ3D5Yqog
Youtube is not a scientific reference. In these cases water is an additive to gas but not a fuel
I'm not so sure YouTube is not an Scientific reference. Some posts come from hobbyists, private experiencers, narcissistic people, and are mostly for fun, but there are also serious Scieintific Societies, as ESMO, that publish content in YouTube, some industrial producers of many types of devices and inventions do show their line there, and if you look at the questions about Turbine design in RG, you'll find references, for example, to YT teaching videos from universities in India.
NASA and NACA research results and prospects are also available in YT, and the only problem is that with millions of videos entering the YT system every week, finding the right search strategy for retrieving what you are looking for may be also time-consuming. Usually, once you find a serious video purveyor in the field of interest, the associated videos feature of YT tends bringing you to videos of the same class and quality.
The Water Engine is for me mostly a subtype of perpetual motion, but sometimes, you find related videos and information having serious content.
Do not give up! Salud †
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