Something to consider for all those worthy public representatives who will be attending the economic summit at Davos next month.

YouTube - Join the Davos Debates 2009

Stan Meyer's Dune Buggy

The telling statement is in the last few sentences on the "Equinox video" (Narrated, if I'm not mistaken, by ex - BBC Tomorrow's World presenter, William Wollard) that this device will have universal application and will render motive and electrical power virtually cost free.

Looking at the date of the video, it must be a technology which is about to, if it hasn't already, matured.

Whilst he seems to be using the hydrogen produced here to burn in a conventional engine, I presume there would be nothing stopping you connecting it to fuel cells which would take the component oxygen and hydrogen and combine it to form water again and in the process generate electricity. Depending on the relative input/output ratios you might have a perpetual energy machine on your hands which only required minmal and occasional water top-ups.

What this guy is offering is certainly more promising and safe than the solution proferred by the existing auto and oil companies:-

Honda FCX Clarity - Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle - Official Web Site

This requires you to carry a tank of compressed hydrogen on board and, obviously, duly equipped gas stations.

Shell Hydrogen - Shell Hydrogen homepage

Nick

Hydrogen is currently to expensive to produce, and production relies on fossil fuels. Currently it's as expensive as petrol.

Until someone finds a way to produce 'on vehicle' from water and very little else, it's not worth pursuing IMO

In the video, the guy claimed he was producing large quantities of hydrogen by running a one half-amp high frequency current through some immersed alloy tubes - so no more current than is used in your heated rear window and it was running a dune buggy.

Usual dune-buggy has a 50 BHP (37.5 KWH) engine, so 4 amps @ 12 V i.e. 48 watts gets you 37.5 KiloWatts, not a bad input to ouput ratio.

The US Patent office have accepted that it is a workable device by granting him several patents.

I'm just wondering, is this another facet of the effect that the Profs at Southampton Uni obrserved when conducting the "Cold Fusion" experiements in the early 1990s ?

Cold fusion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nick

The guy said he had found a way to get hydrogen from water 'free' - but obviously he was deluded/a fraud/mistaken because there is no such thing as enery for free.

These potty ideas of self-sustaining, hydrogen from water generators have been around as long as gyroscopic anti-gravity devices!

And they all fail proper scientific scrutiny and they always claim to have been threatened by mysterious dark forces to drop the idea.

Check out the Sunshine to Petrol project - that has actually been proven to work now (according to the documentary I saw on the BBC!).

Looking forward to seing how you get on with it.....

I'll stick with what i know works.... diesel at 98p a litre

The guy said he had found a way to get hydrogen from water 'free' - but obviously he was deluded/a fraud/mistaken because there is no such thing as enery for free.

These potty ideas of self-sustaining, hydrogen from water generators have been around as long as gyroscopic anti-gravity devices!

And they all fail proper scientific scrutiny and they always claim to have been threatened by mysterious dark forces to drop the idea.

Check out the Sunshine to Petrol project - that has actually been proven to work now (according to the documentary I saw on the BBC!).

He has a certain amount of credibility, in that his claims are based on the use of a technique to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water that is well known and already accepted by the scientific community and which most GCSE science students have had the opportunity to perform as part of their curriculum in the school lab i.e. Electrolysis.

All he is claiming is that he has taken this a stage further by using high voltage and high frequency current and that this has resulted in a reversal of the usual input/output relationship from 3/1 to 1/3 - not so unbelievable in the World of Chaos theory and "Tipping points" in equations.

And of course, unlike petrol, it does not have a Carbon footprint at the backend of the process and only a minimal one at the front-end.

Unfortunately, the reality is that many scientific inventions which would benefit the mass of humanity are buried or delayed/deferred for the preservation of the economic welfare of vested interests or immediately adopted for military uses and therfore banned from wider use - Prof Lathwaite, late of Imperial College and the Linear Motor Engine comes to mind.

Nick

Wasn’t it Lathwaite who wanted to show how gyroscopes could power spaceships in outer space? It went very quiet on that one:(

run on water?? steam engine

Amphibicar anyone?

Wasn’t it Lathwaite who wanted to show how gyroscopes could power spaceships in outer space? It went very quiet on that one:(

Reactionless propulsion ! The Mag Lev design was reportedly adopted by NASA as a possible means of accelerating launch vehicles.

Eric Laithwaite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nick

Reactionless propulsion ! The Mag Lev design was reportedly adopted by NASA as a possible means of accelerating launch vehicles.

Eric Laithwaite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nick

I remember his Christmas lecture on Gyroscopes (I was quite young at the time, honest). I had a feeling that his propulsion proposal was a bit of a flop.

I remember also seeing a linear motor Sound desk. the faders were all Linear motors and the power supplies took up the space of a small office!!! they could break your fingers if they went a bit doo-lalley though. Unsurprisingly the desk was a flop.

I remember his Christmas lecture on Gyroscopes (I was quite young at the time, honest). I had a feeling that his propulsion proposal was a bit of a flop.

I remember also seeing a linear motor Sound desk. the faders were all Linear motors and the power supplies took up the space of a small office!!! they could break your fingers if they went a bit doo-lalley though. Unsurprisingly the desk was a flop.

Hang on ! Is the solution to the fuel shortage proposed by the oil and auto companies e.g. Honda, that you carry around a tank of compressed hydrogen in your car, any more practical, rational or safe ?

Hindenburg disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nick

Hang on ! Is the solution to the fuel shortage proposed by the oil and auto companies e.g. Honda, that you carry around a tank of compressed hydrogen in your car, any more practical, rational or safe ?

Hindenburg disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nick

Whoa there matey. I wasn’t slagging the great Prof Laithwaite, merely pointing out that I had come across Linear motors in the work place. I loved them, but they were a bit ridiculous in the application mentioned. As for Hydrogen, I’ve read a couple of articles stating that it isn’t as dangerous as it it’s detractors would have us believe. Most people killed in airship explosion were killed by the fall not the heat. This is caused by Hydrogen burning very quickly in an upward direction, unlike petrol which will spill, spray and spread, covering everything in it’s path with volatile fluid.

Personally I think the future is super hamsters under the bonnet

Hang on ! Is the solution to the fuel shortage proposed by the oil and auto companies e.g. Honda, that you carry around a tank of compressed hydrogen in your car, any more practical, rational or safe ?

Hindenburg disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nick

Energy required to compress hydrogen? Energy density of compressed hydrogen? I don't know that hydrogen is a go-er.

I thought the car companies wanted to use Hydrogen to make conventional hydrocarbon fuel :confused: Very little investment of car technology required.

Unfortunately mega-investment in electricity generation to create massive amounts of hydrogen being the main flaw in that plan but no worse than running them on hydrogen I suppose.

You know the most worrying thing about the possability of running a car on water????

We had better learn to be able to digest petrol 'cos we sure as hell won't be able to afford to drink H2O

You know the most worrying thing about the possability of running a car on water????

We had better learn to be able to digest petrol 'cos we sure as hell won't be able to afford to drink H2O

:rofl:

Yes, I know what electrolysis is. I still say - deluded/fraud/mistaken.

It is easy to demonstrate the production of vast quantities of hydrogen from water and many substances that appear to be water, or he has miscalculated his energy input, or the electrodes are reacting, or blah blah etc. In all probability, one way or another, more energy is going in than is being liberated, so it is a pretty pointless way to run a car - charge a battery to run the electrolysis to burn the gases to make electricity/motion. UNLESS there is some form of air-source heat recovery going on to 'power' the reaction - given the external surface area of the cell demonstrated, that possibility would be remote.

He is not a trained scientist and he would never put his experiments up to peer review and no proper scientist has managed to verify his claims as far as I recall?

So, are you seriously suggesting that in the current climate when politically the US needs to be free of Oil dependency, if a method for the catalytic or semi-catalytic breakdown of water existed, this idea wouldn't have been developed!

I remain deeply sceptical.

If this was possible, and viable, the likes of Honda will be ripping his arm off to license it, and he'd be in hiding from the oil Mafia's hitmen.

I think he's dead anyway, supposedly poisoned by the 'dark forces'!

Appropriating the phrase that was around not too long ago, perhaps we should all "Condemn less and understand more" - not everybody is out to swindle the masses.

Funny though, when considering the possibility of fraud, few direct their attention to the big institutions, who, lets face-it, have the consistent track record for doing-it (Just look at the last few years financial news, Enron, Wall Street, Utility and Transport companies etc ).

Its much easier to burn a heretic, . . or a witch !

As 4/5s of the planet's surface and a good part of the atmosphere and underground spaces are composed of water, there's very little possibility of a shortage, which might explain why the commercial and governmental World wouldn't be interested.

Show me the contra-indicating scientific papers !

Nick

Edited 24 December, 200817 yr by Clunkclick