Posted on 09/11/2007 4:50:56 AM PDT by Neville72
ERIE, Pa. - An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the "most remarkable" water science discovery in a century.
John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.
The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.
Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, has held demonstrations at his State College lab to confirm his own observations.
The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.
The discovery is "the most remarkable in water science in 100 years," Roy said.
"This is the most abundant element in the world. It is everywhere," Roy said. "Seeing it burn gives me the chills."
Roy will meet this week with officials from the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense to try to obtain research funding.
The scientists want to find out whether the energy output from the burning hydrogen — which reached a heat of more than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit — would be enough to power a car or other heavy machinery.
"We will get our ideas together and check this out and see where it leads," Roy said. "The potential is huge."
___
If we could just harness the energy from this story being continuously reposted, we would have unlimited free energy.
Blame the search function, not me. I searched the exact title and got nothing.
For those non scientists out there, just remember, God provides NO free lunch. This is not a new “soucrce” of energy. Salt water is about the most inert substance in the world, and the available energy from burning the hydrogen produced is less than the microwave (i.e. electro-machnetic) power required to produce it. It is not a secret that you can produce hydrogen from water by applying an electric field. Perhaps microwaves are a good way to do that, but there is no “breakthrough” here.
2nd Law of Thermodynamics will not be violated no matter what these yahoos think.
'Nuff said!
Roy and Kanzius never passed Physics, Chemistry or Logic, apparently. But they did pass the course on securing grants.
In other news the WIDOW OF DR MUBUTO NEEDS YOUR HELP IN GETTING $25,000,000 OUT OF NIGERIA AND SHE WILL PAY YOU 10% TO HELP HER IF YOU GIVE HER YOUR BANK ACCOUNT ROUTING INFORMATION.
What’s the frequency, Kenneth?
Point your magic radio at water, hydrogen splits out. You burn the hydrogen, which turns it back into water. And there's supposed to be a net gain in energy somewhere?
TANSTAFFL, you-all.
At most this is a more efficient way to liberate the hydrogen than electrolysis (electrolysis is about 50% efficient). It would be a useful result, although not earth shattering, if the efficiency of this process is better by 10 or 20 points. It’s definitely not a way to “create” energy.
But since they don’t appear to have actually done the calculations you can’t even be sure that this is more efficient than electroysis. (Said calculations apparently require large amounts of grant funding even though an honors science student in high school could get a good estimate in about 2 hours given one of the radio devices).
Yes. I know.
I’ve already been contacted and the money is as good as in my bank account already.
The $10k I’ve got in there is my life savings, but I’m not worried, because that will soon be chump change.
I’m stepping out, and to hell with all the naysayers.
Life is changing. It will soon be...
Sweeeeeeet!
Exxon already has the rights to this technology.
“If we could just harness the energy from this story being continuously reposted, we would have unlimited free energy.”
- Now, if the energy produced by burning salt water could be used to power the radio frequencies which released it with some left over to heat my house, then I think they might have something here.
Finally we know what that dude was asking ;-)
Andy, Andy, Andy.
Next you'll be telling me there's no such thing as perpetual motion.
People who never check the math will always fall for these con game.
I love the “magic radio” comment. And your tagline made me laugh...
(Do you have a different meaning or did you mean TANSTAAFL?)
I suspect that what is happening is that the minerals dissolved in the water act as a conductor through which the microwaves induce an electrical current; if so this amounts to nothing but an overly complex method of electrolysis. Like other methods of electrolysis, the limiting factor is that even at 100% efficiency you will not get more energy out of it than you put in.
“the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies”
I guess a match won’t do?? LOL!
ping
Actually, perpetual motion is theoretically possible. It’s also quite useless because it stops as soon as you take energy out of the system.
“Perhaps microwaves are a good way to do that, but there is no “breakthrough” here.”
Unbelievable that knowledge of basic chemistry is so rare that
high school level science demonstrations are being heralded as the “New Hope for Mankind!!!”.
If it has a higher efficiency for obtaining and burning hydrogen than existing methods he likely would have publicized that fact. Ergo, it is likely no more efficient than other means so Federal funding is sought to research marketable applications which would result in proceeds to his university. The univeristy isn't funding it so that's a clue....
Theoritically possible only if you ignore inconvenient things like friction.
(Do you have a different meaning or did you mean TANSTAAFL?)
A misspeling (sic) on my part. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Friction is one of those things that takes energy out of the system. Conservation of energy dictates that if no energy is removed from a closed system then it will never stop. The only real-life example we have, though, is the entire universe ;-)
Any planet’s orbit around the sun can be considered “perpetual” motion as far as the life of the human race is concerned, but the usual definition of perpetual motion is some sort of gadget that produces energy from no-place thus violating the 1st law of thermodynamics (like this device)
Suppose you put a satellite in spate orbiting around the north poll. Then you attach a cable to it and bring it down to the north poll. Then you use the energy from the cable spinning the poll around and make energy. You could run the World!
There are many researchers that say he is on to something and are excited about the tech he uses.
The burning saltwater story, OTOH, makes me cry at the state of public education in the US today. I guess they were putting rubbers on cucumbers during physics class. Don't they know if we burn all the salt water the polar bears will all die?
bfl
This piece of breaking news has hit FR about a dozen times this summer. Nobody gets a match on the exact title. The secret to Internet success is to keep the search terms to a minimum, not a maximum. You'll never find an exact match to the whole thing.
1st law of thermodynamics? So? Next thing, you guys are gonna tell me that murder is not possible because there is a law against murder 1! Go perpetual motion!
Misspelled is one of the ten most often misspelled words.
These “radio waves” are from a Rife device. Go google it.
Radio waves don’t come for free. It takes energy to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water. You are spending more energy in the form of radio waves to split the water and get hydrogen, than the energy you will get by burning that hydrogen
THAT'S the problem. Same article can be titled differently by different papers/websites.
Always start out simple. I searched "salt water" and found several articles. Also could search "salt fuel" or "water fuel".
Simple searches are better.
Good point. For any given grant there might be a hundred applications. Out of those maybe twenty five will make the first cut. Out of those they might like to fund ten, but will ultimately have money to fund one or two. Getting grant funding, the question mark guy notwithstanding, is a dog eat dog game, and even if you get it, they have this annoying tendency to (sometimes) want results.
Yeah, but when you put a complex query out there and get a hit it's pretty cool. Why can't we execute SQL over Google?
Dell just offered to update my computer system. Apparently they want to disable everything except Google this time.
That’s why it’s research. I don’t mind them DOING it, that’s how you learn to do it with LESS energy expenditure. Perhaps a good reason not to trumpet it as the holy grail though.
Nor will the First Law of Thermodynamics!
Because we don't ... and if Google is as smart a company as we are told ... we should never know the table structures that Google uses to store its search data.
select [what row?] from [what table?] where [what row?] = ???
You aren't going to get far with SQL if you don't know what you're querying against.
There’s no way in he*l any government would let an almost free energy source to be developed - or anything else that would interfere with the deep pockets of the big boys. Just think “Tucker Torpedo” for one of example.
Best damn car to come down the pike at that time = and would’ve mopped the floor with the big 5 in Detroit. Their bought and paid for buddies in DC squashed Tucker like a bug - and then the big 5 proceeded to steal his innovations - many of which are still in use today/
Or if they let it be developed they make sure the Big Boys are in control and the cost of the technology is set high enough so that it doesn't upset the other Big Boys. Example: nuclear power generation, GE, Westinghouse and oil corporations. Nuclear power was touted at first as practically free energy but before it rolled out it was over-regulated and government controlled to such an extent that only a select few companies could build it and its power generating costs were as expensive as oil.
“This piece of breaking news has hit FR about a dozen times this summer. Nobody gets a match on the exact title. The secret to Internet success is to keep the search terms to a minimum, not a maximum. You’ll never find an exact match to the whole thing.”
Oh yeah? http://tinyurl.com/2y2wqv
This sounds like my highschool science class where the teacher put a current through a tank of water and collected the hydrogen in a sealed vial then lit it on fire. Of course it took about 3 hours of electricty to get 1 second of fuel.
And if you collected the hydrogen and oxygen into the same container, then light it, it sounded as loud as a gun shot. :-)
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