Posted on 09/18/2008 10:24:42 AM PDT by Red Badger
It runs on water -- Jeff Falk demonstrates his hydrogen powered generator. It uses an electrolyzer to break the water down into hydrogen and oxygen, then burns the hydrogen for fuel. It produces zero carbon emissions and is "very safe." Falk's goal is to get off the grid completely. Photo By Don Lee
EUREKA SPRINGS -- Are the high prices of fuel getting to you? Do you cringe whenever you pull up to the pumps, or when the electric bill arrives in the mail?
If the answer is yes, it's a safe bet most Americans share your concern.
But Jeff Falk has a different way of dealing with the current economic meltdown.
The generator in his shop runs on tap water.
"This is a technology that goes against the grain of world economics, from the point of view of the oil companies," said Falk, whose has designed and built everything from race cars to aircraft to speed boats. "Anybody who really thinks the government is going to embrace this is probably wrong. They'd probably lock you up first."
Nonetheless, Falk has done it. Starting five years ago after he read about it, he has built an electricity producing generator that runs on hydrogen rather than fossil fuels.
Hydrogen safer than you think
"There is a lot of propaganda about how dangerous hydrogen is," Falk said. "Not true. You can't approach it like fossil fuels, there are different rules. Unlike fossil fuels, which are heavier than air and pool, creating potential explosive hazards, hydrogen is the lightest element there is. It disperses. It will go right through the ceiling if you don't contain it."
Falk points out another vital distinction between hydrogen and fossil fuels.
"Burning hydrogen produces no radiant heat," he said. "It's the hydrocarbon emissions from burning gasoline, for instance, that burn you if you get in its way. The hydrocarbon emissions are also the source of its pollution."
Falk uses high-frequency DC/AC hybrid pulsed electrolyzers to separate the hydrogen and oxygen from ordinary tap water.
An electrolyzer runs a current through the water, splitting the H2O molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.
Anyone can electrolyze
Many will remember the familiar high school science experiment where wires are attached to any two-poled battery, then into two water-filled containers. As the current splits the molecules, one bottle will fill with oxygen, the other with hydrogen.
This is a little more complex.
Falk's electrolyzers do the same thing, using a small current, high frequency and high voltages to initiate the process.
Once the electrolyzer begins producing hydrogen, the generator produces enough power to fuel itself and more.
Because hydrogen burns so quickly, steam is channeled to slow down the burn.
"You couldn't run appliances off this generator at this point," Falk said. "The amperage is too low. But I'm refining it. My goal it to have the power company come out and remove their pole and then go away, because I won't need them anymore."
For every .75 amps going into the generator, 22 come out.
Falk said ideally two generators would be needed, so that one could be serviced from time to time.
Dinosaur snot unattractive fuel source
"Why do we want to keep pumping dinosaur snot out of the ground and burning it?" Falk asked. "How primitive can you get? Why don't we just leave the rest of it in the ground until we can find something better to do with it than that?"
Falk speculated units sufficient to power home use could be mass produced for about $7,500 each.
"Look at this," Falk said, holding a temperature sensor near the generator's exhaust. "Right now the exhaust is 228 degrees. If this were a gasoline generator, the temperature would be more like 800 degrees."
Falk said the his model generator uses about a pint of water an hour to produce 7,500 watts of electricity.
DIY possible
"Most of this equipment I got off the Internet, the parts and the info on how to do it," Falk said. "Eventually I can get off the grid without having to live by candlelight, and save money too."
In addition to the water-powered generator, Falk is working on an improved, highly efficient solar panel design which he expects to have up and running shortly.
Video on Falk's generator and other projects can be seen on-line on YouTube at www.youtube.com/SolgenLLC.
See my previous post, I think you’ll like it.
LOL I knew that you Cabal members would believe this crap : )
I disagree. When a technical article starts out with false claims that sounds like wishful thinking, I doubt any other claims he makes.
It may be all great stuff and from the 3rd paragraph on perfectly true. But it did not start out that way.
LOL!!!
This thread is hilarious!
picked up one on ebay last week..... it is SWEET. All the B!tches want to ride in my interocitor.
Not even suns are exempt from laws of physics.
True enough, I just figured the x billion year burnout
was sufficient to make some assumptions at least for a few generations.
Be careful with it, remember, no spare parts!
I think that the most useful way to capture solar energy for human use would be to grow selected oil-producing algae in closed reactors fed with waste industrial CO2, harvest the oil, and feed it into oil refineries for processing into hydrocarbon fuels.
And quit wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on such boondoggles as hydrogen and ethanol as transportation fuels.
I wholeheartedly concur.
At first I thought that contraption had a fatal flaw, but then I finally located the brake shoe on the front wheel. *<];-)
Recondense and recirculate on a closed system, using the same water perpetually, along with all that extra free energy.
Maybe you could even use some of that free energy to combine atmospheric O2 with hydrogen from a back yard waste-to-methane generator mounted on the spetic tank to make extra water, and use some more of the free energy to pump it where needed. (The carbon from the methane would be sequestered as a solid, that could then be, through use of some more of the free energy, into fibers, diamonds, pencil lead, and nanotubes! Think how RICH this invention will make all of us!!!!!!)
With this system, one could end up with a flood of free energy and flood the neighbor’s basement as well.
Add some talapia to the flooded basement, and you have a perpetual source of free food, too!
Things are so easy, if one just repeals the laws of thermodynamics!
Whew - I’m glad it is just that I haven’t gotten to max entropy yet - that at least is no embarrassment - there are a whole lot of things that applies to... I don’t know that I’ll ever forget my shirt size though even if it changes, though...
I’m glad I can still say I’m a physicist despite this lack of perfection.
Agreed: YoYo - excellent, simple explanation of pulsed power supply theory.
It is always difficult for me to understand why otherwise knowledgeable persons fail to understand that hydrogen based power sources must be considered STRICTLY like a battery now.
Some day, we will have 4H>He and at that time we can really talk about it as an energy SOURCE, but that day is not going to come in my lifetime (though D+T>He conceivably may if I live looong)
Safety first you know; we wouldn’t want it to continually gather speed until it exceeds the speed of light and sends us back in time to the big bang.
A slab of leather pressed firmly on the wooden wheel prevents that.
Therein lies the BS in the stats.
After he blows the head of the gen-set a couple times, he will put up his tools.
Well, if he hadn’t invented them, I would have.
“There is no net energy gain when water is extracted from water, and then burned to get water. “
But it is cool to watch.
Wanna see me turn water into wine?
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