Thread: WHY has this not changed everything??

Originally Posted by khh

Yes, it can. In pure water you'll always have a few H₃O⁺ and OH^- ions, so if you expose the water to a direct current, you'll get Hydrogen and Oxygen gas.

True, but in practical terms the amount of hydrogen released is insignificant.

If you've got chloride gas bubbling at the anode, you're not really electrolysing water the water, but you may get hydrogen gas depending on what positive ions you've got in the solution.

If you're using table salt, you definitely get hydrogen on the cathode, makes for good homemade fireworks .

Originally Posted by Spartiate

If you're using table salt, you definitely get hydrogen on the cathode, makes for good homemade fireworks .

When I was younger, we would fill plastic bottles 1/5 full with small balls of tin foil and then fill 1/2 of it with HCl, put the cap on the bottle, shake it real quick and then throw it far away. Basically the pressure of gasses build up inside and eventually explode the bottle, making an incredibly loud boom. We're not sure which gasses came out of it though. Probably hydrogen and chloride. Yummy! Collapsed lungs!

/derail

Originally Posted by Marvo

When I was younger, we would fill plastic bottles 1/5 full with small balls of tin foil and then fill 1/2 of it with HCl, put the cap on the bottle, shake it real quick and then throw it far away. Basically the pressure of gasses build up inside and eventually explode the bottle, making an incredibly loud boom. We're not sure which gasses came out of it though. Probably hydrogen and chloride. Yummy! Collapsed lungs!

/derail

For an even simpler homemade "bomb", try mixing milk and chlorine (like for a pool) in a bottle. Pretty dangerous though so be careful.

Originally Posted by Marvo

When I was younger, we would fill plastic bottles 1/5 full with small balls of tin foil and then fill 1/2 of it with HCl, put the cap on the bottle, shake it real quick and then throw it far away. Basically the pressure of gasses build up inside and eventually explode the bottle, making an incredibly loud boom. We're not sure which gasses came out of it though. Probably hydrogen and chloride. Yummy! Collapsed lungs!

And HCl is a strong Acid, so if the bottle explodes it's a fair bet it's flying around. Why would you do something as dangerous as that, when there are easier ways of making things explode?

Originally Posted by khh

And HCl is a strong Acid, so if the bottle explodes it's a fair bet it's flying around. Why would you do something as dangerous as that, when there are easier ways of making things explode?

It was over the counter HCl, I think 18% it said on the bottle.

In hindsight, somebody could've gotten acid in their eyes. That never occured to us I think. We were more afraid of the gasses really.
Which kind of bomb would be better? Fireworks will blow fingers off

Originally Posted by Marvo

Fireworks will blow fingers off

I suppose that's true. So in essence, people shouldn't play around with explosives until they're old enough to handle the materials properly.

Originally Posted by khh

I suppose that's true. So in essence, people shouldn't play around with explosives until they're old enough to handle the materials properly.

Ideally yes, but you know people. If something goes boom, we want to try it out

Originally Posted by Marvo

Ideally yes, but you know people. If something goes boom, we want to try it out

Yes, I know. I was playing around with fireworks as a kid too, you know :p

Originally Posted by Xei

Well, that ain't really that convincing. Did you actually test for oxygen? The most common way is to get it to relight a splint.

Sorry for the delayed reply...moving into dorms and whatnot. >.< To answer your question, we did do the splint test for oxygen, and found that it was, indeed, quite present. The difference between the two experiments was how quickly we obtained the same amount of oxygen. The solutions with higher ion concentrations performed much more rapidly.

Hey, Chemistry time!


Pure water can conduct electricity because there will always be a few molecules that dissociate into H3O+ and OH- ions

Self-ionization of water

Of course, pure water doesn't conduct very well, but in the real world there's almost always something dissolved in it because it's such a good solvent.

When I was younger, we would fill plastic bottles 1/5 full with small balls of tin foil and then fill 1/2 of it with HCl, put the cap on the bottle, shake it real quick and then throw it far away. Basically the pressure of gasses build up inside and eventually explode the bottle, making an incredibly loud boom. We're not sure which gasses came out of it though. Probably hydrogen and chloride. Yummy! Collapsed lungs!

You'd get Tin Chloride and Hydrogen being given off. Definitely no Chlorine.

How did you measure the speed of the reaction? Current?

The speed can be worked out by looking at the gas evolved, and the rate will change over time, but higher currents mean faster reactions - the rate at which charge flows is higher.

I never said anything about getting hydrogen from salt. All you ever claimed was that salt water would be more 'active'. This could be because of the electrolysis of the salt. With a couple of tablespoons in there, the concentration of salt ions is going to be literally billions times higher than the concentration of hydrogen and oxygen ions in your solution.

I just don't see at the moment how this works, chemically or thermodynamically.

It's completely right to say you'd add a salt to electrolyse water. The rate is determined by the current that flows, and higher conductivity allows a larger current to flow for a given voltage (as given by Ohm's law).

The product that is formed at the anode and cathode preferentially is due to the electrode potential. In simple terms, it's easier to oxide / reduce certain things than others.

How, chemically, do the ions help the electrolysis of the water?

Chemically? Not at all. It's purely physical, by allowing a larger current to flow. Larger currents cause more reactions, which will shift the equilibrium point.

Using a bunch of energy to produce a radio wave for a small vial that will produce a small amount of energy would result in a loss. In this case, it isn't viable.

The question is does the strength of the radio wave determine the amount of energy produced? Why not just build a massive plant out in the ocean with this technology? If it covers a large enough surface area on the ocean, it should result in a net gain of energy. It would be just like a power plant, which the tides would constantly renew the salt levels so that it would continually provide energy. If there isn't a net gain due to energy being required for the radio wave, throw up wind turbines for the ocean breeze. Give it an power storage supply that it can put energy into to keep the radio wave going in case the ocean breeze ever stopped.

Sounds viable in revolutionizing power plants. Clean energy and basically free through exploiting nature.

P.S. I wonder if this could cause spontaneous human combustion.

I remember seeing this on Youtube a couple years back.

I thought it was amazing and that it WOULD infact change a lot of things, as we can see that it happens it makes me wonder.

My thought is that big oil companies bought the idea and threw it in the trash, to prevent them from being run out of business. I think that the main reason we haven't come with a successful break-through is because that there is a lot of people who don't want to loose money. These people have almost limitless amounts of money, so they can do whatever they want to try and prevent fair business from being had. Kinda like trust's and monopolies back in the day.

I didn't read anything in the thread, I am just posting this, so don't yell at me if this is something someone already said

Anyways, that's my idea

Originally Posted by Meeshu

I remember seeing this on Youtube a couple years back.

I thought it was amazing and that it WOULD infact change a lot of things, as we can see that it happens it makes me wonder.

My thought is that big oil companies bought the idea and threw it in the trash, to prevent them from being run out of business. I think that the main reason we haven't come with a successful break-through is because that there is a lot of people who don't want to loose money. These people have almost limitless amounts of money, so they can do whatever they want to try and prevent fair business from being had. Kinda like trust's and monopolies back in the day.

I didn't read anything in the thread, I am just posting this, so don't yell at me if this is something someone already said

Anyways, that's my idea

I remember seeing this on Youtube a couple years back.

I thought it was amazing and that it WOULD infact change a lot of things, as we can see that it happens it makes me wonder.

My thought is that big oil companies bought the idea and threw it in the trash, to prevent them from being run out of business. I think that the main reason we haven't come with a successful break-through is because that there is a lot of people who don't want to loose money. These people have almost limitless amounts of money, so they can do whatever they want to try and prevent fair business from being had. Kinda like trust's and monopolies back in the day.

I didn't read anything in the thread, I am just posting this, so don't yell at me if this is something someone already said

Anyways, that's my idea

Less time making up conspiracy theories, more time educating yourself on basic science.

If you'd even bothered to read this thread alone, you'd have learnt why this idea is nonsense. Namely, this could only ever store energy (like a battery), it's not an energy source (like oil). And you can't replace energy sources with energy storages.

Originally Posted by Photolysis

Less time making up conspiracy theories, more time educating yourself on basic science.

If you'd even bothered to read this thread alone, you'd have learnt why this idea is nonsense. Namely, this could only ever store energy (like a battery), it's not an energy source (like oil). And you can't replace energy sources with energy storages.

Hydrogen as a way of storing energy definitely is interesting though, the problem is that it doesn't really help the energy crisis that much. It could improve electrical vehicles drastically, though that won't be through combustion, but rather some very advanced process in which the nucleus is split from the electrons and the electrons are run through a system. This is a very superficial explanation though and it's been a while since I've read about this stuff. Essentially, some countries have a lot of spare energy, like in Denmark we sometimes get more energy through windmills than we need, so practically we could use that energy to produce pure hydrogen for later use.

Electrolysing water and then immediately burning the hydrogen has no practical application though.

Damn, post seems to have been eaten.

I don't think hydrogen would be that practical as an energy storage solution for vehicles, because to get the energy density to a usable value involves compressing it, and that creates all kinds of challenges. It lends itself far better to the power generation scale of things where they're better equipped to store it safely.

Improvements in battery technology and regenerative braking could make this obsolete as well.

Invention does not drive our economy, capitalism does. Capitalism has a fundamental flaw where what's best isn't always what's used. What's cheapest in the short term is what's used. So even though in the long run, this might be something that changes the world, the immediate cost far outweighs the immediate gains.

Not sure if this is going to contribute anything, but I read this a while ago and thought I'd just post it since it's related.

"Magnesium sulfate is the primary substance that causes the absorption of sound in seawater.[1] Absorption, in this case, means the conversion of acoustic energy to heat energy. The conversion is a strong function of frequency. Lower frequencies are less affected by the salt, so that the acoustic energy travels much farther in the ocean. Boric acid also contributes to absorption; but the most abundant salt in seawater, sodium chloride, has no known effect on sound absorption."

Originally Posted by ArcticDreams

In an ideal world this would have been snapped up by a car company and used for its intended purpose. Sadly, in the real world the car manufacturers have nothing on big oil companies who are probably the ones who will buy this guy out to protect their market.

Actaulmly in this world the oil companies simply buy the patents on cars on water. They have already been invented 50 years ago. Theres just a few guys who want to be rich so they decide to fuck over the entire planet. That is the said truth behind our reality.

No.

Originally Posted by Xei

No.

Brilliant logical argumentation you got there. Did you come up with that all by yourself? Impressive.

I can't give a counter argument if you don't actually give any reasons or evidence.

You can't use water as a fuel.

Actually you can use anything as a fuel. It's just a matter of whether it is worth it and whether we know how to get the energy out of it.

Originally Posted by tommo

Actually you can use anything as a fuel. It's just a matter of whether it is worth it and whether we know how to get the energy out of it.

No, a fuel is something that can make energy from a normal state. Sure you can heat up water and use that in a steam engine, but then what you're heating the water with is the fuel, not the water.