Hydrogen cars are nothing new. These cars generally use the hydrogen in one of two methods: combustion or fuell-cell conversion. In combustion, the hydrogen is "burned" in engines in fundamentally the same method as traditional gasoline cars. In fuel-cell conversion, the hydrogen is turned into electricity through fuel cells which then power electric motors.

The big issue is how to make the hydrogen out of water, efficiently. Right now, hydrogen is not economically feasible to use for transportation , nor will its use reduce global warming. Key problems are the cost and greenhouse gases generated during production, the low energy content per volume and weight and size of the hydrogen container.

I always thought hydrogen (and thus, fuel-cell) cars would only be economically feasible when a new process would have hydrogen as it's by-product, or if an efficient way to make hydrogen out of water would be found. If this could happen in large enough quantities, hydrogen could be transported to gas stations the same way gasoline is supplied now. You then fill up your hydrogen tank and off you go.

So the question is, has the man in the article won the race toward efficient hydrogen production? i doubt it.

thats why they capture it in a magnetic field. as i spammed here a few times already, they're building a fusion reactor atm.

i remember the process of electrolysis from 7th grade biology class....electric current passed thru water, separating the molecules.....1 test tube full of hydrogen, one full of oxygen...took about 4 minutes for the process to work....point is, the technology has been there for many years, they just havent figured out a way to make it efficient, basicly because of big oil.....and this guy in the video, well, hes full o s**t, imho....." SRC="images/smiles/icon_lol.gif">

Doc B...

Why am I angry about it? Because I don't like being lied to. Because they are perpetuating a common misconception. Because scientific ignorance and the irresponsible idiotic nature of the American media are two of my biggest pet-peeves!

The thing that bothers me most is that this "news" piece has almost nothing whatsoever to do with the subject matter of the claimed patents. Journalists ought to be the best critical thinkers in the country. At best, those two are gullible saps. At worst, they fabricated 90% of the piece to inflate it's apparent importance.

What is claimed is a very simple design for an electrolytic cell that will split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas. The primary innovations are it's ease of servicing and the enhanced surface area of the electrodes. The intended purpose of the invention is to mix small quantities of hydrogen and oxygen with conventional petroleum fuels. Apparently doing this promotes complete combustion and can reduce the emission of partial combustion products, as well as possibly making the engine somewhat more efficient. no real science was done here, just some fairly simple, but clever, engineering.

Another thing that really bothered me was their reference to water as a "fuel". I'll try to explain things in a way that non-scientist can understand.

Why can water never be used as a chemical fuel? because it is already at a potential energy minimum. Splitting water and then burning it is like picking a book up off the floor and then dropping it again. By picking the book up you store gravitational potential energy, and by splitting the water you store chemical potential energy. Dropping the book, or burning the hydrogen simply releases that potential energy, and gets you back where you started. However, the trick is that you've got to put more energy into raising the book or splitting the water than you will ever get back out when you burn/release it. That is a fundamental principal of nature, no way around it. Any time you convert one form of energy to another you loose some as dissipated heat.

As others have said, electrolysis of water is an incredibly inefficient way to generate hydrogen. You've got to put WAY more electrical energy in than you get out in chemical potential energy. So, unless you have a cheap, clean, plentiful source of electrical energy, you can forget about using electrolysis as a means of generating hydrogen as a vehicular fuel.

The on-board system described by the patent would have to use electricity generated by the cars alternator to make the hydrogen. this would increase the load on the engine and decrease the power available for actually moving the vehicle. The only way a system like this could improve fuel efficiency is if adding the H2 and O2 caused a large enough increase in petroleum combustion efficiency to overcome the losses incurred by running the electrolytic cell. I doubt this would be the case, and if it is, I expect that the gains would be rather meager.

All that said, I think the welding torch idea sounds pretty cool. All you've got to do is fill it up with water and plug it into an electrical outlet and you've got a hydrogen torch. No need for dangerous compressed gas cylinders! Plus, I expect that the purity of the flame would be hugely desirable for welding reactive metals like titanium and aluminum.