Originally posted by: jagec
Why do people buy into this crap?
1)You can't "burn water". Water does not react with oxygen.
2)Sure, you can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and burn these two to create....water. Of course, you lose energy, since it takes more real-world energy to split the stuff than the recombination could ever yield.
3)"HHO" is not a gas, and I want to flip out and kill people every time I read that. It's hydrogen, and oxygen. Is air made of "NNOOHHOArCOONeCHHHHHeKrHHXedust"? No, that's just stupid.
I read the website and I didn't get it since it's such trash, but I think you're right. The scam involves having the alternator/battery in your car power a electrolysis machine so water can become hydrogen and oxygen gas and then "burning" that gas to burn water like you said.
2H20 + energy -> 2(H2) + O2
Then 2H2 + O2 -> 2(H2O) + significantly less energy
Due to the law of conservation of energy, energy cannot be created, though it can change forms, but due to this being the pesky real wold and all, there's no such thing as 100% efficiency so you won't even break even energy wise.
This whole conservation of energy is important enough to no just be ANY law of thermodynamics, but THE First Law Of Thermodynamics, so it's quite established and pretty much impossible to cheat/bend.
Every step that you have to convert energy from one form to another always come with inefficiencies attached. You always end up with less energy then you started with since some is lost as products of motion or heat or whatever in the process.
Gas engines are ~30% efficient(I'm being generous here, we're talking about high performance/efficiency motors). I'm not sure how efficient alternators are but I'll be generous and give it 75%. Lead acid battery charge/discharge efficiency is 70-92%, for automobile applications, I'll be generous and give it 85%. Now if I'm also very, very generous and give the electrolysis 90% efficiency and the gas engine once again burning it 30% efficiency, we end up with...just over 5.16% of the original energy content in the gasoline burned. That's right, you should get about 5% of the energy you spent back under my MOST optimistic predictions.
That's why people try to reduce as much as possible energy transfer, otherwise we'd all drive cars power by internal combustion engines, charging batteries to drive electric motors to electrolyte water to burn in another engine, and etcera for infinite mpg, but unfortunately the world doesn't work like that.
Whoever does figure out a way to break this law of conservation of energy is not going to be found on a website like this, but on the stage accepting a nobel prize and then flying back home to his manor, the size of a small country, constructed entirely of diamonds and employing Bill Gates as a butler.