firewater

James D. Hunt, is a 36 years old disabled veteran who served eight years in the Navy. Also a former jet mechanic turned student (now alumni) at Carl Sandburg College Community College in Galesburg Illinois and the founder and president of the Carl Sandburg College Inventors Club.
He has invented a way to extract hydrogen from water on demand.
"hydrogen extraction from water via plasmatic induction. By inducing a small amount of plasma into a water tank, we're able to extract hydrogen from the water."
Hunt said his system can be retrofitted into any vehicle for about $2,000. He said it may be possible to do that as early as next year.
The club has a 1991 Chevy Cheyenne 4x4 pickup truck it hopes to use to begin testing the energy conversion system this summer.
He has the backing of the Dean of the college and has said he will be looking for investors.

http://www.register-mail.com/stories...B3AM.GID.shtml

http://cscinventorsclub.blogspot.com/

Just my own guess but I wonder if he is using a sulfur lamp.Their being used quite a bit in europe for hydroponics because of their very wide light spectrum and by the military for lighting in aircraft hangers because of there efficiency.It's been known for some time that ultraviolet light through steam will seperate water into Hydrogen and oxygen.This web site says "less than 1% is ultraviolet light" but maybe their tweaking it..http://www.sulfur-plasma.de/


http://files.myopera.com/H2earth/fil...icity%20P6.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_lamp

Anyway way the Youtube video is just plain cool!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...arch&plindex=0

Hero999

But how much energy does it take to produce the plasma?

This thing's going to need a lot of batteries or whatever source is required to separate the hydrogen and oxygen.

Lastly, as he doesn't really explain how he does it, it's a total work of science fiction as far as I'm concerned.

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firewater

This is not some independent inventor asking for investors money in some scheme.
It is a respected college with the backing of the Dean and other faculity.
I know the Dean and board of directors for that school must have gotten a demonstration and reviewed his data carefully before putting their schools reputation on the line and of course he's not going to explain how he does it.
No college/company is going to put their intellectual property out for anyone to take and patent for themselves.Sadly like so many other sources of energy it will probably be bought up by some huge corparation and shelved to protect their profits.

Nigel Goodwin

You've been watching too much X Files!

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j.p.bill

You can make anything happen in a video. The trick is to defeat the law of entropy and get more energy out than you have to put in.

If you need UV, try a mercury vapor lamp - lots of UV in the spectrum.

philba

Uh, "Carl Sandberg Community College" is a respected university. well, lets see what they sayI'm sure it's a fine school to learn hair design and plumbing but cutting edge energy research???

Hero999

So?

Prove it to the people here?

How do we know you're telling the truth?

Even if you are, there's no proof that they're not involved in some sort of scam.

For a start the patent office refuses to accept anything that clearly violates the laws of physics.

Secondly, if the aforementioned isn't the case here, even if he did reveal his secrets then no one else could patent them, providing he can prove that he did it first; this is known as giving an example of prior art.

You appear to be missing the point that if any company came across a new and clean source of energy then they would start profiting from it; why can you not seem to accept this or is it just me?

Now, I'm not meaning to sound nasty of patronising in any way but going by some of the other questions you've asked on this forum your not the best person at science and physics here.

Do to know about bond energies?

Do you at least understand the basics of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy?

You don't have to know all the maths or even accept the aforementioned theories to be true, all you need to is understand them before you go about challenging them. It isn't acceptable to just go round saying "I know people who can extract hydrogen from water using plasmatic induction - it appears to be a promising new energy source." without actually providing any theory as to how it's actually done and if you do then no one with any sense will believe you. Please accept that if you want people to seriously consider any new idea you have then you have to carry the burden of proof.

Please read the FAQ on this forum:
http://www.electro-tech-online.com/a...de-v2-0-a.html

Also may I highlight the section on energy gradients. We all know that it's impossible to generate energy from nothing but what many people don't realise is that it isn't energy that does work it's energy gradients. Liquids and gasses run from high pressure regions to low pressure regions, electronics flow from a high potential to a lower potential. You could quite easily run a car from a very cold substance, that's right you could actually run a Stirling engine from liquid nitrogen, just fill it up and drive off! In this case, you're not actually putting any energy in to your car, in fact you're taking it away when you fill up with liquid nitrogen, the energy that's pushing you along is coming from the outside environment!

So where's the catch? We've discovered a new fuel, liquid nitrogen! A way to tap into into the energy rich source of heat surrounding us!

Well, I'm sorry to say but everything isn't as good as it sounds, is it?

The problem is, it actually takes energy to cool the nitrogen in the atmosphere down until it condenses. The second law of thermodynamics dictates that heat naturally flows from a hotter region to a colder region, to make it move from a colder region to a hotter region you need heat a pump which requires energy, just like you need a pump to move water from a low pressure region to a high pressure region. There is no way to extract work from a region of uniform pressure, temperature or potential difference.

Now as far as water is concerned I don't have the bond energies handy and I can't be bothered to look them up but, it takes just as much energy to split up the hydrogen and oxygen atoms as the energy that is released when they recombine. It doesn't matter what method you use to split them up, whether it be electrolysis, plasma, or some far out nanobot cutters, the same is always the case. Just like, if you have two magnets stuck together, the amount of energy release when you bring them together is equal to the energy expended separating them regardless of whether you use your hands, a pair of pliers or a mallet.

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Sceadwian

Entropy can not be beaten this is known. What's not known is where the line can be fudged, turning otherwise thought useless resourcse into wells of energy. Salt water would be a good one, but they'd have to prove a sustainable system, otherwise it's just a neat scientific process to combust water.

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Hero999

You can't combust water as it's already the product of hydrogen combustion.

I know you already know that and, yes I can see wat you're saying. You're talking about finding an absolute ground state, we know one exists for pressure (a vacuum) and temperature (absolute zero) and potential difference (uncharged body, i.e. a piece of iron with exactly 26 electrons per mol), and chemically (all electrons in their lowest orbits). However, such a state actually requires energy to create if it starts from a higher enthalpy level, i.e pumping air out of a chamber or cooling air to absolute zero.

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firewater

I never did watch the Xfiles much even when it was on years ago and I don't have to prove anything to anyone.The information I posted here is for people to read, follow the links and draw their own conclusions and I don't think it's very nice to put down a college you know next to nothing about.I will continue to post about Hydrogen production and I don't care what anyone thinks.I never claimed in the least to be an expert, I am a beginner in electronics.
The Chit-Chat forums say "Please be polite and respect your fellow members" I guess that doesn't apply in here!:

Nigel Goodwin

Unfortunately this forum tends to be the 'post loony ideas here' forum, which is why I opposed it in the first place - and sensible people tend to take offence at such ludicrous posts.

Your supposition that the oil companies suppress any 'free energy' schemes is the usual conspiracy theory that the loonies always blame - hence my X-Files reference.

If such crazy schemes worked then the oil companies would be making a fortune from them, and using the oil for plastics and lubrication.

As far as I'm aware no one has ever managed to give a working demonstration of any of these madcap schemes? - they are usually just cons to scam money from gullible investors.

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speakerguy79

This is total crap. I actually do research in plasma based hydrogen production at work (using everything from methane to diesel fuel). The first article was a joke, I stopped after that.

If you want to make a lot of hydrogen, make an enclosed reaction chamber (no O2), pump diesel through it, and have a neon sign transformer hooked up to some electrodes inside the rxn chamber. H2 along with a mix of stuff that smells roughly like acetylene mixed with asphalt will come out as bubbles in the effluent stream.

Even using diesel, you're NOT going to break the laws of thermodynamics. I've got the specific production numbers to prove it (but I can't post them - getting into that detail would waaay violate my company's IP rules).

Hero999

Of course you don't have to prove anything. However, if you come up with a new theory or process and you want people to believe it to be true/work and respect you then you jolly well do need to prove it.

That's what we've done and our general conclusion is that it's total rubbish!

Don't take it personally, we're doing as you said, drawing our own conlusions to the links you've posted.

No one said it was a bad college, all they said is that after doing a bit of research they concluded that it isn't the type of college that's involved in cutting edge scientific research.

Good for you but please don't get too upset when people tell you what they think.

Good for you. By your own admission, you're no expert so please accept that there are people here that know a lot more about physics and engineering than you do and that when they provide a detailed argument debunking one of your ideas or links to websites claiming to violate the laws of thermodynamics then it's highly likely that they have a point. The chances are they're not trying to humiliate you but are providing a well-reasoned argument as to why it won't work and are actually trying to help you by encouraging you to learn more about science and engineering.

I'm glad you're interested in electronics.

I'm not going to search the whole forum but as far as this thread is concerned, up until the posts made in response to this one, no one has been rude to you.

I imagine that you're frustrated because you've posted something that you believe to be helpful or interesting and (from your perspective) you've been met by a wall or resistance and (as a result) are taking it personally. Try to look at this differently, people aren't saying you're stupid/thick/retarded, they're saying that the information on the website you've linked us to is silly.

The only thing I've ever accused you of is being ill-experianced or nieve. I urge you to read up on the laws of thermodynamics, perhaps when you know more about science then you'll be able to see things more from our perception.

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philba

I'm cranky today. Post a load of crap and you will get grief from us. If you come off as naive or credulous, you will damage your reputation here. Posting things like conspiracy theories WILL do a pretty good number on your "cred". I suggest if you want to believe in something, you should take up something like religion where no proof is needed. In the science and engineering world, proof is expected and speculation is met with disbelief.