Talk:Water-fuelled car/Archive 1

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== Additives to water I agree that using Water as a fuel is complete nonsense, most people who have claimed to produce water fuelled cars provide some kind of additive to the water to make it work. ("Fill your tank with water - add this little blue pill - then just start up your engine")

There is (I suppose) some possibility that the additive could produce some kind of reaction in which water+additive = reaction product heat If this seems unlikely, consider what happens when you put a small amount of sodium metal into water. We would say that the sodium was the fuel in that case...but someone who is trying to raise venture capital would say it was the water - and it would be hard to argue otherwise. Indeed, if you could imagine a hypothetical situation in which sodium metal had somehow become very cheap - then water (+sodium 'additive') fuelled cars might not sound quite so ridiculous.

Yes - it's a ridiculous standpoint - but that's where most of the nut-jobs would argue their case and the article doesn't deal with that.

The issue with steam engines could also use some clarification. In this case, the water isn't the fuel it's the motive fluid. In changing it from water to steam, you aren't changing its chemical composition and you are putting energy into the water rather than extracting energy from it.

SteveBaker 13:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that feedback. These are valuable points which I shall address at some point. Man with two legs 13:45, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Done! Man with two legs 12:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Weird stuff

I put the bit about weird sources of energy in because it covers a point that the looney crowd sometimes raise. I thought that after reading some of the discussion on the water fuel cell. Without it, the article can be dismissed as simply being written by establishment luddites. I think pointing out that a working water fuelled engine would provide proof that science would accept is worth making in some way because it illustrates the point that science will accept things if they really do work. Thoughts, please? Man with two legs 15:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The point you made in the previous version (that the 'waste' output from a water-cell + engine combination is the same as the input 'fuel') - and that this is therefore a perpetual motion machine was a good one. What needed cleaning up was the tie-in to the first law of thermodynamics. With that connection, you can show that to make a water cell work, you'd need to violate the single most solidly proven law in all of science. I think it's better to come at it that way ("In order to make this work - you have to completely overturn all of science") rather than imply that there is a possibility that someone might make this work and then science would then happily accept it.

Just think about this for a moment. If you could build a machine to overturn the first law of thermodynamics, science wouldn't "accept it" because we wouldn't have any instruments that we could trust to measure whether it did or did not work. Thermometers only work because heat moves from hot things to cold things - if the laws of thermodynamics can't be trusted around this mythical machine - then we can't measure it's temperature reliably - so we can't know whether it actually works by violating the second law and cooling the world down a bit to extract heat with the water consumption just being a side-effect. If the car goes forwards as the water drains out of it's fuel tank - but the first law of thermodynamics no longer applies, then we can't trust in our belief that the car is moving or that we can correctly assume that the water stays in the tank - or anything. If there is no conservation of mass/energy in the world then maybe this machine is moving because it's mass is changing or because the air behind it suddenly and mysteriously got denser causing a pressure gradient - or maybe it works by telekinesis or magic of some kind.

That is not correct. Simply having a machine that produced energy from water would prove the existance of something new, and you could attach the output to a generator producing electrical power that could be measured. Science will eventually accept anything that is true. Man with two legs 11:34, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

The first law of thermodynamics is the only thing that prevents unicorns from suddenly materialising out of nowhere! Without the first law, we don't have *any* basis of science left, we'd have no tools to judge what the machine was doing! SteveBaker 15:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Wrong! Unicorns popping up spontaneously is more a violation of the second law (which could be phrased "as you can't make order out of chaos without making more chaos somewhere else") because air could provide the raw material required by the first law ("you can't get something for nothing"). Man with two legs 11:34, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Saying something like "the laws of thermodynamics must be right" does not achieve what I would like to achieve (even though I believe it). To a wavering non-scientist, some grandiose sounding law is corroberative evidence rather than proof. I'd like to see this article end up as user-friendly as possible.

You can't rule out the discovery of new science of which existing science is a special case. Fusion creates a way to get energy from water that was unknown within living memory and does it without breaking the old laws of thermodynamics. I'm not saying I believe this new science is going to happen, but you need to mention it in order to make clear the difference between something genuinely new and a false rejigging of the old stuff because pseudoscientists and crooks are inclined to claim new science and to blur the distinction between new science and nonsense

These are different points:

1. Any water fuelled car that claims to work within the framework of known science must be a hoax

2. New science should only be believed when we actually see a water fuelled car that works

I think that my original paragraph is pretty near what is needed:

It could never be ruled out that a water fuelled engine could exist using an energy source unknown to existing science. A claim of a whole new science might suggest a need for grand new evidence, but in fact sufficient evidence would simply be a water fuelled engine that worked. It would not be necessary to reveal how the engine worked, but simply to demonstrate that it did work long enough for any hidden fuel to be consumed (with independent people providing the water for it to run on). No such engine has ever been demonstrated where trickery was not possible.

Man with two legs 11:34, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

No - that is simply not correct. If I were to take a conventional car with it's filler cap mounted 2 feet from the ground and fill the (very large) tank with water - then I could place a hole at the bottom of the tank with a small water-turbine mounted inside driving the wheels through a reduction gearbox. As the water drains from the tank, it spins the turbine and moves the car very slowly forwards sending the waste water out of the exhaust pipe which is six inches from the ground. This fulfills YOUR criteria for a water fuelled car. It moved, fuel was consumed (and drained out of the 'exhaust') - it'll run on water that some independent person procures and pours into the tank themselves and you can pull it apart and verify that there is no other fuel on board. OH MY GOD!!! NEW SCIENCE!!! So, no - you are entirely wrong on this point. SteveBaker 16:32, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

How about this:

==Claims of "new science"==

It is sometimes claimed that a water fuelled energy source works due to "new science".

Because it is certain that a water fuelled engine is not possible within the laws of known science, absolute proof of this "new science" would be a water fuelled engine that worked. It would not be necessary to reveal how it worked, but sufficient to show that it did. No such engine has ever been demonstrated where trickery was not possible. Man with two legs 11:50, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry - still no good. The word "worked" is too vague and the idea that making one that worked is somehow possible because the first law of thermodynamics might be overturned is giving the layman the wrong impression. As far as we know, it's impossible. We are not in the business of speculating about what might be the case if what we think we know is false. In the article on the Empire States Building, we don't say "If the Empire States Building were made of Jello, I would collapse" - so why do you want to say "If water fuelled cars were possible then..." - it's about as useful. SteveBaker 16:32, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Sodium

The trimming of the bit about sodium introduces an inaccuracy. When water reacts with sodium, a small part of the energy does come from water molecules being converted into hydroxide ions or sticking to the sodium ions. The previous version had all that detail to make it rigorous. Also, it made the point that you get the same energy whatever path you take. Man with two legs 15:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps - but it made the paragraph very weak and left open the idea that there is energy to be had by 'converting water to hydroxide ions' - which isn't really what we're trying to get across here. What we're trying to say is that water is in it's lowest energy state already - and therefore you can't extract more from it without putting something else in. In this kind of popular writing, sometimes 'less is more'. SteveBaker 15:42, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Note that, technically, water can be further 'burned' as fuel, in an atmosphere of fluorine. This article should somehow bring in the enthalpy of formation, though I'm neither a writer nor a chemist I'm afraid. Femto 17:33, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Good point.

Water is in its lowest energy state while it is pure. Once you add another substance the goalposts move which is why people claim to invent gasoline pills. In fact, you can get energy out of water by dropping sodium in it or burning it in fluorine because sodium is more reactive than hydrogen and fluorine is more reactive than oxygen. If you point out you can't get very much energy from the water, then the article becomes rigorous. My earlier point that if you burn sodium you get a lot of energy and then when you drop the oxide in water you get not much more was intended to provide an example that non-scientists can relate to. It is probably true that my version was getting a bit long winded. Man with two legs 11:37, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

This should go in the fuel pill article.Go-here.nl (talk) 14:02, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

No, your hiding of the real title of the article you linked to is the entire problem here. The article isn't called "fuel pill" it's called "gasoline pill" because it's about those people who claimed to literally transform water into gasoline (or something very similar) - thereby turning a relatively inert substance into an energy source (so they claimed). Using sodium mixed with water to produce energy isn't changing the water into an energy source - it's simply extracting energy from the sodium. That's not at all what the energy pill guys claimed. You could probably make a vehicle that operated by dropping pellets of sodium into water - and it would actually work. Of course pure sodium metal is lethally dangerous stuff and presumably costs a small fortune to extract - so this would be a ridiculously impractical vehicle. SteveBaker (talk) 23:42, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Water can be oxidized by fluorine but burning implies oxygen so by this definition water will never burn. Steve I think your being the literalist fuel pill and gasoline pills are the same concept. Frauds generally claim anything and everything. Best not to try and tie them down to a position since they feel no moral obligation to stand by their positions. As far as your comments on sodium, the lethality in general has little baring on the value of energy source, after all gasoline is also very lethal, it just a matter of how the material is handled. Actually the environmental impact of a sodium "spill" would be smaller than a gasoline spill. Cost must also consider scale, if there was a large market sodium would be very cheap after all the ocean is full of it. I thought you might like to know a variation of your sodium idea has been used in hearing aid batteries known as Zinc-air battery, different metal and the energy is pulled out through direct redox rather than burning hydrogen from evolved hydrogen but its the same idea.--OMCV (talk) 00:33, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

fact reference

please ad reference links for each of the statements. thanks. reg .Mion 14:46, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Claims of "new science"

I removed these sections because they unnecessarily cloud the explanation whilst adding no new information:

"Thermodynamic proof that a water fuelled car is impossible does not prevent someone from making a water fuelled car that works to some extent and therefore looks promising to a gullible investor. For example, there is nothing in the laws of science to stop you making a car with this design:

• it makes hydrogen using electricity from its batteries
• it uses the hydrogen to run its engine thus moving the car at speed and making electricity (like any car engine)
• it uses the electricity to recharge the batteries

However, this car will not produce enough electricity to stop the batteries from running down quite quickly. The inventor might claim that this is a technical problem soluble by having, say, a more efficient piston engine and a better design of electrolyser, but the laws of science show that it is a problem that can never be solved.

Hence there is a fundamental difference between a design that very nearly works and one that actually works.

...and...

"As explained above, a non-nuclear water fuelled car is not possible within the laws of known science. It is sometimes suggested that designs might work by some new principle previously unknown to science. However as is also explained above, it is not difficult to build a false "energy source" that appears close to working but in fact can never be made to work.

Hence a claim of "new science" can only be taken seriously after a demonstration of a water fulled engine that clearly does work, but not one that nearly works (no matter how convincingly).

It would not be necessary for the inventor of such an engine to reveal how it works. Absolute proof that a new science had indeed been discovered would require no more than an engine that could light up a single lightbulb for a long time with no fuel other than water. In reality, no such engine has ever been demonstrated where trickery was not possible."

...because...

1. It would not be sufficient to do what you say. I can easily come up with two designs for 'water fuelled engines' that would meet your criteria and therefore (according to your text) require new science. For example, you didn't say that the water has to be at ambient air temperature. It would be perfectly possible to design a car that used water at 100degC or at -100degC as 'fuel'. (You could use thermocouples to extract electricity and drive an electric motor - this is not "new science" - yet it fits your criteria). It would have to be at the same height as the exhaust or you could build a waterfall-powered engine using a simple waterwheel. What do you mean by "a long time" and "light up a lightbulb" - can I make it emit one photon per hour for 3 hours? Is that new Science? This is all too fuzzy and vague and we just don't need it. We have shown that water fuelled engines are impossible - let's not go on to explain in detail how they might be shown to be possible.
2. Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis isn't a water fuelled car - it's an electrically fuelled car. We explained that very carefully in an earlier section - and now you are saying that it IS a water fuelled car and what's more, it "nearly works"!! No it doesn't - it's neither a water fuelled car nor does it work...not even "nearly".
3. It is not actually practical to build a hydrolysis driven car - the rate at which hydrogen can be produced from water using batteries is actually very low indeed (try it!) - the rate of production wouldn't even be enough to start a regular internal combustion engine large enough to pull those batteries around - let alone have it pull anything along. You are giving the entirely false impression that such a car might run for a few minutes before the battery went flat - in truth, it would never even start. Those that have been 'demonstrated' have used a big hydrogen gas cylinder that they would claim is being refilled by the electrolysis - although in reality you can't generate enough pressure from the hydrolysis cell to refill anything.
4. Phrases like "It is sometimes suggested that" are weasel-words and are frowned upon in Wikipedia. Provide a concrete reference to who is actually suggesting that or leave it out.
5. I strongly object to "nearly works" - it implies that someone who was just a bit smarter than the rest of us could maybe just push a bit harder on the research and make it work...because it 'nearly' does already. In fact, none of these things "nearly" work - they don't work at all - period. To nearly work, they'd have to extract SOME energy from the water but fail to drive the car for merely practical reasons like friction or something. In truth, they extract no energy whatever from the water and therefore quite utterly fail to work. A water fuelled engine that 'nearly' worked would still require new science.

I just don't think we need these section. They add no new INFORMATION but merely expound on your theory of what counts as a success and what doesn't. That's (at best) a subjective thing and at worst it counts as 'original research' which doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. Let's just list the facts and be done with it.

SteveBaker 15:36, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

The comments I thought I posted on the 29th seem to have disappeared into the vacuum. Here is the gist:

• the bit about the car that "nearly works" contains no new information but I think it makes the point clear to a non-scientist reader in a way that modifing the paragraph higher up would not. By the way, such a car would be essentially an electric car with an efficiency of about 20-25% so it would be possible to do it if one were really determined.
• the bit about "new science" covers a claim that is likely to be raised by the sort of people who push perpetual motion machines. I think that somehow this article needs to make the point that a claim of "new science" is believable ONLY when something works and not when it looks like it might be promising. This also neatly keeps the article accurate should someone discover a way to make cold fusion work.
• the thing I think should be avoided is ending up with an article that boils down to "we are scientists, trust us" because (a) many non-scientists don't see why they should (b) it is not an argument that works against a hoaxer. Also, "believe it when you see it work" illustrates why science is right on this one; the laws of science get their legitimacy from the fact that they do accruately describe reality.
• I don't think that the averager reader will look for loopholes if the explanations are clear. Closing loopholes is worth doing if clarity is not lost.
• having said all that, I don't think the existing version is perfect. It would be good to use examples from actual claims. Man with two legs 13:02, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

We're never going to convince the people who think that perpetual motion is possible. If they don't believe science's proofs for the laws of thermodynamics then they also won't believe Wikipedia. In fact, they won't believe anything they didn't think up for themselves. So I don't think we should be concerned about them. I'm concerned that when one of these nut-jobs claims to have produced a water fuelled car and members of the general public see that and look up 'Water fuelled car' in Wikipedia, that those readers see the facts, and nothing else. Facts clearly stated and without weasel-words that might make the nut-job look creditable - no speculation about what might happen if someone managed to do this. If you say that a water-fuelled engine just has to run a lightbulb for a while in order to completely overturn everything we know about science - then you are giving a completely incorrect impression to our 'target demographic'. I can make something (using a turbine and the gravitational potential energy of the "fuel" - or thermocouples and the temperature differential of the "fuel") that meets ALL of your criteria. Where does the article's credibility stand if someone actually tries to pull that off as a water fuelled engine? Hell no! I'm happy to work to dumb-down the science to the point that non-scientists can understand it (although there are limits to this) - but I absolutely won't lie to them. SteveBaker 13:28, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting lying! That suggests you still don't quite get why I want to make that point. You are right that with the wrong phrasing, it could be misread as an endorsement of false science. It is true that a water fuelled engine WOULD be new science which is not the same thing at all as saying it is likely to happen. It is an example of the concept of falsifiability: the fact that you could falsify something if it were false does not mean it is false but is actually evidence it is true because, despite effort, nobody has falsified it. This all illustrates a point: if you are finding this hard to live with, then it might be more difficult than I thought to phrase it in a way that gets the point across to a non-scientist. What I am trying to say is "believe it when you see it working properly (which you won't) and not before". You might be in a better position than me to find the right words for this. Man with two legs 11:10, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Aquygen

Is this whole article written around aquygen ? 81.171.25.93 11:06, 2 October 2006 (UTC)not logged in. Mion 11:07, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

No. Aquygen is mentioned in passing purely because it is a well publicised product (with scientifically nonsensical claims about it) that could be mistaken for a new car fuel. It would not be appropriate to add more because (a) this article is not about aquygen and (b) the science in this article completely covers why aquygen is not a new fuel. Man with two legs 11:17, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

it is the only statement pointing to something in the whole article, the rest is like a Readers Digest story, heard some people saying, pointing to long past times or people who are dead, etc.Mion 11:21, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

This article is new. Citations and tidy up are still required. Man with two legs 11:44, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

The one that makes the statements can also add the references ?. Mion 11:49, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you saying that the claims made by this company are incorrect? http://hytechapps.com/company/press. Denny Klein has created a car that will go 100 miles on 4 ounces of water. Briandr 12:44, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, those claims are incorrect. Unfortunately, every time we try to say this on Wikipedia, promoters and pseudoskeptics get the article deleted. Don't worry, there will be an article eventually... — Omegatron 01:07, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Fox, CNN, The St. Petersburg Times, and a local NBC affiliate in Louisville, KY have all done stories on Klein backing his claims. Briandr 1:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

<unindent>

Newspapers are not good scientists. Examples of people fooling journalists can be found everywhere every day. I guearantee this is bullshit. My personal belief that nobody can break the laws of thermodynamics means that I will personally bet anyone a thousand dollars that I can find solid proof that this car is not in fact fuelled by water - or that it flat out doesn't work. Give me a day alone with the supposedly working example and some basic tools with which to measure and disassemble the thing. All of these machines (without exception) either:

1. Do not in fact drive for any resonable distance...or...
2. Only run until the battery inside runs flat (because in reality it is powering the car...or...
3. Are pre-charged with hydrogen in some storage container which (in reality) is what fuels the car...or...
4. Are simply outright fraud - being driven by gasoline or some other fuel supply than the water that is claimed. SteveBaker 01:59, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, if you read the current Aquagen claims (as opposed to the crazy press reports) they are actually saying that their power system will 'enhance' the power of a gasoline or diesel engine - that's a very different thing from running the car using water as a fuel. Injecting a small spray of water into an engine is a known trick to help prevent predetonation and to allow the engine to run on a leaner mixture without knocking...this can probably be made to give you a small gas consumption improvement...but there are severe downsides to the long term survival of your engine which is why this 50 year-old trick isn't commonly used. It's not new, it's not rocket science and it's not really practical - but it's enough to allow you to let gullible folk believe that your car "runs on water"...it's still bullshit. SteveBaker 02:15, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Journalists know essentially nothing about science. Even legitimate science gets completely corrupted by the time it appears in your local newspaper. The reason we're emphasizing the coverage by many newspapers is to demonstrate how notable and popular this idea is, and that we therefore need a (neutral, scientific) article about it.

More evidence that we need an article: The "runs 100 miles on 4 ounces of water" quote is not referring to using water as a fuel. He didn't make that claim. He claims a hybrid car that runs on gasoline, but injects hydrogen derived from electrolysis as a fuel additive to increase the efficiency of the engine. Whether this is legit or not, I have no idea, but we need an article to sort out what is and isn't actually claimed. — Omegatron 02:05, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

According to the third video listed at http://hytechapps.com/company/press, Klein's Aquygen machine creates Aquygen gas (effectively hydrogen and oxygen still connected in the gas giving the gas more stability than pure hydrogen) from water. The gas is then burned to fuel a car. The car is effectively fueled by Aquygen (hydrogen stabalized by oxygen) that is created from water (hence the term "fueled by water"). The Aquygen gas generator can be purchased from Klein's company: http://hytechapps.com/aquygen/generator. Briandr 2:40, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

According to the claims of Denny Klein and Ruggero Santilli, Aquygen gas is not just a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. That's the crux of the matter. Oxyhydrogen is well-known. They claim that HHO gas or Aquygen is a different gas that contains other anomalous compounds besides hydrogen and oxygen. This is also well-known, though; things like hydrogen peroxide, ozone, and trioxidane are known to form during electrolysis when the gases aren't kept separated. So they go a step further and claim an entirely new type of chemical bond, the "magnecular" bond.  :-) — Omegatron 03:09, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah - and it's complete babble - it's nonsense! Nobody with an ounce of knowledge of chemistry or science in general is going to buy any of it. It truly doesn't matter what magical chemicals they may or may not be making along the way. If water is the sole input and water is the sole output then no net energy can be created without making a perpetual motion machine - and those are in violation of the first law of thermodynamics. If he has succeeded in breaking the first law then all of science as we know it is wrong. If he had done that, he'd be in line for a Nobel prize (at least) and we wouldn't be discussing whether you could run a car on it - we'd be wondering how the entire economy of our planet is going to change. But it's bullshit...it's on the same level of believability as Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy - both of whom are possible within the laws of thermodynamics! SteveBaker 12:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

If water is the sole input and water is the sole output

Don't be so enthusiastic in your skepticism that you discount things without actually researching them.

Although their website ambiguously says that "Aquygen" can be used as a "fuel or fuel additive", the prototype car Denny uses as demonstration is not claimed to be fueled by water. He clearly states that the car runs on gasoline, and uses electrolysis-derived hydrogen as a fuel additive to increase the efficiency of the engine. Whether this is legit or not, I don't know; I'm not a chemistry or internal combustion expert. I know typical engines aren't very efficient, though, so there's certainly a window for it. The news reporters bastardize everything for maximum popular appeal, of course. The way I see it, Denny's simply using the "water-fueled car" publicity to sell more electrolysis welders than his competitors. — Omegatron 04:33, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

OK - let's assume for a moment that this guy is talking about OxyHydrogen. OxyHydrogen isn't some weird new compound. It's boring old oxygen mixed with boring old hydrogen - and it's what you get out of electrolysis of water if you don't take care to separate out the two gasses. You do understand the difference between a MIXTURE and a COMPOUND - right? A MIXTURE is when the hydrogen and the oxygen are formed up into their own separate molecules a COMPOUND is what you get if they are reacted together. The trouble with a MIXTURE of oxygen and hydrogen is that it's very, very unstable - it's explosive as all hell and will explode spontaneously. It makes nitroglycerin look like a really safe substance! Far from being a good fuel for a car, it's a death-trap in the making - but that's OK because any rational person would realise that it's vastly preferable to separate out the oxygen and the hydrogen at the electrolysis stage, store just the hydrogen (which is pretty stable) and release oxygen into the atmosphere. You don't need to store the oxygen because when the car comes to burn this fuel, you can get all the oxygen you need from the atmosphere whenever you need it. Furthermore - by not storing the oxygen, you need much less storage space/weight. But now we're talking about a hydrogen powered car - which is a very well known thing. There are hundreds of hydrogen cars out there (the British embassy in Mexico own a hydrogen powered MINI Cooper for example). But these aren't FUELLED BY WATER - they are fuelled by hydrogen. Getting hydrogen requires that you use a heck of a lot of electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen - and the energy it takes to do that is more than you get back when you burn the hydrogen again. It has to be that way because otherwise you have a perpetual motion machine - and that's impossible. So claiming some bizarre OxyHydrogen thing gets you free energy from water merely tells us that these guys are either idiots or charlatans. I suspect the latter. SteveBaker 12:54, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Another inventor

I'm skeptical myself about the encyclopedic value of this article. The part about the over-unity cranks can go into History of perpetual motion machines if notable -- and "ideas that nearly work" and "claims of new science" are rather essayistic.

But I can point out another crank: Stef Kling [1]. His story even made it into The Times of India [2].

Pjacobi 12:00, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

If you do a Wikipedia search on water fuelled car, you don't get anything useful. I think an article debunking that particular urban legend is worth having simply because people will be able to find it. The fact that this kind of nonsense can still get into repectable newspapers suggests this article does have a place. Man with two legs 12:34, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Pjacobi said: "ideas that nearly work" and "claims of new science" are rather essayistic....I agree - which is one of the reasons I removed them the first time. Man with two legs put them back - I have re-removed them. As to whether the article has a place - yes, I think it does, so long as we stick to hard facts about water as a fuel and don't stray off into meta-science as Man with two legs repeatedly attempts. SteveBaker 14:51, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

What's meta-science? Man with two legs 15:22, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

And what is your specific objection to debunking claims of "new science" which feature in some reports of water fuelled engines? Man with two legs 15:32, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I've just looked up meta-science on Google. It means mixing science with weird stuff. I find that not only insulting, but also proof that, as I suspected, you do not understand the point that I wish to include in the article which, as I am growing tired of explaining, is that people should not believe whacky science until they have seen it tested by experiment. Man with two legs 15:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Over at water fuel cell the general consensus seems to be that the article is rather Stanley-Meyer-centric and could also expand on the general concept of "water fuel", unless another article such as this one was created.

Here's a list of Water Car Inventors (courtesy of waterpoweredcar.com...)

This article should list some of them as examples (similar in style to history of perpetual motion machines, only water-fuel-specific), each entry summarizing their individual claims and technologies, this would give it more real-world relevance. Femto 15:36, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

People tend to forget that accusations of fraud do require actual proof of fraud. Yes, I actually don't think people are frauds until I have something to show for it. This keeps me out of legal trouble also. I don't know what the water car car scam is but I don't think I have seen that movie. Oh and to refer to peoples lives work as crank claims of new science is not very nice, rational or a useful activity?....is it? Go-here.nl (talk) 02:48, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Stanley Meyer's claims were found to be fraudulent in a court of law, as were the water powered claims of Genesis World Energy, and the partial water power claims of Paul Pantone (GEET). Water-powered motor claims date back at least at least to John Keely in the late 1800's, who, while never found guilty in a court of law, was thoroughly debunked by Scientific American shortly after his death. If you've never heard of "water car scams", it can only be because you've never investigated the topic; they are the most common of the free energy scams and have been around for well over 100 years. As for your question about the usefulness of these comments, if Wikipedia can prevent a few people from losing money to conmen, then it has served a noble purpose.Prebys (talk) 03:31, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Selling someone something that you know to be useless or other than you describe it is fraud. To quote our article on fraud:

In the broadest sense, a fraud is a deception made for personal gain. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and is also a civil law violation. Many hoaxes are fraudulent, although those not made for personal gain are not technically frauds. Defrauding people of money is presumably the most common type of fraud, but there have also been many fraudulent "discoveries" in art, archaeology, and science.

We know that these devices cannot possibly work as described - so when the inventor claims to be extracting energy from the water and to have measured such-and-such performance, he or she must be lying. Hence, these people are without doubt frauds. As Prebys points out, many of them have been proven to be so in a court of law - but that is not necessary in order to know that they are behaving fraudulantly. If someone spends their life's work being a fraud - then saying so is certainly rational. It's also useful because it prevents others from being cheated out of their hard-earned cash - and it's "nice" because helping the innocent and revealing the guilty is "nice" behavior. SteveBaker (talk) 17:13, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Scientifically, if someone claims that a car runs on water, or makes any claim that's at odds with existing laws of physics, the burden of proof is 100% on them to establish their claims; however, the minute you call someone a "fraud", then the burden shifts to you to establish intent. While I have no doubt that intent exists in most cases (some of these characters are sincerely self-deluded), proving it can be tricky, and is best left to courts. Certainly Wikipedia isn't the place for such battles. Fighting a libel charge can consume a lot of resources, even if it's totally without merit. It's best to reserve the term "fraud" for those that have actually been legally convicted. As for the others, document how extremely implausible their claims are, and present their (invariable) histories of unfulfilled promises. Logical people will reach logical conclusions, and the rest would not have believed your accusations anyway.Prebys (talk) 14:30, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Since we have someone who knows something of the laws of man, of a given nation, of a given time... I've got a question. Is it legally acceptable to state that some claims are fraudulent without identifying the individuals making the claims. By the way, where are the "courts" on hydrogen fuel enhancement schemes?--OMCV (talk) 06:12, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I suppose you're legally safe making vague fraud charges, but I don't see what it accomplishes. As for Hydrogen fuel enhancement, Paul Pantone was convicted of fraud for pushing his pet Hydrogen technology, but he was transferred from jail to a mental institution because there's some evidence he actually believes what he says. There are probably others.Prebys (talk) 12:10, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

POV

This article has (predictably) been accused of being POV because it is in line with the scientific consensus that existing "water fuelled cars" are nonsense. All of the discussion to date is about what should go in the article rather than whether it is true or not. Contrary to claims by perpetual motion believers, there are no water fuelled cars and it remains NPOV science to say so until someone actually demonstrates one that works (and collects their Nobel Prize). As I would like to explain in the article, a water fuelled car that looks promising is entirely possible but very different from one that actually works. Man with two legs 11:28, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

From WP:NPOV:

 We sometimes give an alternative formulation of the non-bias policy: assert facts,
 including facts about opinions — but do not assert opinions themselves. There is a
 difference between facts and opinions. By "fact" we mean "a piece of information
 about which there is no serious dispute." For example, that a survey produced a
 certain published result would be a fact. That there is a planet called Mars is a
 fact. That Plato was a philosopher is a fact. No one seriously disputes any of
 these things. So we can feel free to assert as many of them as we can.

Statements such as that the laws of thermodynamics prohibit such-and-such are not POV because that is a fact about which there is no serious dispute. SteveBaker 13:33, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

This comment appeared and was reverted:

 "However, if external energy is used in the process of electrolysis, which already
 is true for 13% of the energy if water is electrolysed at 300 K (and 100% electrical
 efficiency; 90% is certainly feasible), the first law of thermodynamics would not
 apply because the system is not closed."

...whilst I don't understand the fractured language used here, one part is clear: You can't just write off the laws of thermodynamics merely by defining some part of your engine to be outside of the 'system' that you are referring to. The fact that you have provided an external energy source to electrolyse the water means that you have to account for the amount of energy it inputs into the system when applying the laws of thermodynamics. Hence, the amount of energy leaving the box has to be equal to the energy entering it. So at best (assuming no heat losses) the power produced by your engine can be no more than the power you are supplying it from this 'external energy' source. In reality, since burning the hydrogen produces heat as well as a useful mechanical output, the sum of the energy in the waste heat and the energy in the useful output will be equal to the energy input into the system - hence your useful output will inevitably be less than the input. There are no cases where the laws of thermodynamics "don't apply" - you just have to be careful to use them in the context of a closed system in which you account for all of the inputs and outputs. There isn't some kind of a 'loophole' that lets you simply handwave them away! SteveBaker 13:33, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Whether this is scientific nonsense or not is not the issue; the issue is that the wording used in the article is very biased and not neutral. Re-tagged for now. 71.3.233.125 (talk) 14:52, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

In accordance with the rules of Wikipedia, the fact that water-fueled cars violate the laws of thermodynamics is something "about which there is no serious dispute", so it is not POV and there is no reason to be "neutral" about it. That said, I agree that some of the wording, although accurate, is perhaps gratuitously inflammatory and under-cited. If you make reasonable improvements, they will likely be accepted, whereas the POV tag will pretty much always be removed.Prebys (talk) 20:01, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem with "Neutrality" is that most people see their own viewpoint as being the "neutral" one - then expect viewpoints to be equally balanced on either side of their own position. Sadly, since no two people are at the exact same point along the 'opinion line', one person's neutrality is another person's bias. In this case, however, we have a clear mandate. WP:FRINGE clearly lays out that the mainstream scientific view is to be regarded as the neutral position. Points of view that are out on the fringe (or indeed, utterly "out there") may be identified by the fact that those views cannot be referenced in peer-reviewed scientific journals. That's the gold standard that is now well established in Wikipedia. So, in the case of water fuelled cars the position is clear. They don't work - mainstream science says that they cannot possibly work (laws of thermodynamics, etc) - and we can say so in the article providing we reference the laws of thermodynamics adequately. If you find a solid reference (in a peer reviewed, well-respected journal) that says that they do work - please point us at the document that says that and we'll be more than happy to adjust the article appropriately. Failing that, all we're allowed to say about the fringe theorists is that "so-and-so claims this" - NOT that "this is true because so-and-so says so" - and even then, we can only say it if we have a good reference to prove that so-and-so claimed that. SteveBaker (talk) 20:52, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Accepted scientific fact is NPOV. Any attempt to claim that the laws of thermodynamics can be disobeyed qualifies as a fringe theory. --Athol Mullen (talk) 05:10, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

The fact is, most of these claims are beyond "fringe science" (which can still be legitimate) and solidly in the realm of "voodoo science", which is just plain silly. Nevertheless, sloppy and loaded editing can make an NPOV article sound very POV, which I think happens on some of these "free energy" articles. You shouldn't "preach to the choir". Remember, anyone with a background in science doesn't need Wikipedia to know water powered cars are fake, so the article should be aimed at those who might potentially believe these claims, and they will assume that unsourced invective statements are POV. For example, the intro contained the sentence "Claims for water-fuelled power sources are often invoked to fraudulently extract money from gullible investors.". In addition to being uncited, this convoluted an indisputable fact (that water fueled motors are a common investment scam) with a superfluous value judgment (the gullibility of the investors is irrelevant). I've tried to improve it, and will try to clean up the rest of the article when I get time.Prebys (talk) 13:53, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

What about this news report?

Thought I should post this: http://www.broadcaster.com/video/player.php?clip=1234 67.35.241.52 00:20, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

This is the aquygen scam. Denny Klein is using electricity to make mixed hydrogen and oxygen from water and then burning it, yielding less power than he could have got from an electric motor. It is not a source of power and it is thermodynamically impossible for it to be developed into one. Man with two legs 10:18, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

If you took the Hydrogen and Oxygen that you got from hydrolysis of water and stored them together, you'd have the most unstable and explosive mixture imaginable! But even assuming it made sense - why bother to store the oxygen? There is plenty of oxygen in the air. So use electricity to split your water - release the oxygen into the air and just bottle the hydrogen. Less weight to carry around, less space - and much, much less chance of a large KABOOOOOMMMMM!!!! So - bottled hydrogen is vastly better. But that's known technology - you can't make news that way - you can't dupe stupid investors into giving you large piles of cash. (HHO -- HO, HO, HO more like! How is HHO different from H2O? That's what the '2' means - two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen HHO, HOH, OHH, OH2 - it's all the same stuff! Water.)

Yes, this is yet another "free energy from water" magic trick. There seems to be an inexhaustible supply of gullible people who'll fall for this when a VERY simple scientific proof shows that there is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to energy production. The first law of thermodynamics is one of the oldest and most well proven of scientific laws - nobody have ever come close to breaking it - there are no theories of how it might be broken - and if (god forbid) it ever were overturned, you can bet it would be in some zillion dollar cyclotron or in the heart of a black hole or something - not in some amateur inventor's spare bedroom! These things are ALWAYS scams - the only (slight) interest is in showing why they are a scam. If someone had actually found a way around the first law of thermodynamics, their best way to capitalise on it would be to write it up for 'Nature' and get their Nobel Prize in Physics and automatic tenure in the most prestigious university out there. SteveBaker 17:27, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Video about Stan and his invention: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3333992194168790800

This video claims "1700% more efficient than 'normal' electrolysis methods". Since normal electrolysis is around 50% efficient, this is clearly a claim of an "over unity" device - so Stan Meyer (at least) is effectively claiming to have both overturned the first law of thermodynamics and created a perpetual motion machine. SteveBaker 16:27, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

What shocks me is how persuasive it is. If they didn't know what they have left out, such as the car not working, many a sensible person might be taken in. Man with two legs 21:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

What's gratifying though is that it has five of six the classic claims of a crank/fraud:

1. Claiming not only to having zero scientific training - but also claiming that this is a good thing.
2. Claims that "they" are out to get him - murder threats - claims of being offered a BILLION dollars by "big oil companies" to surpress his technology.
3. Claims that "this is only a demo and I can't show you the much better one I have behind the curtain over here"...yeah...great.
4. Over-specific claims. He could make himself rich and famous, fix global warming, solve world hunger and get at least one nobel prize just by demonstrating an actual working over-unity electrolytic cell. But instead he has to make it drive a car....Eh? WTF?
5. Claims that being awarded a US patent is actually some kind of proof that the machine works as advertised are always a mainstay of this kind of nut-job. Patents are very easy to get yet somehow they add a lot of respectibility to ridiculous devices. The average patent claim gets something like 10 minutes of a patent officer's time - including the time to read the claim and fill out the paperwork...and that's an average - so most get a lot less.

(sadly, the lack of excessive precision in his claims is the missing sixth claim - most cranks would have claimed 1714% better efficiency than by classic electrolysis - he at least had the sense to round it to a reasonable precision!)

The pattern is well established - and this crank fits the classic symptoms to a tee! SteveBaker 22:45, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

We keep trying to write an article about this hoax, but it keeps getting put up for deletion. The latest rendition is at HHO gas. It would be great if you could help. — Omegatron 03:32, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Specific people

See Talk:Water_fuel_cell#Other_people

The article Water fuel cell has some stuff about other people hawking the same "water-powered car" hoax, but I see that it belongs here. I will move from talk and the article to this section:

• Carl Cella
  • Alleged inventor of a water-fueled car in the 1980s.
    • He says: "As for building this device to sell as a completed system, that's a dead issue. In 1983, I contacted the Department of Energy to show them that my car actually worked. I was confronted by two very belligerent 'agents of tyrannical oppression' who told me that if I tried to sell pre-built units, I'd have a lot of "problems". I asked zhy, demanding an explanation, asd was told very bluntly, and not in a very nice tone: "Do you have any idea what a device like this, available to the public, would do to the economy?""...and then goes on to claim that because of this he can't manufacture the units for other people! Since when did the Department of Energy get to rule on what car modifications are not legal?! Did he never think to try to sell them in some other country? To appeal this rather ad'hoc ruling? But you can easily see that this is just another very naive electrolysis unit. He even goes on to claim that with water being recovered from the exhaust that a better than 100% efficiency is possible - so he's very 'up front' about the whole perpetual motion thing. Anyone who ever tried sticking a 12 volt car battery across a pair of electrodes and putting them into a container of water would be very quickly convinced that you aren't going to get enough gas out. You get one tiny bubble every couple of seconds - you might make maybe 1cc of hydrogen gas per minute. It's orders of magnitude too little to run a car engine. At least most other 'inventors' have the decency to claim they have some mysterious electronc gizmo that makes an electrical signal at some magical frequency or some such thing. You might maybe hypothesise something special in the way of a catalyst - or perhaps some kind of real special electrodes. This guy shows nothing more than a switch and a fuse and he says nothing at all about specialist electrodes or anything. He's also suggesting that a conventional fuel pump can be used to pump the water. Since ordinary tap water conducts electricity and gasoline doesn't, most fuel pumps would immediately short out if made to pump water. You can get specialised pumps for 100% ethanol fuel - but since he makes no mention of this issue, it's pretty clear that he's never actually tried to run one of these things. SteveBaker 21:29, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Most fuel pumps, and especially ones in the 1980's and earlier were generally of a diaphram construction and ran either from the crank or camshaft via a lever pumping up and down, The only electricity in the fuel systems was for the fuel level guage.I55ere (talk) 16:27, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Nope. My 1963 Austin Mini has an electric fuel pump - and even the 10% of electrically conductive ethanol in present gasoline is enough to cause a severe voltage drop. Water would put a dead short across it. SteveBaker (talk) 12:43, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

• Stanley Meyer
  • Water fuel cell
• William P. Alexander and his company, Emerging Technologies Development Company
  • Carnahan Orders St. Louis Company to Repay $100,000 to Investors
• "HHO" guy Denny Klein
  • Hydrogen Technology Applications, Inc.
  • Prototype car runs 100 miles on four ounces of water as fuel
  • Car Powered By Water A Reality
• Stef Kling
  • Earth 2012 Aims to Develop Water-Fuelled Car by 2005
  • Coming soon: a water-fuelled car
• Aquatune Water Injection System - McDonald Davis
  • The "Water Car" put to the test
• Stephen Chambers?
• http://waterpoweredcar.com/
• PRELIMINARY PLANS TO RUN YOUR CAR ON TAP WATER! - References Stanley Meyer, Stephen Chambers, and others
• A number of youtube videos with even more proponents
• How to run your car from water!GENUINE!!! Joe Cell

— Omegatron 16:38, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I have put in a link to waterpoweredcar.com (in the bit on suppressing inventions). They think not only that water powered cars DO work but also that 911 was not due to aeroplanes after all (despite all that film). I had no idea that conspiracy theorists could be quite that silly. Man with two legs 18:15, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

In one of the pages linked from that web page, someone who actually saw the demo of the car said that it sat there for a L-O-N-G time "charging it's tanks" before it drove off...and that it didn't drive very far. My presumption is that it was using electricity to split water into hydrogen - but that it couldn't do it at anything like the rate needed to sustain the car in motion for any significant amount of time - and that it was running down it's batteries by doing so. That's all pretty believable. With a handful of car batteries you could produce many litres of hydrogen in an hour or two - and that would suffice to run the car long enough for a demonstration. If nobody bothered to check how full the hydrogen tank was before and after the run - and whether the batteries were still fully charged at the end - then it's a completely invalid test. That being the case, there isn't much to write home about here. Most of those pages are ranting on about the trial at which Stanley Meyer was found guilty of defrauding his investors - there are all sorts of wild claims about the judge mis-trying the case (so why didn't they appeal?) - and suggestions that a 'white powder' was added into the water tank against the protests of Mr Meyer during the testing - when he wanted to run the car on pure tapwater?!?

There is lots of wild and crazy stuff there. The 9/11 allegations are just nuts though. They claim that one of the trade center buildings was not hit by a plane (that's true - but it wasn't one of the two main towers - there are half a dozen other buildings that were a part of the World Trade Center) - they claim it was blown up with C4 explosives. That is also true - days after the initial collapse, they demolished some of the other buildings because they were in an unsafe condition - but that was after a bazillion tons of concrete had fallen on them from the collapse of the towers. The idea that someone used that exact moment to say "Aha! This is our chance to get rid of the plans of that pesky water-powered car!" seems a little far-fetched! If these mysterious all-powerful corporate entities could frame al-quieda in the twin towers disaster in order to surpress the details of this car - I'm damned sure they would have put a stop to that pesky little web site that's exposing the entire plot!!

I've gotta stop reading those conspiracy-nut pages - it's fun to demolish their flimsy claims - but they can make new flimsy claims faster than I can research them! SteveBaker 14:45, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

We should also debunk god. There is no proof that god exists, and technically the concept is inconsistent with the laws of physics. I think god should be grouped with the water fuel car nuts that believe in things that cannot be proven or are blatant violations of the laws of physics!!!!!!!! I am all for this, lets show the world what skeptics are made of and take down water fuel cars, god, and a couple of other things!!! 24.193.218.207 03:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

At most god is a theory, and a good theory has something testable. Its the same reason string theory is attacked, there is no test. God has no test. How should we debunk this, maybe we can create a page of untestable theories. At this moment the water fuel car, and god can be placed on that page. Any thoughts? 24.193.218.207 06:04, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Are you a troll or do you really think this? The Water Fuelled Car is testable: you take any that claims to exist and see if it works. Also the theory of the Water Fuelled Car can be examined in the light of existing science where it breaks established and tested rules. Man with two legs 09:50, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Whilst I don't believe in either God or that you can use water as a fuel, there is a clear distinction between them as scientific theories. God is unfalsifiable, the water fuelled car is false. That means that science can make no useful comment on the former (beyond, perhaps "God is not necessary - so Occam's razor says we should probably ignore that possibility") - but the latter is flat out false. We can prove it quite easily and conclusively using known science. SteveBaker 17:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

At minimum they should be grouped together as concepts that violate the laws of physics. Both concepts are blatent violations of the laws of physics!!! 24.193.218.207 17:37, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I just love the total lack of grammar and spelling exhibited by these people. I mean, come on, even firefox comes with a built in spell checker nowadays. This is straight from the from page of waterpoweredcar.com

They will also set out to prove you wrong. They base their laws of physics form 1825 thinking. Faraday's laws. Did you know that the first ICE engine ran on hydrogen from water? BMW has them! Hyunda will be making them. Japan indorses them.

(my italics)

How could anyone with an ounce of sense believe this crud? It's beyond me.Sippawitz (talk) 13:03, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

We're not talking A-students here. Energy-from-water conmen have been proving "no one ever went broke underestimating human intelligence" for a long time. In addition to his "etheric device", the original free energy conman, John Keely, also claimed to have a water-powered motor. He was conclusively exposed as a fraud 110 years ago, and there are still people who believe his claims. More recently, Genesis World Energy used the same old shtick to bilk investors for $2.5 million in spite of having no address, a projected gross revenue equal to the Canadian GDP, and consistently using "Watts" as a unit of energy! Not only do people never learn, there's some evidence they're getting even dumber.Prebys (talk) 13:33, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[Keely heater], It's called sympathetic vibrations. Acoustic resonance is the tendency of an acoustic system to absorb more energy when the frequency of its [[oscillations] matches the system's natural frequency of vibration (its resonance frequency) than it does at other frequencies. Like when I explain something you listen to it, anything else would be un-sym-pathetic. It also means the first perpetual mobile was patented in 1500 by Cornelius Drebbel in the city of Alkmaar. :-) Go-here.nl (talk) 23:33, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Water fuel cell into Water-fuelled car

The Water fuel cell appears mainly to be described as a power plant for cars - whilst if it ever came to fruition, it would undoubtedly be used for other things, it is also true to say that if any of the water-fuelled cars ever came to fruition then they too would be used to power other things.

It seems that the merge needs to happen from Water fuel cell into Water-fuelled car because the latter also talks about stuff like the gasoline pill. Arguably we may wish to rename the article after the merger - but let's do one thing at a time.

The arguments for and against water as a fuel are made independently in both articles - and that's utterly unnecessary. Neither article is well written or particularly compelling and merging the efforts of both groups of editors could only help that.

Let's see if we have consensus. Please answer with support or oppose below - don't forget to sign your statement with four tilde's ('~~~~'). Thanks!

• Support - per proposal. SteveBaker 03:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose - Gasoline pill and Water fuel cell are specific instances of the water-fuelled car concept. They should have their own articles. See Talk:Water_fuel_cell#Other_people. — Omegatron 04:12, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
• Tentative Oppose - I think Water-fuelled car should discuss the general concept and in a particular section provide few lines of descriptions of the various "efforts" to build one. If the description is potentially longer than a couple of lines (as in Stan Meyers' Water fuel cell) perhaps a separate article is justified. That said, I fully support the idea of "merging the efforts of both groups of editors" in order to improve both (all) these articles. Abecedare 05:02, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose - The water fuelled car is the one that appears in urban legends and is therefore the one that people will search for. The water fuel cell is notable as a specific example which I had not heard of when this article was created. I think that having separate articles with links works better than merging them would. Also, a merged article would have to be tiresomely long if it were not to lose information. Man with two legs 09:58, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. Each article is comprehensive enough to stand on its own. I would support a short paragraph in the water-fuelled car describing the water fuel cell, with a "main article" link. -Amatulic 18:27, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

• MERGE, rename, delete, DO SOMETHING FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! : Both articles suck. They both have WP:OR violations beyond my 10 fingers and toes can counts. I admire Steve's initiave to try and fix these articles. Something needs to be done because this is seriously an eembarssement to wiki. I definatelly wouldn't want to show any of my friends any of these articles because it shows how biased and POV wikipedia can tully be. Smarten up and put your fut down and be WP:BOLD and start moving and deleting WP:REF stuff that is not referenced. If you haven't clued in yet, there is obviously some hidden issues that you need to take a look at within these articles. One example is the on-going poll since January (forever), that states that the article is not worthy of wikipedia standards. Another issue is the fact that the name is just not correcly reference "ever". I've never seen such a pathetic article that can't even give a reference for the term that it uses! Finally, the term "Water fuel cell", has other meanings... Please look at Water fuel cell reference section, reference #2, and you will sesee that a water fuel cell is used for waste management (SEWERS). This means we require a disambiguation page. I propose the creation of a dissambiguation page and to change the name of the article to Stanley Meyer but having a reference from the dissambiguation page. Done finito! Except for all the WP:CITE and WP:OR violations. not to sound pessimistic but, GOOD seriously luck! You have my support though! --CyclePat 22:46, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

  Whilst I entirely agree with you, it is clear that unless half a dozen more people weigh in on the side of doing something, the consensus currently is to do nothing. SteveBaker 00:12, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

• oppose merger, but support rename. A lot of work has gone into the Water Fuel Cell article, and given the number of people who still believe in Meyer, it's worth having a separate article. However, I would support renaming it to something like "Water Fuel Cell of Stan Meyer", just so there's no ambiguity and it doesn't get diluted with lots of WP:COATRACK or OT stuff.Prebys (talk) 16:48, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

• oppose merger, also support rename.I55ere (talk) 16:42, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Hydrogen cycle engine

The idea is to run completely without air, thus on the inert Nitrogen existing In the Air which forms Nitrogen Oxides with the combustion (Dissipation). An additional oxygen tank would by necessery with substancial costs in particular from the saftey aspect to burn pure oxygen

A Conversion of exhaust gases is intendet ( Exhaust gas recirculation ). This is made possible by replasing the air intake completely with hydrogen. The flow resistance minimises its higher fluidity (diffusion characteristic) and optimises the volumetric efficiency ( no Nitrogen ) . the achievment is adjusted totally over the quantity of the injectet oxygen ( higher power density ) The surpuls unburned hydrogen water Vapour can condense in the exhaust- intake system, whereby the negative pressure with fresh hydrogen results in mole contraction becoming balanced. Because of such a Rich mix the oxidizer (Oxigen ) is fully converted. Also there is decrease in the combustion temperature. A further characteristic is that there is a Oxyhydrogen chain reaction, branched out strongly to a greater fragmentation ( Less binding energy ) in the combustion chamber. With modern rocket propulsion one uses likewise this effect (Synergy-Effect) (Oberth-Effect), which results from a hydrogen surplus.

The Oberth Effect: That seems to be the correct term for saying that, under some circumstances, it is better to use fuel deep inside a gravity well. Fuel provides ?V, and a given ?V provides a greater change of energy when applied at higher V.

I've reverted and edit by 80.129.211.231 (who is not a native English speaker) describing a device called a Hydrogen cycle engine because I could not make sense of it and there was no citation. Does anyone know what this is about? Man with two legs 09:09, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Fuelled vs fueled - WP:ENGVAR?

I note that on two occasions recently, editors have gone through the article and replaced fuelled with fueled. I'm guessing that this might be an issue with variations in English spelling but I'm not sure because I've never come across the latter spelling anywhere except as a mistake. If nothing else, this comment is here to point out that the spelling fuelled is correct for the variant of english used within this article and should not be changed to fueled. --Athol Mullen (talk) 23:42, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

The spelling "fuelled' reached up and grabbed me too. To me it's a glaring spelling error, but it seems that "fuelled" is an alternative spelling of "fueled". But I'm not sure because I've never come accross the former spelling anywhere except as a mistake ;-) For what it's worth, as of today, Google returns 12 million results for "fueled" but only 3.9 million for "fuelled". By that reckoning, the fueled's have it. - Jbarta (talk) 10:12, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, this has been bothering me for a while, too. But both spellings look wrong to me.  :) — Omegatron 14:47, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

See American_and_British_English_spelling_differences#Doubled_in_British_English. The usual British spelling is fuelled, as the final consonant is doubled to preserve the short vowel, and although the usual American spelling is 'fueled' most dictionaries give fuelled as an acceptable alternative. Athol Mullen has it right: as with other variation issues, the policies of WP:ENGVAR should be followed. 86.20.205.210 (talk) 00:03, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure if I understand the Wikipedia standard for spelling since every international reference to fueled or fueling regards the single l as the primary spelling with the exception of British preferences. I don't completely understand how the Wikipedia article on water-fueled cars is expressly British. That being said, I would respectfully request that duplicate pages are provided for both spellings so that the issue of correct spelling becomes mute and the preference of the user as to spelling prevails.

Wdhowellsr (talk) 02:04, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

As a point of reference I typed colour into the Wikipedia search box and was immediately, without correction or redirection, taken to the page for color. I may be wrong on this point but I do believe that Britain and their former colonies, save the US, still use colour as the accepted spelling of the American english color. I believe a solution similar to color can be provided while allowing for the understanding that many people would regard fuelled as the correct spelling.

Once again respectfully. Wdhowellsr (talk) 02:13, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

It's much deeper than "duplicate pages"...one is a redirect to the other one. That is, one is essentially declared as a synonymous title title for the other page--the one that has the actual content--instead of having two identical pages with different titles. The following titles:

• Water fuelled car
• Water-fueled car
• Water powered car
• Water-Fueled Car

are all redirects to the actual Water-fuelled car page. DMacks (talk) 02:32, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Valid point. However my initial point remains. If the primary spelling according to the majority of dictionaries is "fueled" why would Wikipedia use "fuelled" as the title of the primary page? I'm only pressing this because I've done a completely non-scientific survey of my peers and the concensus is that "fuelled" is disturbingly wrong. Wdhowellsr (talk) 21:36, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I referred you to WP:ENGVAR in the edit summary when I undid your edits that were contrary to the rules, so that you would be able to find out why what you did was wrong. If you read it and the many associated pages on variations of english, you'll discover that this is not a problem isolated to this one article and one word. There have been edit wars of this type of spelling issue for years. There are now a set of rules to cover it, and those rules should be followed. While you say that fuelled is disturbingly wrong, I find fuelled correct and fueled disturbingly wrong. That's what variations of english is all about... --Athol Mullen (talk) 23:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I defer to your understanding of the WP:ENGVAR and have modified all references to fueled as fuelled.

Wdhowellsr (talk) 00:17, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

It's unfortunate that there is no single Wikipedia standard for British versus US English spelling - but instead we have this rather messy and unsatisfying hotchpotch of ad-hoc rules. However, we need some kind of rule to prevent the continual oscillation of articles from one form of spelling to another as British, American, Canadian, Australian, NewZealand (and other) english-speaking editors each try to impose their national spellings. So - we stick to the rules and we suffer the consequences. The short-form of the rule is that if an article has an inherent national connotation (like articles about cities or biographies of famous English speaking people) - then we use that dialect for the article. If there is no obvious national origin (as I believe is the case in this article), then the fallback rule is that whatever dialect the article started out in - it should retain forever. That's a very arbitary rule - but it has the major benefit of preventing edit wars because it's easy to interpret. Hence, 'fuelled' - not 'fueled'. Appeals to majority of Google hits or anything like that don't work...we have a rule - and we're going to stick by it because anything else leads to edit warring and other nastinesses. SteveBaker (talk) 03:19, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Hybrid/Water

Hybrid/water combination, could be a good theory to test, batteries are charged by the movement of the vehicle and the electricity is then used to break down more water into hydrogen for charging or for moving the vehicle, it could be suplemented with small solar panels, and a electrical plug for complementary charging of the batteries, even if the there was a deficiency in energy production from the water system the amount of energy obtain from the water could be a big savings in energy.Hydrogen not to be stored but to be used by the car on demand, according to the speed/torque demands. the more demand the more production —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oma13 (talk • contribs) 12:37, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry - but your idea is completely without merit. Why? The process of converting water to hydrogen and oxygen is a lot less than 100% efficient. The process of reacting the hydrogen with the oxygen to drive the vehicle is also a lot less than 100% efficient. The result of what you propose is essentially just a horribly inefficient electric motor! Batteries and electric motors are vastly better. Solar panels over the area of a car don't produce much electricity compared to the energy it takes to run the car. Adding them to charge the batteries on a hybrid is possible - but currently not cost-effective...putting a water electrolysis unit and an internal combustion engine to burn the hydrogen would make them even less useful and VASTLY less cost-effective. So instead of messing around using the electricity to split water - just use it to charge the batteries! You might argue that you can store energy as hydrogen more compactly than you can using batteries - but sadly, that has been clearly shown to be false. In order to store hydrogen, you've either got to compress it to very high pressures (which would take a lot of energy and is dangerous in the event of a car crash) or you have to use some kind of high-tech hydride storage cell. If we had cheap/efficient/safe ways to do that then we'd crack the water much more efficiently on an industrial scale and just run hydrogen-powered cars. SteveBaker (talk) 12:54, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Name Change

I would propose changing the main name of the article to "Water-fueled motors" or even "Energy from water". The central issue is the claim that one can extract useful energy from water. Whether it's used to run a car is a detail. This would allow us to include things like Genesis World Energy and Keely's water motor and another of other things which (fraudulently) claim(ed) to extract energy from water using the same "principles" as the Garrett Carburetor (Meyer Fuel Cell, Brown's gas, whatever you call it), while not strictly speaking being cars.

Thoughts?Prebys (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 03:36, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree - but that would then immediately invite a merger with Water fuel cell - which was already rejected by consensus. SteveBaker (talk) 16:59, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Disagree. I'd say no to "Energy from water" since it has implications of Water power. "Water-fueled motors" would be fine for (another) redirect link for this page, however since all current claims appear to involve vehicles, the current title seems appropriate. (Of the examples you cite, Keely's motor was also claimed to be useful for transportation, and Genesis World Energy appears to be nothing more than a collection of links to other websites of dubious worth.) - Ralphbk (talk) 13:53, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Genesis World Energy was one of the biggest free energy scams in recent history. I should really add an article about it. They actually did talk about water fueled cars, but that was late in the game. Their first "product" was the "Edison device", which supposedly used water to supply electricity to your home. They took investors for $2.5M before the president went to jail.Prebys (talk) 18:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Hydrogen fuel injection vs water fuel

I had always been under the impression that this process was not getting the gain from energy in the water, but rather as an increased efficiency in the combustion of the normal fuel. This point seems to be totally missed. I agree it is important to clear up confusions about how people might imagine this system working, but lets cover all the bases. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.122.234.42 (talk) 13:49, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

This article was clearly defined to be about cars that run on water, as Meyer, Aquygen, the Garrett Carburetor, et al claim to do. The general topic of increased efficiency is covered in the hydrogen fuel injection article. It's best to separate a controversial topic (hydrogen fuel injection) from one which unquestionably violates the laws of physics as we currently understand them (water-fueled cars).Prebys (talk) 15:21, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

That's certainly an important separation - but the claims made for Hydrogen fuel injection (as applied to automobiles - and especially using equipment such as that sold by 'water4fuel' and others) violates the laws of physics just as much as water fuelled cars do. If you claim to increase the mpg of a car by 50% (say) - and 99% of the fuel being consumed in the unmodified car is converted to energy then you are saying that about 33% of the energy of the modified car is somehow coming from the water. That's every bit as impossible as 100% of the power coming from the water. The link to the article on the Mythbusters forum (below) is very instructive in that regard. But certainly, that information doesn't belong in this article. SteveBaker (talk) 15:16, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Gibbs free energy

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Water-fuelled_car&oldid=221847563

Referenced content was removed which provided a scientific model for the operation of a water powered car. The increase in entropy caused by the change from liquid to vapor phase provides a source for the enthalpy necessary for a heat engine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.93.153.97 (talk) 01:28, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, really - not that old saw again! That idea has been busted so many times - I thought that even the free-energy nuts had given it up by now. Read almost any textbook on the subject...picking one off the web more or less at random...this[3] page for example says:

"Entropy is never enthalpy, nor free energy. A system’s enthalpy is only entropy change (after DH is divided by T) if it is transferred to the surroundings and no work of any sort is done there in the surroundings. A surroundings’ enthalpy is only entropy change (after DH being divided by T) when it is transferred to the system and no work is then performed in the system. Gibbs free energy change, DG, is only considered entropy change(after being divided by T) when no useful work of any kind is done by the heat transfer in the system or in the surroundings."

The last sentence says it all. Jeez! Thank you and good-night.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:23, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Honestly it might help people if Gibbs Free Energy was Gibbs Available Energy, "available" being the pertinent definition of "free" at this juncture. IUPAC wants the Free dropped all together, check out the Gibbs free energy. Steve is completely right with his quote (and most accurate). A counter argument that doesn't rely on DG, DH, or DS in any apparent way and might be easier to understand is to consider the macroscopic scale. It takes heat to go from water to vapor. The entropy increase during this process is hard to see but is partially embedded in the volume increase while going from liquid to gas. Of course the entropy increase that occurs during the phase transition from liquid to gas is derived from the added heat. The phase transition consumes heat rather than providing it. Thus no perpetual motion.--OMCV (talk) 06:40, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes - a name change would certainly cut down on the problem. The free energy nuts see the magic words "free energy" in an actual, genuine scientific principle that's well understood, mentioned all over the place in peer-reviewed journals, etc, etc. Sadly those people don't actually READ the articles they jump onto. The "free" in "Gibbs free energy" doesn't mean "costs nothing" it means "not constrained"...or, to put it another way: It's not "free as in beer", it's "free as in speech". The English language needs two new words to replace the word "free" - gratis and libre come closest. So, here it is in a nutshell:

"The gratis energy movement should understand the Gibbs libre energy principle."

SteveBaker (talk) 10:55, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Try go easy on the obscene language Steve.

Go-here.nl (talk) 18:08, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

"obscene"?!? Where? SteveBaker (talk) 21:37, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

suggestion: some one do up a link from "h2o powered car" or h^2o ... etc

Just noticed that h20 powered doesnt offer this page as an option, may one of you wiki wizs please wip up a link that will redirect to this article. To cover all bases how about h20 (h, two, zero), h2o (h, two, o char), h²o... etc. -just feel that search-assist is great and noticed some people could't find this article when i told em what to search (although not as exact as i thought i have told them:) However, does this now mean water sports (for example) should have a re-direct(s) from h20 sports or water polo h20 polo etc.. -found that h2o polo does bring up (and h20 does not0:Water polo please leave me a msg here of what ya think. Sense of pre-existing proof.. to establish a precedent, if u will. (yes, i learned some more cmds:) Thanks for your time. --66.66.126.16 (talk) 15:00, 15 June 2008 (UTC)_pauly

So are you also advocating links from Brown C6H12O6 (song) and Fetal C2H6O syndrome? 'cos if not, you're being a little inconsistent! I don't think many people will be looking for H20 powered car rather than water powered car. SteveBaker (talk) 22:08, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Genepax

Genepax: Japan company that claims they have it!

Genepax announced on/around Friday the 13th 2008 the car could do 80km(approx. 50 miles) an hour on 1 liter of water. heres the news link: [4]http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSSP7366720080613 the video link: [5]http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=84561 Heres Genepax's website, but its entirely in Japanese and Google's translate does a horrible job, but the translate is better than nothing http://www.genepax.co.jp/ I'm going to have to say that I doubt it, but still extremely interesting. --66.66.126.16 (talk) 00:00, 15 June 2008 (UTC)paul

Here is some of the news (not all):

• How to Run Your Car on Water - Truth About Water-Powered Car, Water Fuel - Popular Mechanics
• Genepax Unveils First Water Car
• Finally, a car that runs on water!
• Follow-up - Genepax President Interviewed on 'Water Energy System' -- Tech-On!
• Petrol pricey? Japanese invent car that runs on water | Lifestyle | Reuters
• Genepax unveils water energy fuel cell system - Fuel Cell Today
• Gas Crisis: Genepax Unveils a Car That Runs on Water and Air
• Japanese company creates eco-friendly car that uses water as fuel!- International Business-News-The Economic Times
• Denver Green Living Examiner - How Dasani, Fuji and Evian will replace Exxon, BP and Shell - Examiner.com
• Japanese company unveils water fueled car
• Water Your Car and Go?
• Epoch Times | Japanese Firm Tests Water-Powered Car
• Water-fueled car: too good to be true? | Cleantech.com
• Car That Walks - Make That "Runs" - on Water? Japanese Company Making the Claim
• New Fuel Cell System 'Generates Electricity with Only Water, Air' -- Tech-On!
• euronews | Sales of new cars in Europe hurting
• Michael Graham Richard: Water-Powered Cars: Possible or Impossible? - Green on The Huffington Post
• CityNews: Japanese Firm Demonstrates Car That Runs On Water
• Water-Powered Car Demonstrated in Japan (Video)
• Water-powered car hits the streets
• Business Intelligence Middle East - bi-me.com - Race hots up to commercially produce the first car running on ordinary tap water - News, analysis, reports
• The Daily Sprout « Earth2Tech
• Electric cars plug in to Washington - MarketWatch
• Genepax shows off water-powered fuel cell vehicle - Engadget

There also is slashdotting.

• Slashdot | Japanese Company Says Laws of Physics Don't Apply — to Cars

And skeptics with their readers digest reasoning. Friday the 13th, pipe dream, to good to be true etc hahahahaha

• Water-Fueled Car Too Good To Be True? - Green on The Huffington Post
• Going Postal: Friday the 13th not unlucky, a cat's odd friend, a car that runs on water - Posted
• Water-Powered Car a Pipe Dream | RiverWired

What to do with the news articles? They are going to disappear soon. They did in all previous cases. We have a Usenet posting as the lone BBC source for Stanley Meyer. Should I make copies? What is the correct way to keep the old news on the article?

Gdewilde (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 17:04, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah - well, we know for sure it's not real...but it'll be interesting to see where this goes.

This report: http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080613/153276/

says:

adopting a well-known process to produce hydrogen from water to the MEA," said Hirasawa Kiyoshi, the company's president. This process is allegedly similar to the mechanism that produces hydrogen by a reaction of metal hydride and water. But compared with the existing method, the new process is expected to produce hydrogen from water for longer time, the company said.

So they react a metal hydride with the water to produce hydrogen. That's possible. This patent describes the process: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7179443.html

The problem is that (as the patent states) the metal hydride is the "fuel" - it is consumed by the process of reacting with the water. So, sure, you pour water into the tank, it reacts with the hydride to form hydrogen - which you can react some other way to make electricity and power the car...but the problem is that your metal hydride is being consumed in the process - so sooner or later (probably sooner) you're going to have to refill your car with more metal hydride - and the energy cost of producing that stuff is going to be greater than the energy needed to drive the car.

So, either this is a fraudulant attempt to get investors to part with their money by demonstrating something that LOOKS plausible - but isn't - or (more likely, I suspect) there is a glitch in the translation from Japanese and they aren't really saying what the journalists claim they are saying.

SteveBaker (talk) 06:06, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Worth including into the main article? Since we are on the topic, and this is very recent and some-what reported by the "media", include this info into the main article? what you think Steve? anyone? I was thinking twards the very end and using the above links ... maybe throw in a pic of the car (we have no pics in the main, would be nice to have a recent claim pictured "front and center" in this article) if some one wants to do it. --66.66.126.16 (talk) 16:46, 15 June 2008 (UTC)_pauly

Since it is clearly the metal hydride that's being burned, it would be appropriate to add it under the "additives" section.Prebys (talk) 14:51, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Mentioned the car in the lead

First, a couple misconceptions need to be cleared up: the process is "allegedly similar" to the metal hydride process, but that patent linked to be Steve (link) does not necessarily describe this process. We don't know whether metal hydride per se is involved or consumed, although that's a fairly plausible hypothesis. However, the report linked to by Steve (link) says that it requires "no catalysts".

Because of this story, which received quite a bit of attention in the media as a "water-fueled car" and will likely receive more, I changed the lead a bit. Current, and major news like this deserves to be in the lead -- if we don't add it, other people will. There's a lot of skepticism on messageboards and such (Slashdot), but currently not much critical in the news -- as soon as anyone finds anything, it should certainly be added. If this is true, it does seem possible that this would imply that the world's energy problems are solved, as it seems to be an energy-positive -- or at least energy-neutral -- way to generate hydrogen, which seems fairly fishy. I just saw the article on Genepax which appears to be full of original research. Steve has defended this research by pointing to FRINGE -- but that page does not defend original research at all, and certainly not on the scale it is going on at the Genepax article. Claims that the car violates the first law of thermodynamics need to be sourced, or they are OR. The most you can do is what I've done: cite the internet message board, the most notable of which is Slashdot. ImpIn | (t - c) 08:51, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

This has been hashed out many times. Stating that a car which "burns water" violates the laws of thermodynamics is not OR, as it falls into the category of something "about which there is no serious dibute" under the guidelines for WP:NPOV. That is, anyone with any background in physics would not dispute this statement. That said, I have provided a link to back it up. In fact, it was kind of frustrating because this statement is so obvious that it was like finding a citation for "water tends to flow downhill". Trust me, Genepax will go the way of the Garrett Carburetor, Aquygen, the Stan Meyer Fuel Cell, Genesis World Energy, and dozends of others.Prebys (talk) 12:04, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this is an issue which is best dealt with by the guidelines for WP:NPOV. But it always bothers me the way that perpetual motion machines are debunked, its not right to say "these perpetual motion machines don't work because they violate thermodynamic laws". The right way of saying it is that "the perpetual motion machines don't work and by doing so demonstrate the thermodynamic laws". The proof people are asking for on this page is usually supplied in the Electrolysis of water:Efficiency and Thermodynamic Cycles (Carnot Cycle). These subjects are well cited and established putting these two bits of information together is no more originals research than saying 2+2=4. In addition they don't need to be combined since they disprove perpetual motion machines independently. As long as the machine involves electrolysis of water or an internal combustion engine (respectively). Before any electrolysis based perpetual motion machine can be recognized the burden is on the inventors to demonstrate their system defies not one but both of these phenomenon. Its true the thermodynamic laws can be stated and used as a less direct proof such as at conservation of energy but this always bothers me especially when we have the specific science available.

I have one question. Can "internal links" be implied citations? For example:

Water flows down hill because water is a liquid and has mass. Liquids move by flowing and things with mass are effected by gravitational forces. The water will flow until this gravitational force is balanced in an equilibrium by other forces.

In this passage I assume all the necessary citations are in the hyper linked pages. This seems fair to me especially for high school level science.--OMCV (talk) 14:07, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

For really non-controversial things - that's probably OK, but if it's not then you should be able to go to those articles, pull up THEIR references and just toss them into whatever article you're writing. But this shouldn't be necessary for non-controversial stuff. Of course if the thing you are linking to has insufficient references then you probably need to be a lot more careful! SteveBaker (talk) 15:46, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Claims that the car violates the first law of thermodynamics need to be sourced, or they are OR.

Not so. Guys, this issue has been hashed, voted on, rehashed, re-voted on, re-rehashed and ruled upon by ArbCom over at WP:FRINGE. It's recognized that the way modern science works is such that mainstream scientists are not likely to write learned papers in respectable journals that say "Yet another water fuelled car can't work because of the first law of thermodynamics" - such things simply wouldn't reach the standards of notability for those journals because it falls into the realms of the "bloody obvious". This lack of sources on the 'Con' side of the 'Pros versus Cons' of fringe theories would ordinarily allow undue weight to be piled onto the 'Pro' side of the scales by people like Genepax who have no compunction about promoting the heck out of their bullshit product and getting every journalist on the planet excited about what their report will do to newspaper sales.

Mainstream science has spoken on this issue - the laws of thermodynamics are the only reference we need to say "No car can run on water - ever - period." - saying that is not OR per WP:FRINGE. If we ignored WP:FRINGE then every article about a fringe theory would read as if the theory were 100% true and backed up by copious references which would be a gross misrepresentation of the truth and would do a massive disservice to our readers. It is precisely because of this horrible imbalance that ArbCom has ruled that it is not OR to state that the mainstream scientific view is such-and-such because of so-and-so, resorting only to primary scientific laws such as thermodynamics (which should, of course, be properly sourced, notable, etc). It is absolutely NOT necessary to find a scientist who says "Genepax's machine can't possibly work" - it is quite enough to say "this is a violation of well understood scientific principles".

I certainly understand that this may seem unfair and contrary to Wikipedia's other guidelines and policies if you happen to be on the side of a particular fringe theory - but those are the rules we live by and if you don't like them, head over to WP:FRINGE's talk page and explain why. Sadly for you - there is broad consensus and at least one ArbCom ruling in favor of the status-quo - which is going to be very difficult indeed to reverse.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:34, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Steve, please help me out by pointing me to the ArbCom decision. This revision in policy should probably be included in OR if is true. Thanks. ImpIn | (t - c) 05:15, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Is the Genepax car water-fueled?

The claim that Genepax's car is not water-fueled is dubious; it gets into semantic issues which are unnecessary. Is a steam engine fueled by coal? Many people would say yes -- yet the coal is converted into steam. The analogy fits perfectly. Even "gasoline-fueled" cars are actually powered by heat (those combustion engines), as hydrogen cars are powered by electricity. The claim that the Genepax car is not water-fueled is rather weak, and it should be taken out. Fuel generally refers to the ultimate source of the energy (the thing consumed) rather than the intermediate conversions. ImpIn | (t - c) 04:49, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, I've already pointed this out in this page and cited it in in the section I put in: Genepax claims that its engine requires no catalyst, and doesn't explicitly say that it uses metal hydrides -- so making these claims as if they are fact is actually completely false. Please respond. I think we should revert back to what I had. I think that my little section substitutes quite nicely for the entire Genepax article, which basically redundantly covers the "water cannot be burned" arguments already in the body of this article. ImpIn | (t - c) 07:17, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

THe ultimate source of energy for the car is a metal hydride, not water, thus it is not a "water fueled car". Yilloslime (t) 15:30, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

One presumes that this article has to be about cars that are claimed to have run on water. If we restrict ourselves to cars that actually do run on water - then it's going to be a very short piece indeed! SteveBaker (talk) 22:36, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Yillo -- the company claims that it requires no catalyst. I pointed this out in my blurb (diff) as follows: "The company claims that it requires no catalysts.[6] I assume they mean that no catalyst is consumed when the generator runs. That means that the metal hydride is not consumed -- and, as I said, we don't even know if they do use metal hydride. You're making a lot of assumptions. The Treehugger piece is good for speculation on consuming metal hydride, but it should not be passed off as fact. My paragraph was very thorough -- add the Treehugger 's perspective to it, and I think that it can substitute for the Genepax page. ImpIn | (t - c) 23:38, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I think we can probably come up with some compromise language here. Something about how "the company hasn't been very forthcoming with details, but has likened their system to others which use metal hydrides to produce hydrogen, and this lead some reliable sources to speculate that the true source of fuel is a hydride." Or something. I don't think the presence or absence of catalyst really matters--the best catalyst in the world can't make a reaction go "uphill" thermodynamically. Also I think Impln's version was a little long on detail--I'd prefer to see a compromise version that's not significantly longer than what we already have. Finally, this source http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080613/153276/ seems pretty good. Yilloslime (t) 00:10, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

In English they wrote "H2O Power" on the side of their vehicle and then claimed it can run on rain, river or sea (even tea) and never directly discussed the ultimate energy carrier or source. Genepax made the claim to be a water-fuelled car it was not a mistake by the media. All the speculation about hydrides is just that speculation. I also agree with the comment of SteveBaker above. They only said their technology used something similar to hydrides and perhaps some electrodes. Electrodes and hydrides are not directly combined in any known technology. Its all fishy. Besides as I understand it pixie dust has similar qualities to hydrides however it will also make the car fly if it thinks happy thoughts. I'm starting a company called Frank Black Cars based on pixie dust and the peter pan power system. Anyone interested in investing?--OMCV (talk) 13:47, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

There appears to be two stages to what Genepax are claiming (and there are two big boxes in the back of the car) - the first claim was that they separate out the H2 and O2 from the water using a "catalyst" - which they say is a metal hydride. The next step is to react the H2 back with the O2 (or possibly with O2 from the air - it doesn't matter) in a fairly conventional hydrogen fuel cell to make electricity. The electricity that's produced is evidently being used to drive conventional electric motors on an existing electric car. It is the fuel cell that has "electrodes". The fuel cell part is not in the least controversial - they exist, they work, you can buy them quite easily.

It's the first part of the process that doesn't fly. Some (but not all) metal hydrides REACT with water to produce hydrogen. They do not CATALYSE a reaction that splits water because the very definition of a catalyst is that it's not consumed in the course of the reaction - and the kinds of metal hydride that do split water are most definitely consumed in the process - being converted into metal hydroxides. Hence, the strong conclusion is that they are simply using a metal hydride as a fuel to make hydrogen and thus make electricity...which is a pretty dumb way to power a car.

Another possible way they might be faking this convincingly is that some metal hydrides are exceedingly good at STORING hydrogen. So you could charge up the hydride with hydrogen and just let that drive the fuel cell. Many hydrogen powered cars are built that way and they work very well...but they're powered by hydrogen made outside the car - not by water. In this case, the act of pouring water into the tank is presumably just for show because it's having no effect on how the car is powered.

A third (even simpler) possibility is that we know that the car Genepax claim to have modified is actually a small electric car made by some other company. It's possible that Genepax have done absolutely nothing to the car at all and are simply running it from the batteries it came with and all of the contraption in the back is just to impress the venture capitalists whom they are scamming.

It really needs a trustworthy person to drive the car around for long enough for the thing to "run down" - and then CAREFULLY watch what Genepax have to do to make it go again. That person must not let the car out of their sight during the testing.

• If Genepax merely pour more water in it and you can immediately drive it another 80km - and you can do that over and over again for many hundreds of kilometers - then something magical is happening as they claim and all the laws of physics are flushed down the toilet. Science has to start again from square one and Genepax will be showered with praise and Nobel prizes. This is so unlikely to be true that we can more or less ignore the possibility.
• If they make some pathetic excuse about needing to replace the catalyst for any reason whatever - then it's a metal hydride fuelled car. Their use of the word "catalyst" is incorrect - but maybe we can put that down to the language barrier - or perhaps they genuinely believe that the reason the metal hydride "catalyst" keeps failing is just some minor problem they need to address before they go to market. They would have to be exceedingly stupid to believe that...but who knows? This is the most generous conclusion we could come to - and it rather fits the claims that Genepax are making.
• If they have to sneak off and pump a bunch of hydrogen gas into it then it's a fairly conventional hydrogen powered hydride-storage car and they are criminals because this would imply a deliberate fraud.
• If they feel the need to hook it up to a power source to recharge the battery - then it's an electric car and they are still criminals because this too would imply a deliberate fraud.

Genepax could EASILY prove their claims and dispel all of this speculation: Over an 80km demonstration, such as they've already given, any of the three plausible possibilities I outline here would suffice to power the car - they are all well-known technologies that have been demonstrated many times before - and none of them constitute a "water powered" car.

SteveBaker (talk) 14:55, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Obvious that the car isn't truely water-fueled, for all purportedly water-fueld cars are frauds. All that really matters for the purposes of the article is that the car is claimed to be water-fueled. Jefffire (talk) 15:00, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Merger proposal

PROPOSAL: We should merge the 'Genepax' article into 'Water-fuelled car'.

Now that the press interest in the Genepax water-fuelled car has died down a bit, we should merge such sections of that article into this one and delete the rest. The company is non-notable in itself - all that's really interesting is that they are yet another water-fuelled car fraud, and as such, they belong here. SteveBaker (talk) 19:48, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

• Support per my nomination. SteveBaker (talk) 19:54, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

• I think everything that needs to be said about the Genepax car is already in this article, so I would support turning that page into a redirect pointing here. I suspect that this would be best handled via an AfD for Genepax, though. Yilloslime (t) 20:01, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

• Support I'm all for that. Guyonthesubway (talk) 21:10, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

• Support, for the same reasons as Yilloslime. Sophos II (talk) 22:40, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

• Support Let's do that. I don't like how it's worded on this article currently, as I noted above, and would prefer to substitute my old paragraph (diff) with an added sentence on Treehugger's speculation that the car consumes metal hydride. The current paragraph writes in speculations as if they were fact. I don't think we need an AfD; the people on that page have been notified, and this is a pretty clear-cut case with strong consensus. If someone strongly objects, maybe an AfD. ImpIn | (t - c) 23:37, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

• Support per nom. --Athol Mullen (talk) 23:45, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

• Support - but it's too soon As the guy who started the Genepax article and got it passed some speedy deletion attempts, I think it's a bit soon to roll it into water-fuelled-car. We need to know if they are committing fraud (the current assumption) in which case merge it here, or if they just dumbed down their message - from what we suspect is a metal hydride reaction to 'put water in and watch it go' - for consumption by the ignorant masses. Fraud requires intent. Deception requires that the deceiver is aware of the truth. If our current assumption is wrong, then perhaps Genepax should be merged into an article about electric cars or hydrogen storage for fuel cells, where their presumed advance in MAE or metal hydride technology may be notable once it is better understood ... or some article as an example of bad marketing or how not to inform the public about your spiffy new technology if such articles exist. In the mean time, they are notable because of the impact of their apparent claims as reported by the media, the hundreds of blogs that have discussed it, and the public debate that has ensued. This must be considered notable, otherwise many other articles need to disappear on the same grounds, for example Marina_Bai - a crackpot who has an article just because of the hype caused by suing NASA for disrupting her astrology work, Virgiliu_Pop who kind of sort of annexed the Sun, oh and apparently wrote a couple books, Dennis_Hope who claimed sovereignty over the moon and sold bits of it. What about the unremarkable companies that have pages listed in the Companies of Japan list for example Sokkia with nothing notable discussed, or more broadly, the hundreds of unremarkable company articles that can be found through the List_of_companies. I bet most of them should be deleted. Are all of the 281,000+ people with articles that are listed in the Category living_people any more notable than Genepax?

Although I understand your point of view, Suraky, I think we should not try to justify the maintenance of articles on the basis that there are others similar but of lesser quality out there. Once the info on Genepax is merged and if one day that company becomes real big deal for any reason then nothing would prevent the redirection link to be broken and fully restore the dedicated article. IMHO.
Sophos II (talk) 07:57, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree. The justification for creating and keeping the article for as long as we have was pretty tenuous. Whatever justification there was has now gone. It's time. SteveBaker (talk) 15:09, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Ya, WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS isn't the best argument, but for what it's worth, if any of the articles mentioned above came up for AfD, I would probably vote delete or merge. I might keep Dennis Hope, but I'd need to do a little research to be convinced of notability. Yilloslime (t) 16:31, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I like the way in which the Water-fuelled-car page has been modified to include Genepax. The Genepax page has not received any significant modification in the last couple days (the topic has now settled down). I no longer think it's too soon. Merge away. --Suraky (talk) 22:41, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

• Support and it should be clear that they are the definition of fraud and water-fuelled car. They are currently incorrectly listed as "not a water fuelled-car" on this page. In addition the current genepax page is far to kind to this fraudulent company. Since they can't be discussed as frauds safely from a legal stand point and they certainly can't be discussed as not frauds from a scientific stand point perhaps the mention of them should not be made.--OMCV (talk) 13:13, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

While one must avoid the term "fraud" for legal reasons, it's acceptable, and important to lay out the facts and let logical people reach logical conclusions (illogical people will not believe you anyway). In the case of Genepax, this article appears to be doing that.Prebys (talk) 15:52, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

• Comment: I just reorganized a bit, merging my description and ImpIn's, and taking it out of the "a water fuelled car is not:" section. I think everything we need to say about about the car is in this section, and we all seem to be in agreement about the merge, so I think we ought to go ahead with it. Yilloslime (t) 16:31, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

We don't seem to be seeing much disagreement - but this merge proposal has only been up for 24 hours. We should probably wait until (say) Monday to allow weekend-wikipedians to have their say. SteveBaker (talk) 00:52, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

• Support: I may have had a lot to say on the WFC, but this is the same thing all over again. If Genepax can stand on its own as a company, then it deserves an article about the company, though there isn't much to put there. I'd go as far as saying Dunkin' Donuts is more interesting. Whatever direction their gizmo takes, the Water Fueled Car article is the best starting point.I55ere (talk) 13:45, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

---

The debate is now closed - the decision was to merge Genepax into this article.

---

• delete request: Steve Baker is to much of a POV pusher to make this request, he denounces people as cranks until they leave.

See point 4.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Genepax#Let_it_play_out_i_say.21

''Cranks, scam artists and fringe theorists share a set of common traits in their writing. Free-energy nuts are the worst. Look out for the following signs:

1. Claiming not only to having zero scientific training - but also claiming that this is a good thing.
2. "They are out to get me/suppress my technology." Murder threats - claims of being offered a gazillion dollars by "big oil companies" - typically to suppress technology that's already been patented. (When you patent something, you describe fully how it works and put that description up where anyone with an Internet connection can read it...it's kinda hard to suppress it after that!)
3. "This is only a demo. I can't show you the much better one I have behind the curtain over here"...yeah...great.
4. Over-specific claims. He could make himself rich and famous, fix global warming, solve world hunger and get at least one Nobel prize just by demonstrating an actual working over-unity power source. But instead they ALWAYS' have to make it drive a car.'

He has not contributed anything and managed to run off the people working at the Genpax article. A user asking about this on his talk page was 100% ignored.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SteveBaker#Original_research_in_fringe_articles

This is not an appropriate editor to suggest the article to be merged. I have added the 20 or so news articles to the talk page. Now it is a note worthy business, I will just take my freedom to write articles.

You can delete it next year or so.

Thanks.

Gdewilde (talk) 02:56, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Your "rights" are tempered by policies and guidelines - one of which is that we follow the consensus. If your read the words of everyone in the discussion above, you'll see that the decision to merge was essentially unanimous. I didn't "Decide to merge" - I "suggested a merge" and everyone agreed with me. You DO NOT have the right to recreate the article in the teeth of a unanimous consensus. If you think that something has materially changed since the merge discussion then you should tell us what that is - and seek consensus to recreate the article. If you do not achieve consensus (which you won't because I'm going to Oppose) then the article doesn't get recreated - period. Please - it's clear that you are woefully ill-informed about Wikipedia's policies and guidelines - take notice of how we do things around here and things will go much smoother. SteveBaker (talk) 15:57, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Take out links to Genepax

It's really annoying to click on the Genepax links only to find that it directs back to the same article again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.91.218.112 (talk) 22:46, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah man, I didn't log in fast enough to vote for/against the merger! It fits Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) plenty. I was really going to back that up, but oh well. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 01:31, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

The genepax site is updated

• http://genepax.co.jp/en/
• http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=585906
• http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080613/153276/

--85.167.107.138 (talk) 23:08, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok, seems like the nikkei article was already referenced. But it already gives details not given in the three speculating articles? --85.167.107.138 (talk) 23:14, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Meh, nevermind. The financialpost article is new, but sheds no new details. --85.167.107.138 (talk) 23:18, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, the ultra-cute animation on this page [7] clearly shows water being fractured into O2 and H2 using a small yellow explosion symbol with the words "Chemical Reaction" written on it. What follows is some kind of a hydrogen fuel cell - which is of no great interest because that's well known stuff. So we're still left wondering what this mysterious "chemical reaction" is. Since we know water doesn't fly apart spontaneously - there must be some other ingredient involved in the reaction. So it's looking like the Metal Hydride reaction theory is still the best one. However, the remainder of the site pretty much just says that they're claiming it's a perpetual motion machine. SteveBaker (talk) 04:34, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Well it does say the water is eventually used up - 7 hours for 2 litres, that is not perpetual motion. Also with a duration of use comparable to typical hydrogen fuel cells - 40,000 hours. The site says they have proprietary technology so that would suggest something more than any well known use of metal hydrides, lets wait and see. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.21.35.133 (talk) 22:19, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Not likely a perpetual motion machine but based on the available information it is most likely a fraud. Braking water into hydrogen and oxygen takes energy. The chemical reaction must contain a fuel or get energy form some place. Likely they are describing a sieve that slowly moves water form one place to another and claiming it spits out energy.--OMCV (talk) 22:41, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

It's is a perpetual motion machine - although the water may disappear from the cars storage tank, their animation clearly shows that for every molecule of water that enters the reaction chamber, another molecule comes out the other side. It's perfectly possible that they are failing to capture this 'exhaust' water - but in principle they could. Hence it's still a perpetual motion machine - at least in the sense we mean when we are speaking loosely of machines that violate the laws of thermodynamics. Those laws apply to any closed system - ANY closed system. So I am free to define the system as the car plus all of the exhausted byproducts and the laws still apply. So even if it dribbles water along the road and fails to recycle every last drop - I can draw a line around a "system" and apply the laws of thermodynamics to it's inputs and outputs. If I include the byproducts inside that line then the "system" consumes nothing whatever and generates kinetic energy, heat and sound. That makes it a clear violation of the first and second laws - which allows us to say it's a perpetual motion machine in the strict scientific sense of that term. SteveBaker (talk) 21:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

added sections

Discussion of user related edit-pattern issues removed, this talk page is about the article Gdewilde (talk)

GEET engine by Paul Pantone

A U.S. patent was issued to Paul Pantone for a "Fuel pretreater apparatus and method" on 18 August 1998 . The system supposedly increases fuel efficiency and cuts pollution by 90% by transferring exhaust heat to the fuel intake. Pantone claims the instantaneous pressure fluctuations in the exhaust help to create a vacuum that, when combined with the heat, creates micro-magnetic forces, producing a plasma that dissociates the hydrogen from the oxygen in the carburetor. Go-here.nl (talk) 23:11, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Aquygen by Dennis Klein

hydrogen Technology Applications Inc.[[8]]

Dennis Klein was granted US Patent No: 6866756 for a Hydrogen generator for uses in a vehicle fuel system. ABSTRACT: The present invention discloses an electrolyzer for electrolyzing water into a gaseous mixture comprising hydrogen gas and oxygen gas. The electrolyzer is adapted to deliver this gaseous mixture to the fuel system of an internal combustion engine. The electrolyzer of the present invention comprises one or more supplemental electrode at least partially immersed in an aqueous electrolyte solution interposed between two principle electrodes. The gaseous mixture is generated by applying an electrical potential between the two principal electrodes. The electrolyzer further includes a gas reservoir region for collecting the generated gaseous mixture. The present invention further discloses a method of utilizing the electrolyzer in conjunction with the fuel system of an internal combustion engine to improve the efficiency of said internal combustion engine.. Go-here.nl (talk) 23:11, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

• American, experimenting with hydrogen-powered torches developed a system to run cars on water. The energy produced is over twice that of an equal volume of gasoline. Dennis Klein is in negotiations with a major US auto manufacturer and the US government wants to produce Hummers that run on both water and gasoline.Goodbye Big Oil - Vive

• The characteristics of the gas set his hydrogen technology apart.Clearwater man puts technology to work. | Tampa Tribune (Tampa, Florida) (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News) (November, 2005)

• EVWORLD FEATURE: Electric Cars and the Goldilocks Planet: Global Warming | Carbon Dioxide | Cold Fusion
• The Return of the Water Engine
• Hydrogen Technology Applications and UTEK Corporation Announce Strategic Alliance Agreement. | Business Wire (April, 2002)
• [http://www.loislaw.com/ogpc/login.htp?WSRet=12&dockey=13019494@USFR01&OLDURL=/gpc/index.htp&OLDREFURL
• Primary Law - State & Federal Case Law and more at Loislaw
• Hydrogen Generating Technology Closer Than Ever

"This technology is going to end up being in the mainstream eventually," he predicted, "and then the critics are going to look absolutely foolish." - Denny Klein [http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=36226 Cars run on water: Miracle or scam?] Gdewilde (talk) 19:07, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

In how many ways and in how many contexts does this have to be said? US PATENTS ARE NOT PROOF THAT THE INVENTION IS ANYTHING OTHER THAN WORTHLESS RAMBLINGS. Anyone can patent almost anything - a typical patent application is reviewed in about 5 to 10 minutes - there is literally zero effort made to establish whether the claims made are true, viable, original or anything else. So - patents prove nothing other than that the author has made those claims. SteveBaker (talk) 03:53, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Where did you get the idea I didn't know what a patent is? It's like we document the news as news, not as science. A patent is a means of protecting an invention. The man payed money for it. That is what it proves.Go-here.nl (talk) 18:17, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

You are exactly right, scientifically speaking a patent shows nothing more than someone paid for a patent. Paying to patent your snake oil does not make you snake oil something other than snake oil. Getting a patent increases ones ability to claim their snake oil is more than it is to those who don't understand what a patent is. While patent examiners spend a bit more than 10 min on each case their primary intent is identify the petitioners legal right to the claims. There are statutes to exclude fictions but they are much weaker than excluding a patent on preexisting art. As a result it is some times easier, due to legal loop holes, to allow a patent for product that will never be built. Most people outside the sciences don't understand this. For this reason please don't reference patents, even on the talk pages, since they demonstrate nothing.-- (talk) 01:13, 1 July 2008 (UTC)OMCV

Bios Fuel by Steve Ryan

Amoung a number of Fuel related innovations Steve Ryan has successfully made his stock motor bike run on water. Go-here.nl (talk) 23:11, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, he CLAIMS that - but we know that there have been MANY false claims about this stuff over the years - why should we believe this one any more than the others? Is there actual proof? Has he allowed scientists and engineers to carefully examine his machine in order to rule out fakery and cheating? I kinda doubt it. SteveBaker (talk) 04:39, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Why are you doubting out-loud without doing a single web search?

One of the country's car rental firms is putting its money where its mouth is and trialling a new device that could improve children's health by cleaning up the air they breathe.

Ace Rental Cars is leading the campaign for a healthier environment by conducting a trial of the EcoTube, made by New Zealand company Bios Fuel, on its rental cars.

This simple device cuts the harmful nitrous oxide and particulate exhaust emissions that are linked to asthma, bronchitis and heart disease. New Zealand has one of the highest rates of childhood asthma in the world.

Last year Auckland's chief medical officer blocked the opening of a new daycare centre on busy Great South Rd because the air quality was too bad for young lungs. And a report for the Ministry of Transport estimated that in Auckland alone, every year 253 people die prematurely because of pollution from vehicle exhausts.[9][[10]]

Of course there is nothing new about a fuel vapor. It's just a very simple implementation. At the solar challenge they took part in a separate "greenfleet" demonstration class for fuel-efficient vehicles.

The Bios Fuel Corp blend - branded H2W+ - comprising 40 per cent water and 60 per cent waste oil will be used to drive a battered old 1989 Landcruiser[11]

"What we're doing is taking this waste stream, taking the energy from that and converting it to fuel," he said.[12]

But he also has a water powered motorcycle.[13][14]

"In 2005 60 minutes featured him running a standard 350cc motorbike on 100% water using a process to entrain Hydrogen within the water, without the use of power. "[15]

Potentially world saving. But yes, scientists have not looked into the subject officially. The article should of course make this as clear as possible. Go-here.nl (talk) 11:46, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

If you have a reference to a peer reviewed scientific journal in which ANY kind of water fuelled vehicle has been shown to work - then please, stop toying with us and show it to us. A vehicle that runs on 40% water 60% oil is an oil-fuelled vehicle. If you don't have that information - then give it up - we're not putting that junk into the encyclopedia because Wikipedia's rules don't allow us to do so. We need properly referenced reports - not "what someone says on their website" or "what some journalist saw". Please read WP:FRINGE. SteveBaker (talk) 13:34, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

try the MIT plasmatron. There definitely exist peer review paper on that. I cant remember if they used 2/3 water or 1/3. But it sounds like a primitive Pantone engine.Go-here.nl (talk) 18:22, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

That's Steve's point get the references so we can read about it. Throwing MIT on the front of something doesn't make it true. You can use youtube to make comments about popular culture but don't ever use youtube as an example of anything scientific.--OMCV (talk) 01:36, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Daniel Dingle

Dingle claims to be running cars on water from as far back as 1968.[[16]] Go-here.nl (talk) 23:11, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

If he had a working prototype 40 years ago - how come we aren't all driving water fuelled cars...or water fuelled bikes or lawn mowers...surely after all that time, he'd have at least ONE actual viable product? Please don't say "suppression of the technology" because this particular loonie has been publishing and demonstrating for 40 years without anyone shutting him down. SteveBaker (talk) 03:56, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

It's called The Big Lie. It's a trick so good you almost cant believe such a thing exists. Go-here.nl (talk) 18:25, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

The one that actually works

Why doesn't anyone add about the one that actually works? The inventor is a Filipino. It's on the news right now. It's being sold to other countries. What a waste of pure talent and a chance to change the world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chez Anthony (talk • contribs) 11:19, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

When it has suitable references, it can be added. So far, I haven't heard anything about it. Usually, one of the first references available debunks the invention as either running on a chemical reaction such that there is a fuel other than water, or the whole thing is shown to not work at all. --Athol Mullen (talk) 12:48, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I believe he's talking about Daniel Dingel (or sometimes Dingle). As far as I can tell, the only evidence is a Youtube video, so of course true believers treat it as a sold gold fact. I haven't found any other supporting evidence, or anything credible about Dingel. He's often identified as a former NASA scientist, although as far as I can tell he's never personally claimed this, or necessarily ever left the Philippines.Prebys (talk) 13:09, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Daniel Dingle Foundation

The Daniel Dingle foundation has been set up as a strategic alliance partnership between Ethos World GmbH Schweiz and Daniel Dingle, the Filipino Inventor, to commercially develop his inventions and to promote their benefits so that everyone in the world can gain from their unique properties. http://www.dinglefoundation.com/ Gdewilde (talk) 02:20, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Yull Brown

Yull brown got a patent disclosing the implosive properties of Brown's gas. Go-here.nl (talk) 23:11, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Once again, a patent isn't worth the paper it's printed on. If you take a perfect 2:1 molar mixture of hydrogen and oxygen gas and set light to it - it's going to very rapidly turn into a very small amount of water - this is most certainly an implosion. It didn't need to be patented - people have known about this since the discovery of hydrogen almost 500 years ago! This is a true non-event! SteveBaker (talk) 04:00, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

So you agree the mixture in the piston can do an implosive cycle? Interesting, do you have a link to some car that uses this? Go-here.nl (talk) 19:25, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I didn't say anything of the sort - but it would certainly be possible to capture the energy from an implosion pretty much as easily as for an explosion - I have no clue whether you'd use a piston for that...but it seems plausible. But it's quite utterly irrelevent. The problem isn't how you make an engine that runs on hydrogen and oxygen - that's easy (vent the oxygen to the atmosphere and use a hydrogen fuel cell - take the resulting electricity and use it to drive motors - reasonably efficient, clean, quiet). We have very good hydrogen fuelled cars in prototype form from several car companies. The problem is how you get the hydrogen and oxygen separated in the first place - THAT is where the whole water-fuelled car concept comes crashing to the ground. There is not - nor can ever be - a way to dissociate water without consuming more energy than you get back when you burn it...explosively or implosively or any other way. SteveBaker (talk) 19:05, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually it's not an implosion at all, since the product of hydrogen + oxygen reaction is water vapor, not liquid water. Sure, you have 1 mole of water vapor produced for each mole of hydrogen and 1/2 mole of oxygen, so reaction does reduce the number of particles by 1/3, but the reaction products will be at much higher temperature than the starting gases, and thus take up a larger volume. So this would still be an explosive cycle. See ideal gas law. Yilloslime (t) 18:21, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Such an "implosive cycle" cannot work. Plus where does the electrical energy come from to produce the Oxyhydrogen? Store the electricity in batteries and its more efficient to use an electric motor, hence why electric cars are viable. Oxyhydrogen is not viably stored so scratch that idea. The simple conclusion is that Oxyhydrogen cannot be used as a fuel, and is only viable for torch applications and possibly fuel enhancement depending heavily on the efficiency of the electrolyzer design. I kinda feel like I'm wasting my time explaining this because most people debating these topics are opinionated toward extremes; either its all BS or its some incredibly suppressed technology. The truth is thats its neither, its just another technology that may or may not have viable applications depending on a variety of considerations. Noah Seidman (talk) 22:09, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Placing all this info, and links here is counterproductive. It only fuels critics. On the other side placing statements in articles declaring fraud only fuels fanatics. Frankly I don't know where a happy medium lies, its just a little frustrating being stuck right in the middle of die hard skeptics and full blown fanatics. Noah Seidman (talk) 22:12, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I think you should read: Energy_crisis, Peak_oil, Starvation, petrodollar and federal reserve bank. Then you can help attack the solutions. *grin*

I think the above is the most interesting discussion Steve and I have produced thus far.

Yeah, this is where Steve says there will be an implosion. (ha-ha) I hear there has to be a patent from Yull Brown related to the implosive reaction.

But you can view: [17](forward it to 5:00)

Meyer mentioned mixing in incombustible gasses. The Oxyhydrogen torch gets just as hot as the target requires remember? Then there is the implosion part.

Implosions draw heat from the environment for they are Endothermic.

Not perpetual motion because when the sun cools down it stops working. :o)

Go-here.nl (talk) 00:15, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Bullshit! Implosions don't have to draw heat from the environment - and they aren't all endothermic. The only difference between an explosion and an implosion is the ratio of the volume of the reaction products compared to the volume of the inputs. You REALLY need to understand some very basic physics and chemistry before you carry on with these ridiculous claims. SteveBaker (talk) 19:05, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Green fuel lab Water Energy System

In may 2008, usa company Green fuel lab unveiled a car which it claimed runs on water.

http://www.greenfuellab.com Our device is a water-to-energy converter using a SIMPLE and PRACTICAL technology. The device uses frequency to separate water into a Hydrogen gas. Hydrogren burns efficiently and provides tremendous energy - while the by product is just WATER! DID YOU KNOW: Hydrogen GAS IS 3 TIMES MORE POTENT THAN GASOLINE!!! Hydrogen is the only way for boosting performance and MPG. We took a 90-year-old suppressed technology, We SIMPLIFIED it, You will discover how affordable yet very effective these devices are.

News coverage: [[18]] [[19]] Go-here.nl (talk) 23:11, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

How do they know that there is this 90 year old suppressed technology if it's suppressed? SteveBaker (talk) 04:10, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Ethos

They are working very closely in conjunction with Daniel Dingle, who was one of the first people in the world to convert his car to run on ordinary tap water way back in 1968. They have set up a new foundation to help bring these products to the world whilst helping Daniel to raise money to help his fellow Filipino people.[20][21] Go-here.nl (talk) 23:47, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

New Grand Unification Theory makes Perpetual Motion Possible

At least that's what this inventor my dad knows seems to imply.

hey its me, the guy who was going to see a real perpetual motion machine! The "inventor" made me see a presentation by Nassim Haramein before I get to look at his machine. I've been looking into a new Grand Unification Theory Nassim discovered which gives different results for Einstein's field equations. His reason is that scientists did not account for all factors and got "lazy", thus naming certain things that they couldn't see or measure (ie. dark matter). His theory explains gravity, black holes, and the link between cosmology and biology. His work is currently under peer-review (or its finished I'm not sure) and I'm guessing the inventor used these concepts to make his machine. An external link is on his wiki page. It's a little much for me to digest but it seems pretty creditable. Genepax probably doesn't use any of these theories since the car is supposed to use a "well-known chemical reaction", but still the idea for new types of machines can be thrown out there. Ace blazer (talk) 05:56, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

So you're saying you've seen a perpetual motion machine? or that some friend of your dad's implied that he saw one? Does this have something to do with water fueled cars? Guyonthesubway (talk) 14:32, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

This is a prime example of a fringe theory. The fellow Nassim Haramein is not a scientist or part of the scientific community but rather a person who synthesizes science and spirituality for popular consumption. Basically a guru like Deepak Chopra. The most important feature of this is that his ideas have not been critically reviewed at any level (despite Ace's claiming that he is "currently under peer-review"). Its worth noting that the wikipedia pages for Nassim Haramein and his collaborator Elizabeth A. Rauscher is predominantly the product of a single editor. Haramein work is not scientifically credible even if it is spiritually credible for some. Our concern here is scientific credibility. Subway, I think water fuelled cars is a magnet for cranks, and that is the connection here.--OMCV (talk) 02:36, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

The problem goes deeper than that - and this is a mistake that many non-scientists make. They imagine that some new theory can completely overturn everything that came before - and truthfully, nothing of the sort can EVER happen.

A scientific 'theory' (in the sense of "Einsteins Theory of Relativity") isn't just an idea someone has...that's the common usage of the word - but scientists apply a very special meaning to it. It's only an accepted Theory when it fulfills a bunch of criteria:

1. It has to have been published in a widely accepted, peer reviewed journal.
2. It has to explain ALL existing experiment evidence in the field.
3. It has to be testable ("falsifiable" to use another technical term).
4. It should make very specific predictions that some carefully defined future experiment will turn out in a way other than we expect with our current theories.

What Nassim Haramein has put forth doesn't yet meet ANY of those criteria - not a single one of them. Hence it's no more a theory than my idea that electricity is carried around by very small green aliens in purple plastic shopping bags. In scientific parlance, that would make it a 'hypothesis'. A hypothesis doesn't make anything possible that wasn't possible before - it can only extend our understanding in areas that are currently unexplained. So he might have a way to explain away 'dark energy' or something - but he can't possibly explain away the laws of thermodynamics under more or less "ordinary" circumstances.

If his hypothesis ALLOWS perpetual motion then it also has be able to explain why no experiment that's ever been performed under carefully controlled scientific conditions has EVER shown the laws of thermodynamics to be wrong. His ultimate theory would need to contain something like: "The laws of thermodynamics start to break down in a gravitational field of about 10x that of the sun"...or... "if the machine is made entirey of anti-matter"...or..."only within a billionth of a degree of absolute zero". But otherwise the 'old' laws of thermodynamics still apply to a precision at least as good as our finest instruments can measure. So in all likelyhood, even if this guy DID come up with a new "Theory of Everything" that was widely accepted, that theory wouldn't allow for Water fuelled cars or any kind of mundane perpetual motion machines. It's "loophole" would have to be so tiny in order to avoid failing to explain our experiments that it would be useless as a way to explain something as mundane as an electrolysis of water.

When Einstein "overturned" Newtons' Laws of Motion, his new theory of relativity was shown to only apply to things moving VERY close to the speed of light. As 'mundane' speeds, relativity matches Newton very precisely indeed. So much so that practical calculations in matters such as spaceflight or engineering a car can UTTERLY ignore Einstein and work with Newtons' Laws and everything works out just fine. That was a necessary part of the new theory - if it had claimed that relativistic effects happened at speeds around a meter per second or so - then Einstein would have had a very hard time explaining how come we've been making solidly reliable pendulum clocks for the past few hundred years because that's a FACT that no new law can overturn.

Einstein wrote up his work - had it peer reviewed, he showed that if his theory were true then if you watched a star pass behind the sun during a solar eclipse then the light from the star would be bent by the sun's gravitational field. Previous theories would have said this was impossible - but the experiment had never been done. If the experiment failed - then Einsteins' theory would be wrong so it certainly was 'falsifiable'. If the experiment produced the amount of bend in the light beam that Einstein predicted then that would strongly suggest it were true. All of those things happened - so we call Einstein's hypothesis a "Theory"...which means we pretty much know it's true...at least over the range of conditions under which we've tested it - which grows every year.

So we really don't have to concern ourselves with weird and wonderful new grand unification theories because we KNOW that any successful "true" theory cannot possibly allow perpetual motion to work except under some highly extreme experimental condition such as we've never been able to experiment with before.

This is why we can so comfortably dismiss claims for free energy from wildly new theories such as 'magnecules' or 'gyroscopic massergies' and other such wild-assed guesswork. If they ever prove to be true - then those theories will be identical to what we believe now - except in some very extreme and untested area of experience. It's quite possible to "overturn" dark energy and dark matter because those too are only hypotheses right now - but the laws of thermodynamics are as solid as you could imagine for the realms of normal human existance.

SteveBaker (talk) 22:18, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm still in doubt over whether any of his papers have been peer-reviewed. In fact I clearly remember him saying that his papers are CURRENTLY under peer-review process; however, I can say with certainty that he has something or else he wouldn't be churning out papers left right and centre. Also, I would also like to point out that Nassim's collaborator, Elizabeth Rauscher, has a PhD in astrophysics. Are we going to start accusing her of being bought out? Ace blazer (talk) 06:07, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

In response to my comment - which was using another computer & therefore a different IP - being deleted. I argue that this type of discussion is seen across all talk pages on wikipedia. Every time people ask silly questions about why certain things like "why we can't get energy from the motion of turning car wheels" and so on. Granted my last statement was way off topic and indulgent but the other paragraphs were merely responses to SteveBaker's points. I'm not a regular wiki guy; therefore, I don't bother to read WP Rules to try to find some loop-hole, but from the quick overview I got, I would say that this talk is still a relevant topic in the discussion of the laws of Thermodynamics which water-fuelled cars appear to cross, and talking about this in the "opposing camp" makes it much easier to provoke discussion from people with a strong understanding in the relevant science. By talking about this, I can somehow show that a perpetual motion machine IS possible (once I finally get to see it). However, perhaps it is best if this topic section was deleted until I find some better evidence or explanation more relevant to a water-fuelled car, or at the least, a perpetual motion car. Ace blazer (talk) 05:56, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Until someone wants to explain what Nassim Haramein has do with water-fueled cars and propose how to incorporate the connection into this article, this discussion should go no further. Talk:Nassim Haramein would be much more appropriate place for general discussion of his ideas. Yilloslime (t) 15:35, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The problem is no one knows or cares about Nassim Haramein. Ace blazer (talk) 05:15, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

As stated above, my comments were deleted but I do not know why. The explanation of deletion could have been put on the bottom. I am not a sock puppet, I just haven't signed in on the same computer. 207.34.120.71 (talk) 23:32, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Dean Kamen

Before I go remove the See Also link to Dean Kamen would anyone care to explain how he is at all relevant to the topic of water-fuelled carts? Yilloslime (t) 04:40, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

(updated comment:) I read this on the other page: This article is about the Water Fuel Cell invented by Stanley Meyer. For fuel cells in general, see Fuel cell. For other water fueled devices, see Water-fuelled car.

• Thursday Mar 20 2008 - Stephen colbert puts inventor Dean Kamen's vapor compression distiller to the test.[[22]]
• Dean Kamen's latest creation promises to do nothing short of producing clean water from virtually any liquid source (without filters) and generate enough electricity to power about 70 energy efficient light bulbs. [23]
• Here there is talk about 2 separate devices:[[24]].
• He chose to be vague on his website also: [[25]]

I see there is indeed reason to be confused. Gdewilde (talk) 16:42, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

OK....looks absolutely irrelevant. I'm removing it. Yilloslime (t) 04:56, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Nowhere in that video was it ever claimed that the unit generated power. Yilloslime (t) 06:17, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

So Gdewilde has added it back in. I fail to see any relevance whatsoever. Seriously--did I miss the part where he mentions that it also produces electricity? I can admit when I'm wrong--just let me know the time in the video when it happens. Thanks. Yilloslime (t) 06:51, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

According to Dean_Kamen, the purifier uses a sterling engine for power, and according to the patent linked there, the purifier can also be powered by an "external combustion engine" that runs on "fuel". Nowhere is claimed that it "makes energy from water". What am I missing? Yilloslime (t) 07:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree with removal; neither this article nor the Dean Kamen article imply any kind of connection, much less anything to do with "energy from water". Oli Filth^(talk) 08:53, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Please stop wasting our time: I've ready both of the above articles, watched the Colbert video, and done some of my own internet snooping and nothing even hints that it produces energy from water. What we have are two separate devices: one that purifies water, and one that makes electricity by burning fuel--cow dung, oil, etc. The generator can be used to power the purifier but absolutely nothing I've read or seen suggests that the purifier could be used to run the generator. Yilloslime (t) 15:03, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

It clearly says so in engadget, then again it says something different on CNN, his site is vague about it. Lets forget about it until he decides to make up his mind. Gdewilde (talk) 16:42, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Thushara Priyamal Edirisinghe

[ copyrighted text from http://www.dailynews.lk/2008/07/16/news12.asp removed by Yilloslime (t) 23:25, 20 July 2008 (UTC)] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gdewilde (talk • contribs) 18:31, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

According to that report, the inventor says: ”This generator could be fixed to any petrol or diesel vehicle with suitable adjustments depending on their cylinder capacity. While Hydrogen is 1000 times faster than petrol, the exhausts of water-powered vehicles consisting of water vapour are also entirely eco-friendly. Using water as opposed to oil that react with lubricating oil would also extend the life of the vehicle,” he adds.

Mmmmm'k. Even allowing for linguistic issues - what could possibly be meant by "Hydrogen is 1000 times faster than petrol"? He can't mean 1000 times more energetic - that's not even close to being true. As Energy density points out, the energy per kilogram of hydrogen is only 3.5 times more than gasoline - and energy per liter of liquid hydrogen is 2 times WORSE than gasoline. Energy per liter of gaseous hydrogen at normal temperatures and pressures (such as would be coming out of an electrolytic cell) is 3,400 times WORSE than gasoline...so where this factor of 1000 times "faster" comes from is rather odd.

His suggestion that "water as opposed to oil that react with lubricating oil would also extend the life of the vehicle" is actually the complete opposite of the true situation. The difficulties of lubricating hydrogen powered engines is one of the biggest technical issues to resolve with hydrogen engines. Real hydrogen powered cars use fuel-cell technology to produce electricity to drive electric motors - that avoids the lubrication problem and is much more efficient.

But we know that this is all utterly bogus - it's another claim to have broken the laws of thermodynamics...and that simply isn't going to be true.

SteveBaker (talk) 22:53, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the section for now. THere is only a single article on the subject, so it's clearly not notable enough for inclusion. If this garners more media then we can think about adding it back in, but for now, any mention at all would violate WP:WEIGHT. Yilloslime (t) 23:25, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't resist crunching Edirisinghe's numbers...

There is this video [26] on YouTube that shows this purported WFC in action. It appears to be a pretty standard car with a pretty standard internal combustion engine. I can't quite see what kind of car it is - but it's not a super-light car like the Genopax car. I'd estimate that a car like that would maybe make 25 miles per gallon on gasoline. The claim in the ShriLankan Daily News article is that "the generator he has designed is capable of running a motor car for 80 kilometres using only one litre of water". OK: 80 kilometers on one liter of water.

There is a severe problem with that claim. Even if we 100% buy into his claim and even if we're super-generous and say that his electrolyser consumes no energy whatever(!!) - then we can do some calculations based on this claim: We know that 1 liter of water weighs 1kg - but only ~1/9th of that mass is hydrogen - the rest is oxygen. So that 1 kilo of water contains about 0.11 kilos of hydrogen. Per our Energy density article, hydrogen contains 3.5 times as much energy by weight than gasoline (Woohoo!) - so the hydrogen in one liter of water contains about as much energy as 0.39 kg of gasoline...which (at a density of 0.71 kg/l) is about 0.55 liters...about 0.14 gallons. Let's be clear here: ALL of the hydrogen in one liter of water contains the same amount of energy as 0.14 gallons of gasoline. Which (in a 25mpg car) will take you about 3.6 miles or 5.8 kilometers. Even in something super-efficient like a Toyota Prius, you won't get much more than a tenth of the distance that Edirisinghe claims on one liter of water.!

Conclusion: even if you believe that this guy required no energy AT ALL to convert water into hydrogen (which even he does not claim) - and even if 100% of that hydrogen could be captured and burned in an engine that was clearly designed to run on gasoline - then his car would only travel 5.8km on one liter of water. This means that even if he's invented an utterly magical, INFINITELY efficient electrolysis process, he is DEFINITELY lying when he claims 80km on 1 liter of water. Forget his supposedly clever technology...no matter how clever it is - he's lying his ass off - and he's taking money and land from the Shri-Lankan government (who can little afford it). This clearly puts him clearly into the realm of the cynical fraudsters. He belongs in jail.

It always amazes me that these nut-job "inventors" not only claim magical efficiencies from their electrolysers but they simply can't resist claiming to use ridiculously small amounts of water! Why do they do that? Both Meyers and Genepax are guilty of the same mistake. If they managed to consume 10 gallons of water and to travel a mere one hundred yards, it would be quite utterly amazing...but they just can't resist going one step further!

SteveBaker (talk) 00:52, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

How much hydrogen?

My calculations (above) on the claim that the ShriLankan car can do 80km on 1 liter of water leads me to wonder about the answer to the following question: If we look at ANY water-to-hydrogen-to-internal-combustion process - how much water must be converted to hydrogen per second in order to power a car?

Assumptions: Let's be generous and allow a typical 25 miles per gallon gasoline engine being driven at a fairly modest 30 miles per hour. That's 1/120th of a mile per second...and at 25mpg, that's 1/3000th of a gallon per second or 0.00126 liters of gasoline per second - about 0.00089 kg/second. Hydrogen is (kilo-for-kilo) about 3.5 times more energetic than gasoline, so you only need 0.00026 kg/sec of hydrogen. But the density of hydrogen gas is 0.00009 kg/liter at normal air pressure - so you've gotta produce about 2.9 liters of hydrogen per second from your electrolyser to keep your car running.

Worse still, most of these electrolysers are producing a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen - so only a third of that gas (by volume) is hydrogen. So ANY water powered car that uses electrolysis has to be able to demonstrate an electrolyser that produces 9 liters of gas per second! That's an enormous amount! Imagine one of those big black plastic garbage bags - the ones I have can hold 130 liters - so you've gotta be able to completely inflate one of those in under 15 seconds using the output of your electrolyser.

How well does Stanley Meyer's electrolyser do?

When we look at Stanley Meyer's videos of his electrolyser running ([27] - 3 minutes and 5 seconds into the video for example) - we can see quite a lot of teeny-tiny bubbles - it looks very impressive. But look carefully at the surface of the water...it's hardly disturbed at all. Nothing like three liters per second.

But the non-skeptics amongst us won't take that as evidence. Fortunately, we can do MUCH better:

• At 4:35 into that video, you can see a pressure gauge mounted on top of the electrolyser showing the pressure inside the vessel climbing as the gas is produced.
• Later on in the video there is a close-up of the gauge that shows that it's marked in PSI (pounds per square inch).
• At 4:40 seconds into the video, you can see the dial climbing as the pressure builds up. Take a stopwatch and time how long it takes to go up by one pound per square inch...It takes 5 seconds to climb from 4psi to 5psi...which in SI units is from 27kPa to 35kPa.
• I'd guess the volume of the empty space at the top of the container to be about 10cm in diameter (about the length of Meyer's hand) by maybe 5 cm tall - that's 450cc's plus some space in the tubing...let's say about a half liter...0.0005 meter³.
• We can use the ideal gas laws (PV=nRT) to estimate how much gas was needed to push the pressure up by ~8 kPa over ~0.0005m³ within ~5 seconds at room temperature (~290 degrees absolute):

  8,000x0.0005/(5x8.3x290)= 0.00003 moles of gas.

• Only about 0.00002 of that 0.00003 moles is hydrogen (H2O).
• Hydrogen weighs roughly one gram per mole - so Stanley's device is producing about 0.00002 grams of hydrogen per second. (We were working in kilograms before - so that's 0.00000002 kg/s

0.00000002 kg per second.

But as you saw above, we need 0.00026 kg per second to power our car.

Conclusion: We'd need 13,000 of Meyers electrolysis cells to power a typical car!

Yeah - 13,000 of those huge cells to drive a 25mpg Corolla at 30mph. We're told in the video that it took "only" half an amp to produce that much gas...but half an amp times 13,000 devices isn't something you're likely to drive from the 100 amp generator under the hood of your car!

So - Stanley Meyers' cell is at least 10,000 times too pathetic to drive a car.

QED

SteveBaker (talk) 02:39, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Here's a fun way to extrapolate a little further....assuming "Hydrogen is (kilo-for-kilo) about 3.5 times more energetic than gasoline"

Water is two atoms of hydrogen to every one atom of oxygen.

The atomic weight of oxygen is 16, the atomic weight of hydrogen is 1. Therefore, water is 2/18ths or 11% hydrogen by weight.

One kilo (1000 grams) of water will produce 111 grams of hydrogen.

About 285 grams of hydrogen is equal in energy to 1000 grams of gasoline. (1/3.5)

Therefore, it takes about 2.6 kilos of water to make the energy in one kilo of gasoline.

If you prefer, 2.6 gallons of water to make the energy in one gallon of gasoline.

Note that I am assuming zero energy cost to produce hydrogen from water, and that its possible to build a hydrogen engine as efficient as a current gasoline fueled engine.

Assuming a very efficient modern engine getting 40 mpg on gasoline, thats about 15.5 mpg of water.

Did I screw up somewhere? Guyonthesubway (talk) 16:42, 21 July 2008

(UTC)

CRAP. I just saw that you did the same math already....nevermind... .Guyonthesubway (talk) 16:43, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Thushara Priyamal Edirisinghe

no original research section According to a Sri Lanka Daily News report engineer Thushara Priyamal Edirisinghe, from Athurugiriya, is powering a car by water, using an extremely low amount of electricity. The car, travelled from Christ King College, Pannipitiya, Thushara, to Anuradhapura and back on mere three litres of water.(80 km/l) Thushara claims the energy is produced by the splitting water into separate Hydrogen and Oxygen molecules using a current of barely 0.5 amperes then burning it in the engine. According to the news report Thushara claims the technology existed for 60 years and that the generator could be fixed to any petrol or diesel vehicle with suitable adjustments. Using "water" as opposed to oil that react with lubricating oil would also extend the life of the vehicle.

Thushara explained the technology behind his creation to Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka at Temple Trees Wednesday, 15 July 2008 Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka who holds portfolios of Minister of Internal Administration and Deputy Minister of Defense extended the Government’s fullest support to his efforts to introduce the water-powered car to the Sri Lankan market. The Premier also pledged to provide facilities to carry out the conversion of fuel-powered engines to water-powered ones, bank loans etc.

We need sources not cheap knee jerk original reserach page littering.

Gdewilde (talk) 03:08, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Be careful:

• My calculations above certainly constitute "Original Research".
• Original research is certainly disallowed in article space.
• I have not added my calculations into article space - this is merely commentary here in TALK space.

However, performing some simple calculations to give us some idea as to just how trustworthy our sources are is absolutely to be encouraged. If we find a book on geometry that claims that the interior angles of a triangle sum to 200 degrees - then establishing that this is not the case here in Talk space by doing some math is perfectly legitimate - what we CAN'T do is to stick our math into the article. What our research may tell us it that we should distrust that book.

In this case, there is absolutely no doubt that Edirishinghe is a fraud...no question whatever. Follow my math - tell me where I got it wrong or admit that I'm right. Facts don't lie...inventors do. I agree 100% that my math cannot be used in the article - however it DOES enable us to judge who to trust and who not to trust when it comes to reports. The article you quote from seems to mostly quote the inventor - which really only tells us what the inventor claims. It's also a primary source and we're directed to be exceedingly cautious about such sourced. It's not a peer reviewed journal and as my numbers show, they cannot have attempted any scientific verification of the things they printed there. So, we should treat the information in that newspaper with extreme caution.

As WP:OR says: If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it. - we know that the Daily Times article cannot be a reliable source to show that Edirishinghe has invented a working water fuelled car - I've proved that. So we cannot use the newspaper article to claim that...it's just not trustworthy in that regard.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:41, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

POV Assertion and facts require inline citation per WP:V.

To avoid a WP:3RR, I have taged the following sentence which must be properly referenced or removed per WP:V.:

"This article is restricted to those cars or motors which purport to extract their energy directly from water, a process which would violate the first and/or second laws of thermodynamics"

The first part of this sentence states a type of POV regarding a "certain type" of water fuelled car. The second part is a statement that requires referencing. This is because it states a fact regarding the "certain type" of water fuelled cars. Please provide proper references for the statement "a process which would violate the first and/or second laws of thermodynamics". Who said this? In what context? and reqarding which type of water fuelled cars? In 24 hours I will remove this sentence if it is not properly referenced. --CyclePat (talk) 16:43, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Note: This sentence is a type of commentary on the article itself or an "Introduction" per the structure of an "Encyclopedia. I find it however, inappropriate because of my afformentioned statement but also because it creates a type of WP:CFORK. There exists other perfectly valid water cars. By having this statement, and not being able to verify it's origins, we are forced to limit this article and can no longer expand into other types of water fuelled cars such as this japanese water car (Note: Video is Japanese) or this other Japanese water fuel car from Genepax. This, to me, is considered a type of unintentional violation of WP:NPOV which will create content forks. Essentially, having a broad label that states "all such water fuel cars violate the laws of thermal dynamics" is something that must be properly referenced. With a proper reference we then may be able to find out specifically which water fuelled cars the author of that statement was talking about. It is highly unlikely that one will find a proper, reliable reference that states all water-fuel cars violate the laws of thermodynamics. When you think about it : it's virtually impossible to evaluate every water-fuelled car. Hence, by common logic and to respect Wikipedia generally agreed upon concensus (policies), the statement should be removed because of these reasons. --CyclePat (talk) 17:05, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

The article doesn't discuss any cars that don't purport to extract their energy directly from water, so I don't see any problem with the first half of the sentence above (it's certainly not a content fork, and I fail to see how it could be POV). Whilst I don't speak Japanese (therefore have no opinion on your first link), the second link includes the text "its eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but water", so of course that would fit the criteria of this article too.

As for the second half of the sentence, whilst I appreciate that a ref may be necessary, we don't need to find a reference that explicitly refers to all water-fuelled cars, we need one that states that deriving (chemical) energy directly from water is not possible. Especially since, just as with most crackpot theories and pseudoscience, there are going to be very few serious scientists who have spent any time refuting this publicly, and therefore very little "reliable-source" material that explicitly refutes individual instances of water-fuelled cars. Per WP:UNDUE we certainly cannot remove all mention of the fact that this is indeed nonsense science (to paraphrase!). Oli Filth^(talk) 18:42, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Hello Oli Filth, we agree then that the second reference is a good item that would meet the criteria for this article. However, in light of the aforementioned problem, I still don't see how we can include this item within the article while we still have the second part of that sentence which is unreferenced (that's where we disagree). We may be leading readers to believe that the first statement regarding a study on the laws of thermodynamics (the one I'm asking for references) applies to the vehicle in question. A reference can and would most likely clarify this issue and will ensure that the article is "copy edited" according to wikipedia's policies and guidelines. We seem to agree on this issue that a reference is required. Am I correct?

Of course we could just mention that the study on the laws of thermodynamics doesn't necessarily apply to this new vehicle, but then that would original research, may not be true (because it probably would apply), and would be lacking verifiability. We would be making an assumption which is totally unreferenced. Hence, per WP:V I'm requesting a reference. Also, without a reference we are promoting a POV. Just to make it clear, the POV is because the article is forced into status quo without room for expansion into other "water fueled" cars. These other water fueled cars may actually be notable enough to even have their own article (which I may explore instead of busting my head on this POV stricken article). Nevertheless, I would like to see this article talk about japanese cars I've presented.

Finally, I agree. If we have something that says that "deriving chemical energy directly from water is not possible", then by all means put it in the article. However, please ensure it is properly attributed to the author so we know exactly what the circumstances where. Otherwise, it's not part of how wikipedia operates and should be removed upon site. One last question, if a water fueled car is such a notable subject, then surely we should be able to find one reputable source regarding this matter. --CyclePat (talk) 04:03, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

CyclePat has a VERY strange set of ideas about POV and attribution requirements - and we've run into it before and argued for 10 pages over it. You can't keep on demanding attribution for the definitions of common English words (well - you can, but we're all going to get pretty sick of it and start reverting without discussion). We're not required to prove the definition of common English words. Hence when we say that a water fuelled car would have to obtain it's energy from water we're merely expanding on the definition of the word "fuelled". When A fuels B, B gets it's energy from A...that's not POV, it's not a statement that requires attribution - it's merely the very definition of the word "fuel". Therefore any car that doesn't somehow extract energy from water is not (by the very definition of the word "fuel") a water fuelled car. For example: A car that's powered by a steam engine is fuelled by the coal that's used to heat the boiler - not by the water inside the boiler - which contributes no energy. That would NOT be a water fuelled car - it's a coal-fuelled car that happens to use water as a working fluid. We need to explain that this category of vehicle is NOT a water fuelled car in order that subsequent statements remain clear. That's not POV - its the basic meaning of a word. We need to clarify this point at the top of the article because there are many ways in which a car might APPEAR to be fuelled by water when in fact it's not. SteveBaker (talk) 19:13, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the description. A member of http://www.EVCO.ca once did a presentation on how he hooked up a 2 L pop bottle (filled with water) to his regular ICE engine air intake. As he describes it, the car would essentially mist some water into, I think he said the carburetor? Hence, his car burns a mixture of the water (or water fuel) with of course his regular fuel. Technically, this vehicle meets our current description of water-fueled car! A clearly referenced statement is necessary to show that we're not just pulling the definition of this vehicle out of our ass and to know what the author of the original though was thinking at the time he published his idea. There's always going to be many different types of inventions that exist and frankly, stereotyping them all as a violation of the laws of thermodynamics is ludicrous. Despite this, I'm willing to except the possibility that a water fueled car is in violation of the laws, however, we must have a reference! I request a reference so I can help work and expand this article. Can you please provide a reference? b.t.w. Are you trying to make up our own definition as we go along? In fact, now that you mention it, do you have an authoritative and reliable reference or definition for the term "water-fueled car"? --CyclePat (talk) 04:03, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

No, no, no! This is PRECISELY the kind of misconception that the intro to the article seeks to avoid. This system ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT meet any reasonable definition of a water fuelled car. Let me explain what's going on under the hood with these systems:

Misting a very fine spray of water into the cylinders of your car can slow down the burning of the gasoline or diesel fuel and thus save you some miles-per-gallon and perhaps give you a little more power. You do need to adjust the software in your engine management computer to make it work efficiently because the water in the spray confuses the oxygen sensor and causes the system to squirt even more gasoline into the engine, thereby making your fuel consumption WORSE - not better! So people claiming to just hang a soda bottle off their inlet manifold are either lying or kidding themselves! But this is extremely well-established technology - it's been known for at least 50 years - but it's not used in automobile engines because the resulting hot steam quickly corrodes the cylinder and exhaust systems - and also tends to sneak past the piston rings and results in water in your oil which can cause all manner of nasty problems with engine lubrication.

This is SO damaging to your engine that it's strongly recommended that you don't do it. That should come as no surprise because if it was that easy to make a gasoline engine run more efficiently, every car on the planet would be using it - and not one production car does, not even those like the Prius who's entire selling point is gas consumption efficiency. However, mere facts don't get in the way of the free-energy nuts and the "make your car run on water" fraudsters from claiming wonderous results for the technique and selling "conversion kits" that either don't work - or if they DO work, will trash your car's engine within a thousand miles. On very large engines that are designed for this kind of thing (massive diesel generators or ship engines for example), this water injection technique is already in common use - and it works very well.

Anyway...what's important for this article is that the water in these systems isn't "fuel" - it's not "burned" - it merely gets boiled to steam (thereby removing heat from the burning fuel) and then re-condenses onto the cylinder walls and into exhaust manifold. No additional energy comes from the water - it merely allows the gasoline to burn more completely. No fundamental physics principles are violated and the water is certainly not converted into H2 + O2 or "HHO gas" or anything like that - it simply boils to steam. Because the water doesn't contribute any energy to the process, it's not a "fuel" and that means those kinds of devices don't fall within the scope of this article. Far from PROVIDING energy - the water actually absorbs energy because the water in the exhaust is a lot hotter than the water in the storage tank.

That's why it is ESSENTIAL for our introduction needs to go to some pains to explain to people what we mean by "a water fuelled car" - or people like you will assume that water can indeed be a fuel - and that's exactly the kind of misunderstanding that an encyclopedia is required to avoid.

SteveBaker (talk) 05:06, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

To continue to answer the remainder of your last post: It's certainly not ludicrous to issue a BLANKET statement that ALL water fuelled cars are impossible because they ALL violate the laws of thermodynamics. We are required to give the most weight to what mainstream science says.

I'm very familiar with the science - and I can explain it to you in easy-to-understand words:

• Chemically, water is like the white ash that's left over when you completely burn a piece of wood. It's the "ashes" left over from burning hydrogen and oxygen. You can't burn ash...and you can't burn water either. There simply isn't any energy left within in the water to extract...it's already given up everything it has to give. This is not an uncommon thing - carbon dioxide (for example) is the substance you are left with when you burn carbon in oxygen...same deal - it's the result of COMPLETE combustion and it has no more energy to give.
• You can't extract energy from something that has no energy within it.
• Hence it is simply not possible to build a car that uses energy extracted from water...or to phrase that using different words with the same meaning: It's not possible to build a water-fuelled car.
• You can put energy INTO water (eg by sticking some electrodes into a tank of water and applying an electrical current) - when you do THAT, you can pull apart the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The resulting gasses have energy within them that was not present in the water - but (and here is the important bit) you had to put AT LEAST that much electrical energy into the water.

So - how do we know that no water fuelled car can ever work? Because BY DEFINITION - a water fuelled car is a car that is fuelled by water. That means (in standard English) that the energy to power the car comes from within the water - but (as mainstream chemistry has known for 150 years or more) there is simply no energy in the water to start with. So - how could a car possibly be powered by the extraction of energy from a substance that simply doesn't contain any energy? We don't need to examine how the car is claimed to work - it simply doesn't matter - there is no conceivable process to extract energy where there is no energy. This enables mainstream scientists to say - with complete confidence - that no water fuelled car will EVER be possible. Every single one of them is either a fraud or the result of a seriously self-deluded "inventor". There can be no exceptions - and we certainly don't have to carefully examine each one to know that for a fact.

SteveBaker (talk) 05:44, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I must concede regarding the POV. I noticed the article does talk about the Genepax Japanese water fueled car. I now see that a POV isn't really a big issue in this article. Though, the way it's currently written is a little weard, please except my appology and that I concede the necessity to clarify an articles content. On the other hand, regarding referencing, I still believe this article needs some improvments. I'm still requesting a reference regarding the idea that making energy from water is a violation of thermaldynamics. Can we somehow find a reference for this? Or at least agree that this important statement, which can be mis-interpreted, should have a good reference? --CyclePat (talk) 06:03, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Hello Steve, Thank you again, for the great explanation. Per yesterday's statement I must concede for now regarding the POV. I do appreciate the time you've taken to explain this. On the secondary issue however, I find it hypocritical that this article has some good references except for when we talk about the violation of the laws of thermodynamics. On top of that, that the First Law (article on thermaldynamics) doesn't even have any references. This is becoming silly, not because of me, but because of the complacency of some editors to provide material (facts) into Wikipedia's articles which are un-sourced, non-referenced and lacking proper format per Wikipedia's Copy edit guidelines. I'm attempting to generalize, and I do believe this may be applied through all of Wikipedia, but I am talking about the lack of reference per the my previous request. On top of that, you ask for my complacency or ignorance in carefully examining the know facts. This is not only an insult to Wikipedia's process but to me, an editor trying to respect the general concensus of our community guidelines and policies. One last time, can we please find a reference or remove the unsourced material? b.t.w.: If mainstream chemistry for the last 150 years says there's no energy in water, it should be quite easy to find a reference right? Thank you! --CyclePat (talk) 18:05, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

OK - so finally we are making some progress. It would indeed be nice to find a reference that says that extracting energy from water would be a violation of thermodynamic principles...but such a direct statement would be hard to find because the laws of thermodynamics are taken so much for granted in science that it is not generally necessary to mention them. The sort of thing you find (eg in our own article "Bond dissociation energy") are statements like "...an O-H bond of a water molecule (H-O-H) has 493.4 kJ/mol of bond dissociation energy, and 424.4 kJ/mol is needed to cleave the remaining O-H bond. The bond energy of the O-H bonds in water is 458.9 kJ/mol, which is the average of the values.". This means that you have to put in 458.9 Joules of energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen (actually, you get some of that back when the two hydrogen atoms form an H₂ molecule and when two oxygen atoms from different water molecules form an O₂ molecule...but let's keep things simple for now). So the fact that you need to put energy INTO the water in order to generate H2 and O2 is something that we can reference with that kind of a statement (A. I. Pavlyuchko's paper[28] would be a fine reference for that). But that didn't make any statement about extracting energy or the laws of thermodynamics. Why not? Because any scientist writing about things like bond energies is going to assume that his readers already know all that there is to know about trivial matters like the laws of thermodynamics - he's also not going to explain what a "kiloJoule" or a "mole" is - these are things that a reader is supposed to be able to figure out without the author's help.

We can also find a reference for the first law of thermodynamics easily enough (Perrot, Pierre (1998). A to Z of Thermodynamics. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-856552-6, for example)...but it's talking about a broad scientific principle - which is that in a closed system, you can't get out more energy than you put in. Any halfway reasonable scientist can put two and two together and say that knowing the bond dissociation energy of water is a positive number (ie it takes energy to crack open a water molecule) and knowing you don't get out more energy than you put in (because of the first law of thermodynamics) then you OBVIOUSLY can't use water as a fuel. That's such a blindingly obvious statement that it doesn't have to be explicitly stated and nobody who understands the relevent topics is ever going to debate it. Hence, nobody is likely to have written down this fact in a book anywhere. It's like asking me to find a book on mathematics that explicitly states that 123+321=444 - you'd have to be AMAZINGLY lucky to find a reference for that exact fact because it's assumed as a natural result of the rules of basic arithmetic. You might find a book somewhere that says that 52+11=63 - but that's just a matter of luck that this particular sum was chosen as an example. Hence, we MIGHT find also get lucky and find a reference that says that Carbon dioxide can't be used as a fuel because of the laws of thermodynamics...but it's exceedingly unlikely that we'll just happen to find one that picks water as an example...in fact, it's pretty unlikely that you'll find one that talks about thermodynamics in the context of bond dissociation energies in general...it's just OBVIOUS from the basic principles.

Now, we could certainly link to Perrot & Pierre for a discussion of the laws of thermodynamics and also to Pavlyuchko for the bond dissociation energy thing - but if I do that then you're going to accuse me of WP:SYNTHESIS and we're back where we started. The fact is that Wikipedia's rules - if interpreted as strictly as you are attempting to do here - fall apart at the seams for articles of a scientific or mathematical nature. The general rule is that where things are widely accepted as mainstream science, we can treat these as statements that are obvious enough to not need referencing. WP:REF says "Wikipedia's verifiability policy requires attribution for direct quotes and for material that is likely to be challenged.". Statements that entail the laws of thermodynamics should not be challenged in a scientific context - so they don't really need references.

Sadly, the intersection of science and fringe theorists results in even the most fundamental science being challenged by a bunch of bozo's who know nothing about the subject. These kinds of issues are described in great detail in WP:FRINGE and in the seemingly endless debates on the associated talk page. I strongly suggest you go there to debate this point because there is nothing more that can usefully be said about it here. SteveBaker (talk) 19:30, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Fussion power is impractival

"but fusion power plants of any scale remain impractical" is a WP:POV. A reference is required for this statement. --CyclePat (talk) 06:15, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Please peruse Fusion_reactorYilloslime (t) 06:36, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

CyclePat - your time would be better spent looking for references than uselessly decorating articles with 'fact' tags. It is really very easy to go look at other articles in Wikipedia that deal with the question that you purport to doubt - you'll almost always find references there that will fill your 'gap'. In this case (as Yilloslime points out), a quick trip to Fusion reactor leads you to: An editorial in New Scientist magazine opined that "if commercial fusion is viable, it may well be a century away.".

There is really nothing more annoying for serious editors than someone who merely sits on the sidelines and nit-picks at irrelevencies without adding any actual value to the article. Covering an article with these tags makes it MUCH harder for our poor readers to read and throws doubt on a fact that is truly beyond dispute. (Do you REALLY doubt that there are no practical fusion reactors? Can you point to ANY fusion reactors that produce useful sustained power?). In areas where there is no likelyhood of doubt we are not even required to produce a reference. Wikipedia's guidelines for referencing (WP:REF) says that - right in the very first paragraph: "Wikipedia's verifiability policy requires attribution for direct quotes and for material that is likely to be challenged." Who in their right mind is going to challenge a statement that there are no practical fusion plants when there are in fact NO PRACTICAL FUSION PLANTS.

Worse still, (in general) it's almost impossible to find references that prove a negative (we got lucky in this case). If I were to write "There are no mauve elephants in antarctica" into an article, you'd stick a 'fact' tag on it. How could that fact ever be disputed? Where would you ever find a reference explaining the lack of purple pachiderms in polar provinces? Really - you are (once again) pushing attribution requirement FAR beyond where Wikipedia requires them to be - and you aren't actually contributing ANYTHING of value to the acticle.

This behavior is extremely annoying! So, PLEASE, either get of your butt - take a trip to the library and start digging out references for things you genuinely doubt - or let experienced editors get on with the work of writing an encyclopedia and only use 'fact' tags (and their relatives) where they are truly required for controversial issues - and even then, only after you've first done 'due diligence' in trying to find a reference yourself.

Add a tag when:

1. The statement in question is a direct quote - or a fact likely to be challenged...AND...
2. You have diligently searched both online and in a decent library or book store and failed to come up with a reference yourself.

If either (1) or (2) is not the case then you should not be deploying fact tags.

SteveBaker (talk) 11:20, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Nuclear energy prospects.

The form of the article today includes several sentences about the issue of getting fusion power out of water (thereby, presumably, avoiding the issues of there being no energy in a water molecule). I think this section unnecessarily clouds the issues - and perhaps even leaves the less scientifically savvy reader with the gleam of a possibility for water as a fuel.

Running a car on a nuclear reactor is a difficult enough proposal - but the idea that such a nuclear reactor might run on pure water - is out there in crazy la-la-land again. This is really just as impossible a claim as it is to extract energy from water by other means.

Firstly, we know that a fission reactor cannot run on light elements - it needs stuff that's way down at the bottom of the periodic table - uranium, plutonium, etc. Heavy atoms that are just ready to split in two at any moment and chuck out some neutrons as they go. Anything lighter than Iron is simply unable to undergo fission. So fission reactors based around water as a fuel are a definite non starter at any scale - let alone small enough for a car.

So that leaves only Fusion reactors. Aside from the issue that humanity doesn't yet have the technology to build fusion reactors that run for any significant amount of time and produce any net energy - there are still some fundamental problems. The only elements that are likely to fuse with any ease at all are the ones at the top of the periodic table. Hydrogen is certainly a possibility - but getting any kind of fusion reaction based around oxygen is going to require vast containment forces - such as could only really be found at the center of a dying stars' gravitational well.

This means that any hypothetical fusion reactor would first have to split water into hydrogen and oxygen...toss the oxygen out into the atmosphere and then fuse the hydrogen atoms together to make helium. Personally - I'd describe this as a hydrogen-powered fusion car - the fact that we started with water is really an irrelevence. You'd get so much energy out of a very little amount of hydrogen (a 50MegaTon hydrogen bomb contains only a few grams of hydrogen) that it truly wouldn't be worth the effort to carry a water tank and an electrolyser+battery on board the vehicle.

Furthermore, for most fusion reactions involving hydrogen, we'd need Deuterium or Tritium - you'd need a truly impressive array of machinery to extract enough of those rare isotopes of hydrogen from a few hundred tons of water.

It's truly not remotely likely that we'll see fusion reactors working with water either in power plants or cars - the whole idea is about as far off the charts as the other ways of getting energy from water.

I'd also suggest that the idea of using fusion power for cars is 'non-notable' and doesn't deserve even a mention here.

SteveBaker (talk) 00:29, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Remember you have to keep your audience in mind. I agree that fusion power is not a practical way to run a car, but then I don't expect we'll see any designs involving a tokamak in a dune buggy. Remember that the same people who believe in cars that run on water tend to believe in cold fusion. In fact, I'm personally amazed we haven't seen more cars that claim to run by cold fusion. Now even though cold fusion appears not to work, it doesn't really violate the laws of physics, at least not in the way extracting energy from electrolysis does. So in the interest of strict accuracy, I think it's reasonable to leave the qualifier about the hypothetical possibility of energy from fusion, but I certainly don't think it warrants a whole section.Prebys (talk) 12:51, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

That's somewhat my point though. In my explanation above - I carefully didn't say anything about what CAUSES the fusion to happen. But even if you believe the increasingly nutty cold-fusion proponents - those Cold Fusion experiments all revolved around heavy water (²H₂0). That is to say water in which the hydrogen atoms had been replaced by deuterium. As I explained above, deuterium is much easier to fuse in a fusion reactor than regular hydrogen. Even the wildest of cold fusion proponents recognise that you can't do cold fusion with tap water.

Deuterium isn't exactly rare - although it's hard to obtain as a pure sample. One in 6400 naturally occurring hydrogen atoms is a deuterium atom. However, heavy water consists of TWO deuterium atoms plus one oxygen atom. Water containing one deuterium and one regular hydrogen molecule is 'semi-heavy water' and that's no good for cold fusion. So only one in 41 million water molecules is true heavy water (6400x6400=41M) molecule. Worse still, you can't separate out those water molecules because water is an ionic fluid and the hydrogens keep jumping around between different oxygen atoms. So what might be a one-in-41-million heavy water molecule plus 40,999,999 regular water molecules one moment becomes two one-in-6400 semi-heavy water molecules plus 40,999,998 regular water molecules a few nanoseconds later. Heavy water molecules are spectacularly rare - but they come and go at random times.

So separating out heavy water from tap water by some sort of direct means is really a non-starter. The stuff is actually manufactured though: You first have to electrolyse a bazillion tons of regular water - extract the hydrogen and vent the oxygen off someplace else (so no silly Stanley Meyer water fuel cells that mix up the hydrogen with the oxygen). Then you have to centrifuge the tons and tons of hydrogen gas to separate out the heavier atoms of deuterium. But this requires many, MANY centrifuge stages to progressively increase the percentage of deuterium in the mix until it's sufficiently pure. Then (and only then) can you introduce some oxygen and make heavy water that doesn't turn back into semi-heavy water because of the presence of regular hydrogen. This is a MASSIVE industrial undertaking - not something that runs in the trunk of your car!

The conclusion of all of this is that even if we somehow concede that cold fusion is possible (which mainstream science truly no longer does) - even if you could go to your local hardware store and buy a "Mr Fusion" reactor the size of a coffee machine, then a "water fuelled car" is no closer to becoming likely. A car that uses fusion of tap water is doubly impossible because:

1. It's impossible because cold fusion doesn't work...AND...
2. It's impossible because extracting heavy water from tap water is a massive industrial-scale enterprise.

SteveBaker (talk) 14:58, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

This article's main concern is the impossible so it seems appropriate to me to include your bulleted points. Above CyclePat wanted all energy in water accounted for. Clearly he needs to take a general chemistry class before editing this subject matter because right now he knows just enough to get himself in trouble. Thats your point Steve about confusing the message but I don't think ignoring it is the way to go. We might as well deal with things like nuclear energy as well as ambient heat content up front. We want to be clear about things so I say rework it until it sounds good to you. Steve You don't quite have the industrial separation of deutrium right. I'm pretty sure its an exchange process between H2O and H2S prior to electrolysis. Columbia University has/had the patent on the technology. This process isn't on wikipedia right now so I'll research it and write it up.--OMCV (talk) 18:45, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Does this look familiar to anyone?

In my hunt for references, I came upon this most excellent article that backs up every word we said in our article...every...single...word:

http://thefinancialdaily.com/Articles/ViewArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=2810

Can I use this as a reference?

 :-)

SteveBaker (talk) 02:50, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Well... I'm trying to open the link and it doesn't work for some odd reason. If it's a mirror image of wikipedia's article on Watef-fuelled car, (LOL) I think (quizical look) we would need another source! (You did after all say "every... single... word:". hehehe! Seriously, though, if the articl in question you are trying to present does backup what we say in our wikipedia article then we should most definatelly have a reference... if not at least a further reading! I'm actually trying to find references to substantiate this bloody idea of violations of thermodynamics and it's frustrating. As you can tell, specially with my somewhat, evern perhaps anoying and pragmatic approach. :-) Thank you, again for you patience. Can you try posting that url again but using http://www.tinyurl.com. Thank you.--CyclePat (talk) 03:09, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

No - I'm joking. It's a word-for-word rip of this article as it was a month or two ago...with a 'by-line' that says that one of their staff journalists wrote it. They didn't give credit to Wikipedia or abide by the GFDL - so they are in breach of our copyrights. I'm not going to use it as a reference! I sent them a rude email telling them that they are "busted" - and to please take down the article immediately. I guess they did exactly that. SteveBaker (talk) 04:44, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Nope - the link works OK for me. Try it again? SteveBaker (talk) 04:45, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I've noticed plenty of "encyclopedia" sites that rip Wikipedia articles verbatim, but adding an author was a nice touch. My guess is that "Syed Abul Abbas Naqvi" was a summer intern who was charged to write an article on this topic and figured his boss was a Luddite.Prebys (talk) 06:17, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Yep. To be clear though, it's perfectly OK to take a copy of one, some or all of Wikipedia's articles, images, sounds, etc and stick them up on your own website - even with advertising. When we talk of "Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia" we are talking of "Free" in the sense of "freedom to copy". However, if you do make a copy, you have to adhere to the terms of the GFDL license - which includes giving Wikipedia credit for the article and offering other people the right to make copies from YOUR website too. Many of the sites that quote or copy Wikipedia do it perfectly legally. The article in "The Financial Daily" doesn't do that - so it's a clear copyright violation. SteveBaker (talk) 11:50, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah...here is Mr Naqvi's facebook entry: [29] ... the photo alone speaks volumes. Disappointingly, the quality of his writing in the only other article he's written for The Financial Daily [30] is not quite up to the encyclopeadic standard of his excellent work on Oxyhydrogen. SteveBaker (talk) 12:05, 1 August 2008 (UTC)