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Written by Ed Howes
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Wednesday, 27 September 2006 |
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Word Count: 1218 Water - The Perfect Fuel
As a freshman in high school, I failed chemistry class due to an extreme
disinterest in the entire subject. I do recall a demonstration in which the
teacher hooked a large one and a half volt battery to a glass and wire
electrolyzer that transformed water into separated hydrogen and oxygen. I would
later learn that commercial hydrogen and oxygen producers also used this method
in an inefficient manner that requires more energy than the fuel produced can
generate through combustion.
In the late eighties I would learn that a boy genius in California learned to
make hydrogen from water efficiently with a twelve volt battery and standard
auto electrical system, during the 1970s. Around 1990, my machinist neighbor
built a hydrogen generator that did not work due to defects in the plans the boy
genius had drawn up in prison when he was no longer a boy.
My neighbor was not interested in correcting the defect when it was discovered
and I was only a bit disappointed. My father was a hobby style inventor and he
gave me a good idea for a cheaper and much more effective 12 volt hydrogen
generator. I never got around to building it and decided there was no point in
separating the oxygen and the hydrogen after splitting the water.
Because the hydrogen and oxygen have opposite electrical charges, they readily
recombine as a compound I call hydrox. The man who discovered this gas and
fooled with it to make underwater welders and cutting torches, named the gas
after himself, so hydrox is also known as Brown’s gas. Simply put, hydrox is an
oxygenated fuel, which means it burns hotter and faster than a non oxygenated
fuel. In WWII the Germans used hydrogen peroxide as a liquid rocket fuel. H2O2
is a super oxygenated fuel, highly caustic, corrosive and dangerous to work
with. Hydrox, however, is no more corrosive than water. Flat plate electrodes
one sixteenth inch apart, made of stainless steel will last a long time if clean
water is used. Clean water can be had from relatively inexpensive filters which
can be carried on a vehicle. Having a good filter can also help supply one with
potable water when clean water no longer flows from the pipes at home.
Big Energy talks only about a hydrogen economy. Using expensive technology to
manufacture a product that can be made inexpensively by anyone who wants it. The
idea of water power is far too democratic to control. The rain falls both on the
just and the unjust. If people put water in their fuel tanks and make enough
fuel with a few watts of electricity that then makes kilowatts or megawatts of
power in a combustion engine, who will buy hydrogen at fueling stations? Most
Americans buy water cheaply compared to its value because of its relative
abundance. In the U.S. it is usually cheaper to buy than to collect, store or
drill for. Dry nations only need water pipelines from neighboring wet nations.
Seaside countries can desalinate and filter sea water and pipe where needed. How
can the corporate fascists gain control of water? Only by convincing everyone we
need their new technology.
Water is to democratic energy access as the internet is to democratic
discussion, information distribution and personal activism. This fact will be
concealed for as long as possible and a few of us will be wise to the game.
Without water we cannot live long. It exists in altered forms with special
properties. When we know what there is to know about water, we will be wiser
than any who have come before.
Engineers forge ahead building hydrogen fuel cells. These cells apparently
generate electricity by recombining hydrogen and oxygen. This means that hydrox
will not be suitable as fuel cell fuel. However, simple electrolysis costs
little more to collect the two gasses separately and send them to the
appropriate ports of the fuel cell. Thus, water can power these fuel cells as
easily as combustion engines of many types, including jet and rocket engines. It
is also likely from basic chemistry that steam is more easily electrolyzed than
liquid water. Temperature rises speed chemical reactions. Steam is quite easy to
create with combustion engines, which are the space heaters for the great
outdoors.
I often wonder why greenhouse gasses are so readily blamed for global warming,
while billions of super space heaters are seldom accused of much contribution.
Fuel cells would be a fine solution to all this combustion heat. How many
volcanoes would we need to equal the heat of transportation every day? Are we
not burning up the planet one day at a time? Most especially for the sake of
corporate profit. Why do we so willingly play the game of don’t blame me, I just
do as I’m told?
When water is our fuel, the environment does not suffer crisis when a spill
occurs on a highway, an ocean or a storage container ruptures. When water is our
fuel, old ships can run aground, break up in a storm and not destroy hundreds of
miles of coastline and wildlife environment. When water is our fuel, cars do not
burst into flame during rear end collisions. The great betrayers of humanity
have known what I am saying for more than a hundred years, and don’t want us to
have water power. Is it not time for some changes? Shall we choke ourselves and
our children for corporate profits? What is our reward?
Hydrogen and hydrox are both gaseous fast burn fuels, just as vaporized alcohol,
gasoline and diesel; except even faster burning with much greater power
potential, also producing the usual oxides of nitrogen, unless in fact such
oxides mostly form in slow burn engines due to the long burn time. In this case
we can expect greatly reduced oxides of nitrogen with water fuel, as well. When
we make water fuel at home we can operate stoves and heaters and combustion or
fuel cell electric generators and make electricity for a few pennies per
kilowatt. Do you imagine the electric utilities will be happy they do not need
to purchase more generating capacity? Will they want us to supply them at
wholesale prices? Could developing countries adopt water power and internet
connections to vault ahead to the 21st Century? Is clean, cheap power a huge
threat to all the traditional power? Of course it is. That is why the science
savior has not provided us with this miracle of the 19th Century. How does it
feel to be one or two centuries behind existing technology? Is it not shameful
and embarrassing? Humiliating?
The corporate scientists, engineers and energy experts will continue telling us
it is impossible to make hydrogen as cheaply as some garage and basement
scientists and engineers have been doing for decades. The sad thing is we will
just say OK, we believe you. There is no such thing as conspiracy except in the
minds of radicals.
Ed Howes sought and found. Knocked and entered. Now he sees things differently.
To see more of what he sees, please visit
http://www.justanotherview.com or do an author search here at Webraydian.
Readers grow: wiser, better, faster.
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