Burn saltwater? Radio waves? Snake oil?

You could certainly use electrolysis to extract hydrogen from water, but the energy investment is obscenely massive.

Magic radio waves... uhhh.

My understanding of electrolysis is that you can get no more energy out of the burned hydrogen than you spent separating the hydrogen from the water in the first place, since the byproduct of combustion is more water. The unknown here is why is salt required? Maybe he's somehow burning sodium.

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Original post by smr A coworker sent me this ">video of a guy who claims to have discovered a way to burn saltwater. He uses some magic radio waves to "release the hydrogen" from the water and burn it. It seems too good to be true to me. Can this work?

No, for the reasons you've identified. In terms of "low energy state", you can't really get much lower than salt water.

Also of note is that there are some species of water-borne algae that can release small amounts of hydrogen as a byproduct of their respiration process.

However, you'd certainly notice that.

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Original post by smr My understanding of electrolysis is that you can get no more energy out of the burned hydrogen than you spent separating the hydrogen from the water in the first place, since the byproduct of combustion is more water.

You could electrolyze heavy water, and then fusion the resulting deuterium... [wink]

Seriously though, splitting water molecules by some kind of wavelength and phase adjusted electromagnetic radioation is probably possible. But as always, you can't get more chemical energy out of burning hydrogen than what you put into splitting it. Regardless of the splitting method, you always have to overcome the same bond energy. Otherwise, you'd have physcially impossible perpetual energy.

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Original post by smr My understanding of electrolysis is that you can get no more energy out of the burned hydrogen than you spent separating the hydrogen from the water in the first place, since the byproduct of combustion is more water. The unknown here is why is salt required? Maybe he's somehow burning sodium.

I once heard (I think it was back in school) that water by itself is not a good electricity conductor, what does conduct electricity in the water is the salt it contains, therefore salt water would be optimal for electrolysis.

I might be dead wrong here though.

I once managed to get hydrogen and oxygen out of water using electrolysis with a couple of carbon rods from 2 discarded D batteries, though a nice experiment, the amount of the gases produced was quite insignificant, but then again, I was too chicken to use a 120v wall outlet directly and just used 12v out of a transformer.

Edit: Wouldn't this be the same as microwaving the water next to a flame (for ignition)? thats the Idea I got after watching the

">second video

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Original post by Kwizatz I once managed to get hydrogen and oxygen out of water using electrolysis with a couple of carbon rods from 2 discarded D batteries, though a nice experiment, the amount of the gases produced was quite insignificant, but then again, I was too chicken to use a 120v wall outlet directly and just used 12v out of a transformer.

When I was a kid, I almost leveled our barn (for the third or fourth time, although the other times were by *ahem* malfunctioning electric arc experiments) by doing something like that on a slightly larger scale... I used a barrel full of saturated salt water with two electrodes connected to a Villard cascade, which was in turn connected to a 380V outlet. It produced a *significant* amount of hydrogen, and just as significant amounts of highly toxic chlorine gas... I let it run for a few hours and try to capture the H2 in various ways (which mostly failed). My parents were not too happy about it... Fortunately, hydrogen is really volatile and disperses quickly. I would probably have died instantaneously, had that thing exploded.

Ah, the memories of almost-Darwin Awards... [grin]

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Original post by smr My understanding of electrolysis is that you can get no more energy out of the burned hydrogen than you spent separating the hydrogen from the water in the first place, since the byproduct of combustion is more water. The unknown here is why is salt required? Maybe he's somehow burning sodium.

Saw something on the discovery channel once about making coffee hotter than boiling point. They used salt water in the microwave to make the water hotter than the kettle. The salt could get a lot hotter than the water can alone for some reason I don't remember.

sounds similar to these 'magic waves'.

The superheated water in a microwave thing is a byproduct of the way that it's heated. If you superheat it, and then give the glass a good knock (to dislodge any bubbles) then it insta-boils. In theory.

Speaking of fusion, if they're going to name two starship parts after Dr. Bussard in 2300

">this is why.

adding salt raises the boiling point by changing the chemical composition of the mixture. sorta like how oil has a higher boiling point than water

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Original post by TheUnbeliever The superheated water in a microwave thing is a byproduct of the way that it's heated. If you superheat it, and then give the glass a good knock (to dislodge any bubbles) then it insta-boils. In theory.

It's because the gas needs a surface to form bubbles on. In a smooth glass container in a microwave, it is easier - although rare - for this to happen. It's funny though; it actually happened to my girlfriend last weekend. She was boiling water in the microwave to make jello. When she put the jello mix in the cup the water erupted. There was strawberry jello juice all over. Luckily she didn't get burned.

Lousy entropy. Always screwing with my gimmicky science tricks.

According to a discussion on another forum, the flame is most likely from burning Sodium.

This is actually a pretty easy trick to do - I wrote a paper on it in school. (The assignment was to write a paper on cooking. Being a smartass, I wrote a paper on "How to Burn Water".)

Basically, you take two physically separate tanks of water, and bridge them using cardboard soaked in some kind of saline solution (I can't recall the specifics). As Kwizatz noted, this is because pure water is a fairly bad conductor. The sodium ions help increase the conductivity.

Then, you drop one electrode into each tank, apply current, and get electrolysis. Because of some goofy chemistry gimmick which I also do not recall, all the hydrogen ends up coming off one of the electrodes, while oxygen comes off the other. Put a balloon or something over the tank that emits hydrogen to capture it, then wait for a while until you get a decent volume of gas. Apply heat source, watch a quick spurt of flame, et voila.

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Original post by ApochPiQ Because of some goofy chemistry gimmick which I also do not recall, all the hydrogen ends up coming off one of the electrodes, while oxygen comes off the other.

It's because of the way the water molecule is constructed. The hydrogen ions are positively charged because they lose an electron to the oxygen ion, which is negatively charged because of the electrons it gains from the hydrogen in order to fill its valence shell. Hence, when you split them apart, the hydrogen should be attracted to the negative electrode and the oxygen to the positive electrode.

Did anyone here see the recent show on Discovery Channel called "Building the Future"? One of the most recent episodes covered the issue of water and one of the segments featured a novel approach to desalinization that involved using the air currents that circulate up the sides of a building or some such. I got a phone call at that point and wasn't able to catch the details. I was hoping that maybe someone else here saw it and remembers enough to point me to info on the www.