[Vwdiesel] Heads up

[pmdolan at sasktel.net]

The story you heard about the "water engine" was definitely big time BS.

It takes energy to separate the hydrogen and oxygen.  To do it by heating means going to the fourth state of matter - plasma - where the electrons are also stripped from the atoms.  That is way, WAY past the melting temperature of ceramics and an extremely high energy state (takes a lot of energy to produce and maintain).

Then, there is the matter of energy balance.  When you "burn" the hydrogen to make water, you are just putting back together the bonds that you ripped apart to make elemental H and O gasses.  The most you could ever recover in a perfectly efficient system would be what you put in.  Of course, that is not possible since there are mechanical and thermal losses galore (otherwise, you could easily make a perpetual motion machine - which is what your story really is about).

As for acetylene as a motor fuel: well, you COULD use it, but it cost so much more than a liquid hydrocarbon to produce, and is so much more difficult to handle (very unstable - would have a really poor octane rating), why would you want to??  You could use ANY hydrocarbon in an internal combustion engine, but it is simplest to conclude that since such chemistry is extremely well known, as it the economics of same, if was a viable product for motor fuel you would be able to buy it for that purpose.  You can't.

Oh, the material that you saw being added to water to make a gas was calcium carbide, and the resulting gas in both cases would be acetylene.  This is why you can't completely dismiss the urban legend of adding a tablet to a tank of water and driving off - except that it would be a really big tablet, and might take a while to get enough acetylene to run an engine - which would likely run like a knocking POS and only for a very short time.

----- Original Message -----
From: William J Toensing <toensing at wildblue.net>
Date: Tuesday, December 26, 2006 4:54 pm
Subject: [Vwdiesel] Heads up

> I heard a story several years ago about  an engine that would run 
> on water. I question whether it is true but repeat it as best I 
> can. The engine supposedly was made out of ceramics with no 
> cooling system, so would run very hot, so hot it would separate 
> the hydrogen from the oxygen, which they would then burn in the 
> engine. The problem was they were unable to figure out how to 
> throttle the engine.
> I also have heard the old "urban legend" about the person who 
> would drive in to a gas station, fill his gas tank with water, 
> drop a pill in the gas tank & drive away. However, when the auto 
> was in its infancy it used acetylene lamps for lighting. Acetylene 
> was made by dropping some substance (don't recall what) into water 
> to make a flammable gas. Why couldn't a car be made to run on this 
> gas? I also recall a toy cannon I had as a kid (and still have) in 
> which you put a small amount of water in the cannon, then a small 
> amount of  "bauxite", I think it was called, in the rear of the 
> cannon. As it turned it dropped the bauxite into the water which 
> produced a flammable gas. You then hit a button which would cause 
> a flint to spark inside the cannon, which would then go boom. Why 
> wouldn't a car run on this gas?
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