Survey: Can a Car Run on Water?

Come on folks, get yourself an education so you aren't open to every scam that shows up.

Water can be used as a storage medium for energy, but needs a source of power to make energy.

steam needs heat
hydrolysis needs another chemical added to the water, or an electric current added to the water

There is no free lunch.
Every "this car runs on water" story is a scam.

Why is this even a survey? It's an insult to Tree-Hugger readers' intelligence. You might as well ask "is telekinesis real?" or "will teleporting be possible one day?"

How about adding "Can't now, never will, and the entire water-car field should just get lost and die in a corner so the rest of us can get on with REAL solutions" as an answer!

I won't call it a complete insult to intelligence because not everyone on Treehugger has a background in science so many have chosen the third "maybe" option, even though that's not how energy works, it is said so often people think it might be possible (say it often enough until it's true!).

There's two downsides I see to this, one is that it shows that large portion (according to the way the poll is going) of even the people at Treehugger aren't scientifically informed and the other is currently the poll shows:

Options
1) 48% - 84 votes
2) 25% - 44 votes
3) 46% - 80 votes
4) 5% - 9 votes

That's a grand total of 122% and the percentages are off as well. Voting system isn't going so hot :p

i can honestly say i chose the maybe option because i have no background to base a decision on, but i lean toward no. what little i do understand of the science, it just doesn't seem possible. . . Maybe water can be integrated into some sort of system which would reduce the fuel or energy needs of a vehicle, but water as fuel? i don't think so.

rehashing old posts - not enough hot enviro news today?

This was quashed last week, with obviously no way to get energy out of water without forcing it (which means energy comes first, then water is broken down for use). You don't need to even have a high school diploma to understand that.

Nice though to bring up more controversy to a dead subject, but goes to show that most people here are motivated by emotions not by facts, which well represents the environmental group (and this website) as a whole...

Actually there is a tremendous amount of energy stored in water in the form of chemical bonds, electrical bond, neclear force, etc, etc. The pictured car simply uses a catalyst to release Hydrogen from the water. You don't need an exotic material, just aluminum. As soon as water touches aluminum it releases hydrogen but the reaction usually stops almost immediately because a corrosion type film forms rapidly on the surface of the aluminum. If you mix the aluminun with another material(which is what Genepax did) the reaction will continue for a much longer period.

The real question is how long the catalyst lasts and how much does it cost to replace. I have worked in machine shops for 32 years and they produce a massive amount of aluminum chips. We recieve a very small token amount of money for the chips by recycling companies but if you take all the aluminum chips from all the machine shops in the country and manufacture these pellets for the system like Genepax uses you could power a lot of cars and the reaction leaves you with Alumina which is what the manufacturers mine many tons of earth to obtain a few hundred pounds of to manufacture aluminum in the first place. Sounds like a good recycling system to me.

The simply answer is no. You can't burn water. You can't get electrical energy out of it. You could react it with something else, like hydride, to release energy, but the energy comes from the thing you're reacting it with, not the water. Same goes for hydrolysis: you can turn water into hydrogen and oxygen, but you have to put in energy from somewhere (which is why hydrogen is for energy storage, not energy production), and you can't even break even (since any transformation from one energy form to another involves some loss to the environment, usually in the form of heat), though you can come reasonably close.

A more nuanced answer would say yes, but not realistically. After all, at high enough temperatures the hydrogen and oxygen would dissociate, the hydrogen would fuse like it does in the sun, and poof- massive amounts of energy. The odds of doing this in a car are zero, however, at least for the next century or so. We can't even generate a self sustaining fusion reaction using deuterium (which is much easier than ordinary hydrogen) in a big reactor, let alone an energy-producing hydrogen fusion reaction small enough and safe enough to be put in a car.
Let's speculate even more: if there turns out to be an energetically cheap way to make antimatter (seems unlikely with the science we know today, but weirder discoveries have happened on occasion), we could react it with the water (or anything else- why we would choose water I have no idea) to recover 100% of the the E=mc^2 rest mass energy.
Again, don't hold your breath for this sci-fi stuff. IF it is possible to do in a manner that results in a net gain of usable energy, and IF i can be made safe and compact enough to use in a small vehicle, and these are big ifs, the odds of it happening this century are extremely low.

If we want to do better with our transportation, we need more efficient vehicles (which we have, in the form of feet, bikes, and trains, or have a strategy to get, in the form of hybrid cars, PHEV, EV, and such) that use different sources of energy (which we know how to get, in the form of nuclear, wind, and solar, each of which is more abundant than fossil fuels anyway). So forget water. It isn't an energy source. And with global warming-induced droughts already starting to occur, we're going to need all the fresh water we can desalinate (as existing freshwaters sources are depleted or cease to renew themselves) anyway.

Water is quite stable and to bring it to a reactive form takes more energy than you will then get out of it. That's super basic, but all of those who've never studied physics and chemistry will make up stories about how "laws of science are made to be broken!".

Sure they are, but you can't just claim that without first SHOWING via reproducible experiment that you can break that law. AFTER you've done that, then we can talk about breaking laws. But wishful thinking won't make a car go.

this survey could also be called "do you have a clue about thermodynamics" ?

I'm sure there is a majority of people that don't.
But that doesn't make them right.

I just lost a lot of respect for the critical thinking abilities of treehuggers.

It's possible.

Why can't we try? We've tried airplanes, and people thought they were crazy, but we want another type of car, and all of a sudden we are tree-hugging lunitics?

We can at least try.

A lot of people take the Keep And Open Mind mantra a wee bit too far.

I say this can't work as described and this is a giant hoax like the thousands of other free energy hoaxes. I tend not to believe things that go fundamentally against current scientific dogma without silly things like proof or at the very least, detailed explanations on how it works. If it does work, I will be wrong. Oh well.

My favorite thing about the comments are the people who say things like... but just imagine if it were true! Ahh dreamers. You've gotto love them. What if there was anti-gravity. Imagine how that would effect things!!!

You just blew my mind man.

I think if water gets used for cars then soon everyone would run out of water to drink, use for showers, and so on. I think it is a great idea except for the flaw.

It is a DEFINITE yes!

I am not sure if a car can run solely on water, but I personally have a vehicle that we retrofitted to run of of distilled water and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) along with gasoline. (hydrogen fuel cell)

I have consistently seen a 50% increase in my fuel economy. ( I have a subaru outback)

The best part is that anyone with basic mechanical skills, a Haynes manual and about $100 can do it too.

check into it yourself. I think it is worth it. http://water4gas.com/2008.htm

Although I haven't had the opportunity to determine if it has long term adverse effects, I at least and saving at the pump and stickin' it to the oil man. ;)

Having a degree in chemistry and working in the feild my entire career, I know that the laws of thermodynamics tell me using electricity from the car's generator to breakdown water and then recombine it to power the car is not even a zero sum game since so much is lost in inefficeintcies. Gotta go, theres a rainbow out here I have to chase...anyone want to joing me...there's a pot of gold at the end!

Having a degree in chemistry and working in the feild my entire career, I know that the laws of thermodynamics tell me using electricity from the car's generator to breakdown water and then recombine it to power the car is not even a zero sum game since so much is lost in inefficeintcies. Gotta go, theres a rainbow out here I have to chase...anyone want to joing me...there's a pot of gold at the end!

Apparently some readers can't get around the concept of water as fuel. What burns is not water itself but the Hydrogen in the water molecule after being separated from the oxygen molecule. Hydrogen is extremely explosive, more than enough to ignite in the combustion chamber of your car engine and cause it to run! A simple on-board device can do this. It may sound too good to be true but it's a very real and simple solution to the world's energy needs both in individual small scale and industrial large scale. This is a real and most practical solution. What are we waiting for?

Water is already burned Hydrogen. To unburn it takes energy, as electricity or in a refined reactant. It's not a catalyst because it is consumed.

The reason why people are confused is there is a valid system called water injection that turns ICE into hybrid gas/steam engines.

ICE engines turn most of their energy into heat and then use a radiator to get rid of it. What water (or air) injection does is force that heat to do work against the piston and go out the tailpipe instead of the radiator. This does reduce fuel consumption but it increases corrosion with water and it can never replace all of the hydrocarbon fuel.

Up though the 70s when people still worked on their own cars, almost every mechanic knew about these things but today's practical education is weak.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_injection_(engines)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_stroke_engine

Can a car run on water?...It'll sink...DB

I don't know if it can actually work but the japanese presentation seemed pretty serious and they have a website introducing their technology to the public. Why would they do so if it did not work? Also, those saying that they are just trying to lure in investors probably have a biased view of investors if they think that they would invest in a technology without checking how it works. Also, I have been working on building a hydrogen reactor of my own for a while unsuccessfully, unfortunately. However, the reason that keeps me going is that I understand that free energy "systems" running mostly on water already exist. They are called plants (or algae for the purists). Moreover, I might not know much about thermodynamics but I do understand that water has a spirit and that ultimately, living spirits are a form of energy. Now, I know the reaction of so many and I am ready to take the criticism but I would like them to take a look at the impressive works of Victor Schauberger before they completely reject the possibility that water be used to power cars one day. Additionally, please take a look at the studies of Jacques Benveniste about the memory of water explaining the efficiency of homeopathic dilutions and you might realize that water still holds so many secrets that we cannot simply reject something new concerning its ability just by relying on our acquired knowledge. Genius only exists in questionning.

stanley meyer(rip), and other brave souls...willing to think for themselves(and maybe even a little research and tinkering). We here on earth miss ya

ok now please let me put my two cents in. You know i keep reading it is not posable to get a car to run off water now yall tell me have you done it to your car yet??? my car had one, yes had one had i had a reck and it blew it up, but stock on my 97 ford tarus i was getting about 18 miles to the gallon on interstate then i found the hho cell so i built one my self i was getting 54 miles to the gallon after i put it in i can see that running just a half gallon jar of water and bakeing soda works. chevy has said there selfs that they have made a car run off of water and said we will never see it in this life. who says that is not reasonable that it could run off strait water. i worked at auto zone for over a year and have seen so many people build one and get better results then me. Water is 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen which is explosive if i have to reminde you in its gas state... now i say wither you belive me or not i dont care but if you have not built a motor your self and have seen how a motor works then don't say any thing about a car that just might run off strait water. i nearly lost my eye because of testing what water will do with 12 volts.