Motors Cars Running on Water...

...Yeah, we've heard it all before - crazy old guys building systems that allow cars to run on water, only for them to go into hiding for fear of their lives as the hitmen from Big Oil try to take them out and bury them and their research.

However, it's not as daft as it seems. Several institutions are or have been working on this, and one of the front runners (it seems) is Tareq Abu-Hamed, now at the University of Minnesota, and his colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. They've found that by reacting water with the element boron, their system produces hydrogen that can be burnt in an internal combustion engine or fed to a fuel cell to generate electricity.

Read this article from new scientist on the system: A fuel tank full of water

Interesting, eh? On demand Hydrogen, and we can still keep our IC engines. Genius, if it works as advertised. The big thing I can see being an issue is the whole Boron infrastructure - which (TBH) is the major flaw in any new alternative fuel technology... Getting the stuff to the consumer.

And what about the boron itself? Would we be switching from reliance on petrochemicals to another fuel / catalyst / whatever you want to call it? How much Boron is there in the world? Where are the major deposits of it? OK, it's not as if it's a finite resource, as it can be recycled - but it's just another snag if the Boron mines are in another unstable geopolitcal area, eh?

What do you all think? Pipe dream, or worthy of serious funding?

 

Borons a ****ing nasty element though. I wouldnt want to be near car crashes with that in a tank.

Water's also the next new scarce resource: hence the irony of washing out your rubbish to be recycled. Although collecting your downpipe contents to fill your car would be awesome.

There is quite a lot of Boron, it's just managing it is expensive since it's exceptionally toxic. It should be able to be recycled though, just like a CAT.

Ultimately its a pipe dream: they won't get the funding or the mass roll out needed, because oil makes the world run. It's even more valuable than blood, apparently.

 

Part of that is a lie. Well the image at least, any form of combustion (fire) produces greenhouse gases. Hydrogen combustion normally produces NOx emissions which are going to affect us.

Until fuel cells are produced we need to keep driving Petrol driven ones.

 

NOx is significantly reduced by CATs though, it ends up being a negligable factor. The biggest output of cars now is CO2 and compared to Methane cows pump out it's a significantly LESS powerful greenhouse gas.

It's not only about producing hydrogen, but also storing it effectively.

 

They don't pay for blood anymore!

But because the world runs on oil. Oil is therefore an "essential" commodity.

Trying to reduce oil use would be like trying to withdraw Anime from Otaku.,

 

My car allready runs on water....every couple of days or so im having to pour at LEAST a pint of water into it....
(the radiator that is)

 

Even water vapour is a greenhouse gas. And you breathe it out. All the time.

 

What makes it so nasty though? I'm not a chemist, but Isn't elemental Boron non-toxic?

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

And the byproduct of the hydrogen liberation (according to the article) is boron oxide... Is that dangerous stuff? As in more dangerous than a tank of petrol?

Enquring minds need to know!

 

I've managed to find a pic of the test vehicle.

 

I did think that when readin the article, considering the system requires superheated steam to work...

 

No Im confusing it with Beryillium because: Beryllium and its salts are toxic substances and potentially carcinogenic.

I didn't want tons of carcinogens flying round the country at 80/90mph was my point

 

i swear i saw a two page spread advert for bmw's 7-series bigging up the fact that they would soon be selling a version that ran on water (well, electrolysis... technically it's just a huge hydrogen tank) - this was a good while ago though.

... i seem to recall you studying chemistry at the very same university i go to. for shame... FOR SHAME!
(as a side note, dunno if you're in his year but if you see lobo about tell him i said hi)

 

i read that once on a ebay auction about some guy selling plans on how to run you car on water for somming like £200 on parts you would need to convert it... funny really... wounder if any of us would be alive when water powered cars are running around....

 

It seems to me that the process for a water-boron system would be unnessecarily complex. With one, you need to cary both water and boron, which you react to create boron oxide and hydrogen, and then burn (or fuel-cell) the hydrogen. Then, you need to hang on to the boron oxide, to carry it back to a fuel station.

Wouldn't it be easier just to carry a tank of hydrogen, and forget the whole water/boron mess? While admittedly, hydrogen is a lot more explosive than water and boron (which is flammable, by the way), I would be inclined to say that a crash-worthy fuel system would weigh less than a boron tank, the boron itself, the boron oxide (technically diboron trioxide), and whatever reactor vessel you're using.

In short, why bother?

 

University of Manc.? It's been four years since I did that course I remember we did a huge section on Boron Hydrides, which is what I'm getting confused with.

 

... oh. why had i pegged you as a UCL student? random.

 

There are cars already running on water in the US. They sell kits to convdert. Simply put the water gets brocken down by pumping high voltage through it.

In any case before some of you get your panties in a bunch, the kit is simply a transformer that can be run on either solar power (slower) or regular off the wall power (faster) as well as a compressor. The process involves bottling your own hydrogen in tanks and hooking them up to your car. The tanks they use for these kits look to be the same ones used in bbq grills. There is some experimentation going on where they want to make the process more portable. Some people have already put the kit in their cars trunk and hook up large solar cells to their cars roof for collecting gas when stopped in the sun as well as using the alternator to generate gas so the range is greater.

So far some claim great success and others declare it failure.


There is also a howto kit that uses hydrogen as a booster. What it does is have a tank connected to your intake where water is placed and electrolysis occurs to produce hydrogen and used as booster for IC engines.

I like hydrogen coupled with an IC engine versus the battery pack and electric motor. I hate batteries and to me thats the most unreliable thing one can have in a vehicle.

 

The thing is, these schemes inevatibly end up with whatever the device is, driving an electric car. Electric cars are boring. I'd rather take the bus, or the train.

 

I did a year of Biological Physics, or there about, at UCL. It had nothing to do with chemistry, unfortunately.

 

If you can use the hydrogen in an internal combustion engine though, that's not like driving an electric car