nebbian said...
Regarding water powered cars, there is a big movement of people all trying this.
Google "Joe Cell" and you'll find many, many hits. Unfortunately I think the original "Joe" was a bit of a nutter, but he did attract a cult-type following. I've never built a joe cell so can't comment on whether or not it works, but it smells fishy to me.
Most of the people involved don't have a basic grasp of physics or chemistry, which is obvious when you read their explanations.
I have been watching this for a while and am a long way short of convinced. There are a few clips on Utube showing it working but it looks like simple electrolysis to me. But since they a a bit short on details and explanations then it's hard to say for sure that it all just cobblers. But it does smell fishy so it probably is.
That's no reason to stop playing with it though so long as they don't want to take your money for it.
Of course, the solution to all our energy problems is currently being built in China:
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15043462/Unfortunately little johnny declined their offer of shares in the venture a couple of years ago.
Also when it, and others like it, come online for real, we won't have the hydrogen infrastructure ready to replace oil in our transportation systems. But it will happen eventually... I hope.
The ITER reactor being built by a co op of many mostly western countries, is way ahead of this. More than just produce a plasma in a magnetic containment, they have got significant power gains (i.e. more energy out than they put in) but only for very short times. I seem to recall the output was in the megawatt range so it's quite significant.
The one they are working on now is hoped to produce about 300 to 500 megawatts, which is equivalent to a large conventional power station.
The problem will still be to make the output continuous.
More recently, the USA which was going to contribute 15 billion dollars to the project has cut that back a little bit, to 15 million.
I think this is incredibly short sighted considering the huge benefit of the technology if it is successful. I know 15 billion sounds a lot, but when you consider that they spent about 600 billion in Iraq for a very dubious long term benefit then compared to this 15 billion would be chicken feed.
Take it out of the Iraq budget. It's so huge noone will notice the difference.
I guess we can't be too critical though because Australia is contributiong the princely sum of $0.00 to the project.