Brown's Gas? HHO tech?

[bushtuckerman]

I recently came across this..umm...idea i guess it is, not sure how proven it is, and nor are most it seems. It's all a bit controversial by the looks of things, and words like 'thermodynamics', and 'don't break the laws of', are being banded about with much heated debate , and some :sulkoff: , occasionally a hint of , with added and mostly here .

here's something of a taster:

"I'm sorry... how does mentos plus diet coke take more energy in than is released?"

The gist seems to be that a particular "process" that this guy who has rediscovered brown's gas has patented, electrolyzes water molecules such that they instantaneously form as monatomic oxygen and hydrogen, some of which then react immediately so you then have a mixture of monatomic and diatomic oxygen and hydrogen. It is implied that this is stable long enough to be burnt in that particluar form (some are saying it is an isomer of water), which would still be highly reactive, and perhaps would explain the apparent welding properties of the gas (which when burnt is said to have a 'cold' flame), such that the ionized gas reacts with its subject so quickly that it reaches a critical temperature. I should add that the form of water claimed to exist is as the name suggests: H-H-O, although some have speculated that 'HHO' is a simple marketing exercise, and is not the chemical form at all, and just a shorthand brand name (this seems likely to me).

It's all pretty academic as regards clean energy anyway as it still requires an energy input, and is much the same as hydrogen tech if indeed they are different (one of the 'diggers' suggested the flame colour was that of H2 gas anyway, and that it was a scam), so is not that efficient in the long run (we still need power stations, the means to supply that energy - inefficently over the national grid - , and the clean, demineralised water needed for electrolysis requires a fair amount of energy to produce itself) but they claim it's going to 'evolutionise' the world (apparently a revolution isn't good enough for HHO), so watch out we may all turn into frogs, the seas are rising folks.

anyway, if interested you should watch the Fox News video at the top of the link page, which while being excruciatingly 'Fox' like, is an insight into type of 'story' this is.

so, the question: is this guy just repackaging old news and selling? repackaging naff all and selling that? does brown's gas actually exist or is it just theoretical? wikipedia gives links to the 'Water Cell' scam in the brown's gas page, so you can imagine the high regard it's held in by them...

thoughts please.

cheers,
ian

some links:

Eagle Research

wiki

HHO

Electrolysis

 

[Ben_Hillwalker]

The whole thing has the wiff of snake oil about it to me.

 

[bushtuckerman]

Ahh: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide

perhaps that explains it, i've come across this before but didn't put a face to a name! hmm, so snake oil it is then...

 

[Lithril]

Ah the age old idea of burning water. In theory its sound, at the moment though it takes more energy to split the water molecules than you regain when you burn them. I think its cold fusion that is the same idea.

 

[demographic]

I have some magic beans for sale, would anyone like some?

 

[gregorach]

If that's even theoretically possible, then everything we thought we knew about both physics and chemistry is wrong. What do you think the chances are? And if somebody had made such a breakthrough, do you really think they'd announce it on Fox? It'd be a 100% guaranteed nobel prize, greatest physicist of all time, move over Newton, Maxwell and Einstien kind of thing, and you don't submit it to a proper journal, you go for Fox? Yeah, right...

Think of it this way - you can't gain more energy going down the hill than it took to get you up it in the first place. If anybody believes this, I have a very nice bridge for sale...

 

[bushtuckerman]

Hi, I should just clarify a few points. similar confusion cropped up frequently on digg:

- it is not claimed that the laws of thermodynamics have been broken, or that any kind of perpetual motor has been created. electrolyzing water is in no need of a nobel prize (especially if this is Brown's Gas, which presumably Yull Brown would have claim to!)

- it will always require more energy to split molecules than what is regained on combustion (on any large scale), what is claimed is that burning this so-called HHO is more efficient than burning H2. so what we are dealing with is energy storage: batteries. he also claims that adding HHO directly to fuel increases the efficiency of that too.

now, i am as dubious about this as anyone else, but only to the question of whether he really is burning HHO, and not H2. i reckon it's most likely that this is one of two possible scams:

1. a continuation of the DHMO scam theme, but more elaborate (bear in mind they managed to convince Fox, either that or they managed to convince Fox to go in on the scam! i checked the dates tho, no april fools joke )

2. nothing to do with DHMO, but rather a money making scam, cashing in the fear of climate change, whereby he repackages hydrogen gas as the brand name: "HHO", and hoping people will sign bits of paper before they notice...perhaps far-fetched, i don't know (why would he wait for papers to be published before he can sell his product? he'd go straight to Fox, and the media in general as pointed out).

but if, and it's a BIG if given the doubts expressed, he has managed to electrolyze water in such a way that - under certain conditions and very briefly - it reforms as a water polymer, then i can only guess at how this is allowed to occur:

the electrolysis machine he demonstrates splits water molecules and ejects them immediately at high velocity (and possibly at high pressure), such that this excited state of water is stable enough for long enough to be ignited and burnt when it leaves the welding nozzle, where it either reacts with whatever it hits, or simply emits heat and light and collapses back to the more stable H2O. the excited state of water could (maybe, it's a guess) be explained by delocalisation of electrons, or van der waals forces (HHO is said to be H2 with an oxygen bonded to it in some way, so that the single hydrogen hydrogen bond is not disturbed significantly). but i'm no chemist, so this is probably BS.

either way he says that this state of water retains and re-emits energy more efficiently (for whatever reason) than total electrolysis of water and burning hydrogen, and is trying to sell his machine which does this.

the flags which wave are the endless useful properties of HHO, such as bonding bricks to glass(!?!), stops carbon steel from rsuting (wouldn't we all love that!), that it is better than propane for welding, and better than hydrogen for cars, so doubts are well founded, it is consistently scam-like.

maybe someone with a clue of how cold fusion works could compare the two?

cheers,
ian

oh yeah, and maybe if this is all true then his electrolysis machine is no different from others, and browns gas always forms during electrolysis but as i said, briefly, such that if you wish to use is it it has to be combusted immediately. the major selling point is that it is made in the car, using a battery, and that you aren't storing a potentially lethal explosive gas in your car, so this obviously allows for immediate use.

 

[bushtuckerman]

the brand name idea might hold true, i have been reading that brown's gas it 2H2:O2, i.e. a mixture of 2 parts hydrogen gas and one part oxygen, so 'HHO' could simply be the empirical formula.

ah, and also that apparently no one (until now?) has been able to produce the monatomic mixture: H2:O, which theoretically would implode( while brown's gas explodes). this is all still specualtion however as the source is unclear.

 

[gregorach]

Sounds to me like someone is fleecing gullible venture capitalists...

Regardless of whether it's "fully" or "partially" electrolysing water, you only get out what you put in (less actually). If he's doing it in the vehicle, he has to using stored power of some kind to do it - so why not just run the car off that? It would have to be more efficient.

No matter what you do, if you electrolyse water and then convert the products back to water, you're just pointlessly throwing energy away, unless you're somehow violating the laws of thermodynamics when you do it.

 

[match]

For anyone with some time and chemical knowledge to spare:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph...&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=HHO&OS=HHO&RS=HHO

(US Patent Office Patent Application for this process).

 

[gregorach]

Woo - it's "magnecular"! Wow - a whole new class of atomic bonding that doesn't appear anywhere in the scientific literature, and in fact doesn't seem to appear anywhere at all without a magic little (TM) attached, and the name "R. M. Santilli", who is one of the patent filers.

Sure, it's not exactly a scientific refutation, but that's a combination of factors that's always highly suspicious.

 

[gregorach]

Oh, and they explicitly state that it's not Brown's gas...

 

[bushtuckerman]

i don't think HHO is Brown's gas anyway, there seems to be a distinction between monatomic and diatomic mixtures of H2 and O, while both remain stoichemetric.

If he's doing it in the vehicle, he has to using stored power of some kind to do it - so why not just run the car off that? It would have to be more efficient.

oh yeah, absolutely i couldn't agree more, but if you think about it he's going to try and flog his product in as many ways as possible, although most revenue seems to be from welding machines.