Talk:Water-fuelled car/Archive 3

The scope of this article
The scope of this article has expanded to beyond purely water fueled cars. It now also discusses the use of hydrogen as a supplement, the "gasoline pill", and hydrogen on demand technologies. So I'm if wondering either a name-change or a splitting off of sub articles is in order. The content of the article, regardless of title, seems, in my opinion, to hold together quit nicely, so I'm provisionally opposed to splitting. The hydrogen-on-demand stuff seems like the most obvious candidate to be split since unlike the rest of the stuff discussed, this technology doesn't violate the laws of nature, but it's so frequently misunderstood and confused with water-as-fuel cars, that I still think it makes the most sense to discuss it here. So I would argue for changing the name of the article to something like "water as fuel". Or I guess a third option--and I'm starting think this is my favorite--would be to leave the name alone and not split anything, but instead change the part of the LEAD that says "This article focuses on those cars or motors which purport to extract their energy directly from water" to something like "This article focuses on those cars or motors which purport to extract their energy directly from water and related devices, as well as technologically feasible systems which are frequently mislabeled as water fueled." Or something which gets at the expanded scope but is worded better than this. Thoughts? Yilloslime (t) 06:27, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I think change you suggest is good, especially on clarifying the issue and agree with including the part on hydrogen as a supplement here, but think the pill additive stuff is really a separate topic. I also think there is a bit of dogma in the article. Clearly there are a lot of people that believe that have created a system whereby they can get more out of hydrogen than is put in. Sure, plenty say it violates the laws of thermodynamics and so it should say that, but there isn't really enough about why respected scientists and technicians and others believe they are observing something different.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Cecilman (talk • contribs) 06:37, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Cecilman (talk) 06:50, 21 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think all you need to say is "This article focuses on those cars or motors which purport to extract their energy directly from water and related devices." The included devices are mentioned only because of their relationship to water fuel scams.  I also prefer the idea of the title being "water as fuel" it covers the core issue.  This way it doesn't matter if the water is powering a lawn mower or car.  I think article is much improved and the recent edits have been good, keep up the excellent work Yilloslime.--OMCV (talk) 13:19, 21 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Such a name would also alleviate the WP:ENGVAR cycles that the current title endures. --Athol Mullen (talk) 13:48, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

66.177.50.158 (talk) 17:40, 21 August 2008 (UTC)


 * "The scope of this article has expanded to beyond purely water fueled cars." There are no such things; water is not a fuel. --Desertphile (talk) 19:05, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

a word on neutrality
The wiki article does not take a neutral view on the available facts and opinion on various hydrogen-based plasmas reported to give off excess energy and display unusual properties. There has been considerable, published, peer-reviewed verifications of the phenomena despite the article suggesting such claims are scams and hoaxes.

One such example:

"A variety of experimental configurations have been employed to measure excess energy in low-pressure hydrogen gas/catalyst systems (Phillips, et al. 1996; Jansson, 1997; Mills, 2001). One of the recent experiments (Mills, 2001) will be described briefly here since the authors reported extremely high heat release (orders of magnitude greater than H2/O2 combustion) and the reported figures were used in preliminary calculations of BlackLight Rocket performance.

....

In a variety of experiments performed as part of the Phase I study, there was indeed a clear, repeatable difference (approximately 20 W) between measured power corresponding to water bath heating rates for control gases vs. H2/catalyst gases."

http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/752Marchese.pdf

Note as well articles indicating the theory to explain the results of excess energy from hydrogen are controversial. The tendency is to dispute the theory, not the fact. The wiki article claims the fact is itself a hoax, but apparently reputable scientific publications take the same facts as credible and worth discussing.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/22820

http://www.m-hikari.com/astp/astp2007/astp5-8-2007/bourgoinASTP5-8-2007.pdf

Cecilman (talk) 07:57, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0507193v2


 * The peer reviewed articles discuss theoretical energy states, these theoretical states are the extent of the 3rd party review I believe. Its a big jump from theoretical eigenstates to observed reality and an even further jump to applied technology.  Thats irrelevant because your vexation belongs on the hydrino page.  This will change when there is non-self published information on the observation that over-unity device can be built around hydrogen.  However even if hydrogen has ground states lower than previously expected it just means the ground state needs reassigning.  But that still doesn't meter here since it doesn't change any of the arguments on this page since none of them are based on the ground states of hydrogen.  I could offer more arguments on the nature of a catalyst and Blacklight's application of the term but this isn't the place.  When you come back with citations they should deal directly with an over-unity device, the subject matter of this page.  In the mean time would you be interested in investing in a venture involving the developments I have made in cold fusion technology?  Its based on hydrogen in a platinum lattice modeled by Blacklight's millsian.--OMCV (talk) 13:26, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Just to state it again, stick with the title and what it implies. Water Fuelled Car. Who claims to have built them? How do they operate? Where are they now? Good points are what is not a water fuelled car and the scientific evidence that they are hoax's and fraud. When someone builds a genuinely water fuelled/powered car and puts it out for scientific review, which means it can be duplicated and the results published, then it will be accepted. There is no reason not to satisfy the scientific community since patents are available that would protect the inventor while the tech is going through review. Patents don't prove anything works, but they do protect an inventor's interests. So far, the score is Science all, Water Fuelled Car zero.I55ere (talk) 18:12, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Your comment:

T"he peer reviewed articles discuss theoretical energy states, these theoretical states are the extent of the 3rd party review I believe. Its a big jump from theoretical eigenstates to observed reality and an even further jump to applied technology. "

This is completely incorrect. The article discusses theoritical energy states in order to EXPLAIN OBSERVED LAB RESULTS. You guys are claiming such lab results, repeatedly published in peer-reviewed journals and independently verified, don't exist because in your world you mistakenly think obtaining energy from hydrogen in this manner is an over-unity device and a perpetual motion machine. It is not, and no one claims it is. You are just so confused as to what the claims are you misrepresent them in the article and fail to address the substance of what many credible people are saying and what has been published numerous times in peer-reviewed journals on the potential for hydrogen-based plasmas.

The sad thing is rather than take a neutral stance, you are violating wiki standards and insisting on characterizing using hydrogen-based plasmas in a manner opposite of what these published journals are saying. Regardless, one fact is clear. More energy is being produced from the hydrogen than from the catalyst used to induce the plasma. You need to change the article to reflect this fact instead of erreously insisting accomplishing that is equivalent to a perpetual motion machine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cecilman (talk • contribs) 19:12, 22 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I've just read all of the references that Cecilman puts forth. They are talking about a HIGHLY theoretical energy state of a relativistic hydrogen atom - the theory (according to other peer reviewed reports) is a result of a mathematical slip up - and the organization that's pushing it are developing rocket engines in a tiny engineering department of an almost unheard of private university.  Please tell me how ANY of that has the slightest, remotest relationship to water powered cars?  Hydrolysis?  Anything?  The jump from this to "You can run your car on water" is about as big as the jump from "Hello Kitty" to "The moon landings were a hoax".  It's nothing whatever to do with this article - and even if it was, it's marginal theory that's hotly disputed from an organization with very little standing.  Really, this is ridiculous. SteveBaker (talk) 00:10, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Euh! Steve. Meyer's patent claims for his "water fuel cell" are that it renders hydrogen, and then that it excites it into another stage (plasma perhaps)? --CyclePat (talk) 20:25, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Steve, if you had read the articles, you would noted they are talking of the exact same thing, hydrogen-based plasmas. In fact, the 3 ways they indicate to make these plasmas are the exact methods the water-fuel car guys have said they use. They are all talking of the same fuel. The reason for the controversy on the hydrino is that the hypothesis of the hydrino is being offered as an explanation for why there is excess energy in the process. Frankly, if you genuinely think "it has nothing to do with this article", you should not be editting this article in any manner. Both are talking of water in the form of hydrogen plasmas as a potential for fuel. Sorry to break it to you, but no one is actually talking of using water in it's normal state as a fuel. That indeed would be foolish. What they are all talking about is the potential for water in a plasma state that does indeed "burn" and is not simply electrolysis in reverse.

Cecilman (talk) 03:52, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I think the part that you are mistaken with is that this article is about hydrogen as a fuel. It is not. It is about claims of cars that run on water. The Garrett carburetor claimed to do electrolysis at the point of intake. Stanley meyers claimed on demand hydrogen via a resonant form of electrolysis, which user:SteveBaker was observant enough to calculate that it produced 13,000 times too little hydrogen to get the job done. Aquygen claims to run a car on Browns gas (Just another form of electrolysis that does not separate the oxygen and hydrogen). Genepax claims to use some catalyst to separate water. Is there really a catalyst that will remove oxygen from water, leaving only hydrogen and not consume itself in the process? Otherwise it's a chemical reaction and water, therefore, is not the fuel. No one has claimed a plasma of any type. Companies such as Black Light Power have not claimed to put their systems in an automobile and present themselves on the evening news driving it around. All the pre-mentioned systems have. When the hype was over and level heads examined the claims and inventions, all of these water-fuelled cars didn't pass muster. There is neither an alternator or car battery that can support electrolysis at a level to sustain combustion in an ICE. The fuel and energy demands are too great of a load. That is the scope of this article.I55ere (talk) 17:46, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Cecilman: I explicitly told you that I read all of those articles. The first thing in your reply is to say that I didn't read them.  Please - don't call me a liar.  I said I read them - I did read them. Carefully.


 * I agree entirely that those papers are talking about hydrogen plasma's - let's be sure we know what a "plasma" is: A plasma is the fourth state of matter vastly hotter than a gas.  Please read Plasma (physics) if you are in any way doubtful of that.  None - not ONE of the inventors named in out article was ever dumb enough to claim they were dealing with a plasma...much less a hydrogen plasma such as the BlackLight papers are talking about!!  Their "fuel" is claimed to be water...NOT hydrogen.  For them, hydrogen is a product not an input.  You can watch countless videos of Meyers demonstrating his "water fuel cell" - there is no telltall blue glow anywhere in sight!  It's a few bubbles drifting upwards from a set of copper electrodes with a car battery stuch across it.   The energy required to convert liquid water into a plasma would be even higher than that needed to electrolyse liquid water!  Besides - people like Meyers, Aquagen and Genepax are quite clearly saying that they claim to be splitting liquid water.  You can go to the Genepax site and view a pretty animation that explains how they claim it work.  There is no hydrino - no plasma - no half-quantum energy levels.   Meyers made absolutely no secret of he claimed to be doing electrolysis - he merely claimed that by using some special electrical waveform that he could somehow break up water more easily.  Ditto for Aquagen.  They talk about resonance effects, "shattering" the water molecule.  They talk about "magnecules" and other things that are nowhere mentioned in any of your references.  You can read what each of those people said - in the references in our article - not a single one of them is talking about all of this stuff that BlackLight are going on about.


 * So, again, those references you offer are completely irrelevent to this article. Sorry.


 * SteveBaker (talk) 04:04, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

If you don't think they are talking about hydrogen and plasmas or plasma-like states, then you haven't seriously looked into their claims or you aren't paying sufficient attention to edit this article and speak to it. Brown's gas, HHO, aquygen or whatever you want to call it is a plasma-like or plasma based on hydrogen and oxygen. It's a gas, not a water vapor. Sorry but your insistence that just because they use the word "water", they are talking of plain liquid water is absurd and silly. You know full well or should, that they are not talking of "water" in that respect. They are talking of a water gas that burns. It is noteworthy that Blacklight and others also use the word "water" in discussing their ideas on fuel. In fact, Blacklight lists the exact same mechanisms as ways to produce such a gas as the other people do, including using RF radiation and electrolysis.

As far as hydrogen, as an example, Denny Kline's home page on aquygen is titled:

"Hydrogen Technology Applications, Inc."

To try to suggest they aren't talking about using hydrogen as a fuel but just "water" is frankly absurd. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cecilman (talk • contribs) 04:37, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

It incumbent in an encyclopedia article to report the claims accurately whether you think they are silly or not. Unfortunately, that's not occuring here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cecilman (talk • contribs) 04:32, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I for one have looked into what Brown's gas, HHO, aquygen etc are. Quite simply, it is a mixture of H2 (Hydrogen) and O2 (Oxygen) in a 2:1 ratio, which is the direct result of electrolysis of water without using a membrane to keep the products at the cathode and anode separate.  They are in gaseous form as stable molecules.  There is no plasma state involved, no unstable ions, nothing.  If you burn that mixture, you'll get the same nominal quantity of energy out as was put in, which translates to less actual energy once you factor in efficiency.  Simple primary school level science.  --Athol Mullen (talk) 05:07, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * So it's a gas form of water that's not water vapor, correct? How do you explain it's unusual properties such as seeming to know how to heat up automatically with substances when used as a torch. I am not in this business, for the record, but some 12 years or so ago, I did handle one of these torches and machines in a warehouse without anyone present that made or sold these machines and experimented with it, and it really does what they say. Without additional energy, for example, it reacts with whatever substance it comes into contact with to melt or sublimate it, including tungsten, which isn't that easy to do, and yet it seemed to to take no more energy for tungsten than steel. It was very strange in it's behaviour. I've looked for some scientific explanation for it's behaviour but have found nothing that's really been published and verifiable. Whether it's technically a plasma, or just something else?, it certainly behaves like a plasma. How would you characterize it?


 * Unless and until it's unusual properties are properly explored and tested, it seems foolish and erroneous to characterize claims it produces more energy than the energy to make it if one is taking a neutral stance, and certainly Blacklight's research supports the same claims, as they suggest the same methods for making this "plasma" or however one wishes to describe it.


 * Cecilman (talk) 05:14, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * No, a mixture of hydrogen gas and oxygen gas is not "a gas form of water that's not water vapor". Electrolysis means that the atoms within the water molecules have been separated and recombined to convert that water into separate, different compounds.  To say that they were simply a different form of water would be as invalid as saying that a piece of coal and oxygen from the air are a form of carbon dioxide.  "HHO" gas can also be sourced from bottled gas, simply by mixing bottled hydrogen with bottled oxygen in a 2:1 ratio, as was done for some industrial applications before more modern techniques were developed that rendered this obsolete.  Burning this gas mixture is not a great deal different to burning any other mixture of gaseous fuel (eg acetylene, propane, butane) and oxygen except for the temperature of the flame and the fact that the result is only water vapour whereas most others result in a mixture or carbon dioxide and water vapour in a ratio that is dependent upon the chemical compound. Just to be clear, there is no "plasma" involved in a simple mixture of stable gaseous chemical compounds.  This is still basic primary school level science.  --Athol Mullen (talk) 11:56, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Hmmmm....

" plasma is the fourth state of matter vastly hotter than a gas."

Actually, plasmas don't have to be high temperature as is the case with non-equilibrium plasmas.

Cecilman (talk) 17:29, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Again, you may wish to take a look at Meyer's water fuel cell which, if I recall correctly, one of his patents claims to excite the gas into a fourth stage. --CyclePat (talk) 20:29, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * None of this has to do with the article.  Move on, nothing to see here. Guyonthesubway (talk) 20:46, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * "I dare to dif." So can you please explain before I spend time rebuting your aforementioned statement with inline references and citations. --CyclePat (talk) 22:19, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Lets see... the article is about water fueled cars. So something to do with the article would be to do with 'water fueled cars'.    As in "I have this source that meets inclusion criteria for wikipedia and I'd like to include it in the article", not "hi I'd like to ramble on endlessly about some fringe science topic that might be related and can I cite a scan of a something an unaccredited scietist wrote on a napkin?"  Take it to a user talk page.  Guyonthesubway (talk) 13:01, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Recent Discussion
I have created a new heading to re-emphasize the following point: You must use WP:RS/WP:CITE to provide evidence, and burden of proof is on those who assert WP:FRINGE.  I would also like to remind Cecilman that though he is new, the editors here are assuming good faith and they should not be attacked for their diligent efforts in keeping this article within Wikipedia guidelines. Let's redirect this discussion with a civil tone. Thank you for all the hard work on this article. Fletch81 (talk) 23:44, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Gasoline Pill
The section on the Gasoline pill is good, but it is followed by a Hydrogen on Demand section which goes into an explanation of Boron. The "gasoline Pill" was ultimately debaunked as in fact being Boron. The Hydrogen on Demand section should cover Stanley Meyers' Fuel Cell, Aguagen, Genepax, The Garrett Carb etc. I would like to move the part explaining Boron's reaction with water to the Gasoline Pill section.I55ere (talk) 15:19, 23 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't see how the gasoline pill could have been boron. It was claimed that you put this green pill into a tankful of water and it would transform it into a tankful of gasoline.   This wasn't some kind of hydrogen generation system.  It was debunked - but it couldn't have been a ball of boron...no way.


 * SteveBaker (talk)


 * Ya, I have doubts that it was elemental boron, too. I don't recall metallic boron reacting with water the way some other metals or certain compounds of boron do. (Certainly B + H2O is downhill thermodynamically, but kinetically, I think it's super slow.) Yilloslime (t) 04:16, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * This source (not sure about reliability), says is was naphthalene. Yilloslime (t) 04:21, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think you're confusing a few different scams. There was a naphthalene based fuel enhancement product called Bioperformance, while the gas pill referes to some kind of transmutative product. Guyonthesubway (talk) 20:47, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Yep - when the Mythbusters were investigating a whole bunch of things people claim you can toss into the gas tank of a car to kill the engine, one of the suggestions they tried was moth-balls. They found that far from killing the engine, the mothballs actually made it run faster.  Since the principle ingredient of mothballs is naphtha - this makes sense.  However, there is no such thing as a free lunch - the cost of mothballs is guaranteed to be more than whatever savings you might get.
 * SteveBaker (talk) 04:03, 26 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I probably got a few articles mixed up. I remember reading about the gasoline pill and then it was debunked in either Popular Mechanics or another popular science magazine.  Instead of turning water into the fuel, it was proven that the pill was the fuel.  The article went on to point out that the pill would have to contain the energy of a full tank of fuel to convert water to anything useful and be competitive with petrol pricing.  Wouldn't mothballs be an octane booster at best and really only make a difference in high compression engines, if at all?I55ere (talk) 00:56, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Blacklight Power
Blacklight has come up, admittedly by me, on several topics here in discussion. I pointed out they and others have published specific results to back up their claims of excess energy, and several tenured professors have reviewed their experiments in person and found excess energy to be real and apparent. In the literature, these results of excess heat and energy have generally not been challenged, as far as I can tell, but rather the theory behind how these results has been challenged and is not generally accepted. Personally, I think there is no rational alternative but to either accept the data the scientists at Blacklight confirming excess energy or they are bald-faced lying. There is, to my knowledge, no evidence of someone replicating without success their efforts and so charging them with lying, creating a scam or hoax, is in my opinion slanderous and potentially libelous.

That being said, that doesn't mean it isn't a hoax. It's just considering that these are reputable scientists working there and reputable scientists reviewing the work, usually as skeptics, it's hard to say they are just mistaken somehow or something like that. The more controversial issue in some respects is the theory they espouse to explain the results, which is a different topic.

Some have stated they don't see Blacklight as relevant to this discussion. However, their description of the process bears resemblance to the claims of the water-fuelled car guys.

"The hydrogen fuel is obtained by diverting a fraction of the output energy of the process to power the electrolysis of water into its elemental constituents. With water as the fuel, the operational cost of BlackLight Power generators will be very inexpensive."

http://www.blacklightpower.com/applications.shtml#Power

Clearly, they too consider "water as the fuel" despite both Blacklight and the water-fuel car guys actually using hydrogen in some form or another as the fuel.

I offered this post to hopefully clear up some confusion on the claims of water as fuel by these groups. They really mean hydrogen but use the word "water" since water is where they get the hydrogen from. Hope that helps.

Cecilman (talk) 07:33, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Unless they have a automobile application (and they don't) they're irrelevent to this page. Guyonthesubway (talk) 21:00, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I haven't the slightest clue about black light but if there is the slightest correlation, such as the reference to the laws of thermodynamics, then I think it is relevant. Please let us be reminded that Wikipedia is based on the principals of an encyclopedia. Etymologically, encyclopedia means "cyclo" which means "circular". In fact etymonline.com defines it "from enkyklios "circular," also "general" (from en- "in" + kyklos "circle") + paideia "education, child-rearing," from pais (gen. paidos) "child". Your opinion is quite erroneous. In fact, like a child, I understood the metaphor and found the inferred correlation quite relevant to the subject mater. For example: Speaking metaphorically, and even scientifically, everything comes from the sun. If this philosophy is prevalently notable within a subject matter, then I see no reason why it shouldn't be included. This correlation of black light power, if properly referenced, will help create a circularity. To finish, perhaps a little off topic, ultimately, I believe one should be able to continue clicking around in circles and like a child enjoy the educational process of reading! Hence... relevant. --CyclePat (talk) 22:47, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the question you may be asking, is : is this a notable subject. Perhaps you meant to say this lack sufficient notability for inclusion in the water car article? --CyclePat (talk) 22:49, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Quite simply, no one other than certain commenters on this talk page has ever (to my knowledge) invoked hydrinos/Black light theory as an explanation for a purported water-fuelled car. Even more, no one, other than certain commenters on this talk page, has ever even suggested that blacklight technology could be utilized in some future water fuelled vehicle. Therefore, it would violate WP's policy on original research to include a mention of Blacklight Power in this article. Yilloslime (t) 23:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

The fuel for water-fuelled cars and water for fuel-cells or power plants via Blacklight's stuff is the same fuel. So of course it is relevant. The article says there is no credible science behind this "fuel" but Blacklight shows there is peer-reviewed science backing up these claims. You can argue the peer-reviewed science and other scientific verifications of excess energy must be wrong because, in your view, they violate thermodynamic laws, but you cannot just willy-nilly dismiss it as a hoax or fringe when there is such evidence presented. Say it's not accepted by most scientists (if true) but you cannot just say it isn't supported by valid scientific means and analysis. Of course, more testing and so forth could indicate the initial papers, some 60 of them, and others that think they are getting excess energy from water (hydrogen) are wrong, but to categorically just present one side and pretend there is no valid science behind the fuel is wrong. Wiki suppossed to be a neutral site, not an advocacy site. The article should reflect the views of the scientists and others that have put a theory and devices on the table and what they have done to validate their ideas instead of solely presenting the critics' arguments.

Cecilman (talk) 22:22, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It's relevant in your opinion or analysis...you are the one making the connection between "blacklight power" and "water-fuelled car", either seeing a commonality or a potential application of "water as a fuel". But neither the common aspect nor the realm of potential applications are what this article is about. So we have material that is not directly on the topic. Further, you need an actual WP:RS WP:CITE linking it to the topic at hand, lest you be engaging in WP:SYN. DMacks (talk) 23:04, 26 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Cecil: We're not really getting anywhere, so let's try a different approach. Why don't you make a concrete proposal for bringing BlackLight Power/Hydrinos into the article. Propose a paragraph to add somewhere, or suggest how to reword an existing section differently. Just make a new section on this talk page, name it "Proposed section" or something like that, and float your proposal. Then we can talk about it. This general discussion of BlackLight that you've been pursuing lately hasn't convincing me nor any of the other editors of this page, so it's time for you to drop it. Yilloslime (t) 23:14, 26 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Blacklight is the exact same scam: they make fraudulent claims no different than all the other "HHO" crooks and fools: water is not a fuel. My requests that the "business" provide evidence for his claim have all been ignored: if the "business" was legitimate, evidence for his absurd claims of miracles would have been produced by him by now. For example, quoting from the crook's web site: "The only consumable, hydrogen, can be obtained ultimately from water due to the two-hundred fold energy gain relative to breaking water into hydrogen and oxygen." Nobody with even a junior high school education or higher would believe that ridiculous and fraudulent assertion. --Desertphile (talk) 19:19, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment moved from Talk:Water-fuelled car/Comments
I found the following comment over at Talk:Water-fuelled car/Comments, which i've just WP:SPEEDYed. Yilloslime (t) 06:54, 31 August 2008 (UTC) I'd rate this about a 1 on a 1-10 scale because it includes citations which state the exact opposite of what the author claims they state. For example, consider this quote from the article:

"A number of well-known chemical compounds combine with water to release hydrogen, but in all cases the energy required to produce such compounds exceeds the energy obtained reacting them with water.[37][38][39]"

Unfortunately as far as accuracy is concerned, citations 37, 38, and 39 claim the opposite of what they are suppossed to. 2 of them are from companies discussing their claims they have developed a process whereby water can be used as an efficient fuel via extracting hydrogen on-site in automobiles, and another is a New Scientist article supportive of the idea. None claim the amount of energy to extract hydrogen by these particular processes exceed the amount of energy that can be obtained from burning the extracted hydrogen as a fuel. In fact, it would be ludicrous for these companies and New Scientist to discuss such alternatives as feasible if that was the case.

The fact the author has shown such an inability to check his own citations is very telling, in my opinion, and seems to demonstrate a lack of informative value except perhaps as an example of disinformation though it could just be simple ignorance or laxness in citation.

I would like to see some explanation for these discrepancies since it appears the citations actually contradict this central claim by the author in trying to discredit the efficiency of water as an alternative fuel.

Cecilman (talk) 00:55, 21 August 2008 (UTC)


 * "A number of well-known chemical compounds combine with water to release hydrogen, but in all cases the energy required to produce such compounds exceeds the energy obtained reacting them with water.[37][38][39]" The fact that it as a chemical compound reacting with water and releasing the hydrogen should make it obvious that the compound is the fuel.  It is being used up in the process and must be replenished or replaced.  There are certain metal-hydrides that do react with water and produce hydrogen.  They in turn can be returned to a metal-hydride state, but it requires more energy than what is obtained from the hydrogen.  Sure, you could link solar or wind power into the equation, but the outcome would be a long way around to a solar or wind powered car.  Water is not the fuel.  Hydrogen is not the fuel, it is being used as a battery in this situation.  Whatever is being used to power the conversion is the fuel, and with today's power generation systems, you would most likely have a coal, natural gas, oil, solar, wind powered car.  It is not water powered.  Ran by water.  No chemicals, no additives, just plain old water.  It doesn't happen.  If it were so easy, it would have been figured out long ago.  Thousands of scientists have been working on alternate fuels for over 70 years.  Water doesn't/can't cut it as a fuel.  When Black Light Energy hooks their system up to an automobile and runs it from water alone, then it will be worthy of inclusion in this article.  So far, they haven't.  They haven't even made the claim and as such have no place in an article about Water Fuelled Cars.I55ere (talk) 17:04, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Closed system
Here`s an interesting concept! http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4243793.html --CyclePat (talk) 01:57, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how it differs from a peltier device run backwards. If you heat one side of a peltier device (and keep the other side cooler) - it generates a voltage. This is Pyroelectricity and we've known about it for decades. At any rate, it's nothing to do with water fuelled cars. SteveBaker (talk) 22:10, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Where does this car fit in?
Where can we fit this Japanese car in the Water-fuelled car article?--Geremia (talk) 20:04, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It's already covered in this section. Yilloslime (t) 20:11, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Definition: partially water fuelled or fully water-fuelled?
I tried to restate the definition to include the car modifications that use energy from the car's battery to electrolisize water, then uses the hydrogen to create energy to run the car. User:Yilloslime undid my revision implying that water-fuelled cars run on water, and water alone. He felt "with no other energy input" was important to have in the definition.

I just want to clarify, is a water-fueled car a car that is *only* run on water? Because most (if not all) of this article talks about gasoline car modifications and scams. One rhetorical question: Is a hybrid vehicle an "electrically-fueled car", or do only pure electric cars fit that description? Any comments? Fresheneesz (talk) 00:17, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Ya agree that this article is a little schizophrenic and potentially problematic, and that's why I had started a thread about this ealier: Talk:Water-fuelled_car. Basically, the way I conceptualize this article, is that it's about both purely water-fuelled cars as well as related scams like Hydrogen as a supplement, the Gasoline pill and related additives, and Hydrogen on demand technologies. For the purpose of this article, the term "water-fuelled car" has been defined as a car that derives it's energy exclusively from water. And we talk about these other devices/scam here only because it seems like the most logical place, even though they're not, strictly speaking, purely water fuelled. So anyways, yes, I think the intro of the article could be improved, but I don't think changing the definition of the term "water-fuelled car" is the way to go. Yilloslime (t) 00:38, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that this article is about vehicles powered purely by energy extracted from water. A thermodynamic impossibility.  The use of the car battery to electrolyse the water is covered by this in that, if the battery is supposed to be charged by the engine running on the hydrogen evolved from electrolysis, we still have no energy source except the mythical ability to extract energy from the water.  I think that an important function of this article is to explain the distinction between this and other arrangements that can actually physically work (albeit inefficiently), such as by using oxidation of refined metal as the true energy source.  The way I see it, watering the concept down to "partially" water fuelled blurs the distinction between the physically impossible and the possible but inefficient.  --Athol Mullen (talk) 01:20, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Extracting any energy from water violates the laws of thermodynamics. Although a number of scams are perpetrated by cars that are "water hybrids", the fact is if you can "partially fuel" a car with water, there is no reason you can't fully fuel it, and if someone claims there is, it's a pretty good sign they're lying to you.  Adding the part about "partially fueled" cars blurs the line with hydrogen injection systems.Prebys (talk) 17:13, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Extracting any energy from water violates the laws of thermodynamics. 
 * Wrong. Think fusion.


 * OK, I should have said chemical energy. I have, in fact, pointed this out myself in threads, so I shouldn't complain. However, I know of no water fueled car that claims to run on fusion.Prebys (talk) 21:15, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
 * And this exact point is already made in the article, so I think this discussion is moot. Yilloslime (t) 21:34, 29 September 2008 (UTC)


 * We have one of two choices. We either need to split this article into two (water-only vs hydrogen-as-supplement) OR we need to change the definition. I can't think of any other way to solve this problem. Its obviously not correct to talk about the hydrogen-as-supplement ideas if this article is about vehciles fueled by water-only. Which choice should we make? Fresheneesz (talk) 07:48, 29 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, it's not wrong. Fusion of specific isotopes of hydrogen will evolve energy in a one-way process, and hydrogen is a constituent of water, but as has already been discussed on this talk page (and can be found in archive 1), highly refined hydrogen isotopes does not equal water.


 * Hydrogen fuel that occurs within a closed cycle that starts and ends with water molecules is clearly within the definition of trying to extract energy from water in contravention of the laws of thermodynamics. Introduce a separate energy source that leads to the production of hydrogen that is then burnt in the engine and you have an entirely different story.  I believe that what has been done in this article is to differentiate between the thermodynamically impossible and the possible.  --Athol Mullen (talk) 13:37, 29 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm *very* sorry I even mentioned fusion. My little statement about that was simply to correct a poorly worded sentence, and not to start an arguement about something we all agree on.
 * However, I'd like to ask: Do all of you think that information about "partially-water-fuelled" vehicles belongs on a page about "fully-water-fuelled" vehicles? At very least, I would like the distinction between the impossible and the merely-stupid to *both* have separate definitions in this article. Would anyone object to me creating a second definition for the vehicles of the second category? Fresheneesz (talk) 00:09, 1 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The tricky problem with 'partly' water-fuelled cars is that many (but not all) of the 'hydrogen-supplement' people really ARE claiming to get energy from the water. We are on a tricky slope here.  We really don't want to muddy the message that "There is no energy in water - period" - so we don't want to slip into talking about hydrogen (or water spray) enhancement of gasoline engines where the hydrogen/water is claimed to improve the efficiency of gasoline burning.  Such systems are possible in principle (but not much in practice) - but they DON'T EXTRACT ENERGY FROM THE WATER.  So I'd prefer to keep that version of the explanation for the jam-jar-and-two-bolts scam firmly out of the article.  However, when the jam-jar-and-two-bolts guys stray over the line to claiming that they are indeed extracting energy from the water - then we can legitimately say that the car is "Water fuelled" - even if only partially.   So if we do want to talk about those things, we have to be super-cautious not to open the floodgates to things that can horribly confuse the message.  Talking about fusion power here is completely out of the question - nobody is claiming they have fusion driving their cars - and nobody will until we have huge industrial fusion plants running routinely.   Those things don't run on water anyway.  So again, there is zero benefit to pedantically muddying the water by talking about fusion power.   If we're being super-pedantic then we should point out that many of the "Water fuelled cars" described here (Meyer's dune buggy for example) do not fit the dictionary definition of a "car" anyway and we should talk about "Water fuelled vehicles" or just "Energy from water" as a general topic.  It's only because (WITHOUT FAIL!) the free energy nuts are somehow mesmerized by the car as the subject of their experiments rather than figuring how to use these (supposedly) amazing technologies to build power stations.  SteveBaker (talk) 01:05, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Very good points. And thus I'd like to propose that we rename this article "Water-fuelled vehicles" or "Water as fuel". I'd also like to propose we split the article into two articles: one being the aforementioned change of name, the second being "Partially-water fuelled vehicles". Comments? Fresheneesz (talk) 01:18, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I found the comment below very telling.

"We really don't want to muddy the message that "There is no energy in water - period" "

66.177.50.158 (talk) 07:14, 13 December 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.177.50.158 (talk) 07:12, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Refs disappeared.. but are still on wiki-side
I just made a minor edit to the definition.. and the references that I left in place on the wiki-side are nowhere to be found in the new edit of the article... I'm not sure why this would be, but it looks like a bug of some sort. Fresheneesz (talk) 01:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Sure what you're talking about--all the refs seem to be where they were. Can you be more specific? Yilloslime (t) 16:06, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Refs 3, 4, 5, and 6 at the very end of the first paragraph. Looking through the history of this page, some edits have those refs shown, and some do not. The last edit where they were shown was your last edit Yilloslime. Fresheneesz (talk) 19:20, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't get it--they're still there, aren't they? Yilloslime (t) 20:44, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe its just my browser... Fresheneesz (talk) 10:09, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

info about partially-water fuelled cars
I added the following content to the introduction: Some cars are claimed to be partially water-fuelled or have claims of increasing efficiency by extracting energy from water (for example using the car's battery to perform hydrolysis).

It was reverted for reason of "not saying what it means to say" and without a source. First of all, that information is simply a summary of part of the rest of the article. For example: In addition to claims of cars that run exclusively on water, there have also been claims that burning hydrogen or oxyhydrogen in addition to petrol or diesel fuel increases mileage. and selling plans for do-it-yourself electrolysers or entire kits with the promise of large improvements in fuel efficiency

The article *still* doesn't have anything in the introduction that introduces hydrogen as a supplement at all. It is completely ridiculous that I can't get a simple sentence into the intro that covers this inconsistency. Let me put it back in *please*. Fresheneesz (talk) 18:58, 22 October 2008 (UTC)


 * This sentence in the LEAD, "This article focuses on vehicles which claim to extract chemical energy directly from water..." gets at it. I'm not convinced that we need to explicitly introduce the idea of partially water-fuelled cars any further at that point in the article. Yilloslime (t) 19:18, 22 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Because your sentence sounded like an apologetic trying to get around the first law issue by saying that some cars only get some energy from water. I decided that either the sentence was making unsupportable claims (and should be reverted), or it was worded in such a way that the intended meaning was not conveyed (and should be reverted). - Eldereft (cont.) 21:59, 22 October 2008 (UTC)


 * "Partially water fueled" is a confusing term in that it implies that a car gets some its energy from the water. Getting any energy from the water would violate the laws of thermodynamics. Also, if you can get any energy from water, there is no reason you can't get all your energy from water. Techniques such as water injection and hydrogen injection use water to increase the efficiency of ordinary combustion.  While these techniques are often dramatically overrated, there is nothing about the concept that necessarily violates any physical laws.  These things already have extensive articles of their own, and are explicitly excluded from this article in the second section ("Water fueled cars are NOT").Prebys (talk) 14:18, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I think the confusion may come from the fact that water can perform work. Perhaps people view such things as water injection as being a fuel.  Some people may believe (mistakenly) that water in a steam engine is a fuel.  Would it be appropriate to put in either a link or a brief explanation that although water can perform work, it is not the actual fuel of the process?I55ere (talk) 21:22, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The statement I added was not trying to posit that some cars are partially fuelled by water - only that some cars are *claimed* to be partially fuelled by water. This is exactly analogous to talking about cars that claim to be *fully* fuelled by water. I don't understand why you are confused: "a confusing term in that it implies that a car gets some its energy from the water". Its not confusing, it means exactly what you think it does - and it is indeed against the laws of physics. So REPORT that, but i'm tired of my statements being removed because you're confused. If you're confused reword it, don't remove it. Thanks. Fresheneesz (talk) 08:57, 28 October 2008 (UTC)


 * We are not confused. The statement as worded is confusing to potential readers who have no idea that "partially fuelled" and "fully fuelled" are synonymous.  Both terms imply that there is a surplus of energy in water that can be tapped to fuel an automobile. That is not the case.  The statement should lead to this obvious conclusion.  Using hydrogen as a supplement is not using water as a fuel and departs the boundaries of this article.I55ere (talk) 00:16, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * You must be joking. "partially fuelled" and "fully fuelled" are *different*. Thats exactly the intention I had in writing about partially fuelled vehicles. A vehicle that puts water in its tank and claims to run solely on that is *FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT* from cars that create hydrogen from their batteries, then use the hydrogen as a supplement. Do you disagree with this? Fresheneesz (talk) 23:16, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I think you are trying to argue that this article is about claims of gaining energy from water. And I agree with you. However, when you talk about "fully water fuelled" cars, the very clear fraud cases that use the car's battery to create hydrogen supplement are not included in "fully". However, they are cases where energy is claimed to be deriven from water. I think we need to reconcile this confusion. The terms you use is confusing to *me* and thus i'm certain its confusing to others as well. Fresheneesz (talk) 23:20, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Indent reset. When I say partially fuelled and fully fuelled are synonomous, my intent is...that if a vehicle can gain energy from water partially, what is stopping it from getting all of its energy from water? Where is the line of demarkation that cannot be passed? At what point would I go from gaining energy to losing energy using a "partially fuelled" process if I were to decrease the conventional fuel and increase the "fuel/energy" obtained from water? Fresheneesz idea might be explorable, the net result would reveal the same type of scams and misinformation about chemistry and physics that allow water fuelled vehicle claims to exist. Using hydrogen as a supplement may be viable, but using the alternator or onboard battery to perform electrolysis will not create energy gains.I55ere (talk) 22:07, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Wasted energy from alternator
I think this edit (which was reverted by DMack), and though it lacks some sources or reference and borders WP:OR, has an excellent POV which, if possible should be represented within this article. --CyclePat (talk) 15:53, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * In fact, my friend Darin Cosgrove and his website on hypermilling may shed some light on this subject. During our last meeting he explained how he disconnected his alternator to save on fuel. Even with the extra batteries which he lugs behind his driver's seat, this saved him an enormous amount of energy. Similar to the aformentioned edit, recovering this "lost energy" (be via electrolysis) (or in the case of Mr. Cosgrove, not wasting it in the first place) can increase your milleage and reduce fuel consumption. --CyclePat (talk) 15:59, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Recovering wasted energy has no intrinsic connection to "water as a fuel". Using water-electrolysis or similar is just energy storage, no different (or at least not better, except in terms of efficiency) than a battery. "Electrolyze water then burn it" is just using the electrolysis products (whatever they are) as a storage medium. However, the fuel-efficiency savings is in the reduced friction and other inefficiencies in the alternator itself. If you add a load (electrolyzer, battery-charger, whatever), you will not suddenly regain any of that lost efficiency. You will actually lose MPG as extra fuel must be consumed in order to overcome mechanical losses of the alternator and also charge the battery. It's already been discussed: in an ideal world, it takes exactly as much additional energy input on a generator as the energy output collected, and as usual, the world isn't even ideal. DMacks (talk) 16:49, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I would agree with your first statement, however I believe you are forgetting 1 important element... we are talking about "water-fuelled cars" not "water as fuel". Obviously there is no link between recovering energy for creating "water fuel" unless there is a "car" or some primary source of energy involved within the equation. Hence, I believe there is a link between the recovery of wasted energy (from the atlernator of the car) and "water-fuelled cars". Furtheremore, I put it to you that the even though there may be some losses along the way, that there are moments, for example when the vehicle is sitting idle and the battery is fully charged, that the alternator is in fact wasting energy (or creating to much). So I disagree. But, in the end, we seem to agree. This is simply a storage of energy. Your economic argument, input vs. out-put, and "extra load" argument appears to be a weak argument for excluding this relevant information. In fact, I believe, it helps substantiate it's inclusion from the fact that others have in fact "peer reviewed" the idea. Hence, we could easily present various WP:POV's on the subject. Again, per my Cosgrove's example, let's assume you have no alternator, are carrying extra batteries. You will save. Let's assume you can reduce energy loss by turning off your alternator when it's not needed with a special cut-off switch. You save there too. Let's assume, you can't turn off your alternator and it always runs... once your vehicle is at peak level (charged batteries, etc.) you are lossing wasting energy by using the alternator. Some energy which would have been used to charge your battery could be used to create hydrogen, and, I believe, though there may be some issues on efficiency, there are many good argument which support this idea. In fact, you said it yourself "it takes exactly as much additional energy input on a generator as the energy output collected."... the important element, which I'm trying to highlight, is the inherent ineficiency of the vehicle and how this technology "allegedly" takes advantage of recovery the "lost energy". Hence, I believe the idea should be properly presented and discussed within the article. After all, we do agree that there is an interest in this right? --CyclePat (talk) 17:31, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The fact that alternators are not 100% efficient has nothing to do with the hypothetical, and thermodynamically impossible, use of water as fuel and has no place in this artcle. Man with two legs (talk) 21:01, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * No one really arguing about whether there is loss or gain of energy (or as you would like to try and claim, that, if the system was completely, close it would violated the laws of thermodynamics). You are free to add that information and I believe it is already within the article. In fact, I believe, that in most circumstances there would most likely be a loss of energy if an electrolyser device was installed onto a conventional ICE automobile... and ultimatelly got it's power from the alternator. In fact I just learned today that the Accura has an environment/conservation system which stops the alternator from wasting energy (fuel), by dissengaging the latter when the vehicle is opperated in low RPM. That means, if you do as my friend John Ford explained today... "Much hypermilling and low RPM driving, made my battery low." He also said he now "charges his car battery up with a convential plug-in the wall charger." (He's got a true plug-in hybrid? just kidding) Anyways, the more we talk about this, the more I believe there is a link between this supposed "loss of energy" (from alternators) and the idea that a device such as a water electrolyser which would be hooked in series with a fuel line may not necessarily create a gain of energy. In fact one person from Transport Canada had mentioned that the increase (if any) is minimal, maybe 1% (after you do the averages). So argue, all you want about thermodynamics but I believe this is a valid POV which should be equaly represented within the article (of course only if we find "reliable sources"). Since, you have not specifically addressed this issue, I will assume that my logic (which I believe concurs with wikipedia's policies, is sound and should the day arrive that there are reliable source that the facts should be properly presented within this article. --CyclePat (talk) 06:39, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Still wrong. It does not matter how you disguise the facts by introducing confusing details, it remains the case that you can't get energy from fiddling with water other than by nuclear fusion no matter what you do. Every attempt to avoid that fact reduces to a perpetual motion machine, and they don't exist. Get real. Man with two legs (talk) 17:08, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Hello Man with two legs, could you please refrain from commenting on my methodology of work. ie.: "...doesn't matter how you disguise the fact." Also, could you please avoid insinuating and attacking comments such as "get real", which leave the reader of this talk page believing that I may in fact believe in these (or this) device(s). The only agenda I have is to work within the scope of WP:NPOV, which, in my view, is a fundamental rights (or rule) which should be respected here at Wikipedia. We are after all working on the same article and trying to present something which represent to views of everyone. right? No matter the case, there is obviously a miss-understanding here. You have indicated that you believe the facts to be confusing details. I disagree. But first I will refute your statement regarding energy from water (see Water power engine) and the ability to obtain hydroelectricity via kinetic energy and the Potential energy of water (see next section discussion below). Yes! Point taken that nuclear means (or burning fuel) is obviously the theme of this article but this has really nothing to do with proper presentation of POVs.
 * So, I will re-state what I did in the previous paragraphs. All I'm saying is that this is an issue of WP:POV. I believe we should take care to present equal POVs which are often essential to articles which treat controversial subjects. As I state on my user page: "In The Globe and mail on February 20th 2006 at page A14 in the Section of Social Studies, sub-section A daily miscellany of Information, Micheal Kesteron cited Harold Geneen in his Though du jour and stated:
 * "The reliability of the person giving you the facts is as important as the facts themselves. Keep in mind that facts are seldom facts, but what people think are facts, heavily tinged with assumptions."
 * In short "Hard facts are really rare. What we most commonly encounter are opinions from people (POV's). Inherently, because of this, most articles at Wikipedia are full of POV's. An article which clearly, accurately, and fairly describes all the major points of view will, by definition, be in accordance with Wikipedia's official "Neutral Point of View" policy."
 * Failing to present the prevailing POVs, for example, the fact that "so and so" or that "many websites" believe that this is a functioning device is truly arbitrary. (In this case I'm talking about all the crackpots that believe this device works... which is a fairly substantial minority, if not even a majority). My small (solo) belief, that an alternator wastes energy, is obviously a POV. I shall dub it as the "alternator theory". (electrolysis of water using the alternator of an ICE vehicle). Obviously, we're not going to include any information on the "alternator theory" if it doesn't meet the criteria for inclusion according to WP:NPOV. So, prior to doing extensive research, formatting references, etc. for who, what, etc. I just wanted to see if there were any arguments or opinions regarding this POV. Do you see this as being:
 * a viewpoint held by a significant minority, with easy to name prominent adherents; or
 * a viewpoint held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, (which hence, according NPOV rules, wouldn't belong in "Wikipedia regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article." ?
 * Since you appear to have some expert knowledge on this subject, perhaps you could help us better understand which parties you believe hold the majority POV on the subject of "Water-fuelled cars"? (Remember; a majority POV should be easy to substantiate with reference to commonly accepted reference texts.) Is the fact that people believed this is a perpetual motion machine the prevailing POV? I would tend to say yes... I AGREE WITH YOU.. and this is based on the status quo of the article. Does the alternator theory currently pass the majority test?  I would say it currently does not.  I also believe that the alternator theory would most likely fall, if we find reliable sources, within the minority POV. The big thing here is if we find reliable sources. In short, right now without sources, we can’t tell. Or, I can’t tell. So the big question, since you (and some others here) appear to have some background knowledge in this matter: (since I don’t want to waste to much time doing research) ‘’’Do you believe there are sufficient reliable resources for the alternator theory’’’ to make this a POV which is prominently adherent for this article? I would like to know this so we can continue to productively work at building this article (or if necessary some ancillary article or the subject matter). Thank you. --CyclePat (talk) 09:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I accept that I probably should have omitted the "get real" but the key point here is that the schemes for reducing the inefficiency of a car alternator, while potentially useful as a way of saving small amounts of fuel, have nothing to do with the use of water as a fuel irrespective of how that reduction is achieved. This point is made in more than one place in the discussions above.  If one did want to reduce alternator losses, doing it by using any spare current to generate hydrogen would be inherently less efficient than just using a better alternator because an alternator can have near 100% efficiency while a hydrogen burning engine cannot.


 * The point about disguising the facts is that a complicated scheme such as this one involving the alternator takes attention off one highly relevant hard fact: all water-fuelled cars would violate the laws of thermodynamics if they worked.


 * There is a case for including this in the article, along with a refutation, if there is a commercial organisation promoting this idea and claiming it as a use of water as fuel.
 * Man with two legs (talk) 10:29, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Similar to the aformentioned edit, recovering this "lost energy" (be via electrolysis) (or in the case of Mr. Cosgrove, not wasting it in the first place) can increase your milleage and reduce fuel consumption. --CyclePat (talk) 15:59, 27 October 2008 (UTC)


 * No - it can't. Cosgroves thing is a TOTALLY different matter than this bogus nonsense about "wasted electricity" somehow coming out of the alternator.   This is absolutely typical fuzzy thinking.


 * CyclePat says: "In fact, my friend Darin Cosgrove and his website on hypermilling may shed some light on this subject. During our last meeting he explained how he disconnected his alternator to save on fuel. Even with the extra batteries which he lugs behind his driver's seat, this saved him an enormous amount of energy." - the problem is that the guy is NOT saving energy - he's saving fuel - which is not at all the same thing. In a conventional car, the battery is run down because it powers various electronics, the sparks for the sparkplugs, the cars computer, etc - the alternator recharges it.  If you disconnect the alternator, you'll save fuel, yes - but you're not saving ENERGY because the battery is simply running down and eventually, the car will stop running (even though it has plenty of fuel) because the battery will no longer be able to produce a spark.  That's why he needs more batteries than normal.  But he's not saving energy because he has to recharge all of those batteries at some point.  It's possible that recharging the batteries from (for example) mains electricity is cheaper than recharging it using the alternator - but it's hardly a general-purpose solution.


 * Hypermilers are only interested in their bottom-line 'miles per gallon' number - which he can obviously improve by disconnecting his alternator. But if he thinks he's saving energy, he's under a severe misapprehension.  But if discharging batteries as you drive is an "allowed" trick in hypermiling - why not drive a plug-in-hybrid and get infinite miles per gallon (until the batteries run down)...that's exactly the same thing as disconnecting your alternator and saving gas 'until the batteries run down'.


 * At any rate, none of this has ANY bearing on the argument about hydrolysis units. The (idiot) proponents of those things claim that the alternator produces more electricity than the battery requires for recharging and therefore there is "spare" or "unused" electricity for doing hydrolysis that would otherwise be "wasted".  That's emphatically not true - the amount of effort it takes the engine to turn the alternator depends on the amount of electricity the alternator produces.   So if you're charging the battery AND doing hydrolysis then the alternator will be harder to turn than if it's only charging the battery.  Hence the engine uses more energy to turn the alternator - and (because nothing is ever 100% efficient) it'll waste more energy in doing so than the hydrogen you'd produce could possibly generate.   The idea that a generator produces "spare" electricity is a complete misunderstanding of how electrical circuits work!   That's an error of monumental proportions and shows a total lack of understanding of basic electrical principles.


 * So the Cosgrove/hypermiler thing is (a) nothing amazing and (b) irrelevent to this article. The hydrolysis-using-spare-electricity is just plain delusional.


 * SteveBaker (talk) 20:17, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Water fueled cars
Technically, anyone who owns an electric car could be using a "water fueled car". My friend Allan Poulsen and his sparky Electric vehicle runs on wind power. He utilizes Bullfrog Power and specifically pays for wind generate electricity. Similarly, anyone runing an electric vehicle could "fuel" it with electricity generated via hydroelectricity. A Water power engine (the new article I created) demonstrates that "prime movers can be driven by water". In turn this can be transformed into energy. The definition of "fuel", according to our wikipedia article, is "any material that is burned or altered in order to obtain energy. I know, I know, you're going to say that I'm being ignorant to the "combustion part" or the "chemical reaction", but you must admit, it is a valiant effort. Similar to gasoline, water is often stored, in big dams, for later use to pass through water turbines. A water turbine is a type of water power engine. If you take a look at this definition it says fuel is a type "A type of energy or fuel used by the household. Electricity is included as a fuel.". Where should the line be drawn, between kinetic energy, fuel, water and it's Working fluid? Anyways, just food for thought, or should I say fuel for thought?
 * No, completely wrong. This article is about cars that claim to get energy from water by some weird chemical or electrical process.  Not at all the same thing as wind power (where power comes from the wind, strangely enough) or hydroelectric power which comes from falling weight and does not gain energy from doing something to the water other than dropping it. Man with two legs (talk) 21:05, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Hydroelectricity is not using water as a fuel. It is the flow of water that spins the turbines, thus gravity is doing the work.  For all intents and purposes, this would be a very long way around to being a solar powered car when the water cycle is carried to its ultimnate conclusion.  It is a try, but not even concievable for an article on water fuelled cars.208.242.58.125 (talk) 02:03, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * lol. Well, I figured it might lighten the mood (hey! Pun not originally intended there) and send a chuckle. I hope it did! :) b.t.w.: Good one! I really didn't think of the solar energy... making the atmosphere! Let's not forget the about planetary, gravitational pull (the moon), and Jupiter vs. Mars... we may need to contact the Astrology and compare with the astronomy experts for this one! LOL! (sigh)(Oh! It's good when I can laught about how silly I sound) --CyclePat (talk) 06:18, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Isn't is spelled fueled not fuelled?
Why is the title and most of the text spelled with "fuelled"? Even Firefox is telling me fuelled is wrong. Bluetd (talk) 18:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * "Fuelled" is the British spelling. There was a massive edit war a while back, and eventually the "fuelled" faction just plain wore everyone else down. It's just not worth the fight.Prebys (talk) 19:33, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * That's not quite how it works. There is a section in Wikipedia's Manual of Style specifically dealing with english language variations.  To avoid edit wars, there is a guideline in there on which variant is to be used under various circumstances.  On my computer, firefox tells me that fueled is a spelling error, as I use the Australian English dictionary. If your computer tells you otherwise, you're obviously using the wrong dictionary.  :-p  --Athol Mullen (talk) 02:53, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Under english language variations the rule is that because this article was created with British spellings, it should continue to use them. The only reason for change would be if the article were about something that is specific to another English speaking country. Man with two legs (talk) 10:05, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * NOTE: We're still getting sporadic efforts to change the spelling. So I have inserted the  template at the top of this talk page to at least record the fact - and point people at the relevant guidelines. SteveBaker (talk) 00:33, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

What water-fuelled cars are not
Some better English speaking guy should add a third bullet there about catalytic engine. It is possible to decompose water into elements by using catalytic cells that would take a low amount of energy, and then burn them together to produce a higher amount of energy. Unfortunately in this case the catalyzer is consumed in the process, so an eventually car like that (they were attempts to build such an engine) would work on the catalizer, and not on water. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 223.27.210.130 (talk) 06:15, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

BiosFuel
- In 2007, a company led by Steve Ryan called BiosFuel has sprung up stating that he has made a conversion of a regular internal combustion engine driven motorbike. The bike now supposedly runs on water.

This entry was removed. Please reinsert, at http://www.whathappendto.com/item/water-powered-motorbike.php it was stated that the invention is however questionable

http://www.thewaterengine.com/wfctech.htm finally is intresting site to update article info

81.246.154.220 (talk) 15:55, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Your reference was peswiki. Peswiki is not a reliable source for the purpose of referencing wikipedia articles, and hence this is not able to go into the article in its present form.  If you can find a reliable source that says essentially the same thing as the peswiki article, then it should be able to go in using that reference.  The problem is that, since what is claimed is physically impossible, finding reliable references is difficult.  Finding reliable sources to refute it is usually easy if any suitably qualified people have looked at it and expressed their opinion in writing.  --Athol Mullen (talk) 00:21, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Articles for deletion nomination of Electrolysis system
I have nominated Electrolysis system for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Articles for deletion/Electrolysis system. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message.

I thought folks here might be interested in this.OMCV (talk) 01:15, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Proposed change the title to Water-fuelled car scam
The first paragraph makes it clear that this article is intended to deal with the fringe side of things. One section "Hydrogen on demand technologies" has crept in which belongs in Hydrogen vehicle instead of here. Changing the title of this article (and moving that section to it's proper place) will help prevents such mistakes from happening in future. Your comments? Petecarney (talk) 16:15, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that section doesnt belong here. Its gone. The section described primarily boron fueled cars.  Scam is a loaded term however.  Not all of the claims of a water fueled car are necessarily scams, some could just be experimental error or confusion... I guess.  Guyonthesubway (talk)
 * Yes, "scam" is too much of a loaded term. I think people with any knowledge of physics have a clear vision of what belongs in this article and what doesn't, as is plainly spelled out in the introduction.  It's just a matter of remaining vigilant and culling the inappropriate material that occasionally sneaks its way in.Prebys (talk) 14:55, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree, "scam" is too much. I don't agree with Guyonthesubway about these claims being "experimental error" though - anyone with the least bit of scientific training knows that there is no energy left inside the water molecule to be exploited.  You don't need any new experiments to know that - the work has already been done-to-death.  Confusion is, I suppose, a remote possibility for someone with little or no scientific knowledge...but because the majority of proponents are claiming to have produced powerfully convincing results - we know that they aren't just confused.  So, yeah - these people are knowingly falsifying their results - but it's not really a "scam" until they try to make money out of it.  (Per Wiktionary: scam: Fraudulent deal, To defraud or embezzle.)   So someone like Stanley Meyer or Genepax (who both attempted to extract money from investors) were engaged in a "scam" because fraudulant extraction of money from idiotic investors was involved.  But someone like Garrett, who (it seems) never tried to make a penny from his so-called invention - should not be labelled that way.  SteveBaker (talk) 04:58, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I have read about the HHO converters, how they claim to use not only spare energy from the alternator as mentioned here, but also utilize thermal energy from a gas engine to increase efficiency. I for one would like to see more refutation of the efficiency of these conversions than a AAA spokesman's opinion. Any test results? Proponents claim to reduce fuel costs by up to 35%.  Anyone have other sources to add? Would be helpful.  I also agree with guyonthesubway, scam is a loaded term and doesnt give the impression of neutrality.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sahajrob (talk • contribs) 21:59, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The burden of proof is really on the side of those who make outrageous claims. The phrase "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence" applies here.  Extracting useful energy from waste heat is an extremely tough sell, it's not exactly impossible - but we surely can't say it's true without some really solid scientific evidence. SteveBaker (talk) 01:13, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Propose name change to "Water-fuelled Engine" or "Energy from Water"
The laws of physics are violated if you claim to extract net energy from water, regardless of whether you use it to power a car, so I think a more general title for this article would be more appropriate.

Although most such claims involve automobiles, some notable ones do not. For example, I think a section on ``Genesis World Energy" would be appropriate here, since financially it was one of the biggest free energy scams in history. However, most of their claims regarded units that were supposed to provide electricity for houses (they did make some minor claims about a car just before they were caught, but it was sort of a footnote).

Opinions?Prebys (talk) 15:55, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The examples where a car is not involved are few and far between. Even Genesis World Energy made claims for car engines (here).  For some bizarre reason the cranks and fraudsters out there don't seem to be able to resist going from theory to engineering practice to working end-user application in one gigantic leap.  You only have to read "Revolutionary energy source" and "Car" in the same sentence - and you can skip the intervening words and dump the article straight into the "fraudulant" bin!


 * "Energy from Water" as a replacement title is going one step too far because you can get energy from water (eg in a hydroelectric dam or a wave-energy plant) - it's just that water isn't a "fuel" in those kinds of application. We don't want to muddy the description by adding in a bunch of legitimate "gravitational/mechanical-energy-from-water" applications into the article.


 * "Water fuelled engine" might make a viable alternative title - but so far, I've yet to see a claim for a water fuelled engine that wasn't for a car - so right now, I don't think there is a need to change the title. However, if there was a reasonable consensus to change to this title, I wouldn't oppose it.


 * SteveBaker (talk) 18:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * GWE's claim of a water-fueled car came pretty late to try to distract people from the fact that they had yet to build a single unit of their "Edison Device", which had projected $1Trillion in annual sales by that time. It was never a major component of their claims, and by then only the truest of true believers were buying it.  Broadening the article would also allow the inclusion of BlackLight Power, which has been a fixture on the free energy scene for almost 20 years, and has never, to my knowledge made any claims regarding automobiles.Prebys (talk) 19:43, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No! Surely not?  A power-from-water company who don't claim to be able to power a car?  I don't think so!  I found them claiming exactly that within about 10 seconds of reaching their website!  It's right there on their applications page (emphasis is mine):
 * "It is expected that CIHT will competitively, economically, logistically, and environmentally displace essentially all power sources of all sizes: thermal, electrical, automotive, marine, rail, aviation, and aerospace. For example, a CIHT electric car is expected to have a range of 1500 miles on a liter of water."
 * So we can certainly discuss BlackLight's particular brand of crazyiness without a change to the title.
 * My lack of faith in human nature is restored! SteveBaker (talk) 13:07, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll add them when I get a chance. There's already an article on BlackLight, but I think the GWE article was deleted.  I like these two examples because they completely bracket the spectrum.  In many cases, it's hard to tell whether these things are fraud or self-deception.  In the case of GWE, even the true believers concede that it was nothing but a grand investment scam from the word go, and they were only selling water as fuel because they didn't think anyone would buy the Brooklyn Bridge.  BlackLight is a little more interesting.  I'm convinced that Randell Mills is sincere in his beliefs and he has some technical background (albeit not in physics).  Also, he's not selling the same tired old water->H+O->water scheme.  He's claiming water can go to a lower ground state. While I certainly don't believe this is true, it at least doesn't violate the laws of physics out of the gate (although it would need some pretty big modifications to QM).  That level of crazy thinking does occasionally lead to something profound, so it would be a bad to squash it out of hand. Even Bob Park agrees that Mills is at least methodical.Prebys (talk) 15:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's true that wild experimentalism does occasionally turn up something amazing (the discovery of X-rays, for example) - but the "amazing" always shows up at that experimental stage. I can think of no cases at all when some crazy experiment found a new physics formulation - AND that the inventor was still not believed ten years later - AND that inventor went on to turn it all the way into a practical, engineered, useful application that he was selling to industry - all with mainstream science still saying "it's impossible".  That's why "water fuelled cars" are such a clear-cut case against inventors like this.  If they are merely touting some very small scale lab experiment (like Fleischmann–Pons and cold fusion) then there is scope for simple experimental error - or indeed that there is some major breakthrough.
 * You can be mistaken about some tiny experimental error when you're working with a few cubic millimeters of reactants and doing super-careful measurements of tiny gains with tricky calorimetry. But you can't delude yourself into thinking your invention is actually powering a car unless it actually does do that.  At the point where someone can claim to be able to power a car using water as a fuel, they either have a 100% cast-iron definite new law of physics that no scientist would be able to ignore - or they are lying cheating fraudsters...there really is no in-between once you've made the car claim.  SteveBaker (talk) 19:29, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * True enough. Like I said, I don't believe the BlackLight claims, but they are at least different from most energy-from-water claims.  I believe Mills is sincerely deluded in his beliefs, but I'm not so sure about the other folks involved in the company.  I think it's a fairly common model in these scams for a straightforward con man to exploit the sincerity of an honest (but often crazy) individual.Prebys (talk) 08:00, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Non-Wikipedian Style and Outcome
Hello, Wikipedians !

Some of the previous writers have observed correctly.

I shall briefly present the issues:

By these I mean that, while not violating the page standard of Wikipedia, it blatantly violates it's spirit. Most of these are not direct textual errors, but the general feeling emitted by the article.
 * 1) The "See also: Perpetuum mobile" under the title tends to point out that a water engine is as unlikely as the idealistic device called a "perpetuum mobile"
 * (as a speculation I have to say that, while injecting water in a classic car engine is laughable at least, the obvious possibility that a fuel that is made of precisely the two gases that propel space shuttles to Earth's orbit is too clear-cut to dismiss. Pure water burners are unlikely, but gasoline does not explode by itself either. I am supremely confident that an effective method of splitting water in it's components, for feasibly using it as a fuel, will be found. H2+O2 is the most explosive natural gas mixture on Earth, for Pete's sake !)
 * 1) The general feeling of this page is:
 * 2) * discouraging
 * 3) * cold and sterile
 * 4) * biased (it leans strongly towards the unlikeliness of this type of engine)

We must not forget that the researcher comes to Wikipedia to find an impartial, clean, facts-only, unadulterated source of information, even if not complete. She or he relies on this free source for supplementing personal knowledge without being loaded with other's views, feelings or opinions. There are MANY educational sites out there, however (if I may be perfectly honest, even if violating a Wikipedia law) what she or he loves about Wikipedia is not having to put up with another's personal bullshit.

(a little more speculation: it is more than obvious that we only need - just as the spark-plug+injector/carburator+compression-cylinder system raises the efficiency of petrol - the proper, feasible system for making water an effective fuel. With other fuels being either noxious or expensive or requiring new infrastructure, or a new economic system, or being depletable, it is impossible not to understand that, at planetary-surface-level, no matter how difficult at first, a fluid that covers two thirds of the planet's surface and is more than 70% recreated during use is the only sane, common sense solution for Earth's needs. I could hypothesize about a combination of laser, sonic vibration, new uses for known energies, such as radio waves, and a number of other methods, that, while expensive in the prototype phase, will come together as an inexpensive - in mass production - combined device for swiftly breaking water into the two highly combustible gases, thus making it our planetary surface dream-fuel. In short, it is MORE than possible, we simply have not created the most effective device yet, that's all. HEY ! In 1910, the prospect of walking on the moon would have provided you with a free bed in the hospital's psychiatry ward for a recommended investigation. )

Out of respect for Wikipedia founders, volunteers and users, I will refrain from commenting about contemporary fuel-related interests that actively fight against changing the status quo. See: "electric vehicle", "electric car", etc... on Wiki and search engines to find out about a solution that works but was discontinued for now. "Pockets and thrones may suffer." (Felix Balca, Tulcea, Romania, December 2010 - global analysis essay)

Conclusion: mainly because of not addressing both sides (possible/impossible) equally, and allowing for a clear discouraging feeling to be generated by this page (plus the "See also: Perpetual motion" unfortunate association), WHILE NOT violating the known Wikipedia page standard, IT DOES clearly violate the original Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation spirit.

Possible consequence: many of the beginner researchers that are emotionally involved with Wikipedia as a knowledge source will be deterred from taking up "water-as-fuel" as a valid research subject, thus reducing the number of researchers on the subject, thus possibly prolonging the relative time period until the final breakthrough occurs.

And finally... Suggestions:
 * since this is a subject of paramount importance for Earth’s future, I do dare ask ALL WIKIPEDIA VOLUNTEERS with interest in the subject to work the forums for finding the proper, unbiased format. There's simply too much at stake here.
 * I will ask the Wikipedia administrators to find the Wikipedia-compliant method of making this article difficult to change by interested third parties, AND to keep an eye out for not allowing Wikipedia to be used as a subtle tool for furthering someone's interests. Some regular page-brushing may be necessary.
 * I respectfully ask all Wikipedia users to contribute in any way possible, with any and all information they have available, through the proper channels (Wikipedia forums, talk pages, personal communication) for enabling Wikipedia volunteers to make this page as complete as legally possible. For this, I thank you in advance !

Disclaimer: By understanding the official Wikipedia rules about the protection of personal information, I hereby freely disclose my necessary contact data, for the purpose of further debate on the subject (the personal channels mentioned earlier). E-mail address :    balca.felix@yahoo.com     (can be deleted and another created in case of problems) The reason for this is my insufficient time for browsing forums or sites. Note: the first part of the address (before "@") also constitutes my current YM ID. (can also be "cleaned" if case may be) I have attempted to keep this section as clean as possible, however I am only a beginner regarding Wikipedia formats and edits (I discovered Wikipedia only recently), my time is scarce, therefore I only used attention and basic "spacebar and enter" formatting. I am not a native English speaker, I have re-read the article, I do apologize for any grammar mistakes I have overlooked.

Also, I will respectfully ask readers not to modify the written, please feel free to add all that you see fit, instead.

Thank you for reading !

Please get busy on saving us from problematic fuels. Every drop makes a difference here.

Signed:  BlackTomcat, a.k.a.   Fell X , Eastern Europe.

BlackTomcat (talk) 12:25, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Be well, y'all !

Post Scriptum: (this is my first and final re-edit) I have reviewed the saved article and it looks plain weird graphically. Please, someone with Wikipedia formatting experience, I need help here and no time left today. Please put the article in proper format, leave some text after the article and sign. I would like to know who to thank. Thanks ! — Preceding unsigned comment added by BlackTomcat (talk • contribs) 12:32, 25 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I have fixed your formatting (I hope it is what you intended). Don't type spaces at the beginning of a line - that's what causes the weird look of your post.  Also, when you want to make a list, start each line with s '#' to get a numbered item or a '*' to get a 'bullet'. SteveBaker (talk) 13:13, 25 January 2011 (UTC)


 * You should probably read the archives before spending a lot of time raising points that have been discussed to death. In short, virtually all water fueled cars "work" by splitting water into Hydrogen and Oxygen, and then burning Hydrogen and Oxygen, which produces water.  This indeed implies perpetual motion (whether the inventor makes that claim or not) and deserves all the skepticism associated with such a claim.  See the discussions in the archives or, for example, the Stanley Meyer's water fuel cell article for some details and references.Prebys (talk) 13:28, 25 January 2011 (UTC)


 * OK - let me now respond to your post:


 * The "See also: Perpetuum mobile" under the title tends to point out that a water engine is as unlikely as the idealistic device called a "perpetuum mobile" -- Any motor of any kind that claims to operate using water as a 'fuel' (as opposed to a 'working fluid' like a steam engine or for ancilliary purposes such as cooling or lean-burn control) is a scientific impossibility. Water contains no chemical energy - so there is no energy to extract as a fuel and hence absolutely every application that claims to use water as a fuel is either in error - or (more often) downright fraudulant.  They are almost all "perpetual motion" machines.
 * (as a speculation I have to say that, while injecting water in a classic car engine is laughable at least, the obvious possibility that a fuel that is made of precisely the two gases that propel space shuttles to Earth's orbit is too clear-cut to dismiss. -- Actually, the reverse is the case. Injecting water (along with gasoline) into a specially designed car engine can have some kind of a positive effect - it can slow down the burning of the gasoline and provide some measure of additional control. However, such a machine could not be said to be "fuelled" by the water and would not come under the auspices of this page.  It is indeed possible to use hydrogen as a fuel - burning it with oxygen.  Hydrogen and oxygen are indeed the two chemical elements that make up water...but here is the problem that 100% of the false claims and wild hope represented here trip over:  It takes much more energy to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen in water than you get back when you burn the hydrogen in the oxygen.  Hence, it would (in principle) be possible to build a machine that used a large battery to split water into hydrogen and oxygen - and then burned the hydrogen to drive an engine - BUT (and this is CRITICAL to understanding the issues here), the battery would have to provide much more energy than the engine would produce.  Such a machine would be (in effect) like a steam engine where the water is just a 'working fluid' for an extremely inefficient electric car.
 * Pure water burners are unlikely, but gasoline does not explode by itself either. I am supremely confident that an effective method of splitting water in it's components, for feasibly using it as a fuel, will be found. H2+O2 is the most explosive natural gas mixture on Earth, for Pete's sake !) -- Pure water 'burners' are not just unlikely, they are quite utterly impossible. Gasoline has chemical energy bound into its' molecules - when you use a tiny amount of energy (like the spark from a spark plug) you can cause a gasoline molecule to come apart, and a LOT of energy is released - far more than the energy it took to make that initial spark.  But water isn't like that - you have to use a lot of energy to pull the molecule apart, and when it does come apart, you get no energy out.  That's just basic chemistry.  Your "confidence" that this can be done is completely misplaced.  The problem is one of basic chemistry - really simple science - and the failure to understand that most basic fact is at the root of every single crazy "inventor" that we list in this article.


 * The general feeling of this page is: discouraging, cold and sterile, biased (it leans strongly towards the unlikeliness of this type of engine) -- It should be discouraging because there is no point in encouraging people to do something stupid...like wasting their lives pursuing that which we know to be impossible. Leaning towards the truth is not bias.  If there were even a single case where a car had been shown to run on water (as a fuel), the whole of science would be totally overturned and pretty much every book written by scientists since the 1800's (not to mention, thousands of Wikipedia pages) would need a complete rewrite.  The success of modern science strongly demonstrates that it cannot possibly be so very wrong about the simplest facts of chemistry and thermodynamics.  The tone of this article accurately reflects how the world is for the deeply stupid and/or fraudulant people who have made these claims.


 * By these I mean that, while not violating the page standard of Wikipedia, it blatantly violates it's spirit. -- The spirit of Wikipedia is to present the truth. That is what we're doing here.


 * We must not forget that the researcher comes to Wikipedia to find an impartial, clean, facts-only, unadulterated source of information, even if not complete. -- And that is precisely what we're doing here.


 * She or he relies on this free source for supplementing personal knowledge without being loaded with other's views, feelings or opinions. -- Exactly. So there are no feelings or opinions here.  Every fact we state has to be backed up by a solid reference from a "reliable source".


 * (a little more speculation: it is more than obvious that we only need - just as the spark-plug+injector/carburator+compression-cylinder system raises the efficiency of petrol - the proper, feasible system for making water an effective fuel. -- But that's not true. This isn't a matter of needing some clever little technological tweak.  We know the "binding energy" of a water molecule is negative - when you create a water molecule by burning hydrogen in oxygen, it gives out energy - to turn that water molecule back into separate hydrogen and oxygen molecules - you have to put energy into it.  With gasoline, it would take a lot of energy to force the various constituent atoms together - making gasoline from stuff like CO2 and water takes a LOT of energy!  But when you pull it apart, you get a lot of energy back.

Perhaps an analogy would help: In water, it's like the hydrogen and the oxygen atoms are little balls, held together with bungee cords. It takes a lot of effort to pull them apart (to split the molecule into hydrogen and oxygen) - but when you release them, the atoms come back together with a 'snap' and energy is released. But gasoline molecules are more like little balls that are being pushed apart by springs. To get the atoms close enough to make a molecule, you have to push them together with a lot of force - but when you release them - the springs push them apart, releasing energy in the process. It is this fundamental difference between how a water molecule and a gasoline molecule are put together that makes water fuelled cars quite utterly impossible. It's nothing to do with the technology or clever techniques. You're trying to extract energy that just isn't there to begin with.


 * With other fuels being either noxious or expensive or requiring new infrastructure, or a new economic system, or being depletable, it is impossible not to understand that, at planetary-surface-level, no matter how difficult at first, a fluid that covers two thirds of the planet's surface and is more than 70% recreated during use is the only sane, common sense solution for Earth's needs. -- Oh, sure! If there was energy in water - then extracting it would be a wonderful and amazing thing.  But the energy ain't there to start with.  So no matter how wonderful it would be if we could do it - sadly, we can't.  "You can't get blood from a stone"...and you can't get energy from water.   That's not to say though that we couldn't get energy from the waves or from the flow of water in rivers or tides - but that's not extracting chemical energy - ultimately, it's a way to get energy from the heat of the sun and the motion of the moon.  The energy isn't coming from the water itself.


 * I could hypothesize about a combination of laser, sonic vibration, new uses for known energies, such as radio waves, and a number of other methods, that, while expensive in the prototype phase, will come together as an inexpensive - in mass production - combined device for swiftly breaking water into the two highly combustible gases, thus making it our planetary surface dream-fuel. In short, it is MORE than possible, we simply have not created the most effective device yet, that's all. HEY ! In 1910, the prospect of walking on the moon would have provided you with a free bed in the hospital's psychiatry ward for a recommended investigation. ) -- Science got men on the moon by understanding how things work. We understand how water works - and the results are as I've described.


 * WHILE NOT violating the known Wikipedia page standard, IT DOES clearly violate the original Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation spirit. -- I strongly resent that comment. It's rude, untrue and completely uncalled for.  I think you should apologize to the hard working editors here who are merely passing on the truth.  What is written here does not come from our ideas - it comes from the references, listed at the bottom of the article.   Your complete and utter lack of understanding of the most basic science does not grant you permission to berate those of us who do.  I strongly recommend that you stop complaining - open your eyes and use Wikipedia to fill in the gigantic gaps in your knowledge of science in general.


 * Possible consequence: many of the beginner researchers that are emotionally involved with Wikipedia as a knowledge source will be deterred from taking up "water-as-fuel" as a valid research subject, thus reducing the number of researchers on the subject, -- Excellent! Then our educational mission here is complete!  These people will presumably find other avenues of research and become useful members of society - rather than a drain on it (as were almost all of the people listed in this article as proponents of water-as-fuel).


 * ...thus possibly prolonging the relative time period until the final breakthrough occurs. -- There is no possibility, even in principle of such a breakthrough. We're merely shortening the time until sanity finally prevails and "water-fuelled cars" are looked upon as nasty, fraudulant little schemes of evil people who seek to extract money from the gullible.


 * I will ask the Wikipedia administrators to find the Wikipedia-compliant method of making this article difficult to change by interested third parties, AND to keep an eye out for not allowing Wikipedia to be used as a subtle tool for furthering someone's interests. Some regular page-brushing may be necessary. -- This kind of threat is (again) rude - but also laughable. Go ahead - do your worst.


 * SteveBaker (talk) 13:55, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello, Steve !

Thank you for your help with the page format.

I am impressed by the level of detail and structure that you put in answering. However, for not turning a Wikipedia talk page into a melee, I shall express my opinion using the e-mail address you listed on your profile page.

On this page I only vant to say that, as any quality sceptic, you refuse the possibility that new science could make this idea possible.

I've learned not to be that rigid, thanks to some eye-opening experiences.

I thank you again for your help and exquisite answer !!

I'll attempt contacting you by mail.

Be well !

BlackTomcat (talk) 14:18, 27 January 2011 (UTC)


 * This is a common reaction to "Science says this is impossible". Every crackpot who comes up with a water-powered car says the exact same thing.


 * But what you (and all the crackpots) have to understand is that "new science" can certainly change underlying theory (as, for example, Einstein's relativity changed Newtonian mechanics) - but it can't possibly change existing experimental results or the way that the day-to-day world is observed to work.


 * So, for example, Einstein's theory showed that Newton was wrong - and that was an utterly revolutionary thing that shook science to it's very core - it changed the way everyone thought about space and time. But for all of that radical stuff - it only makes a difference when objects are moving very close to the speed of light.  When NASA fires a spacecraft off to visit Mars, they don't use Einstein's theory...the use good-old Newton - because the older theory is just as good, even at the ungodly speeds that spacecraft fly at.  At more normal speeds, Einsteins' theory is essentially identical to Newtons'.  Hence, when Einstein came up with this astounding stuff, life went on as usual.  Bridges didn't fall down, radios still worked, everything that relied on Newton's laws still worked just like they always had.  The only thing that happened was that we realized that things work differently at very high speeds and that gravity can bend light to a teeny-tiny degree. (So subtle in fact that a small army of physicists and astronomers had to mount a major expedition to measure the position of a star during a solar eclipse to even stand a chance of proving it!)


 * You can find other examples: Quantum theory is radically different from "classical" science - it's insanely weird.  But it only produces different results at the level of atomic nucleii.  But for all "normal matter" it is hardly any different at all from the classical physics we'd known for the previous 150 years.  We can still rely on putting a book down on a table - and it still being there an hour later - even if the same experiment performed on an electron is doomed to failure!   That's not to say that it doesn't have applications in the real world - just that it didn't change any experimentally-determined results that were already well-established...what worked before that theory came about, still worked afterwards.


 * The same would have to be true of any radical new theory about the chemistry of water - and that's the critical thing to understand here.


 * Such a theory would have to explain (as our current theory does) why it takes exactly such-and-such amount of electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen - and why exactly such-and-such amount of heat is released when you react hydrogen and oxygen to make water. Those results are well-established experimentally - and the results must still be true no matter how you explain them.  This new theory would also have to agree to an amazing degree of precision with all of the hundreds of thousands of known chemical reactions that involve water that are the basis of so much of the chemical industries of the world.  Any new theory has to precisely reproduce all of the known-to-be-correct results that the present theory has that have been experimentally proven.  The only thing it can possibly change is the predicted results of rather radical experiments that have never been undertaken before...and for something as commonplace as water - there aren't many experiments that haven't been done!


 * That means that the "binding energy" of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms within a water molecule (which is what is at issue here) has to be pretty much exactly the same in any new theory as it is in the current one - it has to be true over the entire range of temperatures and pressures that we've ever achieved. It has to be true in space as well as in a gravitational field.  It has to be true under widely varying electromagnetic fields.  It has to be true over spans of hundreds of years.  The situations under which it could predict something different that current theory would have to be exceedingly bizarre because they'd have to explain something that's different only in ways that have yet to be experimentally tested.


 * Which in turn means that the statement that "Water has no energy to give up" must still be true for any new theory - which means that new science is astronomically unlikely to allow energy to be extracted from water under any kind of "normal" situation.


 * Now, if your new theory said "You can extract energy from water in the presence of the gravitational field of a neutron star" or "You can extract energy from water under pressures of a trillion giga-pascals" - then maybe that theory could supplant current chemistry. But it can't do that in "ordinary" situations because it has to agree with all of the millions of experiments that have been done over the past 200 years.


 * We have experimental evidence to prove that water has a negative binding energy. That's it.  No change in theory can change that fact.  When you pull apart a water molecule, (here on earth, under "reasonable" conditions of heat, light, gravity, etc) you will not get any energy out of it as a result...no matter what exciting new theory you have to explain what happens.


 * So, yes, there will be new science - but just like Einstein's theory didn't make much difference to "normal" life here on earth - so a new theory of chemistry would produce results that are so similar to our present theories that it couldn't change whether you can use water to fuel a car. This is a really fundamental matter of how science works - and how science survives something as fundamental as Newton being incorrect without us having to rewrite all of our textbooks...and it means that no matter what clever science you might discover, you aren't going to be able to make a water-powered car from it.


 * SteveBaker (talk) 15:20, 27 January 2011 (UTC)