Guy is pretty smart.


http://dabble.com/node/12427667

7/10/2007 10:12:18 AM

what a horrible thread name

really cool innovation though - hopefully it actually goes somewhere

7/10/2007 10:21:27 AM

Had success in getting you to not only view the video but respond so I would say good thread title.

7/10/2007 10:27:20 AM

Does the whole setup result in a net energy gain?

7/10/2007 10:28:11 AM

i hate local reporters..... he should have just let Science or Nature or an engineering journal summarize the invention. The reporter missed a gigantic feature of the invention when he was talking about the Sterling Engine and he said it was using "nothing but salt water" as a fuel. you mean, "nothing but salt water, and radio waves", which of course take electricity to generate, which should then lead to Boone's question, which would then give us some actual information. Not a false hope that we could just start burning salt water to create heat and electricity with no additional energy input.

7/10/2007 10:59:55 AM

^ I agree with that 100%

7/10/2007 11:09:19 AM

The concept of hydrolysis via radio waves is interesting, but I can't imagine that the efficiency is very good. Of course the first law of thermodynamics dictates that you are not gonna get any more energy out of this system than you put in. Unless this technique of breaking down water molecules is ultra-efficient, I don't see too much promise in this science-fair show.

7/10/2007 11:32:57 AM

this is at least the third thread on this, and as has already been discussed, he's probably losing a shit ton of energy doing this

7/10/2007 11:35:26 AM

Well, the production of Hydrogen with existing techniques is attrotious. If his process is even 70% efficient then this is a major breakthrough.

7/10/2007 12:07:54 PM

its not efficient at all

7/10/2007 1:28:59 PM

so is it the H2 that's burning or the Na? and if i remember correctly it took a shit ton of energy to break H2O into elemental H and Na, so he must be supplying a lot of RF energy to get that measly flame

7/10/2007 2:02:41 PM

yep, that was the first thing I thought of, how much freakin RF power is this guy beaming into that salt water?

7/10/2007 6:48:06 PM

this sounds like wireless power to me,
you beam some wifi radio to something that sparks a chemical reaction

also this actually raises a very important health issue
what if you have your radio at the beach and you turn it twards the ocean
you may spark the biggest fire the world ever seen.

7/10/2007 7:26:53 PM

The energy efficiency is the very first thing that I thought about, but another thing I'd like to know is what sort of waste products are produced from this reaction. I can't imagine that there's too many environmental toxins you can produce using salt and H2O, but this reaction is definitely going to produce something. If it puts out some kind of greenhouse gas, then this invention hasn't really fixed anything.

Not that this thing is immediately discredited, but there are two things that make me suspicious. A) This guy is just a "broadcast engineer," so while it's not impossible I just don't see somebody with this background being able to come up with something like this and then being able to conduct the proper experiments to back up his claims with hard data. B) As far as the news report showed, he took it to a guy whose background is polymer engineering. That means he at least has a good working knowledge of chemistry and probably thermodynamics, but I don't know that somebody who works with polymers would necessarily have the right equipment to properly check out something like this. It might be better to get somebody with a chemical engineering background or something. Plus, the guy in the news report only said that the temperature of the flame was impressive; we never heard him say anything about the intensity of the radio waves that had to be put in, and how that compares to the energy that can be extracted from the flame.

7/10/2007 10:32:30 PM

get your head out of your ass

if this thing was real and polluted just as much as fossil fuels, it would solve an ass load of problems

7/10/2007 10:52:09 PM