Salt Water Energy: feasible?

[Rayne]

Source

For obvious reasons, scientists long have thought that salt water couldn't be burned.

So when an Erie man announced he'd ignited salt water with the radio-frequency generator he'd invented, some thought it a was a hoax.

John Kanzius, a Washington County native, tried to desalinate seawater with a generator he developed to treat cancer, and it caused a flash in the test tube.

Within days, he had the salt water in the test tube burning like a candle, as long as it was exposed to radio frequencies.

His discovery has spawned scientific interest in using the world's most abundant substance as clean fuel, among other uses.

Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, held a demonstration last week at the university's Materials Research Laboratory in State College, to confirm what he'd witnessed weeks before in an Erie lab.

"It's true, it works," Dr. Roy said. "Everyone told me, 'Rustum, don't be fooled. He put electrodes in there.' "

But there are no electrodes and no gimmicks, he said.

Dr. Roy said the salt water isn't burning per se, despite appearances. The radio frequency actually weakens bonds holding together the constituents of salt water -- sodium chloride, hydrogen and oxygen -- and releases the hydrogen, which, once ignited, burns continuously when exposed to the RF energy field. Mr. Kanzius said an independent source measured the flame's temperature, which exceeds 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, reflecting an enormous energy output.

As such, Dr. Roy, a founding member of the Materials Research Laboratory and expert in water structure, said Mr. Kanzius' discovery represents "the most remarkable in water science in 100 years."

But researching its potential will take time and money, he said. One immediate question is energy efficiency: The energy the RF generator uses vs. the energy output from burning hydrogen. ...

It sounds like potentially useful stuff here. Breaking the bonds between sodium, oxygen and hydrogen is no easy task so creating a process that breaks it down and harnesses the energy would be remarkably more efficient than what we have now. Plus, we've got more than enough of the stuff to go around.

But my only gripe is that a Radio Frequency 'caused the bonds to weaken.' I guess RF can resonate with the overall molecular structure weakening it, but why this hasn't been discovered before is beyond me. I would have assumed this sort of test may have been inadvertently tested.

I'm skeptical, but if scientists can pull out any more information, hey free and renewable energy for everyone.

 

[evkl]

It's just like cold fusion--get it, and then make it energy-efficient, and life's good.

 

[Zhen Lin]

Fascinating. However, I wonder how energy-efficient this process truly is? You have to put in energy to make the RF waves, the energy of which only part of goes towards breaking the bonds - and bond-breaking is always a process that consumes energy. It is the bond-forming that releases energy, and there's a reason why salt water doesn't often spontaneously decompose into NaOH and HCl and H₂ and O₂ - these substances are less thermodynamically stable than NaCl and H₂O.