Water Inventions

[S10CHEVY]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rb_rDkwGnU
Thought some might like seeing this. With the price of fuel oil, natural gas, maybe a furnace will use it too. Just fill it up from the tap water.

[angib]

For a furnace, why bother - it would be far easier and slightly more efficient to use electricity to heat the house directly, rather than use electricity to make HHO and then burn the HHO in a furnace.

For vehicles the story is different as the HHO gas is effectively a liquid battery - you use electricity to make the HHO and then use the HHO to drive a regular(-ish) engine. But how do you store the HHO gas in the vehicle? And what happens to it in a collision? I don't know the answer to those questions.

As for the idea that you could convert a vehicle so that you put water in the fuel tank and then drive down the road, that's complete nonsense - you would also need a little nuclear power plant in the trunk making the electricity to make the HHO!

Andrew

[Ira]

As for the idea that you could convert a vehicle so that you put water in the fuel tank and then drive down the road, that's complete nonsense

What happened to steam power then?

Putting the dangers of it way back then behind us, can't this be modified for modern day use that's safer?

We should at least try, if not just to put Chavez in his place, but to make the rest of the OPEC son-of-a-bitches a little nervous about their futures.

[mikeschn]

Do we really have enough wood/coal to power ALL them engines on the road today? Wouldn't that be like hyper-deforestation?

And would you have to build up a nice hot fire in the engine to go a couple blocks to the store? And then what? Just let the fire die down? Sounds similar to the problems of having a wood burning stove in a teardrop!



Mike...

What happened to steam power then?

[angib]

As you might imagine, if it's the continuing application of out-of-date technology that you want, we Brits can offer it to you.

Members of the Steam Car Club of Great Britain are not only preserving vintage steamers, many of them American like Stanleys and Locomobiles, but they occasionally convert contemporary ones to steam. Here's a nice conversion of a little fiberglass pickup complete with video (the driver has that special enthusiastic nerd voice...).

Heck, we've even got a Steam Car Challenge to build a car to take the world steam speed record.

Actually with modern technology and electronic controls, it's not that hard to build a steam car. In the old days, you had to fire the boiler maybe 30 minutes before you wanted to set off, but now you can build a boiler to do that in around 30 seconds. But that's with an oil-fired boiler and if you've got oil, why not run a diesel car?

Coal may yet come back - someone is currently planning a new 'sequestration' coal-fired power station in Britain - it will scrub the carbon and other pollutants from its flue and put them down a disused mine! I don't think that would work with a car as people would always be tripping over the hosepipe connecting it to the mine....

Andrew