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Originally Posted by Raptor235
A while ago we posted an article about a company selling a kit to make your car run on water...
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As an engineer, I'm very skeptical that this has a positive energy balance. I don't understand what "HHO" could possibly mean. Hydrogen has a valance of one -- you can't link hydrogen with both oxygen and another hydrogen. (Water might be called "HOH", in that oxygen, with a valence of two, links with a hydrogen on either side.)
If he's electrolyzing water to split it into hydrogen and oxygen, he needs to be honest about how much electrical energy he's using. In such a case, it's deceptive to say he's "running on water," since the water is being transformed into fuel by electricity, and the electricity used must be no less than the energy released when hydrogen and oxygen is re-combined, according to the First Law of Thermodynamics. In other words, why not simply run the car from electricity directly, and save the considerable efficiency penalty that an internal combustion engine imposes? (Some 75% of spark engine energy is wasted as heat.)
