The problem is, water is not flammable as we all know. But it's two components Hydrogen, and Oxygen are very flammable. The hindenburgh was a hydrogen balloon, and look what happend to it from a spark of static electricity.
To get Hydrogen out of water, you have to use electrolosis, and that takes a ton of energy to break the Hydrogen/Oxygen bond. It takes more energy to break that bond that is created from burning the hyrdogen.
Now if you have either a cheap source of hydrogen (fossil fuels are a good source) or a cheap source of electricity, you can make the hydrogen car work. In Iceland it is working rather well because they basically have limitless free electricty that comes from geothermal generation. So in that instance, they can make hyrdrogen cheaply and basically give it away for use in automobiles.
But just pouring water in your tank and breaking it up there will just not work.
The problem is, water is not flammable as we all know. But it's two components Hydrogen, and Oxygen are very flammable. The hindenburgh was a hydrogen balloon, and look what happend to it from a spark of static electricity.
To get Hydrogen out of water, you have to use electrolosis, and that takes a ton of energy to break the Hydrogen/Oxygen bond. It takes more energy to break that bond that is created from burning the hyrdogen.
Now if you have either a cheap source of hydrogen (fossil fuels are a good source) or a cheap source of electricity, you can make the hydrogen car work. In Iceland it is working rather well because they basically have limitless free electricty that comes from geothermal generation. So in that instance, they can make hyrdrogen cheaply and basically give it away for use in automobiles.
But just pouring water in your tank and breaking it up there will just not work.
I'm not claiming this idea will work but... I have a hydrogen powered rocket that uses water. You mix some powder in with the water (I believe it's some kind of acid) then run some electricity through it (powered by batteries) which creates the hydrogen. Then you launch it by pressing a butten that runs electricity (again, battery powered) to a little wire that heats up like a light bulb which ignites the hydrogen gas. All pretty similar to what this site it proposing. Although, I have to doubt that you can just mix in the hydrogen gas with gasoline and everything will be fine.
If you seperate oxygen and hydrogen by electrolisis and then burn it to create water you haven't gained anything. The energy you would get out would be equal to what you put in assuming you don't lose any energy to friction, heat, etc.
I like how one guy has goggles, one has glasses, and the other is a pirate. Only in the big 10
In this case the "cheap" electricity would be the cars generator I suppose.
Same is true of the biofuels - you have to look at how much oil goes into growing the corn/processing it (fertiliziers, diesel for tractors, trucks to transport the biomass, power for the plant, ect)
What Brian means is that it takes more energy to make the hydrogen from water than what is used when it is burned. You would have to introduce additional hydrogen just to keep the generator running.
In your example, it would take more energy to run the cars generator to make the hydrogen than the burnt hydrogen would produce.
In other words, the generator running to make the electricity could not run off the hydrogen it is creating. It would need additional hydrogen. This all = a net usable energy loss.
I agree that hydrogen has the most upside of all the current alternative fuels, but there are laws of chemistry and thermodynamics that make this gimmick just that, a gimmick.