Stuff You Should Know - Could salt water fuel cars?

Episode Date: June 10, 2008

Salt water fuel could be the next viable alternative to foreign oil. Learn about the ongoing research behind the concept of salt water fuel in this HowStuffWorks podcast. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by Consumer Guide Automotive. We make our buying easier. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here at HowStuffWorks.com. With me as always is my trusty editrix, Candice Gibson. How's it going, Candice? Fabulous, Josh. I gotta say I envy you a little bit there, Candice. I haven't been so fabulous lately. My wallet keeps shrinking and shrinking. Have you been to the gas pumps lately? Yeah,

I know what you mean. Those numbers keep climbing, but it's not so expensive to feel my car because I drive an itty-bitty Civic. Well, I drive a big old honkin' Volvo and it uses gas like you would not believe. Think about this though. I mean, what if you could put something else besides gas in your car to power it? You know, like sand or air or something. Well, that would be nice. That would be nice. What about salt water? What are you talking about? That's crazy. No, it's not crazy, really. Have you heard of this guy named John Kanzius? Indeed, I have. You have. Okay, so you have read the article. Yeah, I was just setting you up. That's great. Thanks for that. You're awesome. All right, well, let's tell the people out in podcast land what we're talking about.

This guy named John Kanzius is this retiree in Florida. He's a retired radio broadcast engineer, and he came up with this thing called a radio frequency generator. RFG. RFG is right. Basically, what it does is it takes radio waves and condenses them into a beam. It has actually three applications that they found so far, but one of them came about when Kanzius was tinkering with trying to desalinate water, salt water, which could solve the global thirst crisis, right? Yeah, because not everyone has access to clean water. No, actually, to the tune of about two billion people, I understand. Yeah. So he was trying to desalinate water using his RFG, and he had the little box trained on a test tube of salt water, and he noticed that it sparked, which is fairly unusual for

water. Yeah, water doesn't burn. On the contrary, water actually puts out fire. Exactly. So Kanzius has a little bit of this mad scientist bent to him. You know, he's a very curious fella, and he liked the paper towel and turns the RFG facing the test tube again, and he touches the paper towel to the water, and rather than the paper towel being put out by the water, the paper towel... This one got bigger. Exactly. Basically, it caught the water on fire, and on fire it was. It was burning at about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Unbelievable. It was a pretty serious flame, actually. Yeah. So, well, how does this convert to fuel for our cars? Well, I'll tell you, basically what Kanzius did inadvertently was to separate water into its components. You know,

mother? Two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule, basic science, H2O. We're all there. And we've known for a while that you can use hydrogen as fuel. You can create an electric charge from it, or you can burn it in a combustion engine. Now, wait, wait, wait, hold on, because hydrogen fuel is potentially dangerous, right? I mean, look at the Hindenburg. That exploded. Actually, the Hindenburg's been kind of latched onto by people who aren't all about hydrogen, e.g. the big oil companies. That's kind of a fallacy, actually. The Hindenburg explosion, it was a blimp, held aloft by hydrogen. A static spark caught the hydrogen on fire, and 37 people ended up dying. The problem is, is 35 of those people died by jumping to their deaths.

Most of the people, actually all of the people who were on board the passenger compartment, who stayed aboard, landed safely and unharmed. And that's because hydrogen is actually the most lightweight of all the elements, and so it floated upward. It's lighter than air, exactly. Yeah. And it burned upward, actually, too, away from the passenger compartment. That's not to mention that the Hindenburg's outer skin was coated in rocket fuel and a really highly flammable acetate. Yeah, so that wasn't too conducive to that either. So the Hindenburg's probably not the best thing to point to, to say hydrogen fuel's dangerous. Right. It's not that dangerous. The problem with this type of hydrogen fuel, saltwater fuel, essentially, is that it

has a negative net energy ratio. And so, to create this type of saltwater fuel, you're actually putting in more energy than what you're getting out. Exactly. And what's the point? I mean, speaking strictly from an energy standpoint, you might as well just use the gasoline that you get this gas, a gallon's worth of energy from rather than, say, using a gallon to get a half a gallon's worth of energy from. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. You can't get something from nothing. Indeed. And Kansas isn't the only person to run into this stumbling block. Hydrogen could be a really legitimate fuel. I mean, it packs a real punch. And its emissions are nothing but water vapor, essentially. Yeah. So it's probably the cleanest burning fuel. I mean, the only other

thing that's cleaner is electricity. And if you follow electricity back to its origin, 50% of electricity is created by burning coal. So, really, hydrogen would be cleaner. But there's that negative net energy ratio. It keeps popping up. When are we going to figure this out? I don't know, but I've written a couple articles on it so far. One is a good saltwater fuel cars, and the other is, is hydrogen fuel dangerous? And they're both pretty interesting. You can read them both on howstuffworks.com. And I'll take you no gas to get there. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast.

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