Denny Klein - Fuel from Water - Is this a scam?

[calladus]

One of my co-workers send me information on a Denny Klein who has just applied for a patent on a water to fuel technology.

He says he's discovered a 'new property' of water (which I take as a buzzword for 'fraud'). He calls his discovery HHO (as apposed to H2O)

The problem is that I don't know near enough chemistry to figure out if this guy is talking out of his hat.

Anyone want to look at this guy's claims?

His patent application number is: 20060075683 and can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/np2hn from the USPTO search function located at:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html

There's a Wiki that contains a Fox News video at:
http://peswiki.com/energy/Directory:Hydrogen_Technology_Applications_Inc#Vid eo_Feature

And Klein's web site is at:
http://hytechapps.com/


I guess it's time to crack open my old Chemistry text book.

[ChristineR]

HOH is more correct way of writing it, as its actually a hydrogen atom bonded to a hydroxide ion. I like hydrogen hydroxide better than the more common "dihydron monoxide."

[Crossbow]

It sure sounds like a scam!

A few excerpts from their web site ...

When the H2O Model 1500 Aquygen™ Gas Generator is used as a gas welder, Aquygen™ Gas can weld, cut, braze, solder, metal clad and fuse materials such as ceramics, metals, cermets, glass, plastics and inter-metallic materials together, such as metal-to-metal, metal to glass, ferrous to non*ferrous, and dissimilar metals to each other, which is a true fusion process heretofore unavailable.

How one could weld metal to glass to plastic to cement is beyond me. I have never even heard of such a thing being theorized.

Our technology centers on the ability to generate a unique type of hydrogen/oxygen gas mixture (a "unique gas", which we call "Aquygen™" gas) on demand from a lightweight, compact machine that uses the water electrolysis process as its underlying technology basis.

This unique gas is infinitely stable until it comes in contact with a select target media. Then it sublimates, causing a molecular surface exchange of certain elements, reacting with such excitation as to cause temperatures of up to 10,000° F, the temperature of our Sun's surface, which is currently the limits of our ability to measure.

An infinitely stable gas? That sure is weird.

Also, their fuel is apparently nothing more than a special mix of hydrogen and oxygen; but I have no idea (nor does the web site spell out) how this mix can reach such high temperatures without the use of some very, very specialized equipment.

Finally, they are selling 'Licenses' so that one can become a dealer for their company. One often sees this trick on scam web sites.

[davefoc]

I also don't have any special insight into what they are talking about but if one wanted to make something sound like a scam, this sight might be a good source of ideas.

This from the site:
The ability to create this stable, unique gas on demand from a water electrochemical generator is of great strategic importance, especially because (1) it offers a workable energy level per pound of fuel that is ten-to-twelve times that of gasoline; (2) when combusted/ignited, it causes no hydrocarbon effluents such as NOX, nitrites, nitrates, etc., and (3) its by-product from combustion is pure, environmentally-friendly water.

According to several web sites burning hydrogen produces about three times as much energy as burning gasoline per equivalent mass. So the energy density (by mass) of their gas is about three times higher than pure hydrogen. The other claims are a little dodgy also. Burning hydrogen doesn't produce hydrocarbons because hydrogen doesn't contain carbon but burning hydrogen in the air does produce NOX (which I don't believe are classified as hydrocarbons). If their gas consisted of a mix of hydrogen and oxygen it wouldn't produce NOX when it was burned because the hydrogen was being burned in a pure oxygen environment. But if they were doing that then one would expect the energy density of their gas to be much lower.

So amongst the properties of their gas are:
1. burning it produces pure water
2. it has three times the energy density of pure hydrogen

So from this we can conclude that their gas isn't hydrogen or a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen because the energy density is so high and that their gas is hydrogen because burning it produces water.

[TobiasTheViking]

total woo
HHO == HOH == OHH == H2O

There is no difference

it is like saying:
I've found a new property of water (2*2*4), instead of combining it as usual water (2*2*4) we combine it like this (2*4*2) and thus get AMAZING NEW ABILITIES.

In case you haven't done math in some time 2*4*2 == 2*2*4.

Same difference.

Total woo.

[patnray]

This unique gas is infinitely stable until it comes in contact with a select target media. Then it sublimates, causing a molecular surface exchange of certain elements, reacting with such excitation as to cause temperatures of up to 10,000° F, the temperature of our Sun's surface, which is currently the limits of our ability to measure.[/I]
I'd be interested in knowing how a gas sublimates since sublimation is the process of changing directly from solid to gas without going through a liquid phase (like dry ice).

And we can surely measure temperatures hotter than the sun's surface...

[Alkatran]

And we can surely measure temperatures hotter than the sun's surface...

No kidding. Even if all our 'thermometers' maxed out at some value, we could just measure from further away and extrapolate the real value. GAH!

[Meffy]

I'd be interested in knowing how a gas sublimates since sublimation is the process of changing directly from solid to gas without going through a liquid phase (like dry ice).
Maybe this is a new kind of sublimation -- conversion into subtle matter. I'd have preferred sublime matter but I've never heard of any such thing.

Then again... *googles* Ah. I should've known. Every time I try to come up with an idea too far-fetched to have been thought of before, I fail. Sublime matter seems to be involved in spiritualism. :-S

Righty then, conversion into sublime matter it is.

(BTW, back in the days when football fields were made of real grass, turf was a kind of sublime matter.)

[anor277]

total woo
HHO == HOH == OHH == H2O

There is no difference

it is like saying:
I've found a new property of water (2*2*4), instead of combining it as usual water (2*2*4) we combine it like this (2*4*2) and thus get AMAZING NEW ABILITIES.

In case you haven't done math in some time 2*4*2 == 2*2*4.

Same difference.

Total woo.


As written H-H-O would be a distinct chemical entity from H-O-H, even if their chemical formulae are the same. Only problem is that the H-H-O molecule is unknown. If Denny Klein has isolated this species he will probably be hailed as the inorganic chemist of the century.

[Timothy]

One of my co-workers send me information on a Denny Klein who has just applied for a patent on a water to fuel technology.

Please remember that the existence of a patent application has no bearing whatsoever on the validity of any claim.

If I wanted to, I could pay the bucks and show you a similar patent application for my quantum-levitating-psychic-astrological-orb-generator-and-combination-wand-for-turning-lead-into-gold.

All an application means is that someone took the time and expense to file an application. It appears as if this patent application was filed to be able to try to fool the gullible using the fallacy of Appeal to Authority.

Even a granted patent does not necessarily mean the device works. I've seen a patent for a perpetual motion machine, sufficiently cloaked in technical mumbo-jumbo. All it means was that the design, as stated, was original and did not infringe on a previous patent.

- Timothy

[LTC8K6]

Sounds like a recycling of the old Brown's Gas claims that never went anywhere.

[Oldpossum]

Compleate and utter woo......

Well maybe not compleatly, as there was once apon a time, a welding gas, known as Brown's Gas.
This gas was moderatly stable under normal operating conditions, but cylinders of this gas had an unfortunate tendency to wander into the realm of Exothermic instability, when their contents pressure fell below, iirc, 200 psi.

ie the cylinders had a nasty tendency to blow up, if close to empty.

Hence the very brief existance of the gas mixture for commercial applications, before it promptly disapeared back into obscurity.

Other than that minor defect, Brown's gas gave a very hot, clean flame, and was suitible to be used to weld/cut all sorts of material, and could even be used for welding/cutting ceramics/glass.
And you only had to invest in one cylinder, regulator, and hose!
So much more convenient to lug around that two seperate cylinders of oxygen and fuel!

And more to the point the only oxidation byproduct was.......












Water

Yes, Brown's Gas was a mix of 11% Hydrogen in Oxygen.:D

[Ririon]

A product, too good to be true, that will probably kill any costumer... How Dilbert-esque. :)

[calladus]

Please remember that the existence of a patent application has no bearing whatsoever on the validity of any claim.
- Timothy

As the holder of a couple of Engineering patents, and from doing a lot of patent research, I can attest to that.

The only hard & fast rule the USPO seems to have, is no perpetual motion machines. However, they don't seem to have a problem with perpetual energy machines.

Patent's don't mean that something works, they just give the holder exclusive rights to sell their device for a period of time. Whether they sell a wonderful product or snake oil is up to them.

[Yuri Nalyssus]

HOH is more correct way of writing it, as its actually a hydrogen atom bonded to a hydroxide ion. I like hydrogen hydroxide better than the more common "dihydron monoxide."
You're very blase about such a deadly chemical - see http://www.dhmo.org/.

Yuri

[pgwenthold]

As written H-H-O would be a distinct chemical entity from H-O-H, even if their chemical formulae are the same. Only problem is that the H-H-O molecule is unknown. If Denny Klein has isolated this species he will probably be hailed as the inorganic chemist of the century.

Define "isolated"?

I actually know of a way to study the isolated, gas-phase molecule (you can access it by photodetaching the oxygen anion-hydrogen cluster, although making that cluster requires pretty good cooling). Definately the isolated molecule. Definately not bulk material.

[pgwenthold]

Also, their fuel is apparently nothing more than a special mix of hydrogen and oxygen; but I have no idea (nor does the web site spell out) how this mix can reach such high temperatures without the use of some very, very specialized equipment.

It depends on the heat capacity of the material. If the material in question has a low heat capacity, then it wouldn't be too much of a challenge to get the temperature up. Burning hydrogen is extremely exothermic, and is also very rapid (a hydrogen/oxygen mixture explodes much more rapidly than pure hydrogen). Therefore, if you can direct the combustion, you can get pretty hot.

[davefoc]

Based on some reading on various Brown's gas sites I think I understand the claims a little bit better.

As was suggested the site referenced claims are so similar to Brown's gas claims as to make it seem very likely that this is what they are talking about although for their own purposes they seem to have changed some of the terminology in an attempt to hide that fact.

There seem to be three common basic claims for Brown's gas:
1. Browns's gas consists of a stoichiometric of monatomic oxygen and hydrogen.
2. The Brown's gas electrolysis process produces this mixture of monatomic oxygen and hydrogen whereas a normal electrolysis process produces mostly diatomic oxygen and diatomic hydrogen.
3. The mostly monatomic gas produces substantially more energy when it is burned because the oxygen doesn't need to break down into monatomic oxygen before combining with the hydrogen to make water.

I don't know enough ehemistry to be able to comment on the above claims. It does appear that it is possible to make a mixture of largely monatomic oxygen. Apparently NASA has developed a process for that because they have developed a device for cleaining old paintings with a jet of monatomic oxygen. The idea is that monatomic oxygen is super reactive and it combines rapidly with some substances so as to remove them from the painting. In one demonstration they showed a jet of monatomic oxygen being used to remove lipstick.

I couldn't find anything on the web that talked about the increased energy produced by a reactiion with monatomic oxygen as opposed to diatomic oxygen. I also didn't find anything that addressed the claims that monatomic oxygen was produced by the Brown's gas electrolysis process that wasn't some kind of Brown's gas site.

Wikipedia had a somwhat skeptical overview:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown%27s_gas

[rjh01]

I would have thought that as soon as two oxygen atoms meet they will react and form an oxygen molecule.

Also be very hard to get oxygen atoms.

[Meffy]

Yowsah, I'm surprised/puzzled too.

[Aepervius]

The only monoatomic gas which exists in stable state I know of, are rare gas.
This is a simple question of their surrounding outer sheel. IIRC, O is S2S2P4, which with another O will make a nice sigma and Pi bond, but will certainly not be unreactive in presence of unbonded other Oxygens. Imagine 2 radical together in a gas....

Imagining this is a ionic gas in stable condition is even worse. O2- and H+ won't stay really alone in a gas bottle if you do not make a plasma. They will recombinate.

Plus the claim is quite LAUGHABLE :
The new combustible gas is comprised of clusters of hydrogen and oxygen atoms structured according to a general formula H.sub.mO.sub.n wherein m and n have null or positive integer values with the exception that m and n can not be 0 at the same time, and wherein said combustible gas has a varying energy content depending on its use.
In other word the gas might as well be defined as a mixture of H2 (m=2, n=0) and O2 (m=0 and n=2) , with two O atomic clustered together (in an O2 molecule) and same for H clustered together in a molecule. There are no other gas configuration which are stable (even H2O would be quite liquid if I remmember correctly my phase diagram at high pressure and normal temperature).

In other word, since the claimant DID NOT WANT to say this is freakingly simple misture of H2 O2 molecule he came up with a verbiage which can muddle the meaning for a normal people (investor venture for example). Any true chemist recognize it for what it is. He make a lot of claim of structure with different weight (16,17 I bet he is doing mass spectroscopy which could explain it) but since I can't see any picture/figure especially NMR or infrared one I can't see how he came to the claim. Nonetheless having such structure in a gas at normal temp and high pressure without reaction would be quite surprising. ButI am ready to eat my hat if I am wrong, after all this is more than 15 years I did not do chemistery.

If the claim from this guy were ture he would get a nobel immediatly (for non valente bond at those PVT conditions), and the whole world would pill money in his arms. Funny how no scientific came with this new form of water combustile but he could.

Even if this guy came with a GREAT way to make a mixture of H2+O2 , YOU CANNOT GET MORE ENERGY RECOMBINING WATER THAN YOU DID SPLITTING IT. At best this is a zero gain (you put as much as you get) and you only us O2 and h2 for storage (which is the most interresting application). So if he has such a great way of splitting water, why hide it behind new structure which do not follow valence rules (SIC) ??? THis is a SCAM.

[davefoc]

It seems that the author of the site referenced in the opening post is probably full of crap. Exactly why he didn't mention the Brown's gas connection to his product isn't clear, but perhaps he felt that giving a new name to an old scam was a good idea.

But could there be anything to the Brown's gas claims?

It does appear to be possible to produce a stable stream of monatomic oxygen. From a NASA site: ... In this apparatus, monatomic oxygen is generated in a dc arc in a mixture of oxygen flowing at rate of 0.1 to 0.2 L/min and helium flowing at a rate of 4.3 L/min. The role of the helium is to inhibit the recombination of monatomic oxygen into diatomic oxygen.
from this site: http://www.nasatech.com/Briefs/June01/LEW16971.html

But in the NASA product it was necessary to surround the monatomic oxygen with helium. Could hydrogen serve the same purpose? I don't know but I couldn't find any confirming data for the idea.

And I did find this web site which seems to shoot down just about every aspect of the Brown's gas claims including its usefulness as a fuel for welding torches.

http://www.phact.org/e/bgas.htm

One interesting thing I noticed from the site was that somebody had tried to explain the anomalous characteristics of Brown's gas as being caused by hydrinos. It would seem to be better before writing a research paper to explain a parituclar effect that one actualy have a real effect to explain. But Mr.Ymamoto did not seem to be so constrained. He seems to have written a research paper to explain an effect which doesn't exist with a cause that doesn't exist. At least he had symetry going for him.

[Dilb]

[SIZE=2]It does appear to be possible to produce a stable stream of monatomic oxygen.


That's not stable, it just doesn't have time to recombine before it hits the painting. Trying to stop oxygen from reacting by using hydrogen would simply cause the hydrogen to burn.

The only stable monatomic gases are the noble gases, and even some of those can be made to react anyway, admittedly only with highly reactive elements. It's something like having a box full of magnets (->atoms) that you can shake around (->are moving with thermal energy). The magnets will automatically bond together, and there's no way to stop that over any reasonable length of time.

[Aepervius]

This is why in my own post I suppose we have a bottle of highly pressurised at stable temperature Gas. If you start having plasma, or latticed Ice, or what not other unstable condition, all bet are off. Hell, I should know because I studdied some strange compound in latticed dry ice using infrared specter, on what was at that time 15 years ago one out of 3 rare infrared long path spectrometer in the world (at least that is what the ad for labor in the university said...). And the previous year I had studied a way using gas of H2 and CH4 to get the temperature of a plasma and alpha constant, when we were fabricating diamond lens. Heck I even played with other more exotic element like sulfoxyde in latice.

You can do every kind of stuff in non stable condition. but as soon as you go back to a stable equilibrum in normal PST you are SOL. In other word this guy throw claim like "non valence bond" without explaining why in the hell electrolyse of water would suddenly start building new compound, and why those new compound are stable.

Verdict : SCAM.

[Aepervius]

They have for example what looks like water vapor spectra with gas. Orbital which are localised like thoroid. As a quantum physiker I can only both laugh myself dead, and at the same time give a lot of admiration. This really look like a scientific paper. And can certainly lead somebody to think this is real. But a give away is figure 14. The H2 molecules. They look like small sphere together, but in reality the electron density does not look like that : it would looke like a big lump in the middle of the 2 H (for e- density) (for those which want to google for reference : google fo sigma bond in molecular dihidrogen).

I have to bow down, those guy made a wonderful paper. scammer make relly a good job.

PS: the article is funny and full of far more "problem" I just choose one which spring to my eye when skip-reading.

[Oldpossum]

Now Brown's Gas supposedly being a mixture of Monoatomic Oxygen and hydrogen I had not heard of before, and as someone else has already pointed out, such a claim is compleate horse manure.
There is no way a monoatomic H or O is going to exist for more than a microsecond before combining with something in the environment, and if generated by electrolysis, this is most likely another H or O, to form the regular, stable diatomic gas.

The Brown's gas I have briefly (as humanly posssible) come in contact with was a mix of 11% H2 in O2, and was freaking dangerous stuff.
I go rid of it as soon as possible after a co-worker found a 7 m3 cylinder of it in an old lab, that someone long ago, had been using for some now forgotten experiment.

[nseidm1]

Without further X-ray analysis, the best explanation is that Brown's Gas consists of electrically expanded water. When water is electrolyzed hydrogen and oxygen are produced, if the hydrogen and oxygen are allowed to recombine in the presence of conductive material it will form water and electricty, such is the operation of a fuel cell. Brown's Gas is the result of allowing hydrogen and oxygen to recombine while not in the presence of conductive material.

[Ririon]

Without further X-ray analysis, the best explanation is that Brown's Gas consists of electrically expanded water. When water is electrolyzed hydrogen and oxygen are produced, if the hydrogen and oxygen are allowed to recombine in the presence of conductive material it will form water and electricty, such is the operation of a fuel cell. Brown's Gas is the result of allowing hydrogen and oxygen to recombine while not in the presence of conductive material.
Welcome, but I'm afraid: NO. Sorry.

[gfunkusarelius]

sorry if i have missed something obvious here, but i am just wondering, if this "fuel source" is totally bogus, what is this guy doing? is he a total fraud? is his "hybrid" car actually just a gas car with a coupl eof additions to make a layperson think "yep, its runnin on water." or is he just doing something that is easily explainable and not really useful? just curious because the news program was seriously scammed if he is just a trcikster.

[davefoc]

sorry if i have missed something obvious here, but i am just wondering, if this "fuel source" is totally bogus, what is this guy doing? is he a total fraud? is his "hybrid" car actually just a gas car with a coupl eof additions to make a layperson think "yep, its runnin on water." or is he just doing something that is easily explainable and not really useful? just curious because the news program was seriously scammed if he is just a trcikster.

I think there are several questions that are part of your overall question:

1. Are this guy's claims basically the same as the Brown's gas claims.

It seems so.

2. Is there any significant Brown's gas claims that are true:

Probably not. See the responses from several people in this thread plus some of the links including this one:
http://www.phact.org/e/bgas.htm

3. Is this guy committing knowing fraud or is he a dupe himself. I lean to knowing fraud. He didn't mention Brown's gas probably because he realized that those claims had been thoroughly debunked. His claims concerning his welding gear are easily tested and it seems unlikely that he would be unaware of the failure of those tests.

4. Is there any purpose for a stoichiometric mixture of hydrogen and oxygen?

A guy by the name of William A. Rhodes patented the concept eleven years before the Brown's gas patents. It does seem that a hydrogen/oxygen mixture can be used for welding, but I couldn't find anything on the net that sounded like a legitimate source that promoted Rhodes/Brown's gas mixtures for any welding purposes.

[nseidm1]

My statement was not a question. It is based on my research observations, and an interpretation of research done by a Dr. Anders Nillson at Stanford University that has recently been mentioned in an article written about his work published in the Wall Street Journal on Friday March 10th on the front page. My statement is one of many competing theories that all have potential to explain how the properties of Brown's Gas (HHO, Hydrogen Based Fuel) come to be. More research is required to determine how its properties come to be, but it is undeniable that Brown's Gas can be used as a carbon fuel enhancer, and a torch fuel. As a torch fuel Brown's Gas technologies have been used in industry for the past several decades, and now using Brown's Gas as a carbon fuel enhancer is starting to catch on as well.

[nseidm1]

Buy a Brown's Gas torch to find out why its impressive technology.
Put a Brown's Gas generator in a vehicle and tweak your air fuel mixture. See what happens to your MPG.

Dont look on the internet for what other people have done, do it for yourself.

[JamesM]

My statement was not a question. It is based on my research observations, and an interpretation of research done by a Dr. Anders Nillson at Stanford University Perhaps you could expand on what aspects of Nilsson's work you think provides support for the concept of 'electrically expanded water' - I just looked up his recent publications and I couldn't see anything relevant.

[DALAYNE]

It seems to me that there are some of you out there who want to write this off as a scam without thinking about what he is really doing. Previous posts have made the point that it appears to be Brown's gas, and that it has problems exploding when storage tanks are low. The process that makes it viable is that he is not storing the gas, but using it as it is produced, thereby removing the risks. I don't expect this to be the one great thing that helps us not be dependent on fossil fuel, but it certainly is a step in the right direction. I sincerely hope that he is successful and continues his research in this field.

[davefoc]

It seems to me that there are some of you out there who want to write this off as a scam without thinking about what he is really doing. Previous posts have made the point that it appears to be Brown's gas, and that it has problems exploding when storage tanks are low. The process that makes it viable is that he is not storing the gas, but using it as it is produced, thereby removing the risks. I don't expect this to be the one great thing that helps us not be dependent on fossil fuel, but it certainly is a step in the right direction. I sincerely hope that he is successful and continues his research in this field.
Hi DALAYNE and welcome to the forum,

Making Brown's gas on the fly instead of storing it seems not to be unigue to this guy's claims.

For instance:
http://www.energyoptions.com/tech/browns.html

I don't think anybody wants to write this off as a scam in the sense we wouldn't like to see evidence of a new physical phenomena or evidence of a process that can replace gasoline or evidence of a new useful invention like the welding machine described on the site.

However, there are numerous reasons to be skeptical of the claims from this web site. Among them:

1. Tie in to Brown's gas not mentioned and yet the claims and the approach are very similar. Why wouldn't this inventor credit those who have gone before?

2. The Brown's gas patent has been around since 1977 so there is nothing pariticularly new here and yet there are no devices based on Brown's gas except for the welding machines. But even the welding machines don't seem to have any significant industry useage or acceptance. Why not? The most likely explanation is that Brown's gas welders don't offer significant advantages over existing technology.

3. Claims of much larger than normal energy production or efficiency are relatively easy to verify by independent test labs. Where are the reports from independent test labs about this guy's claims of larger than normal energy production from the burning of his gas mixture?

4. A patent for a stoichiometric mixture of hydrogen and oxygen predates the Brown's gas claims and that patent holder, (Rhodes), doesn't believe there is anything to the claims for Brown's gas.

5. The nature of the guy's claims suggest devices with the potential to be extremely valuable. Why hasn't a major company picked up on the guy's claims and attempted to exploit them?

This is a site I came across promoting Brown's gas welding machines but it seems to have a comprehensive list of links to sites on the web that have to do with Brown's Gas:
http://www.eagle-research.com/Links/BG/bglink.html

[Ririon]

Buy a Brown's Gas torch to find out why its impressive technology.
Put a Brown's Gas generator in a vehicle and tweak your air fuel mixture. See what happens to your MPG.

Dont look on the internet for what other people have done, do it for yourself.
So... You electrolyze water in your car. That takes energy. And it is not 100 % efficient. Then you burn the hydrogen (and oxygen? :eek:) in your car engine. That is certainly not very efficient, so you will not be close to getting back the energy you just used to make the hydrogen and oxygen. Add to that the weight you have added to your car by installing the system.

This is dangerous, hurts your fuel efficiency and can damage your car engine. That is what I found out without using the internet. It has no positive side that I can see whatsoever and several negative sides even before we start talking about cost. What am I missing?

[macgyver]

Trying to improve efficiency is admirable in internal combustion engines, but I'm not sure how that's going to be accomplished without re-engineering the engine for this new HHO/carbon fuel mixture? Otherwise, how is this any different than say NO2 injection?

Perhaps if energy during braking was somehow captured and used to produce the gas?

I've read that one of the problems with Brown's gas is that it has a tendency to oxidize what it comes in contact with (not surprisingly). This makes it useless as a welding fuel because the resulting welds are brittle. I can only imagine a similar occurance within the combustion chamber as well, unless some form of modification is made (ceramics perhaps?).

I have a lot of suspicion around a simple "plug and play" approach....how do modern Oxygen sensors and air/fuel computers react to this new fuel mixture?

[ChristineR]

Mythbusters tried it, and the car wouldn't even run. Of course they may not have "tweaked" it right.

[Dilb]

My statement is one of many competing theories that all have potential to explain how the properties of Brown's Gas (HHO, Hydrogen Based Fuel) come to be.

The problem is that there's nothing to explain. It's a mixture of diatomic hydrogen and oxygen. Every property is perfectly understood within classical thermodynamics. Futhermore, your "theory" so grossly misunderstands fuel cells and basic chemistry that it's utterly rediculous.

The best explanation, which is usually presented to little children as a science demonstration of why oxygen is good for burning things, it that combining oxygen and hydrogen gives you an explosion.

[Hindmost]

This guy has been using techno-babble that would make Douglas Adams proud to try to fool people into buying his machine. Chemistry and thermodynamics will not support Brown's gas or Aquygen™ Gas claims. Water cannot be split into hydrogen and oxygen with electricity and then recombined into water without losing some energy in the process. Entropy still rules. And chemistry won't allow HHO to even form. I think he used to claim govt/oil company conspiracy to keep this away from the public. This has standard woo engraved in its claims. If you still believe in the claims, take a thermodynamics class and a basic chemistry class. Your money would be better spent.

glenn

[mlrosier]

First and foremost, look at this man...Stanley A. Meyer, may he rest in peace.... www(dot)waterfuelcell(dot)org/

Second, this one is indeed interesting...
hytechapps(dot)com

and

youtube(dot)com/watch?v=HF__Qlhtnws&search=water%20power

And finally....This....(You need to download and install RealPlayer to view this one. It's worth the extra few minutes of time though.)

www(dot)gigagone(dot)com/video/view(dot)php?video=6a6c1d04c6a09f09c9e4a7fba0a6378 4

(dot) = .

I feel these links are important, but I'm not going to make 15 posts on here so that I can share information.

[Ririon]

...
I feel these links are important, but I'm not going to make 15 posts on here so that I can share information.
Beside your feelings and some links, what is your contribution?

[davefoc]

Hello mlrosier and welcome to the forum,
I checked out your first link:
http://www.waterfuelcell.org/

and tried to find something of substance. I found this site:
http://www.wheels24.co.za/Wheels24/News/0,,1369-1372_1605834,00.html

This site seems to make claims about how they have discovered some way to power a car with a greatly reduced need for energy:

Developed by Nelspruit research and development company Ku-Shan Technologies, the device uses electricity from the car's battery to turn water into a gas known as hydroxy, or Brown's Gas.
This gas is then re-aligned using Ku-Shan's process - patents have been applied for - to make it suitable for use in an ordinary petrol engine.


The article concludes with this:De Beer said he was currently looking for investors to take the device to market.

OK, so what we have here seems to be the fairly routine claims of yet another inventer or set of inventers that they have discovered something of staggering value and all that is necessary is for a few investors to come forth with a few bucks and the world will be transformed and the investors will of course become staggeringly wealthy because they are lucky enough to get in on the ground floor of this opportunity.

Perhaps you might consider that it reduces their credibility a little that underlying their claim is Brown's gas which has been around since at least 1977 and as yet to become the basis for any significant products or even to be recognized by main stream science as something different than a routine stoichiometiric mix of hydrogen and oxygen. Or perhaps you don't think that. If you find their claims credible then perhaps you could explain to us why this particular group is different than all the other folks out their that have pitched bogus schemes for powering atuomobiles.

[Barbarossa]

A little knowledge of physics saves a lot of discussion: the second law of thermodynamics (notice that it's a "law" not a supposition) denies the possibility of any device producing more energy than is put into it. Just as a mathematician doesn't have to waste time examining a supposed proof that pi is equal to something other than 3.141592653..., a physicist doesn't have to examine a claim that amounts to a perpetual-motion machine.

[NobbyNobbs]

I'd be interested in knowing how a gas sublimates since sublimation is the process of changing directly from solid to gas without going through a liquid phase (like dry ice).

And we can surely measure temperatures hotter than the sun's surface...

"Sublimation" also refers to the reverse process...that of going from gas straight to solid. Though I don't know of any materials that do that under normal conditions, offhand.

Not that this helps the inventor any. He's still full of [rule8].

[Ririon]

"Sublimation" also refers to the reverse process...that of going from gas straight to solid. Though I don't know of any materials that do that under normal conditions, offhand.

Not that this helps the inventor any. He's still full of [rule8].
The reverse of sublimation is deposition. Not that it helps this scam in any way.

[rjh01]

Ignore this. Not relevant.

[willgorman]

Hello... I'm new to this forum, and I'm not a chemist or a physicist. I'm a true believer in the statement "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". On that note, If you were a scammer, would you:

A) Ignore previous research and rebrand Brown's Gas as your invention

or

B) Publish a scientific article about your invention and explain why it's not Brown's Gas

Here's the article, published in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy:

NOTE: I can't link to another site until I publish 15 messages, so Go to hytechapps_DOT_com and then /presentation/linked%20files/Hydro%20Tech/user%20added/Santilli,%20International%20Journal.pdf

or go to sciencedirect_DOT_com and search for "a new gaseous and combustible form of water"

Although I don't have the qualifications to debunk or credit this paper, at least they published. From reading the article, they seem to directly address why their invention is not Brown's Gas. This decreases my initial assumption that this is a scam. Your thoughts?

[davefoc]

willgorman,
welcome to the forum. I do intend to follow your links, although I was an electrical engineer and not a chemist so I am not sure I will have much to say about the article you have linked to.

I have noticed that there is an extraordinary number of posters in this thread that are new to the forum.

Could some of the new posters explain how this has happened?

Thanks,
Dave

ETA:
Here's your link so that it can be clicked on
http://hytechapps.com/presentation/linked%20files/Hydro%20Tech/user%20added/Santilli,%20International%20Journal.pdf

[JamesM]

Hmm, this Ruggero Maria Santilli seems like an interesting fellow. Can any physicists tell me, what are the reputations of journals like Bulletin of the American Physical Society, Physical Review D and Journal of Mathematical Physics? That's where he was publishing in the late 60s and 70s.

These days he appears to mainly publish his work in International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, where he is being ignored by the chemistry community - each paper gets between 0-5 citations, but they're nearly all self-citations.

I would have thought a big hitter like Journal of the American Chemical Society, not to mention Nature and Science (and the Nobel Prize committee) would be a little more interested if he really has discovered the 'hadronic chemistry', the 'magnecule' and the 'magnecular' HH bond.

[smarcy2]

I have read entries here and on other chat rooms. I am interested in his use in automobiles not welding. Here are a few observations and questions.


1. Most automobiles run their alternators all the time. That is they don't have a clutch to remove the load from the engine. This burns fuel, and the load is wasted. The car battery only needs a limited amount of electricity to recharge it. Many hybrid cars solve this by selectively running their alternator. They have a clutch engage/disengage mechanism of some sort (it only engages the alternator when the battery requires charging).

2. Rather than shut off the alternator, this new system makes use of this wasted electricity or load.

3. He does not store the HHO gas so there is no relative little increase in the danger of explosion. It is used on demand.

4. Some have suggested that simply shutting off the alternator would have the same effect as producing HHO. I am not sure if that is accurate. Would the two really be equivalent? You would have to calculate the load the alternator places upon the engine and the amount of gasoline it consumes. Shutting off the alternator would save gas but how much?

5. What are the relative efficiencies of his process? How much gas is produced based upon watts consumed? Is it really enhancing the performance of the engine to the point where the expense is justifiable? In other words, if the unit costs $7,000, and it currently does, what MPG would you need to get to make it worth your time. Okay, maybe with volume production he gets the price down to $1,000. I would still want to see how much gas I would be saving. What would my MPG be in order to earn it back? If it took ten years of driving, I don’t think it would be worth it.

6. Next you would have to compare that to amount of HHO produced by the same unit of electricity produced by the combustion of gasoline. According to the inventor, HHO is more reactive than simple H2 O2. If this were true, it would reduce the inefficiencies of the engine and thus yield better gas mileage. Even if he is simply producing hydrogen, how much is he producing given the amount of electricity his device consumes? Would it really be better than simply disengaging down the alternator?

7. Is he really saying that he’s creating more energy than he uses, or is he proposing that HHO is more reactive than standard H2 O2? It sounds as if his theories about HHO are dubious or misguided at best.

8. How is the device producing the HHO gas? Has he simply invented a better or more efficient method of electrolysis?

9. What volume of HHO gas is produced based upon his method of electrolysis? He must be producing something with his generator because he is selling the welding generators. I’m not saying welding with HHO is a good thing to do, but he is doing it. The video of his system working makes that clear. If they did not work, he would be shut down very fast.

[Ririon]

I have noticed that there is an extraordinary number of posters in this thread that are new to the forum.

Could some of the new posters explain how this has happened?

Ditto.

ETA: This thread was way down on the second page before smarcy2's bump. The postcount of a few of the other newbies here is still 1.

[davefoc]

I have read entries here and on other chat rooms. I am interested in his use in automobiles not welding. Here are a few observations and questions.


1. Most automobiles run their alternators all the time. That is they don't have a clutch to remove the load from the engine. This burns fuel, and the load is wasted. The car battery only needs a limited amount of electricity to recharge it. Many hybrid cars solve this by selectively running their alternator. They have a clutch engage/disengage mechanism of some sort (it only engages the alternator when the battery requires charging).

One thing to take into consideration here is that the voltage regulator actually varies the current flowing through the field coils of an alternator so that when power is not required from the alternator there is no current flowing through the field coils so that the alternator puts less of a load on the car system when it is not producing power. I looked around to try to quantify this but I didn't find anything on line that addressed this.


2. Rather than shut off the alternator, this new system makes use of this wasted electricity or load.


This sounds like regenerative braking which is used, AFAIK, in all hybrids. The issue here is would a system of generating power to electrolyse water and then burning the hydrogen to recover the braking energy be competitive in terms of cost, efficiency and reliability of storing the electrical output of the generator into batteries. It seems unlikely that generating electricity to electolyze water and then recoverning energy from burning the hydrogen or using it in a fuel cell will be as efficient as generating electricity and storing the power in batteries or super caps.


3. He does not store the HHO gas so there is no relative little increase in the danger of explosion. It is used on demand. This statement assumes that a special state of hydrogen and/or oxygen exists. So far the people that have chemistry knowledge that have replied to this thread are skeptical of that claim. In addition, nobody has provided evidence that this idea is accepted by main stream chemistry scientists.

In addition, some storage would appear to be required if the output is to be used as part of a regenerative braking strategy, since when the car is in the process of braking the gas produced must be stored for later use to power the car.

4. Some have suggested that simply shutting off the alternator would have the same effect as producing HHO. I am not sure if that is accurate. Would the two really be equivalent? You would have to calculate the load the alternator places upon the engine and the amount of gasoline it consumes. Shutting off the alternator would save gas but how much?

I am not sure that I understand this comment, but it appears that what you are getting at is that some have suggested that unless more power can be extracted from the gas than is used in producing it just shutting down the system except possibly where it could be used as part of a regenerative braking system to recover energy from braking would be the way to go. This seems obvious. The question of course is how much energy is used to produce the gas and how much energy can be recovered by either burning the gas or by using it in a fuel cell.

Wikipedia had this comment about the round trip efficiency of a electrolyzer/fuel cell system:

The overall efficiency (electricity to hydrogen and back to electricity) of such plants (known as round-trip efficiency) is between 30 and 50%, depending on conditions.[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources)]
from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell

5. What are the relative efficiencies of his process? How much gas is produced based upon watts consumed? Is it really enhancing the performance of the engine to the point where the expense is justifiable? In other words, if the unit costs $7,000, and it currently does, what MPG would you need to get to make it worth your time. Okay, maybe with volume production he gets the price down to $1,000. I would still want to see how much gas I would be saving. What would my MPG be in order to earn it back? If it took ten years of driving, I don’t think it would be worth it.

This is of course the main question. I think it is very unlikely that there is a net positive production of energy by a process that involves electrolyzing water and burning the resultant gas or using the resultant gas in a fuel cell. If somebody is making this claim it is wildly simple to prove. Just start the system running and supply it with nothing but water. I guarantee that anybody that did this would be on every news show in the world within a few days of the demonstration. So given that that hasn't happened I think there is every reason to believe that claims to that effect are bogus.

6. Next you would have to compare that to amount of HHO produced by the same unit of electricity produced by the combustion of gasoline. According to the inventor, HHO is more reactive than simple H2 O2. If this were true, it would reduce the inefficiencies of the engine and thus yield better gas mileage. Even if he is simply producing hydrogen, how much is he producing given the amount of electricity his device consumes? Would it really be better than simply disengaging down the alternator?

See above discussion if I understood what you meant here.

7. Is he really saying that he’s creating more energy than he uses, or is he proposing that HHO is more reactive than standard H2 O2? It sounds as if his theories about HHO are dubious or misguided at best.

I guess we agree completely on this. See above.

8. How is the device producing the HHO gas? Has he simply invented a better or more efficient method of electrolysis?


It would be a lot more credible if this was his claim.


9. What volume of HHO gas is produced based upon his method of electrolysis? He must be producing something with his generator because he is selling the welding generators. I’m not saying welding with HHO is a good thing to do, but he is doing it. The video of his system working makes that clear. If they did not work, he would be shut down very fast.

There seem to be several people marketing some kind of brown's gas related welders. In looking around the web I couldn't find any main stream welding industry acceptance or even reviews of any of them with the exception of a very negative review in one of the articles I linked to above. It seems that there is something of a cottage industry in promoting Brown's gas type claims, but given the existence of Brown's gas claims since at least 1977 and no significant inventions in that time that this is a cottage industry based around a scam.

[FFed]

Saw a news report on him. Needless to say I am skeptical of this myself.

Here is a news report from fox on him.

http://www.freeenergynews.com/Directory/BrownsGas/WaterFuel.wmv


Taken from
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/05/12/water_powered_cars_j.html

[alfaniner]

Steven Hyde: "Hey, did you guys ever hear about this car that runs on water! Yeah, it has fiberglas cooled engines and it runs on water, man!"

Fez: "So, it is a boat?"


(Ref: pilot episode of That '70's Show).

[Aepervius]

Hmm, this Ruggero Maria Santilli seems like an interesting fellow. Can any physicists tell me, what are the reputations of journals like Bulletin of the American Physical Society, Physical Review D and Journal of Mathematical Physics? That's where he was publishing in the late 60s and 70s.


Can't speak for 1st and 3rd but hys review D is quite well known. You will get a lot of quant. phys. old reference from there before they went over specialized journals.

And as I already reported above, the article is bunk about its naive "toroidal" electronic representation. No chemist/physicist in its right mind would use something like bohr model of atom to represent H2 as two spherical presence of e-. In reality they form a nice sigma-g bond which look like a potatoe in the middle of the bond and the two nucleon on either end. Difficult to describe without picture : See figure 14 page 12. This is the one which is completly bunk. It does not explain why h2 is bonding. It does not explain that the electron pair is in reality has a more density of presence in the middle and this is why there is a bonding. As he present H2 this in reality two undbound separated H with a bohr spherical model. Semi classical my [rule 8].

And THAT ALONE cast a great shadow of doubt on the article.

[davefoc]

There were some interesting comments in a forum that was linked to from a site ffed linked to:
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic10778.html

Particularly interesting to me were some comments from DoubtingLiz who purports to know Klein's brother through her boyfriend. Assuming what she says is true, it appears that Klein is actively seeking investors with a promise of financial rewards when the company goes public.

I won't quote the whole post because I think that might be beyond fair use, but a sample of what she writes is this:
The first flag for me was that people that are very close to this operation--and have invested thoustands of dollars in it--know next to nothing about the actual technology. The one reason my boyfriends father gives for why the "test vehicle" runs on some hydrogen/ mostly gasoline is because if they ran it completely on hydrogen it would be too hot and essentially "melt" the engine of the car... apparently the have to come up with a new metal now also? Does that even make any sense at all?
I have taken a little more time to respond to this thread because I thought the existence of so many new posters suggested the possibility that these people were potential investors that were doing a little internet research on the company they were considering investing in. It was my view because of the nature of the claims being put forth that it was very likely that Klein was, perhaps knowingly, working an investment scam and putting forth evidence that Klein's claims were probably bogus might discourage some possible investors. If Ms. DoubtingLiz is to be believed it appears that is exactly what is going on. Of course, I nor anybody else, can say with complete certainty that this is a scam, but I think that there is nothing that has been put forth so far that suggests this is anything other than a scam.

Another comment from the forum that I linked to made note of the idea that if Klein really can get more energy from water than he puts into it all he has to do is take the combustion product (water) and feed it back into the input of his device and he will have invented a perpetual motion machine. If this doesn't scare people away from putting their money into this, then I am afraid nothing will.

[AlSal]

I found two of Dennis Klein's patents on line at the US Patent office website: Just use the quick search by each of the patent numbers below. You will need to download an image reader from one of the sites suggested by the patent office to view the images on file with the patent.

Patent 6,689,259 for a Mixed Gas Generator February 10, 2004
Patent 6,866,756 Hydrogen generator for uses in a vehicle fuel system March 15, 2005.

The Mixed Gas Generator patent just discusses a hydrogen and oxygen gas, the abstract notes "Oxygen is formed in one part, hydrogen in the other and then combined to form a gas." Sounds like nothing more than simple hydrolysis, no mention of "sublimation" nor any of the more dramatic claims.


AlSal

[davefoc]

Here's a link to the second patent referenced above:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=6866756&OS=6866756&RS=6866756

There is a claim from the above patent:
The addition of a mixture of hydrogen gas (H.sub.2) and oxygen gas (O.sub.2) to the fuel system of an internal combustion engine is known to improve fuel efficiency and decrease the emission of undesired pollutants.

It is difficult to figure out what the unigue claim in a patent is and I am not qualified to this but it appears to me here that the unigue claim is to use a hydrolyser to make hydrogen to make the combustion of gasoline more efficient. There may be some claims in the patent that the particular hydrolyser described is part of the patented intellectual property of the patent.

The issue of whether ther is any particular value to this patent are now fairly straightforward. There don't seem to be any claims of phenomena unknown to science here.

The only issues, from a practical standpoint, are:

1. can using hydrogen or a hydrogen mixture in an internal combustion engine together with gasoline improve the efficiency of the engine?

2. If there is an efficiency improvent from the use of hydrogen, is it enough to overcome the energy loss from generating the gas.

3. If there is a net efficiency improvement does it justify the cost of the added equipment for the system?

[willgorman]

I have noticed that there is an extraordinary number of posters in this thread that are new to the forum.

Could some of the new posters explain how this has happened?

Thanks,
Dave


Dave,

Just to let you know, a friend of mine sent me a video about HHO, so I googled and this forum came up in the top results.

Will

[rjh01]

I googled too and found several people can get fuel from water. Results (http://www.google.com.au/search?q=water+fuel&hl=en&lr=&start=0&sa=N)
Pity they may not work.

[davefoc]

I found this article about Brown's gas by Don Lancaster who has written articles on electronics for years.
http://tinaja.com/glib/muse120.pdf

The portion of the article on Brown's gas doesn't start until midway through the file. Stokegas is his word for a stoichiometric mix of hydrogen and oxygen. His point here is that the properties of stokegas and the properties of Brown's gas/Aquygen gas/etc are the same as for stokegas.

Claims that you can briefly place your hand near a stokegas flame do appear true. But do not try it! The reason is that despite the extreme temperature, there is not enough heat energy present to briefly do you any significant harm.
It is interesting that Klein has a patent on an idea that includes the notion of adding a small amount of hydrogen to the combustion mix of an internal combustion engine to improve efficiency.

There are at least two companies producing similar devices today. The idea of adding hydrogen to the combusion mix dates from at least as early as 1974. So I am not sure what the new and/or novel part of Klein's patent is with regard to this. Perhaps it is his particular design of the electrolyser.

The web sites for the two companes producing the devices are :
http://www.chechfi.ca/abcorp.htm
http://www.waterfuelconverters.com/

Adding small amounts of hydrogen to the combustion mix does seem to improve fuel economy, but to what degree seems unclear. I found claims of fuel economy improvements from 4.44% to 25% but I didn't find any actual test reports on line for the devices.

But how does Klein fit into any of this? Except for his March 15, 2005 patent he doesn't seem to be associated with this kind of device at all. I didn't find any claims for this kind of device on his web site.

Site for another company producing a similar device:
http://www.burnh2o.com/index.html

[demonologist]

I thought the reason we have not moved into a hydrogen economy is because it costs as much to produce the hydrogen as you get out of it. If all aquygen and other brown's gas gimmicks do is use hydrogen combined with gasoline to improve efficiency, this seems like a complete waste. Why combine it with gasoline when you can just run straight off of hydrogen if it were more easy to produce. That's the problem that must be worked on.

[davefoc]

I thought the reason we have not moved into a hydrogen economy is because it costs as much to produce the hydrogen as you get out of it. If all aquygen and other brown's gas gimmicks do is use hydrogen combined with gasoline to improve efficiency, this seems like a complete waste. Why combine it with gasoline when you can just run straight off of hydrogen if it were more easy to produce. That's the problem that must be worked on.
I think it is possible that adding small amounts of hydrogen to the air fuel mixture may improve efficiency and reduce emissions even when taking into account the energy required to produce the hydrogen.

In addition to the companies that I listed above that are selling devices using this idea there is at least one somewhat mainstream company working on the idea:
http://www.all4engineers.com/index.php;do=show/alloc=3/lng=en/id=2866/sid=d88f2593ef48d676956ec2040cfa1379
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/11/hydrogenenhance.html
The companies selling hydrogen injection systems right now all looked a bit dodgy to me, but they seemed downright credible compared to Klein.

[Roadtoad]

I'm still following links, but, yeah, this smells like a scam. If it's not, I'll admit to being wrong, but something just doesn't fit.

[fuelair]

Simple chemistry and physics rules here: you never get as much energy out as you put in. Find a way around that and make many mints - good luck trying. You may make a more efficient engine, you may get all the impurities out of the fuel, etc. You still have loss of energy (mostly as heat) (some light, some sound). The key is, can you design your engine and your fuel so that the cost to use it over a given distance moving a given mass is less than gasoline in a gasoline engine. That begins to look useful. (should add, with less - or at least no more -pollution)

[smarcy2]

Aquygen Gas has posted new data. It can be found hytechapps.com/aquygen/hhos


I wanted to perform some calculations to see if the system was financially feasible. In performing these calculations, I used the following constants: tank capacity 15 gallons, price per gallon $3, miles driven per year 14,040, increase in fuel economy 30%, cost per unit $6,995. Now I know in the real world many of these constants would change - especially price per gallon. However, for the purpose of my calculations they were necessary, and they serve to make a point. Since we do not know the systems durablity, we can only guess as to its depreciation schedule. However, assuming it lasts a very long time, it would take 13 years just to recoup your initial expenditure. :jaw-dropp

If the price per system were to decrease to $1,000, it would only take 2 years to recoup your expendature. However, that is quite a price jump and would require mass production with economies of scale. Perhaps one of the automobile manufacturers will offer it as an option. Who knows.

[davefoc]

smarcy2,
Klein is just one of several people that are that are claiming devices that improve fuel economy by injecting hydrogen (produced by electrolising water) into the fuel/air mix.

Klein continues to make claims that he has done something unique and perhaps he has but everything he does seems like something that somebody else is doing. Several of the companies that claim to be doing it have actual devices for sale, I haven't noticed that Klein does.

One reason to be wary of all of these companies is that none of these companies seem to have posted the results of a testing done in compliance with EPA protocols or the results of actual EPA testing. Without credible third party test results it is very hard to distinquish a promising idea from total crap. For me, Klein seems to be about the least credible of the various people making these kind of claims but I didn't find any of them highly credible.

Another reason to be skeptical is that none of the major car companies seem to be pursuing this technology. That seems mighty suspicious to me since the idea of hydrogen injection has been around for a long time and if there was much of an opportunity here I would have thought that they would have been pursuing it.

I didn't verify your calculation but the results seem plausible to me. One thing to note here though is that if there was a $7,000 device that produce a 30% improvement in fuel economy the market for it would still be huge even if it wasn't economically justified for most cars. Long haul trucking companies would snap up a device like that because the average truck drives so many more miles per year than the average car and gets so much worse mileage than the average car. In fact one of the companies that I linked to above was selling a hydrogen injection device aimed at trucks that they claimed was paying for itself despite the $14,000 price tag.

[aavera]

I got my hands on an uncorrected copy (aparently pre-release) of an article on HHO that supposedly appears in the latest International Journal of Hydrogen Energy called A new gaseous and combustible form of water
by Ruggero Maria Santilli. (The release version is available for $30 and I very much hope someone more qualified than me wants to dig into it. If you do, please let me know your thoughts.)

It describes in painful detail what HHO is. They also explain in excruciating detail the difference between HHO, H2O, H-O-H, etc. It is the magnetic bond and arrangement of the particles that make the difference, and somehow create the stability of the gas.

Not being from a chemestry background I don't know all the jargon, but I'll try to break it down here.

The hypothisis to explain the properties of this gas HHO is presented in 16 pages, most of which explain the rigorous scientific tests that this gas has undergone. They're way past 'does it exist'. They're trying to figure out what it is and why it's properties are so unique.

It specifically states that this is not Brown's Gas, as it is far more stable than Brown's Gas. It also introduces a new type of particle called a "magnecule". The concept as far as I can tell, very briefly, is that instead of valence bonds, the particle is using magnetic bonds (thus the term 'magnecule') of several atoms all lined up in a magnetic pattern where the "north" of one bonds to the "south" of the other. (I'm really not doing the article justice. It's way over my head.)

I won't lie...my physics and chemestry background is mainly from books from Barnes and Noble. I am in no position to validate, or invalidate the premise of the article. It is obvious from the article that a whole lot of scientific 'noodling' has been done with this gas with IR, etc. The article states clearly that this is only a hypothetical attempt to explain the unique properties of this gas. It also sounded like they want others to hammer on it to see if they can figure it out.

Any brainiacs out there ought to give it a shot.

:-)

[aavera]

I got my hands on an uncorrected copy (aparently pre-release) of an article on HHO that supposedly appears in the latest International Journal of Hydrogen Energy called "A new gaseous and combustible form of water
by Ruggero Maria Santilli." (The release version is available for $30 and I very much hope someone more qualified than me wants to dig into it. If you do, please let me know your thoughts.)

It describes in painful detail what HHO is. They also explain in excruciating detail the difference between HHO, H2O, H-O-H, etc. It is the magnetic bond and arrangement of the particles that make the difference, and somehow create the stability of the gas.

Not being from a chemestry background I don't know all the jargon, but I'll try to break it down here.

The hypothisis to explain the properties of this gas HHO is presented in 16 pages, most of which explain the rigorous scientific tests that this gas has undergone. They're way past 'does it exist'. They're trying to figure out what it is and why it's properties are so unique.

It specifically states that this is not Brown's Gas, as it is far more stable than Brown's Gas. It also introduces a new type of particle called a "magnecule". The concept as far as I can tell, very briefly, is that instead of valence bonds, the particle is using magnetic bonds (thus the term 'magnecule') of several atoms all lined up in a magnetic pattern where the "north" of one bonds to the "south" of the other. (I'm really not doing the article justice. It's way over my head.)

I won't lie...my physics and chemestry background is mainly from books from Barnes and Noble. I am in no position to validate, or invalidate the premise of the article. It is obvious from the article that a whole lot of scientific 'noodling' has been done with this gas with IR, etc. The article states clearly that this is only a hypothetical attempt to explain the unique properties of this gas. It also sounded like they want others to hammer on it to see if they can figure it out.

Any brainiacs out there ought to give it a shot.

:-)

[Luke]

The problem is that I don't know near enough chemistry to figure out if this guy is talking out of his hat.


I guess it's time to crack open my old Chemistry text book.


Don't bother with the old textbook... that's not his hat that he's talking out of.:D

[davefoc]

Hi Luke,
Welcome to the forum. If we had an award for best post by a newby, you'd be a lock for the award.

As to aavera's post:
Even if for some reason there was a form of water vapor unknown to mainstream science that produced more energy when it was ignited wouldn't more energy be needed to make it then plain old water vapor?

So is the claim that:
1. You can put more energy in to get more energy out with this new and wonderful water vapor so it might have some have some uses as a means of storing energy?

2. This new and wonderful water vapor makes hydrocarbon fuels burn more efficiently?

3. You can get more energy out than you put in with this new and wonderful water vapor?

My estimation:
1. very unlikely
2. apparently adding hydrogen can make burning gasoline slightly more efficient so not much of a new claim here.
3. impossible

[Luke]

Thats me.... professional smart-ass.;)

[Dilb]

Gah, stupid browser crashed on me.

I got my hands on an uncorrected copy (aparently pre-release) of an article on HHO that supposedly appears in the latest International Journal of Hydrogen Energy called "A new gaseous and combustible form of water
by Ruggero Maria Santilli." (The release version is available for $30 and I very much hope someone more qualified than me wants to dig into it. If you do, please let me know your thoughts.)

It describes in painful detail what HHO is. They also explain in excruciating detail the difference between HHO, H2O, H-O-H, etc. It is the magnetic bond and arrangement of the particles that make the difference, and somehow create the stability of the gas.

Not being from a chemestry background I don't know all the jargon, but I'll try to break it down here.

The hypothisis to explain the properties of this gas HHO is presented in 16 pages, most of which explain the rigorous scientific tests that this gas has undergone. They're way past 'does it exist'. They're trying to figure out what it is and why it's properties are so unique.

It specifically states that this is not Brown's Gas, as it is far more stable than Brown's Gas. It also introduces a new type of particle called a "magnecule". The concept as far as I can tell, very briefly, is that instead of valence bonds, the particle is using magnetic bonds (thus the term 'magnecule') of several atoms all lined up in a magnetic pattern where the "north" of one bonds to the "south" of the other. (I'm really not doing the article justice. It's way over my head.)

I won't lie...my physics and chemestry background is mainly from books from Barnes and Noble. I am in no position to validate, or invalidate the premise of the article. It is obvious from the article that a whole lot of scientific 'noodling' has been done with this gas with IR, etc. The article states clearly that this is only a hypothetical attempt to explain the unique properties of this gas. It also sounded like they want others to hammer on it to see if they can figure it out.

Any brainiacs out there ought to give it a shot.

:-)

Allright, I've got the article. A number of glaring concerns pop up:

On page 2, they report Their first remarkable feature
is the efficiency E of the electrolyzer for the production
of the gas, here simply defined as the ratio between
the volume of HHO gas produced and the number of
Watts needed for its production. In fact, the electrolyzers
rapidly convert water into 55 standard cubic feet (scf)
of HHO gas at 35 pounds per square inch (psi) via
the use of 5 kWh, namely, an efficiency that is at least
10 times the corresponding efficiency of conventional water evaporation, thus permitting low production costs.

Which after some conversions (though I hadn't encountered scf before), comes out to producing 0.78 kg of gas using 18 MJ. I'll point out that electrolyzers are ~50% efficient, and hydrogen combustion releases 13 MJ/kg. People doing the calculation will note I got a mass from a volume, which requires the average molar mass, reported a bit later on (with what I can only hope are typos) On June 30, 2003, Adsorption Research Laboratory
of Dublin, Ohi, measured the specific weight of the
HHO gas and released a signed statement on the resulting
value of 12.3 g/mol. The same laboratory repeated
the measurement on a different sample of the gas and
confirmed the result.
The released value of 12.3 g/mol is anomalous. In
fact, the conventional separation of water into H2 and
P2 produces a mixture of 2/3 HBN2 and 13
O2 that has
the specific weight (2 + 2 + 32)/3 = 11.3g/mol.

Everytime I divide 36 by 3, I get exactly 12, but what do I know. I did use 12 rather than 12.3, if you're wondering why my mass is slightly off.

They have pages of graphs of IR signatures and things, and graphs of bonds which, as best as I can interpret, are entirely wrong. The paper is available (http://hytechapps.com/aquygen/international_journal.pdf) from the company, and although this is an "uncorrected copy", the quotes above are directly from the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy.

The last thing I'll mention is from the beginning A second important feature is that the HHO gas does
not require oxygen for combustion since the gas con-
tains in its interior all oxygen needed for that scope, as it
is also the case for the Brown gas. By recalling that other
fuels (including hydrogen) require atmospheric oxygen
for their combustion, thus causing a serious environ-
mental problem known as oxygen depletion, the capability
to combust without any oxygen depletion (jointly
with its low production cost) render the gas particularly
important on environmental grounds.

Amazingly enough, I didn't know, and have been unable to find information, about atmospheric oxygen depletion being a problem. Oxygen depletion in lakes or other bodies of water, sure, but nothing about the decrease in atmospheric oxygen from combustion.

[Dilb]

Oh, and boiling water from 20 Celcius requires roughly 2.5 MJ/kg. Producing 55 scf of steam should take about 0.8 kWh, if my calculations are correct.

[MortFurd]

The problem is that I don't know near enough chemistry to figure out if this guy is talking out of his hat.

Anyone want to look at this guy's claims?


And Klein's web site is at:
http://hytechapps.com/



Talking out his a$$ is more like it.
Old hat. (http://www.randi.org/jr/2006-06/060906just.html#i3)

[Soapy Sam]

Did we ever get any explanation of why so many newbie posters appeared in this thread, most of whom, two months on, have not posted again?

[Roadtoad]

Nope, but it's fun to read some of what they say.

[gfunkusarelius]

Did we ever get any explanation of why so many newbie posters appeared in this thread, most of whom, two months on, have not posted again?

it's just speculation and i am assuming you are already conjecturing the answer, but from my experience on forums, it is typically because a person finds the forum when they see something linked on a blog or forum or article somewhere else and they get led to this site and throw their two cents in.
some of it might also be that they are new here and havent seen the debate before and once they see the opposition, they realize they are out of their knowledge base.

[Luke]

it's just speculation and i am assuming you are already conjecturing the answer, but from my experience on forums, it is typically because a person finds the forum when they see something linked on a blog or forum or article somewhere else and they get led to this site and throw their two cents in.
some of it might also be that they are new here and havent seen the debate before and once they see the opposition, they realize they are out of their knowledge base.

That's how I got here... linked from a discussion on the miraculous water fuel. But now that I've found a decent discussion forum, I don't think I'll be leaving. I'm going to stick around and see if I can hold my own against the existing knowledge base.:D

[victorian]

Buy a Brown's Gas torch to find out why its impressive technology.
Put a Brown's Gas generator in a vehicle and tweak your air fuel mixture. See what happens to your MPG.

Dont look on the internet for what other people have done, do it for yourself.

Hi Nseidm
you seem more open minded than most which is very welcome - The rest of you - armchair scientists should check out the Nov. Dec issue of Nexus magazine which has an excellent article on Browns Gas. wouldn't it be wonderful of some of the above got off their ass and went to see the technolgy - like going to Eagle Research in Oroville WA

[davefoc]

Hi Nseidm
you seem more open minded than most which is very welcome - The rest of you - armchair scientists should check out the Nov. Dec issue of Nexus magazine which has an excellent article on Browns Gas. wouldn't it be wonderful of some of the above got off their ass and went to see the technolgy - like going to Eagle Research in Oroville WA

As one of the armchair scientists that has commented in this thread, let me welcome you to the forum victorian.

Have you done some personal investigation that leads you to believe that either Klein or somebody else that touts something similar to Brown's gas has demonstrated significantly positive results?

I checked out the Nexus web site for articles on Brown's gas. I didn't find any articles there although perhaps the article is only in their print magazine They do link to Eagle Research (through the link labeled Brown's Gas) which seems to be mostly selling a variety of how-to books on improving gas mileage.

Perhaps you could provide a link to some article that you felt proves the value of some of these kind of products? Unfortunately, as a new member you aren't allowed to post links right away, but if you could provide enough information on the article(s) that you have in mind I could convert the information to a real link.

[Luke]

Hi Nseidm
you seem more open minded than most which is very welcome - The rest of you - armchair scientists should check out the Nov. Dec issue of Nexus magazine which has an excellent article on Browns Gas. wouldn't it be wonderful of some of the above got off their ASSES and went to see the technolgy - like going to Eagle Research in Oroville WA

There, fixed it for you. In addition to being an armchair scientist, I'm also an armchair grammarian.

[victorian]

As I mentioned - it in the Magazine - Nov - Dec issue so there should some in the stores. And I have no personal experience but my point is since there are so many apparently qualified people on this forum slamming the technology - why don't they go and see for themselves then we can know for sure - but no it's it's so much easier to go with the herd. Well Klein i s not some one is going with herd. He at least has invested time and money and actually sells products based on the technology.

[TjW]

I suppose you're right. Klein isn't going with the herd. What's the collective noun for conmen?

[The Don]

I suppose you're right. Klein isn't going with the herd. What's the collective noun for conmen?

Congress ?

[Mongrel]

I suppose you're right. Klein isn't going with the herd. What's the collective noun for conmen?

A Fleece....?

[Luke]

Victorian- you suggest that there isn't anyone here with the credentials to understand this subject in the way that you do. So, I am forced to ask; what are your credentials?

Certainly there are "armchair scientists" here (to use your term), but there are also highly trained, well respected scientists that visit this forum.

Full disclosure: I am neither highly trained, nor well respected.

It seems to me that the persons with the least training in Physics or Chemistry are the most likely to believe Klein's claims. Then, if anyone calls it the scam that it is- they are part of some vast government conspiracy to keep it off the market, or they just don't understand it properly. It couldn't possibly be that the people that actually understand and can debunk his claims know what they're talking about, could it?

It's the most recent converts that are most zealous and the ones to be feared.

[RenaissanceBiker]

"Sublimation" also refers to the reverse process...that of going from gas straight to solid. Though I don't know of any materials that do that under normal conditions, offhand.


Ice9.

/Vonnegut

[davefoc]

As I mentioned - it in the Magazine - Nov - Dec issue so there should some in the stores. And I have no personal experience but my point is since there are so many apparently qualified people on this forum slamming the technology - why don't they go and see for themselves then we can know for sure - but no it's it's so much easier to go with the herd. Well Klein i s not some one is going with herd. He at least has invested time and money and actually sells products based on the technology.

A small response to the above:

There have been roughly two kinds of posts critical of Klein's claims in this thread:
1. Posts by people that seem to have relevant training in chemistry that have expressed skepticism of the claims based on their understanding of the basic underlying science.
2. Posts that reference articles that are critical of his claims or other similar claims.

The net effect has been to make a good case, IMHO, that some of the claims are bogus and that Klein's claims don't seem to be particularly unique but that he seems to be one of the least credible in a mix of people that don't seem to be particularly credible.

Given this most of us in this thread have developed a fairly low opinion of Klein and his claims and would classify him as just one more conman. And given the large number of scammers in the world and the finite amount of time that all of us have in our lives most of us see no reason to investigate Klein anymore than any of the other of thousands of scammers out there.

That doesn't mean that we would not be open to admitting that we were wrong or that we wouldn't be interested in evidence that would contradict our conclusions.

You apparently feel that there is some reasonable chance that Klein is more than a common conman and that he might be on to something. This is fine, but the thing that would be most useful here is if you could describe the evidence that leads you to believe that Klein is more credible than all the other thousands of scammers making extraordinary claims without evidence.

[AgingYoung]

The overwhelming interest in this thread fascinates me. I’m sure it is setting traffic records.

Upthread there was a mention of measuring the surface of the sun and it was pointed out that we could measure that temp. We can’t. We can derive or calculate a temperature. It was mentioned that we could move instruments further from the sun (maybe at some distance where they wouldn’t melt) and extrapolate the temperature. That’s a technique of calculating a value and isn’t a direct measurement. There are measured quantities like distance. You can actually take a tape and measure distance. Then there are derived quantities like speed (mph). Then there are calculated quantities like the surface temperature of the sun. It’s probably splitting hairs but these are distinctions made in instrumentation.

Gene

[AgingYoung]

Upthread someone mentioned these two patents of Klein's filed in 2002. It's taken quite a while for all this fervor to foment.

United States Patent 6689259
Filing Date: 2002-09-18

The present invention is a device, which generates a hydrogen and oxygen gas, preferably used for welding. The hydrogen and oxygen gas is generated by an electrolyzing process. Electrolyte is pumped into the hydrogen-oxygen generator where the gas is separated from the electrolyte by applying a direct current voltage across the generator. Oxygen is formed in one part, hydrogen in the other and then combined to form the gas. As the gas is generated, pressure is built up. When the pressure reaches an operating pressure, the gas is pumped via the plumbing system into the electrolyte reservoir, through a filtering process, and stored in a gas reservoir that is connected to a supply line. In operation the supply line is attached to a torch.


United States Patent 6866756
Filing Date: 2002-10-22

The present invention discloses an electrolyzer for electrolyzing water into a gaseous mixture comprising hydrogen gas and oxygen gas. The electrolyzer is adapted to deliver this gaseous mixture to the fuel system of an internal combustion engine. The electrolyzer of the present invention comprises one or more supplemental electrode at least partially immersed in an aqueous electrolyte solution interposed between two principle electrodes. The gaseous mixture is generated by applying an electrical potential between the two principal electrodes. The electrolyzer further includes a gas reservoir region for collecting the generated gaseous mixture. The present invention further discloses a method of utilizing the electrolyzer in conjunction with the fuel system of an internal combustion engine to improve the efficiency of said internal combustion engine.


One thing mentioned in the prior art section is this (United States Patent 6689259)...
The patented invention differs from the present invention because the patented invention is a welding apparatus which generates hydrogen and oxygen in an electrolytic cell by electrical dissociation of water. The resultant gas which is in stoichiometric proportions is directed to a torch which has a pair of tungsten electrodes in the out put path of the gas. An arc is drawn between the electrodes causing the disassociation of the hydrogen and oxygen which produces a significantly hotter flame. The present invention is a device to generate electrolytically, gas needed for welding. The present invention lacks the feature of causing the gas to become disassociative.


I know that silver or platinum acts as catalyst for hydrogen peroxide and gets rather hot as it rapidily expands. I don't think tungsten is a catalyst. It would make for an interesting injection system to recombine H and O into hydrogen peroxide (80% or greater solution) then inject it into a modified engine with silver/platinum plated piston tops. You could not give the alternator a rest; constantly using it to produce the peroxide.

Gene

[JJM]

First, hydrogen is not a fuel in the classic sense of something we can harvest from nature. Hydrogen must be manufactured, and that entails a loss of energy. In the current matter, the electricity used to produce hydrogen is more energetic when used directly. That is the Second Law of thermodynamics. You are more likely to see God than see this Law violated.

Under some circumstances, it is more practical to generate hydrogen (and oxygen) on location rather than to bring it with you. To that extent, this product may be useful; but not at all revolutionary. Ignore the talk of tungsten and peroxide. What is being done is to convert water to hydrogen and oxygen, so it can be burned to produce water.

Most of the claims at Klein's site are ordinary (although, couched in astounding terms), ordinary, or irrational (the electrolysis does not produce "water" as a fuel).

I am a retired chemistry professor. I find it sad that so many of you are confused by this idiot (Klein). Pardon me if there were other rational responses, I could not bear to read the whole thread.

[davefoc]

Aging Young,
How much of this thread have you read?

Could you explain what the new art is in the patents that you referenced, in particular can you point out the claims that are different than the claims made in the Brown's gas patent which significantly precede them? There was also a patent that preceded the Brown's gas patent for a stoichiometric mixture of hydrogen and oxygen to be used in a welding device I believe.

So what is new that Klein claims to have invented? And where is the evidence that there is any potential benefit to what he has invented except a few anecdotes?

[AgingYoung]

Aging Young,
How much of this thread have you read?

My apologies. I didn't know there was going to be a test. I'll do better next time.

Gene

[trvlr2]

Oh crap! Am I gonna have to go over to this(Klein's) shop and look at this 'invention'? Will it make any difference to the woo? He's only about 5 miles away. I just haven't seen enough reason to go there.

[Luke]

Yeah, please go over there and take some pictures. Some first hand information would be valuable here. Too many references to magazine articles or net articles to have a coherent discussion.

[ponderingturtle]

The overwhelming interest in this thread fascinates me. I’m sure it is setting traffic records.

Upthread there was a mention of measuring the surface of the sun and it was pointed out that we could measure that temp. We can’t. We can derive or calculate a temperature. It was mentioned that we could move instruments further from the sun (maybe at some distance where they wouldn’t melt) and extrapolate the temperature. That’s a technique of calculating a value and isn’t a direct measurement. There are measured quantities like distance. You can actually take a tape and measure distance. Then there are derived quantities like speed (mph). Then there are calculated quantities like the surface temperature of the sun. It’s probably splitting hairs but these are distinctions made in instrumentation.

Gene

This is entirely wrong. We can measure the temperature directly, you look at the intensity of the various spectrum's of light and then you know, because the most intense frequency corresponds to a particular temperature. It is not extrapolated it is just as directly measured as putting a thermometer in something and measuring the expansion, or change in electrical resistance of the material to measure the temp.

[davefoc]

This is entirely wrong. We can measure the temperature directly, you look at the intensity of the various spectrum's of light and then you know, because the most intense frequency corresponds to a particular temperature. It is not extrapolated it is just as directly measured as putting a thermometer in something and measuring the expansion, or change in electrical resistance of the material to measure the temp.

I noticed that too. I thought perhaps what Aging Young's point was that one has to assume that the sun is a black body radiator and then one can infer the temperature of the sun based on radiation measurements and the formula for a black body radiator. But at some point it becomes something of a semantic issue. We can't measure the temperature of anything directly. If we put some sort of temperature sensing probe into the substance we want to measure the temperature of we determine the temperature based on assumptions about the characteristics of the probe.

[John Jackson]

The rest of you - armchair scientists should check out the Nov. Dec issue of Nexus magazine which has an excellent article on Browns Gas. wouldn't it be wonderful of some of the above got off their ass and went to see the technolgy - like going to Eagle Research in Oroville WA

The thing is, if you've studied Chemistry (noteably thermodynamics) you would realise that the claim cannot possibly be true without needing to get out of your armchair. ;)

[AgingYoung]

This is entirely wrong. We can measure the temperature directly, you look at the intensity of the various spectrum's of light and then you know, because the most intense frequency corresponds to a particular temperature. It is not extrapolated it is just as directly measured as putting a thermometer in something and measuring the expansion, or change in electrical resistance of the material to measure the temp.

What do you mean by 'intense' frequency? Are you saying short wavelength/higher freq? Frequency is a derived quantity (waves per unit of time); it's a calculated/derived quantity like speed.

Gene

[ponderingturtle]

What do you mean by 'intense' frequency? Are you saying short wavelength/higher freq? Frequency is a derived quantity (waves per unit of time); it's a calculated/derived quantity like speed.

Gene

Intensity means intensity, in simple terms it is how bright it is. You measure that across the spec tum and you know how hot it is by the black body radiation formula.

And everything it a calculated quantity, time is calculated based on the vibrations of various atoms. Space is calculated by how long it takes light to cross the distance. Temp is calculated by measuring the change in properties of some material or by looking at its black body radiation. Thermometers filled with mercury are no more direct than spectroscopy, as what you are actually measuring is the Kinetic Energy of the various atoms(linear there can be vibratory modes and such that hold KE but do not factor into temp, that is why water has such a high heat capacity it has a lot of degrees of freedom for its mass).

As for the whole thing working, well it will work but it is not going to make energy, anymore than having a dynamo run a motor that runs the dynamo will create energy. To think otherwise is to ignore some of the best tested theories in modern science. It would be rather like saying that I had a solid metal ball fall upward away from the earth. You do not need to look into the claim to call it BS, unless I have very good evidence to support my claim.

[AgingYoung]

Distance is based on a standard and can be directly measured against that standard.

When calculating temp based on cavity radiation you are measuring amount of radiation emitted in a given frequency range. hrtz is considered a derived quantity. It might be considered semantics to the layman but as I noted these distinctions happen in the vernacular of instrumentation.

Gene

[AgingYoung]

This might help clarify the point. There are some quantities that are based on standards and you can take an instrument that is calibrated to that standard and directly measure an unknown quantity. Temperature is based on a standard. If you were sick and we wanted to know what your temperature was, I could take a thermometer (calibrated to that standard) and directly measure your temperature.

Frequency is a quantity that is considered derived. A method to calculate frequency is to measure the time between two consecutive occurrences of the event (the period) and then compute the frequency f as the reciprocal of this time..

F=1/t

When you measure temperature using derived measurements you aren't directly measuring; you are calculating it. You can't take a thermometer and directly measure the temperature of the sun. As you know it's too hot.

Gene

[Dilb]

Distance is based on a standard and can be directly measured against that standard.
Gene

Not for the last 23 years it hasn't. The metre is based on the speed of light and the period of the ground state hyperfine transition of cesium atoms.

[Slimething]

This might help clarify the point. There are some quantities that are based on standards and you can take an instrument that is calibrated to that standard and directly measure an unknown quantity. Temperature is based on a standard. If you were sick and we wanted to know what your temperature was, I could take a thermometer (calibrated to that standard) and directly measure your temperature.

Frequency is a quantity that is considered derived. A method to calculate frequency is to measure the time between two consecutive occurrences of the event (the period) and then compute the frequency f as the reciprocal of this time..

http://www.randi.org/latexrender/latex.php?F=1/t

When you measure temperature using derived measurements you aren't directly measuring; you are calculating it. You can't take a thermometer and directly measure the temperature of the sun. As you know it's too hot.

Gene

I don't agree with you but I think your point is moot regardless. What does it matter whether or not Sears sells a star thermometer that you can stick into a star and read a dial? What does that have to do with somebody hydrolyzing water just to recombine it later and claim that they have made more energy than was in the water to begin with? [I've been a chemist for longer than I can count on my fingies and toesies and I don't have to get off my chair to tell you it's hogwash.]

If you want to hold tight to your temperature argument, think about what you're actually measuring and why you do it a certain way. Temperature is our way to indicate the kinetic energy of a substance or mixture. Thermometers are only one of many devices that can be used to detect this phenomenon. Merely because thermometers have been used to measure body temperature for a long time is no reason to think that it's the only method available. Has anyone measured your temperature by using one of those ear thingies? Does it give the same temperature as an oral thermometer? (Say no and you'll be right.) I could use an infrared camera to tell you what your temperature was at any visible area of your body, too. Would you tell me that I was wrong because I wasn't using a thermometer? (Say no and you'll be right again.)

And, no, frequency is not a derived measure. It's an expression of a wave characteristic, directly measured. Hz is no more derived than if you said that your fevered brow has excited a thermal probe whose readings have been calibrated against a known standard and are given in degrees F or C.

[trvlr2]

Yeah, please go over there and take some pictures. Some first hand information would be valuable here. Too many references to magazine articles or net articles to have a coherent discussion.

MMMk...I will take the camera. I have a full plate now, maybe in a week? I can slide over there.

[AgingYoung]

Not for the last 23 years it hasn't. The metre is based on the speed of light and the period of the ground state hyperfine transition of cesium atoms.

Dilb,

More specifically...


The meter (m) is the Si unit of length and is defined as the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during the time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.[ 3 ] This replaces the two previous definitions of the meter: the original adopted by CGPM in 1889 based on a platinum-iridium prototype bar, and a definition adopted in 1960 based on a krypton*86 radiation from an electrical discharge lamp. In each case, the change in definition achieved not only an increase in accuracy, but also progress toward the goal of using fundamental physical quantities as standards, in particular, the quantum mechanical characteristics of atomic systems.


That is how the standard is defined. Reference is NIST site of SI base unit for length. Temperature on the Kelvin scale is also an SI (Système International d’Unités) base unit; temperature on the Celsius scale is derived from the base standard, the Kelvin scale.

Gene

[AgingYoung]

I don't agree with you but I think your point is moot regardless. ...
No argument here. Someone mentioned directly measuring the sun's surface temperature upthread and I commented.

And, no, frequency is not a derived measure. It's an expression of a wave characteristic, directly measured. Hz is no more derived than if you said that your fevered brow has excited a thermal probe whose readings have been calibrated against a known standard and are given in degrees F or C.

You're wrong but I do support your right to be so.

Gene

[AgingYoung]

And we can surely measure temperatures hotter than the sun's surface...

This is the post I was responding to. Although we can approximate with calculations intense temperatures (i.e. the core temp of the sun) we can't directly measure them. We 'know' them based on calculations.

I do agree it's a moot point and also it's a minor distinction. The distinction though is directly measuring the height of a tree vs. using trig to approximate the height.

Gene

[ponderingturtle]

Distance is based on a standard and can be directly measured against that standard.

Not very accurately. Especialy between reference frames.

When calculating temp based on cavity radiation you are measuring amount of radiation emitted in a given frequency range. hrtz is considered a derived quantity. It might be considered semantics to the layman but as I noted these distinctions happen in the vernacular of instrumentation.

Gene

Of course it is semantics, but then again measureing it with a probe is no more of a dirrect measurement than measureing its light. That is where your arguement makes no sense at all.

[ponderingturtle]

This might help clarify the point. There are some quantities that are based on standards and you can take an instrument that is calibrated to that standard and directly measure an unknown quantity. Temperature is based on a standard. If you were sick and we wanted to know what your temperature was, I could take a thermometer (calibrated to that standard) and directly measure your temperature.

But you are not, you are makeing assumptions based on the properties of the material the thermometer is made of and how they change with temp. That is not a dirrect measurement but an indirrect one. You are really measureing the expansion of the mecury or what ever property is being used.


When you measure temperature using derived measurements you aren't directly measuring; you are calculating it. You can't take a thermometer and directly measure the temperature of the sun. As you know it's too hot.

Gene

ANd thermometers do not give dirrect measurements of temp ever anyway.

[ponderingturtle]

No argument here. Someone mentioned directly measuring the sun's surface temperature upthread and I commented.



You're wrong but I do support your right to be so.

Gene

What is so special about the way mercury expands when heated that makes it a direct measurement? Do thermistors give direct measurements? What about thermocouples?

[ponderingturtle]

This is the post I was responding to. Although we can approximate with calculations intense temperatures (i.e. the core temp of the sun) we can't directly measure them. We 'know' them based on calculations.

That holds for all measurements of temperature, what we are measuring it the expansion of mercury or the change in electrical properties of some material, nothing about temp directly.


By the way you are insisting on definition temperature is always a derived measurement. Now maybe you mean it is not as accurately measured but that is a different argument.

[Dilb]

That is how the standard is defined. Reference is NIST site of SI base unit for length. Temperature on the Kelvin scale is also an SI (Système International d’Unités) base unit; temperature on the Celsius scale is derived from the base standard, the Kelvin scale.

Gene

Now you seem to be mixing units with measurements. Yes there are base units, and then there are derived units, but this has nothing to do with measurement, and everything to do with math.

On the other hand, to get this standard meter, first requires measuring a frequency, then measuring a velocity, then converting that velocity into a distance. If these "calculations" that you are so worried about keep you from 'measuring' temperature, then they certainly keep you from 'measuring' distance.

[AgingYoung]

Now you seem to be mixing units with measurements. Yes there are base units, and then there are derived units, but this has nothing to do with measurement, and everything to do with math.

On the other hand, to get this standard meter, first requires measuring a frequency, then measuring a velocity, then converting that velocity into a distance. If these "calculations" that you are so worried about keep you from 'measuring' temperature, then they certainly keep you from 'measuring' distance.

It really isn't as much a worry as it is about what's being sensed. Standards are set by SI that define base units. There are about 6 7 of them. All other measurements are derived from those base units. For instance speed is the ratio of the base units distance to time; it's derived.

To the point of what is being sensed and temperature readings: if you are using a thermocouple it's sensing temperature change. You're directly reading temperature. If you're sensing light firstly you're sensing a derived unit (freq) then inferring temperature. You are not directly sensing temperature.

Gene

[AgingYoung]

What is so special about the way mercury expands when heated that makes it a direct measurement? Do thermistors give direct measurements? What about thermocouples?

It's not a question of what is special and what isn't. The point is what is being sensed. Yes, thermistors and thermocouples sense temperature change.

Gene

[ponderingturtle]

It's not a question of what is special and what isn't. The point is what is being sensed. Yes, thermistors and thermocouples sense temperature change.

Gene