Message from @Deleted User
Discord ID: 461491938864922624
Water itself -cannot- be used as a fuel
it's separating molecules
Chemical reactions happens with the electrons.
You can split water up into hydrogen and oxygen, which can be combined to either combust (I.E., run a standard internal combustion engine on them) or be used in hydrogen fuel cells (where basically the same thing happens, the recombination of hydrogen and oxygen into water, but via a circuitous route that produces electricity) but running any kind of engine on straight water is not possible, because anything you do with water requires more energy to do that thing to it than you'd get from any process that produces energy from it.
separating water into hydrogen and oxygen isnt a nuclear reaction right?
No, it isn't.
It's chemical.
thats what i thought
so it's not a nuclear reactor Baraban
I remember someone on the internet referring to it as a nuclear reactor
Well, someone on the internet claims it, that must mean they're right.
But I guess it shouldn't really be
I think it was on Linus Tech Tips
maybe they were talking about an actual nuclear powered car, not the water one
Even Black Science Man didn't know about the practical details of water electrolysis. He thought the Space Shuttle could be fueled by just breaking down water. Somebody corrected him, it's way too inefficient to do it that way, they just collect hydrogen from oil wells, and oxygen from the atmosphere.
Exactly. Splitting up water via electrolysis is not a viable way of producing fuel.
The oxygen in particular, is nasty to whatever conductor you're using.
It's done on nuclear submarines because they have power to spare, but even there, they're changing out electrolysis plants for reverse osmosis plants.
which is why i dont get why these people are trying it now
All science textbooks talk about how you can do it at home, everyone who tries it, finds no oxygen at all, only hydrogen. Because the oxygen corrodes the terminal.
The oxygen does get produced, it just reacts with whatever metal is being used for the conductor.
Not easy to find metal that won't get corroded.
You'd need a platinum or gold electrode to actually see the bubbles go.
So, to summarize
No, they're not making a water powered car, they're making a hydrogen powered car
Water is a very low energy state molecule, that's why burning hydrogen with oxygen releases energy and creates water.
Yeah, but in marketing language it sounds much better to say water powered, because there's just so much water on the earth! <:pepe_smug:378719408341909506>
At least we can drink water, much better to use as energy source some dark sludge that's otherwise useless, that's just laying there underground.
>otherwise useless
No, it's kinda really fundamentally needed in the production of this thing called plastics. Without oil, no plastics.
Sustainables with a nuclear baseload is the future.
what is that?
Research is done into creating plastics independent of crude oil
We can make plastic out of corn already.
Wind/water/solar power providing the majority of the energy needs we have, with be-it either fission or fusion nuclear power being available as 'on-demand' in case, say, the sky is overcast, or there's no wind.
such production is not supported by an already established industry, though
we should probably do something though, I don't like plastic just hanging around everywhere
Go tell India and China that.