June 10, 2008 • 5 mins
Salt water fuel could be the next viable alternative to foreign oil. Learn about the ongoing research behind the concept of salt water fuel in this HowStuffWorks podcast.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house stuff Works dot Com? Brought to you by
consumer Guy at Automotive we make garbine easier. Hi, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer
here at how Stuff Works dot Com, with me as
(00:20):
always as my trustee edit Tricks. Candice Gibson. How's it going, Candice?
I gotta say I envy you a little bit there, Candice,
I haven't been so fabulous lately. My wallet keeps shrinking
and shrinking. Have you been to the gas pumps lately? Yeah?
I know what you mean. Those numbers keep climbing. But
it's not so expensive to feel my car because I
drive any seven. Well, I drive a big old Honkin
(00:41):
Volvo and it uses gas like you would not believe. Uh.
Let's think about this though. I mean, what if you
could put something else besides gas in your car to power,
you know, like sand or air, something that would be nice,
would be nice? What about saltwater? What do you talk about?
That's crazy? No, it's not crazy. Really. Have you heard
(01:03):
of this guy named John Kansias. You have okay, so
you have read the article. That's great, Thanks for that.
All right, well let's tell the people out in podcast
LAMB what we're talking about. This guy named John Kanzius
is this retiree in Florida. He's a retired radio broadcast engineer,
and he came up with this thing called a radio
frequency generator RFG is right, and basically what it does
(01:25):
is it takes radio waves and condenses them into a
beam and it's got all that has actually three applications
that they found so far, but one of them came
about when Kansias was tinkering with trying to desalinate water,
salt water, which could solve the global thirst crisis, right, yeah,
because not everyone has access to clean water, actually to
the tune of about two billion people, I understand. Yeah.
(01:48):
Uh So he was trying to desalinate water using his
RFG and he had the little box trained on a
test Cuba saltwater, and he noticed that it sparked, which
is fairly unusual for water. Water does and burn. On
the contrary, water actually puts out fire exactly. So Kansis
has a little bit of this mad scientist spent to him.
You know, he's a very curious fellow, and he likes
(02:10):
the paper towel and turns the RFG facing the test
tube agin and he touches the paper towel to the water,
and rather than the paper towel being put out by
the water, the paper towel exactly it basically it caught
the water on fire. And on fire it was. It
was burning it about three thousand degrees fahrenheit. It was
(02:31):
a pretty serious flame. Actually, yeah, so well, how does
this convert to fuel for our cars? Well, I'll tell you. Basically,
what Kanzius did inadvertently was to separate water into its components,
you know, hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecules. Basic science.
We're all there, and we've known for a while that
you can use hydrogen as fuel. You can create an
(02:53):
electric charge from it, or you can burn it in
a combustion. Is hold on because hydrogen fuel is potentially dangerous, right,
I mean, look at the Hindenberg that exploded. Actually, the
Hindenberg has been kind of latched onto by people who
aren't all about hydrogen e g. The big oil companies. Uh,
that's that's kind of a fallacy. Actually, the Hindenberg explosion.
(03:15):
It was a blimp held aloft by hydrogen. The static
spark caught the hydrogen on fire um and thirty seven
people ended up dying. The problem is is thirty five
of those people died by jumping to their deaths. Most
of the people, actually all of the people who are
on board the passenger compartment who stayed aboard, landed safely
(03:36):
and unharmed. And that's because hydrogen is actually the most
lightweight of all the elements, and so it floated upwards.
It's lighter than air exactly, and it burned upward actually
too away from the passenger compartment. That's not to mention
that the Hindenberg's outer skin was coated in a rocket
fuel and a really highly flammable Yeah, that wasn't too conducive,
(03:57):
it was. So the Hindenburg is probably not the best
thing to point to to say hydrogen fuel's dangerous, right,
It's it's not that dangerous. The problem with this type
of hydrogen fuel, salt water fuel, essentially, is that it
has a negative net energy ratio, and so to create
this type of salt water fuel, you're actually putting in
more energy than what you're getting out exactly, and what's
(04:18):
the point. I mean, speaking strictly from an energy standpoint,
you might as well just use the gasoline that you
get this gas gallons worth of energy from, rather than say,
using a gallon to get a half a gallon's worth
of energy from. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense.
You can't get something from nothing, And Cansius isn't the
only person to run into this stumbling block. Hydrogen could
(04:40):
be a really legitimate fuel. I mean, it packs a
real punch and its emissions are nothing but water vapor essentially. Yeah,
so it's probably the cleanest burning fuel. I mean, the
only other thing that's cleaner is electricity, and if you
follow electricity back to its origin, electricity is created by
burning coal. So really hydrogen would be cleaner. But there's
(05:00):
that negative net energy ratio and keeps stopping up. When
are we going to figure this out? I don't know,
but I've written a couple of articles on it so far.
One is a good salt water fuel cars and the
other is is hydrogen fuel dangerous? And they're both pretty interesting.
You can read on both on how Stuff Works dot
com dot com. And I was taking no guests to
Get there for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(05:22):
Is it how stuff works dot com? Let us know
what you think. Send an email to podcast at how
stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented
two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house stuff Works dot Com? Brought to you by
consumer Guy at Automotive we make garbine easier. Hi, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer
here at how Stuff Works dot Com, with me as
(00:20):
always as my trustee edit Tricks. Candice Gibson. How's it going, Candice?
I gotta say I envy you a little bit there, Candice,
I haven't been so fabulous lately. My wallet keeps shrinking
and shrinking. Have you been to the gas pumps lately? Yeah?
I know what you mean. Those numbers keep climbing. But
it's not so expensive to feel my car because I
drive any seven. Well, I drive a big old Honkin
(00:41):
Volvo and it uses gas like you would not believe. Uh.
Let's think about this though. I mean, what if you
could put something else besides gas in your car to power,
you know, like sand or air, something that would be nice,
would be nice? What about saltwater? What do you talk about?
That's crazy? No, it's not crazy. Really. Have you heard
(01:03):
of this guy named John Kansias. You have okay, so
you have read the article. That's great, Thanks for that.
All right, well let's tell the people out in podcast
LAMB what we're talking about. This guy named John Kanzius
is this retiree in Florida. He's a retired radio broadcast engineer,
and he came up with this thing called a radio
frequency generator RFG is right, and basically what it does
(01:25):
is it takes radio waves and condenses them into a
beam and it's got all that has actually three applications
that they found so far, but one of them came
about when Kansias was tinkering with trying to desalinate water,
salt water, which could solve the global thirst crisis, right, yeah,
because not everyone has access to clean water, actually to
the tune of about two billion people, I understand. Yeah.
(01:48):
Uh So he was trying to desalinate water using his
RFG and he had the little box trained on a
test Cuba saltwater, and he noticed that it sparked, which
is fairly unusual for water. Water does and burn. On
the contrary, water actually puts out fire exactly. So Kansis
has a little bit of this mad scientist spent to him.
You know, he's a very curious fellow, and he likes
(02:10):
the paper towel and turns the RFG facing the test
tube agin and he touches the paper towel to the water,
and rather than the paper towel being put out by
the water, the paper towel exactly it basically it caught
the water on fire. And on fire it was. It
was burning it about three thousand degrees fahrenheit. It was
(02:31):
a pretty serious flame. Actually, yeah, so well, how does
this convert to fuel for our cars? Well, I'll tell you. Basically,
what Kanzius did inadvertently was to separate water into its components,
you know, hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecules. Basic science.
We're all there, and we've known for a while that
you can use hydrogen as fuel. You can create an
(02:53):
electric charge from it, or you can burn it in
a combustion. Is hold on because hydrogen fuel is potentially dangerous, right,
I mean, look at the Hindenberg that exploded. Actually, the
Hindenberg has been kind of latched onto by people who
aren't all about hydrogen e g. The big oil companies. Uh,
that's that's kind of a fallacy. Actually, the Hindenberg explosion.
(03:15):
It was a blimp held aloft by hydrogen. The static
spark caught the hydrogen on fire um and thirty seven
people ended up dying. The problem is is thirty five
of those people died by jumping to their deaths. Most
of the people, actually all of the people who are
on board the passenger compartment who stayed aboard, landed safely
(03:36):
and unharmed. And that's because hydrogen is actually the most
lightweight of all the elements, and so it floated upwards.
It's lighter than air exactly, and it burned upward actually
too away from the passenger compartment. That's not to mention
that the Hindenberg's outer skin was coated in a rocket
fuel and a really highly flammable Yeah, that wasn't too conducive,
(03:57):
it was. So the Hindenburg is probably not the best
thing to point to to say hydrogen fuel's dangerous, right,
It's it's not that dangerous. The problem with this type
of hydrogen fuel, salt water fuel, essentially, is that it
has a negative net energy ratio, and so to create
this type of salt water fuel, you're actually putting in
more energy than what you're getting out exactly, and what's
(04:18):
the point. I mean, speaking strictly from an energy standpoint,
you might as well just use the gasoline that you
get this gas gallons worth of energy from, rather than say,
using a gallon to get a half a gallon's worth
of energy from. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense.
You can't get something from nothing, And Cansius isn't the
only person to run into this stumbling block. Hydrogen could
(04:40):
be a really legitimate fuel. I mean, it packs a
real punch and its emissions are nothing but water vapor essentially. Yeah,
so it's probably the cleanest burning fuel. I mean, the
only other thing that's cleaner is electricity, and if you
follow electricity back to its origin, electricity is created by
burning coal. So really hydrogen would be cleaner. But there's
(05:00):
that negative net energy ratio and keeps stopping up. When
are we going to figure this out? I don't know,
but I've written a couple of articles on it so far.
One is a good salt water fuel cars and the
other is is hydrogen fuel dangerous? And they're both pretty interesting.
You can read on both on how Stuff Works dot
com dot com. And I was taking no guests to
Get there for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(05:22):
Is it how stuff works dot com? Let us know
what you think. Send an email to podcast at how
stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented
two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
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