In the early 1970s, Arturo Estevez Varela presented his invention: a Vehicle that runs on water onlyIt even had its place in NODO, the Spanish news agency of the Franco regime. But it was not just water that drove its engine: in its hand it hid the mysterious philosopher’s stone, which it kept secret. It was speculated that the mysterious annex was Viral. And then a committee of experts from the Ministry of Industry decided that it was. Bor.
the laws of thermodynamics It will never be abolished. You can’t extract more power from a system than what goes into it. In Estevez’s engine, as in other articles, videos, and even patents that claim to have found the magic formula for running a car on just water, There is a trap.
More energy than is released
The usual idea is to split water into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis and then burn the hydrogen to generate a Electric current Who runs the engine. So far so good.
But the electrolysis process requires more energy to break down a water molecule than is released when the hydrogen rusts. In fact, in Converting water to hydrogen (Then burn it) A lot of energy is lost. Heat is always produced in conversions. So releasing chemical energy from water violates the first two laws of thermodynamics.
And energy is wasted
Hydrogen reacts with oxygen to produce water either by direct combustion or by inserting it into a fuel cell. According to the arguments of the promoters: “Water-powered” engines.The water produced in this way can be hydrolyzed again to form hydrogen again and the cycle can continue. to infinity.
However, what is suggested is a prattleIt takes energy to break water apart. And where do we get that energy?
The energy obtained from the hydrogen cannot be used entirely to re-electrolyze the water because some of it will already be used to power the car. No free snack.
This does not mean that hydrogen cannot be used to power vehicles, it certainly can be used, and unlike gasoline, it can. Without CO₂ production. At least without producing it directly. But what is clear is that none of them “Magic Inventions” It is effective.
In addition to free fuel, the water engine will solve the biggest global problem of our time: CO2 emissions. The important thing to know here is thathydrogen What is required is not always clean.
The Three Colors of Hydrogen and the Problem of Industry
When hydrogen reacts with oxygen, the only product is water, so hydrogen is a flammable meshBut how do we get to hydrogen? It has to happen somehow, and this is where not everything is clean.
The most common industrial method for producing hydrogen is the reaction of steam with Natural gaswhich is mainly methane. This process produces, in addition to hydrogen, also carbon dioxide. The resulting hydrogen is called gray. If, by any subsequent procedure, the resulting carbon dioxide is captured without being released into the environment, we speak ofBlue Hydrogen.
The ideal isGreen Hydrogenwhich occurs without emitting carbon dioxide. This can be achieved if hydrogen is produced by electrolysis and electricity comes from renewable energies.
Hydrogen engines current reality
Today, trains, cars, buses, trucks and even airplanes run on hydrogen.Liquid hydrogenwhich must be kept at an extremely low temperature, and is produced by applying high pressure to hydrogen gas. Special, resistant carbon fiber tanks can be pumped from any vehicle, and from there it flows into the fuel cell which generateselectricity necessary to drive it.
In reality, Hydrogen cars are electric cars.But instead of being powered by a battery, electricity is produced by reacting hydrogen with oxygen in a fuel cell.
Thus, the cost of producing hydrogen is greater than the cost of using it. Gasoline or batterieswith the added complexity of handling the coolant.
Boron comes into play
Electrolysis or the reaction of methane with steam are not the only ways to produce hydrogen. Dropping a piece of sodium in water Making it move through a container and then catch fire is a classic chemistry show to impress bachelors. Sodium reacts with water to produce hydrogen and sodium hydroxide. This reaction is highly exothermic, and produces enough heat to set the hydrogen on fire. The gases produced by this combustion will fuel the person. explosion engine.
he Bor It also reacts with water to produce hydrogen (and boron trioxide), although its calorific value is much lower than that of sodium.
Directly in the car
In 2006 Chemical Engineer Tariq Abu Hamed He came up with the idea of producing hydrogen directly in the car. He added that this would solve the problem of storing hydrogen in a tank, a potentially dangerous situation, and avoid the need for expensive pipelines. Well, that’s right.
Abu Hamid’s idea was to equip the car with a device that adds… Boron in water To produce hydrogen. At least in theory, it could be extracted from cars, recycled and converted into boron for further use.
Boron price
Unfortunately, there are a few flies in the honeycomb. Converting boron trioxide back into boron requires more energy than can be obtained from hydrogen. If that energy came from solar power, such a car might be viable. But the international price of boron is $2500 per kilogram.
In general, an average hydrogen vehicle consumes between 0.05 and 0.1 kg of hydrogen per kilometer, which requires 1 kg of boron to travel a distance of 50 to 100 kilometers.
The current price of hydrogen is around 10 euros/kg, and the typical consumption of these vehicles is 0.8 kg/100 km. We will talk about the cost of around 8 euros/100 kmTo produce one kilogram of hydrogen, it takes nine liters of water and about 4 kilograms of boron, and at these prices The cost of a 100-kilometre trip ranges between 1,250 and 2,500 euros.Boron also rusts during the reaction and cannot be reused forever.
In short, for a water engine to work in this way, it would be necessary to invest five times more energy than the engine could provide.
However, Tarek Abu Hamed was late. Arturo Estevez had already used boron in his watercraft, although he never explained his secret or patented his invention. For years, there had been speculation that the secret was actually ferrosilicon, a material obtained in blast furnaces by reducing silica with coke in the presence of iron ore. It is a cheaper and easier product to obtain than boron, and it also produces hydrogen on contact with water; in fact, during World War II Many ships have equipped hydrogen generators with ferrosilicon to enable them to inflate observation balloons.
problem Viral The amount of hydrogen obtained when it comes into contact with water is less than with boron, the process of obtaining it is not entirely environmentally friendly and there is no possibility of reusing it later. Esteves used boron, according to the authorities. With ferrosilicon, the invention would not have been a panacea either.
Further evidence of the non-existence of alchemy and Water car, no
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