Magnet doubles hydrogen yield from water splitting
cen.acs.org
cen.acs.org
Do I understand correctly that the magnet just makes the anode behave like a bigger anode, and does not make the process more energy-efficient?
Meanwhile, if the build-cost gets low enough then it suddenly becomes worth installing electrolysers for those occasional times when the cost of electricity goes negative and all that matters is throughput.
This discovery maintains efficiency that would normally require a larger electrode surface. It doesn't double the chemical energy output from the electrical energy input. That would be impossible as conventional electrolyzers are already more than 50% efficient. It (potentially) improves the economic efficiency more than the thermodynamic efficiency.
In a perfectly efficient process all of the resistance would owe to H2O splitting, but we know that's not the case - about half the resistance energy was creating waste heat.
If its like an LEDs resistance which has a voltage drop component which produces light and a linear ohmic resistance which produces waste heat. This would be like getting twice the current (and light) across an LED from the same voltage.
Either the voltage drop has been reduced, or the ohmic resistance is reduced. Either way, we can lower the voltage and produce the same amount of light that was possible without the magnetic hack. Same current with less voltage is less power, for same amount of light or H2O split.
If you look at the full paper through sci-hub [1], it's an efficiency improvement specifically at higher current densities. In the left hand side of Figure 1, the magnetic/non-magnetic curves are indistinguishable at very low current densities. Those low current densities also have the lowest overvoltage and highest efficiency per gram of H2 produced. But for an industrially optimized device you want to push production rates higher for a given electrode area, which requires more current density, which also requires more voltage. Higher current density implies higher energy wastage since the voltage has to go up too.
The voltage increase with higher current density rises more slowly in the presence of a magnetic field. By the time current density reaches 50 mA/cm^-2, the setup with the magnetic field needs several millivolts less than the control setup without a magnetic field.
> "Online O2 detection also confirmed quantitative OER Faradaic efficiency with and without the presence of a magnetic field (Supplementary Fig. 17)."
But it looks to me like this effect is demonstrated as really significant already, for all the catalysts bar one. Application of it cant be far away. A bit like sticking a magnet on an engine block and getting loads more horsepower !
Typical motors used in electric cars are a lot more powerful and efficient than their internal combustion engine counterparts ;)
Because that sounds so absolutely nutty, nobody seems to notice the published evidence that it actually works. The energy efficiency is so-so -- but the point is that the woo-connection creates a sort of forcefield around the topic, preventing scientific study.
You'd hope it would produce the opposite effect. E.g, "wow, this has public interest, let's test and disprove -- and maybe make a practical discovery"
"using radio wave resonance to burn saltwater." ; "had discovered a seemingly impossible phenomenon: a way to burn salt water by exposing it to radio waves." - The salt water isn't burning, burning Hydrogen isn't seemingly impossible, separating Hydrogen from water isn't seemingly impossible. The description is nothing like what's actually happening.
the effect can be achieved with a much lower energy catalyst: radio waves are present in everything from microwaves to televisions. - ??? is this trying to imply you can mine radio waves from a television and use them for this? What a bizarre sentence.
"Nobody is claiming that you get more energy out than you put in," he says.; They even envision a future in which a vehicle can run off its radio's frequency waves.
.. is that not getting more out than you put in? A vehicle which generates radio waves, uses them to split seawater, burns the gas, uses that power to generate the radio waves, and also motion? Then the burnt H and O turn into ash (H2O) and drip back into the "fuel" tank to be burned again? That's not water as a "fuel", that's an overunity machine, perpetual motion.
If they're not claiming you get more energy out than you put in, stop claiming that. In the video the inventor is talking about how their Sterling Engine "could be a car engine if you wanted" but if you're putting in mains electric power to this, you'd be better off connecting that to an electric motor and saying "that could be a car engine" - it couldn't, it's mains electric powered.
This is a neat electrolysis without electrodes idea, but why(??) is it being presented as the woowoo idea "water powered car"?
The point here is: holy crap, radio waves can provide electrodeless water splitting and physicists don't care because it sounds like woo.
Of course the public and the press will see salt water burning and freak out -- but that excitement shouldn't be a reason for physicists to ignore the phenomena.
Probably they don't care, because as soon as that water is split, it is ignited and burned again, so you can't have any hydrogen, you have just changed some rf energy into heat, losing some energy into heat in rf setup... It's easier to just heat something directly with elecrticity. Now if someone invented a way for oxygen and hydrogen split that way to remain split for more than milliseconds, physicists would be more interested.
Converting electricity into radio waves with energy losses, sent through the air with energy losses, to bombard molecules, which then resonate with the waves to use electromagnetic forces to split molecules, will always be less efficient than simply using that original electric current to do the same thing directly with less energy loss.
This will always be energy inferior to simple electrolysis.
Here is a patent from an Israeli company on this topic, granted just this year: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2911976A4/it
This simply violates basic physics. Turning electricity into radio waves only to turn them back into electricity is always going to lose energy. This is fundamental.
In a simplistic undergrad setting the absolute best you could hope for is zero loss, but there is no gain. In the real world with real materials there will be loss.
>Here is a patent from an Israeli company on this topic,
Patents are granted on all sorts of nonsense. Having a patent is not proof of usefulness, or efficiency, or marketability, or even if it is better than any other competitor. A patent means the material seemed novel enough to the patent inspector that after repeated rounds of claim modifications and paperwork he wan convinced the claimed item is new. Usually patents are on a small piece of a technology, since it, like this one, builds on a lot of pieces coming before it (hence all the other patents cited).
Sounds exactly like a cool research area for physicists.
Once you put a magnet near the site of a chemical reaction where radical pairs are formed, the rate of the reaction may be changed, due to the additional energy levels introduced by the spin-magnetic field interaction.
Anyway, in order to have such kind of effects, you need an energy intensive process responsible for the radical pairs creation.
Where does the other 46% come from ?
All the hydrocarbon sources are apparently processed by steam reforming.
So how do the production rates of magnetic versus non-magnetic anodes compare?
Maybe they did, but were dismissed out of hand due to everything else in their woo-based world?
Or maybe they tried it and saw no (or little) difference; the article did say that the effect wasn't shown to happen with every non-magnetic anode material - and I doubt that the "free energy" researchers tried a particular nickel-coated foam type of anode...
All of that aside, I do wonder if there are any "off-the-shelf" anode materials whereby one could experiment with this effect?
If you take the time to trawl through Rex Research you would find this and a bunch of other stuff. Most of it is BS but the bits that aren't... there is some mind-blowing stuff that just hasn't reached critical mass in the collective consciousness yet.
For example, the device of Przemyslaw Lagiewka, which has to be seen to be believed (there are videos):
> A small Fiat 126p, going 45 km per hour, was driven into a concrete wall. The bumper was not damaged. The driver wore no seatbelts. The inertial reaction, which should have thrown him onto the hood, did not occur. The stopping distance was only 16 centimetres.
http://www.rexresearch.com/lagiewka/lagiewka.htm
It seems efficiency is between 70-85% depending on method.
Interestingly it seems there is potential to be >100% electrical efficiency if the water is also heated.
I can envisage concentrated heat-and-PV electrolysis plants.
In fact, it yields exactly what we want: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_splitting
On my first page of Google results, all of them are about electrolysis, with a variety of diagrams from image search.
EDITED: spelling and grammar fixes.
As long as there is regulation preventing manufacturers and practicioners from claiming they can cure cancer/etc., and the remedies do not have any harmful side effects, why on earth should we leave a treatment as powerful as placebo off the table?
GP here has significantly reduced his painkiller intake and reduced chronic pain by putting some magnets on his feet. That is without doubt a strong net positive outcome. Why do we mock it?
Prominent example, to make it a bit more real: Steve Jobs had a cancer with an excellent prognosis on real medicine but chose to handle it with... fruit juice, I think. Steve Jobs is now dead.
Oncologists write bitter and angry testimonials about patients they weren't able to save because those patients turned away from effective medicine. It's even more infuriating when ignorant parents make these decisions for their children.
Your Steve Jobs example highlights that the problem wouldn't be fixed by removing alternative medicine. People can always claim that perfectly ordinary objects have alternative medicine properties.
I believe if there was a well-regulated alternative medicine industry where people would trust practicioners like they do today, but where those practicioners were prohibited from saying they could cure cancer etc, we would end up in a much better situation.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/b0c0a501-221b-4d7b-9336-0cd0e84...
I know someone who was telling me with great sincerity about how she just puts a couple of magnets in with her wash and far less soap is needed.
I told her that I only go with things where I can look up the science behind it.
Makes the colours last longer too.
There is also clear, well-documented evidence that homeopathic magnets have no effect beyond a placebo.
> That is, in let’s say a drug testing experiment, you give some people the drug and they recover. That doesn’t tell you much until you give some other people a placebo drug you know doesn’t work – but which they themselves believe in – and see how many of them recover. That number tells you how many people will recover whether the drug works or not. Unless people on your real drug do significantly better than people on the placebo drug, you haven’t found anything.
> On the meta-level, you’re studying some phenomenon and you get some positive findings. That doesn’t tell you much until you take some other researchers who are studying a phenomenon you know doesn’t exist – but which they themselves believe in – and see how many of them get positive findings. That number tells you how many studies will discover positive results whether the phenomenon is real or not. Unless studies of the real phenomenon do significantly better than studies of the placebo phenomenon, you haven’t found anything.
> Trying to set up placebo science would be a logistical nightmare. You’d have to find a phenomenon that definitely doesn’t exist, somehow convince a whole community of scientists across the world that it does, and fund them to study it for a couple of decades without them figuring it out.
> Luckily we have a natural experiment in terms of parapsychology – the study of psychic phenomena – which most reasonable people believe don’t exist, but which a community of practicing scientists believes in and publishes papers on all the time.
And now for the cliffhanger: so how does real science fare against its control group? (The answer is in the article.)
But we both seem to agree that people should read the article.
I went into it with as open a mind as I could muster, and was told the following:
- The magnets are arranged so that there's a positive magnetic field in the middle surrounded by a ring of negative magnetic field
- Blood cells are clumped and this arrangement of magnetic fields pulls apart the clumps, making the blood cells more efficient
- The magnetic field also ionizes your blood, giving the cells a positive charge so they can hold more oxygen (!)
- They don't claim that it's a medical device because pharmacies won't let them (so as to get more money from doctors prescribing medicine)
- The sales girl's pet cat is way more friendly since starting to use one of their magnet things
I checked their website which yielded further such gems as:
- Magnotherapy has been used for centuries by humans and animals to aid healing
- It is reported that Cleopatra wore a small magnet on her forehead to preserve her beauty and youthfulness!
- Our magnets use a strong, multi-directional force of magnetism called ‘Central Reverse Polarity®’ also referred to as ‘CRP®’, to mimic the expensive professional equipment used by physiotherapists. Molecules that exit a CRP® field are more efficient than those produced by standard magnets.
- The use of a Central Reverse Polarity magnetic field therefore has a three-fold effect on the body’s energy levels (talking at a molecular level);
-- It activates the release of energy
-- It boosts the volume of stored energy
-- It acts as a catalyst by providing energy to increase the rate of chemical reactions.
tl;dr no.
Spoiler: Don't try to fight bacterial infections with lasers.
At this point in our technological competency, all easy advancements are gone.
Oh wait.