Debunking a 'hydrogen-powered' boat that claims to run on seawater
treehugger.com
treehugger.com
If you are at sea, no reason why his mechanism cannot create thrust given unlimited supply of fuel.
In my younger days, I thought that perhaps we would use solar power to split water for this type of thing, but I think it takes more energy to do the water splitting than hydrogen is produced. If the approach was to have a hydrogen cell that was slowly filled with hydrogen by some constant low-power source, that might work, but a tank with pure hydrogen of any quantity is a very dangerous bomb.
That seems like a solvable problem to me. By limiting concentration, removing oxygen, and investing heavily into rupture-resistant tanks, is it feasible that the risk could be brought in line with other fuel storage standards?
It's been a long time since I had chemistry, so I don't know, a lot of people are interested in hydrogen fuel. However, the original post about the boat succeeding at this seems unlikely with current technology.
The reason why his mechanism cannot create thrust is in the linked article: the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Unless there is evidence that the boat suspends the laws of physics, this is the end of discussion.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/335674/water_fueled_torch/
The "HHO" they are talking about is this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyhydrogen
In other words, dude is converting water to a hydrogen, oxygen gas mixture (somehow! they won't say in the stupid news segment), and then burning it.
So yeah. Some magic conversion shit going on here.