Ben said:
There's a story circulating in the news about John Kanzius. Story is
claiming that he has a radio frequency generator that liberates oxygen and
hydrogen from saltwater.
Anyone know the frequency (frequencies?) involved? What about the
transmitter design? Anyone??
I have no idea whether that actually works or not, but even if it does,
no energy can be gained in the process. Why? Because breaking the
chemical bond between hydrogen and oxygen in a water molecule requires a
specific amount of energy input. It doesn't matter how that energy is
delivered, whether by electricity, heat, radiation, magnetism, what have
you. Breaking that bond always uses the same energy as what was released
when the bond was formed.
It is like when you move something up a mountain. No matter if you move
it slowly or quickly, by a winding road or a straight, whether you lift
it by a crane or pull it behind oxen doesn't matter, it always takes the
same expenditure of work to lift the same thing from one particular
height to another.
It is the same with chemical bonds. To split the bonds cost energy,
exactly the same amount of energy that is released when the bond is
formed. But that's just in theory. In practice it alway takes more
energy to split chemical bonds, because such reactions are not 100%
efficient. This radio frequency generator you mention will lose some
energy as heat, first in the creation of the radio waves, second in
causing heat movement in the water, energy that can not be recovered by
re-combining the oxygen and the hydrogen.
S.