For many years the Holy Grail of clean energy has been the search for “Cold Fusion”. The next best thing has just made the mainstream scientific community: seawater. Yeah, all that H2O that has covered the planet for eons has finally been proved to be a potential source of energy.
An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the “most remarkable” water science discovery in a century.
John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.
The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.
Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, has held demonstrations at his State College lab to confirm his own observations.
The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.
The discovery is “the most remarkable in water science in 100 years,” Roy said.
“This is the most abundant element in the world. It is everywhere,” Roy said. “Seeing it burn gives me the chills.”
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8RIRI600&show_article=1
If this sounds somewhat familiar, it should. Utilizing radio frequencies to produce energy is the plot of the movie Chain Reaction that was released in 1996. The movie starred Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman, Rachel Weisz and Fred Ward.
In Chain Reaction, a group of college students help a professor produce Cold Fusion using water. A radio frequency is necessary in order to sustain the reaction. After this breakthrough is achieved, the lab is sabotaged and Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz get chased thru the rest of the film.
Granted it is still early to find a definite power plant design to make this technology commercially viable but see if this idea piques your interest.
The reaction sustains a temperature of 3,000 degrees. So I’m thinking it could be used for a high-pressure steam turbine. If the required radio frequency could be generated naturally, much like to old crystal radios, then you might not need as much battery power to get it started.
The reaction would start in the salt-water chamber. Liquid would be heated to a high temperature and pumped thru to a heat exchanger. On the other side of the heat exchanger water would pump in where it would be converted to steam. The steam would flow into a turbine. Once condensed, the water would be pumped back to the heat exchanger. (See basic design for submarine nuclear power plant for many specifications. This would be smaller scale with different heat source.)
Once it gets going, the turbine could generate electricity to make the whole system run. All you would add is water to top-off the steam system. This would allow for electric cars, self-sufficient energy for homes and it would beat the socks off current solar technology.
Finally we could tell those folks in the Mid-East, “Bye-bye. Enjoy what’s left of the seventh century.”