The Water Engine Evolution. Is it fact or fiction?

The end of rising petrol prices doesn't seems to be ending anytime soon and like many other road users and drivers we are growing tired with the ever increasing pump prices which apparently seems to only be heading towards one direction, up. When will we even see the end of the rising petrol prices and the return to its previous more logically accepted oil prices only god knows. Oops.... let me rephrase that only OPEC knows.

No one seems to know why the oil prices went sky rocketing beyond human apprehension. Industry expert contributes the rise of the oil prices to six reasons:

1. Summer demand,
2. Price of crude
3. Price of ethanol
4. Transition from MTBE to ethanol
5. Refinery problems and finally
6. Demand that's not seasonal

As oil prices rise, the quest for ways to replace fossil fuels or at least improve the mileage of modern vehicles becomes increasingly urgent. All around the globe, scientists and inventors slave away in an attempt to squeeze the last few percent of efficiency out of the conventional internal combustion engine because they know that even small improvements can have a big benefit to an auto-maker's bottom line.

At the same time, legions of "garage mechanics" are also working on ways to improve the mileage of your car. with all kinds of crazy devices flooding the market shelves with the promise of slashing your fuel bill by improving your mileage, or maybe even completely eliminating the need to buy gasoline at all.

As we drivers lamented helplessly on how it ache our heart whenever we visit the petrol pump stations and how it hurts deeply our pocket the moment we inserted the nozzle into the tank, there now seems to be a light at the end of a very very long tunnel.

A Japanese company Geneplax recently announced to the world in much hype which has caught everyone like a tidal wave that they have invented an electric-powered and environmentally friendly car that it says runs solely on water. Genepax unveiled the car in the western city of Osaka saying that a liter (2.1 pints) of any kind of water—rain, river or sea—was all you needed to get the engine going for about an hour at a speed of 80 km. The car will continue to run as long as you have a bottle of water to top up from time to time

What makes the water engine technology apart from other inventions such as the CNG and the Electric Car was that it does not require the build up an infrastructure to recharge your batteries. The water technology works once the water is poured into the tank at the back of the car, the a generator breaks it down and uses it to create electrical power.

However before all the hype and fanfare had died down, there now seems to be a different school of thoughts that are gaining momentum on the internet. Many have begin to debunct the water engine technology as a scam.

Sounds almost too good to be true doesn't it? And what is it they say about things that sound too good to be true?

Let's take a closer look at those HHO "hydrogen fuel cells". They are actually nothing more than a simple electrolysis device that uses electricity to split water into its constituent components -- two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen and technologicaul invention process that's been around for a very long time.
The gases generated by the electrolysis of water which is also known as Brown's Gas are recombined by way of combustion to release energy. Unfortunately the first law of thermodynamics clearly states that the energy generated by recombining the hydrogen and oxygen through combustion can only ever be equal to the amount of energy it took to separate them.

The delivery of it to the electrolysis cell and then the combustion process, actually resulted in far less recovery of energy from burning the hydrogen than it took to create it. Thus the devices which is said to free us up from the use dependency of bio fuel will actually caused us to use *more* fuel to heat the water in the electrolysis cell and the wires that lead to it.

The introduction of hydrogen and oxygen into your engine's intake can also lead to the car's computer incorrectly adjusting the air/fuel mixture to the point where fuel consumption either worsens further, or damage could be done to your engine.

As usual in the wonderful world of physics, there are no free lunches. But a little scientific fact is not about to stand in the way of those who think they can make money from the current energy crisis, there are still many who insist that we can increase our gas mileage by sucking power from your alternator and using it to create hydrogen.

On hindsight, even if the water techology does work what is stopping to say that water one of the world's natural commodity will sonner or later be as expensive as oil is. We may soon have water carter instead of oil cartels and speculators and traders that will push the cost of water up.

Will the water engine technology join its predecessors of invention, the electric car down the path of silence oblivion. Only time will tell.