Hydrogen Engine

Copyright (c) 2007 Steven Magill

Water powered cars are something that the public has been hoping to see on the road for a few decades now. The possibility of water powered cars being invented has been talked up practically since the invention of the automobile itself. Unfortunately as of yet, there are no water powered cars to be seen on the roads or even at car lots because they have not yet been invented-or if they have, they haven’t been proven safe enough to release to the public. This doesn’t mean that the demand for water powered cars is ever going to go away. On the contrary, with the ever increasing cost of gasoline, the demand for water powered cars has reached an almost fevered pitch.

If we were experts in thermodynamics, physics, chemistry and car engines, here is how our water powered cars would work:

The gasoline tank would be replaced with a water tank. In that water tank there would be two metal plates. Each of those metal plates would be hooked up to its own electrical charge, which would effectively turn those plates into electrodes. A battery would send an electrical current through the water tank and this electrical current would cause the water molecules to react. Their reaction to the electricity would be for each of the two elements to separate and reform into two diatomic molecules: O2 and H2. The H2 would appear at the negatively charged electrode while the O2 would appear at the positively charged electrode. From the electrode the H2 diatomic molecules would be burned and the combustion of the hydrogen atoms would produce the power that would be necessary to run the car. If everything works the way it is supposed to, the power that comes from the H2 combustion would be relatively equal to two and a half times the power created form the combustion of gasoline.

Unfortunately, so far, this method hasn’t proven to work correctly because a true water fuel cell will never work correctly. The laws of thermodynamics make it practically impossible for a water fuel cell to work. In order for the water fuel cell to work properly it needs to be a perpetual motion machine. In order to be a perpetual motion machine, the energy that is exerted in separating the molecules must be less than the amount of energy created as a result of the separation process. This means that there is a constant build up of energy within the fuel cell. Unfortunately the energy required to split a water molecule will always far outweigh the amount of energy created by the split itself. This renders the water fuel cell useless.

Hopefully one of these days, scientists will have a breakthrough and will figure out how to create water powered cars. After all, with the price of gasoline being what it is, the demand for such a product is huge. While nothing has been invented yet, you can take comfort in knowing that scientists and technicians are working like crazy to make water powered cars a possibility.