Quittintime: Water for Fuel? Yep, it's possible.

It seems many inventions are at first considered “Of little value”. The cry goes out “That couldn’t possibly work; could it?” or “What on earth is the use of that” and the subject is never raised again.

It is only when the Military becomes interested that the inventions “of little value” get considered seriously and any associated bugbears are eliminated by the experts. Hence we have had Steam Rollers, Tanks, Trains, Aeroplanes, Rockets, Radar and a host of other inventions too numerous to mention..

So it is with the idea of “Water for Fuel” proposed by Yul Brown in Australia many years ago of heating water to 1400C until it breaks down into its molecular components, Hydrogen and Oxygen and running an Internal Combustion Engine on the mixture of the two gases that later became known as “Browns Gas”. Highly respected scientists’ poo-poohed his ideas, saying you can’t get Something for Nothing. Perpetual Motion doesn’t work etc.

What is very true though, is that the Internal Combustion Engine is extremely inefficient at utilizing 100% of the immense amount of energy locked up in hydrocarbon fuels be it Petrol, Diesel, L.P.G. , Bio-Gas etc. A considerable quantity of the energy in any of those fuels is vented out of the exhaust pipe into the atmosphere and simply wasted and that’s why it stinks. It contributes markedly to photo chemical smog, greenhouse gases, micro-particle pollution and has a hidden, unacknowledged, insidiously detrimental effect on our balance of payments.

The twist is, when any hydrocarbon fuel is combined with Browns Gas in an Internal Combustion Engine the motor runs more smoothly due to the fuel being burnt super efficiently resulting in more power being supplied to the driving wheels and thus a far greater economy is achievable from a tank of fuel.

In 2005 President George W. Bush said words to the effect “We have got to get away from our reliance on oil from foreign nationals”. Since then a U.S. company has been modifying the U.S. Military Hummer fleet to run on “Aquygen” which appears to be Browns Gas marketed under a flash new name. Don’t laugh. Re-naming a good product that had an unpopular name worked well for the Zipper didn’t it. For those of us who have access to the Internet, take a look at www.hytechapps.com . My impression was, if the U.S. Military Engineers can’t get it to work efficiently, it aint gunna!

Never the less, they claim “All tests so far have been passed”. Provision is made in the retrofit to enable the Hummers to run either on Aquygen or the normal Petrochemical fuel in the gas tank. The Proprietor of Aquygen Denny Klein recently informed the U.S. Senate Committee his medium sized family sedan (a Corolla) goes 300 miles on one gallon of petrol combined with four ounces of water. That’s pretty impressive.
See U.S. Patent 6866756

If Aquygen is indeed actually Browns Gas, it is produced cheaply in a small device located under the bonnet of the car and is consumed immediately by the motor and turns back into water. Browns Gas doesn’t need to be stored under high pressure in a vulnerable storage tank nor does it require an expensive Hydrogen fuel cell or a heavy Storage Battery array. The water by-product need not be wasted. It can be collected for re-use ad infinitum.

Twenty or so years ago only the US Military were permitted to use the Global Satellite Positioning system. Wouldn’t be ironic, if President George W. Bush, was not so much remembered as the invader of Baghdad, but for having let the Genie out of the bottle and being responsible for us entering the Hydrogen age, in having Browns Gas adopted as, The Fuel Of The Future.

Perhaps the Federal and State Governments in all countries should be looking into how the U.S. Military is modifying their Hummer fleet to run on Aquygen, with a view to modifying public transport fleets similarly. But there again, wouldn’t any fuel savings so achieved, result in less G.S.T. being collected?