Dumbass question - why can't you reuse hydrogen to power cars (please read when you finish laughing!)

[ulrichburke]

know what I'm about to ask is totally dumbass, be gentle with me, I'm not seeing it. So you've got hydrogen. It separates out, runs the engine and becomes water. As water IS hydrogen (and oxygen!) instead of dripping it out of the exhaust pipe - and I'm not a scientist, just been thinking about this - couldn't you separate it BACK out into hydrogen and oxygen and send it round the circuit again? It's just it seems to me that as you've got water coming out, the hydrogen's still there to be reused, so you could have a hydrogen - water - hydrogen - water setup going round and round the engine till the water evaporates, I suppose.

And if you've got that going, couldn't you power the car on water in the first place? Once you've got the circuit started, you could just top it up with water every so often, couldn't you, and the separator - which I admit is the bit I'm scientifically not so certain about - would just separate the hydrogen out from it. I mean isn't it just electrolysis? And there's electrolysis cells around, aren't there?

Yours puzzledly - I know this must be dumbass or they'd be doing it, wouldn't they? -

Chris.

[Vmedvil2]

5 hours ago, ulrichburke said:

know what I'm about to ask is totally dumbass, be gentle with me, I'm not seeing it. So you've got hydrogen. It separates out, runs the engine and becomes water. As water IS hydrogen (and oxygen!) instead of dripping it out of the exhaust pipe - and I'm not a scientist, just been thinking about this - couldn't you separate it BACK out into hydrogen and oxygen and send it round the circuit again? It's just it seems to me that as you've got water coming out, the hydrogen's still there to be reused, so you could have a hydrogen - water - hydrogen - water setup going round and round the engine till the water evaporates, I suppose.

And if you've got that going, couldn't you power the car on water in the first place? Once you've got the circuit started, you could just top it up with water every so often, couldn't you, and the separator - which I admit is the bit I'm scientifically not so certain about - would just separate the hydrogen out from it. I mean isn't it just electrolysis? And there's electrolysis cells around, aren't there?

Yours puzzledly - I know this must be dumbass or they'd be doing it, wouldn't they? -

Chris.

Okay, basically the issue is the process for converting water to hydrogen requires electricity which is energy, thus the process consumes energy thus the process is not 100% efficient in a "perfect world" where everything was 100% efficient it would work but in "Real Universe" where things are never 100% efficient it doesn't work like that, it could be done however you would lose energy every time you looped the water to hydrogen then hydrogen to water. In the interest of being a scientist is try the experiment yourself, you tell me if you can rig it in such a way as to gain energy, if you can you could stand to make a great deal of money, you have made your theory, now test it, but I can put a 99.99% chance it will not work, however on that .01% chance that you do get it to work by your own intelligence then I am sure someone especially car companies would give you several million dollars for it if you can loop it and make energy gains from the reaction loop.

 

More about The Scientific Method, Link = https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapter/the-scientific-method/

Edited November 28, 2021 by VictorMedvil

[OceanBreeze]

10 hours ago, VictorMedvil said:

Okay, basically the issue is the process for converting water to hydrogen requires electricity which is energy, thus the process consumes energy thus the process is not 100% efficient in a "perfect world" where everything was 100% efficient it would work but in "Real Universe" where things are never 100% efficient it doesn't work like that, it could be done however you would lose energy every time you looped the water to hydrogen then hydrogen to water. In the interest of being a scientist is try the experiment yourself, you tell me if you can rig it in such a way as to gain energy, if you can you could stand to make a great deal of money, you have made your theory, now test it, but I can put a 99.99% chance it will not work, however on that .01% chance that you do get it to work by your own intelligence then I am sure someone especially car companies would give you several million dollars for it if you can loop it and make energy gains from the reaction loop.

 

More about The Scientific Method, Link = https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapter/the-scientific-method/

Overall efficiency would be less than 36%. Not really worth the trouble.

[buttocksboss]

There is a type of vehicle engine that uses hydrogen as fuel known as FCEV or Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle. Unlike other EVs, the FCEVs use Hydrogen fuel cells to create electricity and use it. Hydrogen gas is not available on earth in natural form like other gasses ex; Oxygen or carbon dioxide. We used to get hydrogen from electrolysis. The hydrogen fuel cell is converted into electrical energy from potential chemical energy by using (PEM) a proton exchange membrane that uses oxygen (O2) and hydrogen gas (H2). The fuel cell only needs to supply hydrogen for the making of electricity because the oxygen is already available in large numbers in the atmosphere. After converting into electricity some energy also converts into water and heat. One silly question that came to mind is if it converts into water then why don’t we convert back it to hydrogen and use it again? The answer is a bit complex. We can get hydrogen back from the water with the help of electrolysis. But it took a lot of electricity as well. Also, the amount of hydrogen that converts back into the water is not much so this will be difficult.