The videos all show the flame instantly being produced as soon as the radio waves are directed at the test tube vial. If the hydrogen/oxygen mix is burned as it’s being produced then it’s going to be difficult to store the hydrogen. It also doesn’t show the energy that’s required to generate the RF.

So the problem is how to create the hydrogen without burning it right away and how to store that hydrogen so it can be used.

Also what RF frequencies are being used and will they affect all of our other electronics that we have around us.

Also how efficient is the technology. The inventor says 100%, I say prove it with numbers, not retoric.

If they are using salt water which is not just hydrogen and oxygen then all those other chemicals are also vaporized. Do we really want those elements being released into our atmosphere?

Those are some fairly major hurdles to overcome. The inventor is pushing this technology as a cancer cure. Let’s hope it works for that.

Time will tell if you can run your car this way. I personally think that if it worked that well then this company would have been swallowed by big business by now.

No one disputes that burning hydrogen provides power, and it’s perfectly reasonable to think that you could have an ICE that is augmented by injection of a flammable gas.

This discussion is really about whether “burning” salt water is a viable energy source.

The whole biofuels stuff is massively overblown and dangerous. I was just reading an article on it and almost everything grown with the exception of sugar cane actually adds to the global warming effect as the current supply or corn, soy etc. is not enough to supply the fuel makers and feed the population so more land needs to be cleared. Clearing land releases the CO2 into the atmosphere. Farmed land doesn’t sequester near as much co2 as a forest so we cause more problems by trying to do better.

I also wonder if you can ever really see a net gain from any hydrogen generation by RF and salt water or any other kind of electrolysis. The RF generation itself would create loss from resistance in the circuitry and sucking the water up to the point it was converted would require a huge amount of power. I think this is unfortunately just another parlor trick meant to suck money out of “investors”

Using Solar cells to do the work of generating power for this device is a bit of a waste of time as it would be more efficient to store or use the power generated.

I think in the end we’ll all need to use a bit more muscle power to run the world.

…or it could just be an artifact.

I’m skeptical that anybody could correctly envision what kind of cars we’ll need in 2050, but it’s certainly a valuable exercise to try.

You also raised an interesting point about biofuels and ethanol. If I wasn’t so crushingly busy at work I’d write up a post on my thoughts on biofuels. I did want to point out something though: you said that it would take a lot of extra land to grow these crops for fuel. If the work on lignocellulosic ethanol pays off then we could essentially use the stalks and leaves of our existing food crops to generate fuel. So there is no additional land required, and any new land would be both food AND fuel production.

Of course the economics of cellulosic ethanol are not entirely clear, and while it’s technically feasible I’m not sure it’s the right move. But it is worth pointing out that extra land use is probably not a problem with that technology.

I tend to think that we will have to go to some kind of solar-based energy economy in order to achieve any kind of carbon neutrality. I think direct solar power is probably a waste of time in any short term sense (it will take so long to become economically viable that there’s no way direct solar can win). If we want some kind of real “green” solution then we will have to go with something that converts plants into fuel. It’s overall carbon neutral, solar powered, etc.