Making Fire From Water

LexNaturalis writes "Gizmodo has a story out about a new product that makes fire from water. Gizmodo explains how it works: 'Ordinary tap water (preferably distilled) is supplied to the fireplace through a pipe or tank, a 220 volt electrical service then separates the hydrogen and oxygen atoms through electrolysis, the Aqueon ignites the hydrogen, and ta-dah, fire! The oxygen is then added for color and brightness, while the rest is released into the room. It doesn't require venting because it doesn't produce any harmful emittents like carbon monoxide -- just water vapor.' The manufacturer's website has more information on the science behind this new product. While splitting water to get hydrogen and oxygen is not new, this product will likely make the technology more accessible to the masses and might hopefully show that hydrogen is a more attractive fuel than petroleum-based fuels."

I thought hydrogen flames were invisible?

[autopr0n]

I was under the impression that hydrogen flames were only visible in infared. Am I wrong, or are they burning something else as well here?

Conversion wastes energy

[Dzimas]

Using electricity to convert water to hydrogen to create flame is a round-about way of making things more complicated than they have to be. There are better ways to make heat and light with electricity, after all. And there are better ways to make electricity with water. And if you need fire, burning a tree is simpler still. :)

The folks at gizmodo are easily amused...

[daniel_mcl]

Seriously, didn't everyone see this as a demonstration in high-school chemistry? This isn't exactly that new or exciting...

Re:Nothing to see here

[Gunnery Sgt. Hartman]

Real efficient use of electricity also. Most people will ogle at the fact that it doesn't produce harmful emmissions but neglect the fact the the emmissions are just further upstream.

Hmmmm... Misunderstood?

[mcrbids]

I think the poster misunderstood the benefit of this... this is nothing more than a fancy electric room heater!

This is NOT an alternative energy source, it's a wasteful energy consumer...

What about nitrogen oxides?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

If you burn something in air, if you get the air hot enough then you combine some of the nitrogen in the air with oxygen.

Hydrogen burns pretty hot.

I wonder what steps these folks have taken to prevent or minimize emission of nitrogen oxides.

I also wonder how they're getting color in the flame, since the usual cheerful yellow comes from incandescent soot particles.

Maybe when they designed it they were under the influence of firewater.

Right...yeah

[ciroknight]

Well well, we can tell who's a right winger.

There are a billion and two ways to get atomic hydrogen, and this is just one of them. Sure, it's ineffecient, but so is burning carbon fuels.

Besides, electricity can be derived from anything these days. Put a few solar panels on your roof, and you've got a self contained hydrogen producer. Step it up another notch with rain water collection and filtration and it's competely autonomous.

But oh, I guess you'll argue that photovatalics are terrible and that silicon hurts the environment and that oil's the best fuel we got.

Next up, Biofuel. It's cheap! It's effecient! And if you were truly worried about the world farmlands, you'd be *advocating* this. The more biofuel that goes into production, the more the need for farmlands, and farmlands will grow in size. Thus, overall food output will increase and we will be able to transport that same food further, for cheaper than oil.

I know, I know, it's rough I don't wanna give up my old beater jeep either, but the fact is that oil is unsustainable and the sun IS sustainable. Well, unless you want to get pedantic on me and say the sun will go away in 5 billion years.

Hydrogen's a great idea as long as it's implemented correctly, which is where the research is currently going on. Oil was a terrible idea; just look at the middle east today!

Re:Nothing to see here

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

Performing electrolysis with wind, solar and hydro power can produce hydrogen fuel that is 100% pollution-free and 100% renewable.

Wind lacks energy density

Solar PVs are negative energy efficient (yes, you need to factor in the mined platinum & palladium to the equation)

Solar thermal lacks energy density

Hydro power lacks scalability

Nuclear is limited by Uranium reserves

Re:Yeah right

[dukerobillard]

Breaking water to form hydrogen is an inefficient (wasteful) process.

I dunno, plants do a pretty good job of it.

Re:releases oxygen?

[Dunbal]

The rest of the oxygen is released in the room?

      Not only that - what do they do with all that hydrogen then? I know I'm from biology and not chemistry, but if I remember correctly (and I am scratching my head here) water contains twice as much hydrogen as it contains oxygen, so if you're going to have excess oxygen you will have twice as much excess hydrogen.

      Or could it be that somehow this magic fireplace miraculously manages to combine all the hydrogen with the oxygen in the room, but the oxygen from the water is released to the atmosphere and get this, in EXACTLY the same amount as was combined with the hydrogen! Whoa! How did they do THAT? And everyone knows that oxygen from water is purer and good for you, right....?

Ugh, I hate marketers and sales pitches that try to bend the laws of our reality. Rest assured that this thing does NOT increase the amount of oxygen in your home. If anything it decreases it by a trivial amount as the flame and other hot surfaces burn up minute pieces of dust and other impurities in the air.

Huh?

[maynard]

What does your rant against hydrogen have to do with a toy electric fireplace for rich people? The toy burns hydrogen. You have a political axe to grind against hydrogen and fuel cells. Of course it's on topic! Or maybe this is just a pre-written rant for use whenever hydrogen is mentioned. That fuel cell cars and the whole "hydrogen economy" under consideration by policymakers has nothing to do with the topic at hand is irrevant. Lame.... --M

Re:That'll burn a lot of oil...

[Dunbal]

Energy source- never gonna happen.

      The ultimate energy source in our solar system is the sun. Everything comes from that. We're just living on "borrowed" energy right now, burning up millions of years' worth solar energy stored in the form of chemicals. When it runs out we will have to tap our energy source directly - the biggest problem we face is how to "store" that energy. The collection of that energy is a problem of cost and surface area. How many solar panels? How many windmills? How many dams and devices to extract energy from wave motion? We _could_ build loads of those.

Effecient storage of that energy is the big problem.

Re:Nothing to see here

[adamjaskie]

Hmm... have a fire in your fireplace WITHOUT burning fossil fuels...

How could we do that?

Oh YEAH! WOOD!

Re:Check the 220V circuit rating

[stuffman64]

Well, not every watt is directly turned into heat. Many heaters give off light, which is not "heat" (though when it gets absorbed by, say, the air or a wall, that energy may get turned into heat). Also, not every heater is able to extract all of the energy (for instance, some fuel may go unburned, or an AC heater may radiate RF instead of more useful IR).

Re:Let me clarify a little more

[serutan]

I get your rant about the proposed hydrogen economy, but all this product appears to do is separate hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis and then let them recombine to produce flame. The part about adding oxygen "for color and brightness" is moronic, and the device is obviously not a demonstration of hydrogen as an alternative fuel, or anything else. It's just a cute little expensive novelty item.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the point. He quoted exactly the part of the topic he was refuting. He's an exceprt of his excerpt:

"hopefully show that hydrogen is a more attractive fuel than petroleum-based fuels"

ChiralSoftware's point was to refute a bogus claim in the article, so it is on topic.

Re:I thought hydrogen flames were invisible?

[surprise_audit]

It's been a while since I did chemistry (and I didn't RTFA), but I'd have thought that "igniting the hydrogen" would require oxygen to make it burn. There won't be any spare oxygen to release into the room, or rather, the flame would use room oxygen and that'll be replaced by the released oxygen. Adding oxygen to "adjust the color" is complete crap.

$49,999 and wasteful! Excellent! :)

[sterno]

Okay, so rather than burning a renewable source of energy like wood in my fireplace, I'm going pay $50K to obtain the ability to burn hydrogen. Hydrogne is good and pure and not oil so that's good right? Oh yeah except for the fact that in order to make my fireplace work I need 220 current which is coming FROM DEAD DINOSAURS.

*SIGH*

Parent is pure disinformation.

[hernick]

You, sir "Doc" Ruby, are spreading lies.

Electrical transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 7.2% in 1995. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transm ission [wikipedia.org] for details. Electrical power generation is very efficient, and overall pollutes far less than most small-scale energy production operations.

Secondly, "nothing is created, nothing is lost". When you're trying to heat up a room with electricity, waste heat is a good thing. This hydrogen fire device has multiple conversion stages, all of them inefficient - in that they release waste heat. In the end, all of the energy that goes into the system is converted into heat.

In fact, most of the heat of the device probably comes from the electrolysis rather than from the burning. But in the end, it's meant to be a room heater, and is doing a fine job as that. It is as efficient a furnace as a normal heater, or as a beowulf cluster. That's right, a beowulf cluster is a very good way to heat your room, and it's just as efficient as a purpose-made heater.

Do you know about heat pumps ? Those devices are basically air conditioners acting in reverse, taking heat from the outdoors, during the winter, and pumping it inside. At first glance, it doesn't make much sense: pumps and compressors are very inefficient devices, aren't they ? Plus, there's not much heat outside... But then you realise that the waste heat of the whole heat pump is a good thing - it's kept inside the house and used to heat it up. So all the heat pump has to do is extract a little bit of energy from the outside and spit out lots of waste heat, hence making it a tad more efficient than a device which merely spits waste heat.

Any electrical devices that doesn't move outside air around is an efficient heater. Your toaster, your computer and your electrical chainsaw are just as efficient as your room heater, when it comes to producing heat.

Anyway, your post is a travesty of science and logic. You were inspired by a hampster and your reasoning smells of elderberries.

Re:Hydrogen from water

[EnderWigginsXenocide]

your missing the point, the advantage to hydrogen is taht you can make it from any source of eletrical power, be it coal, hydro, solar, nuke, fusion, oil, whatever.

That's all swell, but the majority of power is generated by burning fossil fuels, NOT by hydro, solar, or nukes (at least in North America.)

So, when you push electrons to make your H2 you're most likely burning a fossil fuel and adding greenhouse gasses in a less effecient process than the direct burning of fossil fules at the point of use.

it's a fancy, inefficient space heater...

[utexaspunk]

...and nifty toy for rich people...

let's do the math-
220V x 60amps = 13.2kW = ~45,000 btu's. According to their website, this device produces about 31,000 btus/hr, so that makes this ~69% efficient.

BUT... that kind of heating capacity usually comes from a gas furnace or a heat pump, which usually require insulated ductwork, or a fireplace, which loses a lot of its heat out the chimney.

This thing can (at least theoretically) go in the middle of a room, provide the ambience and heating ability of a fireplace, and doesn't lose any of its heat out a chimney. Probably a solution looking for a problem, but you gotta admit it's kinda cool...

It would be even cooler if the water were incorporated into design- like having a sheet of water flowing over the base or something...

What about the pollutant residue?

[CdBee]

Unless its run on distilled water this will leave a thick, gunky residue of chlorine salts, calcium, limescale and anything else that's in solution in the local water supply

Hydrogen is not a fuel

[Colin Smith]

It's a way of storing energy. You have to produce the hydrogen somehow and you need another form of energy to do it.

This fire is a joke.

Power stations are inefficient. Most of them are around 40%, there are a few types like combined cycle gas turbines that make it up to around 60% efficient. That means electric heating is no more than 60% efficient. That sounds OK till you realise that the power station is throwing away gigawatts of "waste" heat.

If this "waste" heat was pumped round houses, buildings and used to heat them instead of the electricity then the electricity could be used for something else instead. Closer to 90% efficiency rather than 40% or 60%. It's called District Heating and has been round for decades.