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Does anyone know who invented the water engine and what happened to him and his invention?

Posted by admin in Thursday, January 29th 2009

freetronics asked:

I saw a report back in the 80s about a guy who invented an engine that runs on distilled water. Basically, it breaks down the water, burns the hydrogen, and releases the oxygen into the air as exhaust. He tried to patent his invention, but the government shut him down, saying that by producing it, he would destroy the world’s economy.

I heard they took the prototype and told him not to produce anymore or share his knowledge with anyone or he’ll be put in prison.

Does anyone know anything about the guy? Or what happened to the engine? More importantly, how difficult would it be to create an engine like that with today’s technology?
Everyone’s saying you need energy to make the water engine work. Well, the same is true for gas. You need something to get it going, after the initial start up, it takes less energy to keep it going. I would imagine the same is true with water. But once going, will it produce more energy to run the engine than it takes to break down the water? I think with modern technology, that could happen.

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7 Comments

Bones said in January 31st, 2009 at 4:35 pm

It’s a silly theory and completely unprovable…call it an urban legend and let it go.

cjlintexas said in February 1st, 2009 at 1:23 pm

ah never existed – urban myth sorry, but what a nice one it would be.

sa l said in February 4th, 2009 at 3:15 pm

my teacher told this story in class. she told that he was killed by a company because his invention was the cause of their bankruptcy. He did not invent the water engine; he had invented the engines working by fuel cells which are used in modern cars, today. it is the story i heard from my teacher

rhsaunders said in February 7th, 2009 at 8:19 pm

The story has to be fictitious. Breaking down water to extract hydrogen necessarily uses more energy than can be obtained by using the hydrogen, even in a fuel cell.

Steve said in February 10th, 2009 at 5:46 pm

You’re talking here about more than perpetual motion; perpetual ENERGY. It takes energy to ‘break down’ water–infact, a bit more than you get back when you burn the hydrogen, which, BTW, consumes as much oxygen as the original breakdown releases….

I heard this same story in HS in 1956. Then it was the myth of the 100 mpg carburetor that was corraled by GM and hidden away to protect their profits.

Vincent G said in February 15th, 2009 at 9:42 pm

This never happened, it is a myth. And here is why it did not happen: because it cannot. It is a physical impossibility to have any kind of useful power from a set up like that.

To break down water into hydrogen, you need electricity. And the electrolysis process is not 100% efficient, as it releases heat, so you do end up wasting about 20% of the electricity (and by the way, you cannot use distilled water for electrolysis, as it does not conduct electricity well enough — you need to add an acid, an alacali or a salt into it). Now you take the hydrogen and burn it. If you had a PERFECT engine, you would get back the power of the hydrogen, but if you are using a real existing system, you can expect 60% efficiency if you are using a state of the art fuel cell, and 25 to 30% if you use an internal combustion engine (and by the way, after the alleged system “releases” the oxygen in the air, it needs to RECAPTURE the same amount of oxygen from the atmosphere to support the combustion of the hydrogen — except by then, it is not pure anymore and that is another reason to lower the efficiency…)

So, to sum it all, you have an overal efficiency of 0.8 * 0.6 = 0.48 (i.e. 48% efficiency) if you use a fuel cell, and 0.8 * 0.3 = 0.24 (i.e. 24% efficiency) if you use an internal combustion engine.

Use a battery to DRIVE the wheels with an electric motor (some electric motors can achieve 90% efficiency) and you get a lot more useful power from your battery.

If this still has not you convinced, here is the final argument I can offer, that of logic.
If the guy was forced to never mention his “invention”, how come you heard a rumor about it?

FF said in February 18th, 2009 at 6:57 am

I don’t know about conspiracy theories or locked up and unused patents, but Hydrogen fueled cars are a fact not a myth.

Working Prototypes were made by Roger E. Billings in the 1960s, but there are some technical problems, e.g. with the storage, hydrogen has a very low volumetric energy density, the hydrogen fuel that can be stored in a normal size tank is used up rapidly. Another problem; Water is not an energy source, but an energy carrier, to get the hydrogen out of the water you need energy.

BUT now there’s this;