Petrol prices on the UK's forecourts may be staggering back down to the magic level of £1 per litre, but this temporary respite is unlikely to deter those offering to run cars on a tankful of water. Around the time that prices peaked in June, Japanese company Genepax unveiled a vehicle that, according to a report from Reuters, "has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car's tank".
Even if the car does not break the laws of thermodynamics and has an energy source that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, you have to wonder if it wouldn't be more efficient for that source to power the vehicle.
The company has its own web site, showing what looks remarkably like a battery with water going in at one end and out at the other, generating electricity in the process.
Other people have clambered on the water-fuelled bandwagon. Genepax has a note on its website warning visitors to ignore websites with a similar name. So, pleased ignore the blandishments of www.genepax.com.
Looking at this rival site, it points visitors at another set of websites, including runyourcarwithwater.com, where you can read how to "Create your own water hybrid for under $150!". The trick is to "use electricity from your car's battery to separate water into a gas called HHO (2 Hydrogen + 1 Oxygen)". Chemists may recognise this as no more than a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, but what the heck?
It would be a shame if these slightly less than convincing ideas deterred people from looking at some ideas for technologies that really could help to reduce the costs of running vehicles. For example, one idea that may have something does not start promisingly. But what sounds a bit like a 19th-century medical device to cleanse the blood might actually have something going for it.
The device, which promises to use "electric fields" to reduce the viscosity of fuel as it flows to the engine, has made it into print in a peer-reviewed journal, Energy & Fuels. The paper, "Electrorheology Leads to Efficient Combustion," comes from researchers at a reputable university, Temple University in Philadelphia.
The researchers believe that "that proper application of electrorheology can reduce the viscosity of petroleum fuels". They have even road-tested their wares. No need to read the paper to get the bottom line; they put out a press release which says that "Six months of road testing in a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz automobile showed that the device increased highway fuel from 32 miles per gallon to 38 mpg, a 20 per cent boost, and a 12-15 per cent gain in city driving."
It may not be quite as magic as pouring water into your fuel tank, but it does come with enough science to suspend immediate disbelief. If nothing else, the researchers have persuaded the somewhat flakily named Save The World Air, Inc. (STWA) to back the idea.
Given the similar presentation styles of the scamsters and some of the stuff on the STWA website, it would be easy to see them in the same light. That could be a mistake.
While car manufacturers have done much to make vehicles more fuel efficient, you don't have to believe in conspiracy theories - that Detroit has bought up and sat on patents for electric cars and perpetual motion machines, for example - to realise that they haven't squeezed every ounce of inefficiency out of the conventional powertrain.
Further information:
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=84561&videoChannel=74
http://www.genepax.co.jp
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/enfuem/asap/abs/ef8004898.html
http://www.stwa.com/
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