Energy from water arc explosions

[Zephir]

Water arc explosions were first described in 1907 by John Trowbridge of Harvard University, though the phenomenon was not studied in detail until it caught the interest of Peter and Neal Graneau in the mid-1980s (Graneau and Graneau, 1985). By discharging a high-voltage capacitor through around 100 mL of water, the Graneau team was able to expel the water from a dielectric cup. At the time, the Graneaus conjectured that the arc discharge generated high- pressure steam within the water which expanded rapidly and resulted in the observed explosions. Measurements in Graneau and Graneau (1985) and Hathaway and Graneau (1996) indicated that water arc explosions were unusually strong. The history includes work by Trowbridge in 1907 as noted below; also Frungel in 1948 and 1965 papers; and Gilchrist and Crossland in 1967. About the same time as Graneau's publications, we also find a publication by Azevedo of MIT - 1986. YT Videos Water Drop Trigger Apparatus, Max Spark Rate Demo

For further reading: The Mysteries of Fog (Graneau, P., & Graneau, N. (1985). Electrodynamic explosions in liquids. Applied Physics Letters, 46(5), 468, Graneau, P., Graneau, N., Hathaway, G., & Hull, R. (2000). Arc-liberated chemical energy exceeds electrical input energy. Journal of Plasma Physics, 63, 115-128), see Graneau e.a. - Arc-liberated chemical energy exceeds electrical input energy - 2000.pdf (364.3 kB), Powerful-water-plasma-explosions.pdf (313.59 kB), GraneauEditorial94.pdf (178.4 kB), P4.pdf (320.36 kB)

[TinselKoala]

I suppose I should be flattered that you, of all people, should choose to use two of my videos in this topic.

You may not have noticed this, but if you look carefully at the slideshow still images, you can see that the arc does not in fact go _through_ the triggering water droplet but rather goes _around_ it, travelling on the surface of the drop. There is very little actual "explosion" of the water happening in my water-drop experiment. And a good thing, too, because it would probably have shattered my apparatus had the arc actually gone through the water, Graneau style.

You should be aware that George Hathaway, in whose laboratory by far the most of Graneau's experimental work was performed, formally retracted his co-authorship of the paper they published in J. Plasma Phys. It turns out that Graneau's conservation of momentum argument was circular, since he assumed a certain mass of water was vaporized into "fast fog" and then went on the basis of that assumption, through a convoluted chain of reasoning, to "prove" that that was the mass of water "exploded" by Ampere tension, and that mass of water in fog form would be able to transfer its momentum to other systems whereby the excess energy could be extracted and used. Of course this ultimate goal was never achieved. Unfortunately for Graneau, Hathaway's later work, using very sophisticated ultra-high-speed Schlieren photography and other methods, proved that only a tiny amount of water was actually vaporized into superheated steam, Graneau's fantasy "fast fog" did not in fact exist, and the "overunity" effects that Graneau thought he saw were the result of shock fronts in the water, not hydrogen-bond breaking by "ampere tension", and there never was, in fact, any energy produced over and above the capacitor bank energy used to explode the water in the first place. The Graneau story _outside_ of Hathaway's later lab work is plagued by data selection, misrepresentation of experimental results, omission of critical details, backwards thermodynamics, faulty reliance on an inapplicable model, experimenter bias and even downright mendacity. 

The bottom line is that it may-- or may not-- be possible to liberate hydrogen bond energy from water, but Graneau certainly did not manage to do it, nor did he succeed in proving his Ampere-tension hypothesis.

[pomodoro]

TK, fair enough with the theory being wrong, but how did he miscalculate power in vs work done. Where did he screw up.

[Zephir]

There are many successfull replication with water plasma electrolysis (Mizuno, Naudin, Vachayev, Bazhutov, Kanarev, Prosvirnov, Kanzius, Andi, Mills), therefore it's highly probable, Graneau was on to something real.

[pomodoro]

My personal experience is that plasma electrolysis dont work.  I did Mizuno style pre boiling point so I could calibrate calorimeter without need of specific heats , but try out for yourself the simpler Mullove style experiment. Beware though, use big caps after the variac bridge and have some good filtering with RC constant into the seconds when measuring current across a shunt.  Voltage remains stable enough after arc , but the current needs a massive RC constant for filtering. Oh use Na2CO3 never NaHCO3 as some dorks did, as bicarb decomposes at bp of water and gives some pseudo OU.

Anyway, TK , what did our water exploder miscalculate exactly, pretty embarrasing if a renound physicist screws up some simple calcs like that and publishes.