Thermal cracking of water at engine exhaust gas temperatures

[plasmastudent77]

Hi All,

A little experiment that I tried just after I had finished making dinner on our propane outdoors BBQ last night.....

NOTE - DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.
IT IS DANGEROUS. PROCEED COMPLETELY AT YOUR OWN RISK.
THIS INFO FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY.

As we know, water will thermally "crack" into H & O under high temperatures, usually in presence of a metal catalyst like iron oxide ( rust ) or copper or platinum or nickel.

Last night I got my wifes water squirt bottle she uses for the ironing, and gave the BBQ quite a few squirts of tap water in varying water densities ( mists ). I also tried injecting water mist into the gas flow as it entered the burner body. I got some orange flame but not a lot.

Next I tried different levels of misting by adjusting the nozzle. I had limited success. Then I leaned the water mist right off and I must have hit the burner just right and WOOOOOMMPPHHF!!!!!!! - one large orange flame ball about the size of a basket ball.

Proof of concept confirmed. 

Now it occurs to me that if you could create a steel coil in the path of enough heat to get to about 1800F ( 900 C ) roughly, water will crack into H & O.

If you pumped water into the coil at one end, attach an expansion cyclinder of 2 inch diameter and 8 inches long the coil feeds into, and have an oulet pipe at the other end of the expansion tube so the H & O can be extracted, you could then feed & burn the H & O into a furnace and produce steam and create a home electricty generation plant using a simple turbine. The expansion tube should allow quenching ( stopping the H & O from recombining ). I thought of using copper tube but no copper solder will hold at 900 C, so maybe steel.

Interesting I thought.

[z.monkey]

Howdy PlasmaStudent77,

NICE experiment!  Maybe you could inject steam into the combustion chamber and then use plasma to ignite it.  This also leads into the concept of water injection into high performance race car engines that increases the performance radically.  The already really, really hot engine converts the water vapor into HHO.  Then when the spark plug fires the HHO enhances the combustion of the normal fuel, producing more than usual power.  Cool!  Do you have a test planned?

Blessed Be Brothers...

[plasmastudent77]

Howdy


I'm planning a few tests for different things. But this finding is apparently old news, but maybe I'm the first to post this info recently?

Either way, it leaves the idea open of self sustaining home power generation off-grid ( and wont The Man hate that...)

[HeairBear]

Very interesting! Can a person maybe use a gas furnace and increase it's output but just adding water? We would require less gas to burn for a shorter period of time because the water adds the extra heat? That would be a really cheap way to heat a home. Just modify the existing gas furnace if it has one. What type of gas were you using with your BBQ? You could even modify your BBQ to use water. You wouldn't need to fill the tank very often, you just need enough to combust the water which may be a third or less of the normal flame size without water. Smaller flame = less gas consumed. Is it just that simple, or am I missing something?

[plasmastudent77]

Hi

No I dont think youre missing anything. I think the biggest issue is how fast hydrogen burns, which is damn fast ( as I discovered ). One test when I was messing around a few months ago, I collected about a grapefruit size ammount in a plastic bag, dropped a match on it  ...KABOOOOOMM!!!!!! Wife came running out, windows rattled, dogs barked........all at 9pm one week night............. LOL!!!!!!

But I suspect the key thing would be :

(a) getting a stable temperature with which to crack the water
(b) the shape of the nozzle and collector of the gas so the gas can be properly harnessed.

Actually, yuou have given me an idea.........

If you could get the cracking unit up to cracking temperture using propane ( or if you were ina  3rd world country, woods and abellows like a blacksmiths forge - ou only need enough heat to get steel red hot ) Then you need to have enough water going through to support both a fuel sorce for keeping the cracking aunit hot and additional fuel for running a boiler or heater burner, then in theory, heating a house is pretty much down to cents per gallon of water.

Think of how many people would be helped by this alone.........

Cheers

Steve