Japanese Company Has A Car That Runs On Water.

[hartiberlin]

From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genepax
==================================

Genepax demonstrated the car in the Japanese city of Osaka on 12 June 2008. Genepax Claims that one liter (2.1 pints) of any kind of water?rain, river or sea (even tea, stated the press release)?is all that is needed to run the engine for about an hour at a speed of 80 km/h (50 mph). However, their claims that a 300 watt (0.4 horsepower) engine could drive the car (the weight of which has not been specified) at this speed and for this duration despite wind resistance / Automobile drag coefficients and other energy-draining forces warrants further investigation.

The demonstration vehicle was a Takeoka Reva[7], a small electric car weighing between 740 and 960 kg whose manufacturer claims a range of 85 km running on its standard set of batteries, which take 8 hours to charge off the mains at 100 V on a 15 A circuit.

Should Genepax validate their claims, no infrastructure would be required to recharge the car's batteries, which is not the case for electric cars. The vehicle will supposedly continue to run for as long "as you have water to top up with from time to time." [8]. As the residual product of the engine is also water, this would in principle lead to the development of a perpetual motion engine, in which the exhaust product, water, could be fed directly back into the system as fuel.

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The Wiki is a bit naive,
when they claim that the device powers directly the electric car motor.

Of course they will have some buffer batteries between the water generator and the electric motor.

But when the car is not driven, e.g. during work or during night time,
it has enough time to recharge the batteries in the car via its constant 300 Watts output.

This device is really the best device since long time, when it really does not use up any electrodes
material but only water...

Regards, Stefan.

[hartiberlin]

Here are the first real infos:

PATENT ABSTRACTS OF JAPAN

   (11)Publication number :    2006-244714

   (43)Date of publication of application :    14.09.2006
(51)Int.Cl.    

H01M   8/02     (2006.01)
H01M   4/88     (2006.01)
H01M   4/90     (2006.01)

(21)Application number :    2005-054169    (71)Applicant :    SUEMATSU MITSURU
(22)Date of filing :    28.02.2005    (72)Inventor :    SUEMATSU MITSURU
(54) WATER ENERGY SYSTEM

(57)Abstract:
PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a water energy system generating electric power using pure water as fuel under normal temperature.
SOLUTION: The water energy system 1 has a cell in which a fuel electrode 3 and an oxygen electrode 4 are faced with each other through a catalyst 2 same as a general fuel cell. The fuel electrode 3 is formed by carrying platinum on a sintered body of fine powder of zeolite, coral sand, and carbon black, the oxygen electrode 4 is formed by carrying ruthenium on the sintered body of fine powder of zeolite and carbon black. Electric power is generated under normal temperature by supplying pure water 5 to the fuel electrode 3 and air to the oxygen electrode 4.

Unfortunately there was only a very bad drawing scanned with it...

[hartiberlin]

here is a drawing from their Japanese patent:

[hartiberlin]

From:

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Genepax_Co_Ltd#Company:_Genepax_Co_Ltd



On June 14, 2008, New Energy Congress member, Richard P. George, Ph.D. wrote:

I voted not top 100. Even if this works (I'm somewhat skeptical short of more proof), the product is not economic at either their current manufacturing cost ($18,522 for 300 Wp or $61.74 per Wp) or their target rate ($5,000 for 300 Wp or $16.67 per Wp). The use of water for fuel is just a curiosity because the cost is greater than that of traditional fuel cells AND their fuel costs.

I would also want to know about their stack life. Stack life is a huge problem for all fuel cells - many of which have lives measured in hours (typically 6 months to 4 years of continuous operation. For this product to achieve grid parity, it would need a 20 year stack life at 9.5 cents per KWH grid prices or 10 years at 19 cents per KWH.


Genepax response: "The stack life is not yet in data but we imagine our stack would last as long as other fuel cell stack. We have data of other fuel cell in public and it lasts 40,000 hours." Best regards, Jun Onishi
[edit]
FAQs

Recieved June 18, 2008;

"Please excuse me for my English ability.

1) About the water fueled car
We are not car manufacturer. We have invented generator (fuel cell) which produces heat and electricity from pure water. We had loaded the generator into electric vehicle sold in the market for demonstration. Information of milage is not formal data.

2) Investment / Stock exchange
We have no schedule to go public and do not accept any outside investment.

3) Distributorship
We are looking for cooperation, if possible public company, to distribute our "Water Energy System" locally.

4) Press release for Foreign Press
We will only invite media (reporters from magazines, newspaper, tv programs).<br. NO schedule for public presentation at this time.

5) More information
We are working on English version of our website and hoping to update fully by next week. FAQ is under translation and will be updated soon.<br. Still we are not going to announce the core part of our technology.

6) How can I buy one?
Genepax has no schedule to sell our technology as a product to private customer.

7) Real? Fraud?
We understand invention is always attacked by critism.
Since we cannot inform our core technology, we are announcing the factual data taken by 3rd party with public trust. Our testing will start soon and hoping to announce the performance clearly.

We are very sorry if this email did not answer your question.
We check all the emails and try our best to answer in FAQ.

Again, thank you for your precious comments and we will do our best."

Best regards,
Jun Onishi

[kavee]

Here is the generic idea given by my brother, to the video ;

"So, this is the typical component of the water cell. First when we take the cover off, the cells are stacked up like a sandwitch. Here in the middle it usually has the water tank, or the sea water tank. We cover this cell again before our test for safety. Now if we say what we are going to test here, we put water into this cell and when we do that the reaction begins inside. So we use this gadjet to measure the electric potential that is created by the cell. Then we use this small pump for the purpose of pumping the water into the cell. The pump is only for the pumping of water and it doesn't have any other purpose that this. We are now using tap water in this plastic cup and u can see that the water is being pumped in to the cell. The small pipe attached here is to let us know the right level of the water in the cell. when the water level rises to the level of this small outlet pipe, we stop the pump. Now we are having 24 V.

Now we showed the internal set up of the water cell and in this white container, the same internal apparatus has been fixed. We can switch on this switch on the white container and we can see the electricity is being produced by the lighting of this bulb. And with that we can operate this DVD player on the TV screen.

We used a similar system for cars as well. This one we showe you all can sustain the dvd playing for about 7 hours. This water level guage will let you know when you need to pour in additional water to sustain the cell electricity generation. This time we will use this coloured water for you to easily see the water replenishment. You just have to open this lid on top and pour the water in to fill it up to the original level of water and that will be sufficient for the cell to run continously."

Here is a second video with probably 2 people from the company giving some explanations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YRvqAggvss

Can somebody, who understands Japanese language please post a
summary of what they say ?