Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time

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• YouTube
• alternative energy
• water

Just over a year ago several media outlets reported that John Kanzius, an amateur inventor from Erie, Pa., had discovered a seemingly impossible phenomenon: a way to burn salt water by exposing it to radio waves. Videos of the experiment became YouTube sensations, though they garnered as many critical comments as favorable ones. Now that the initial fervor has waned, we checked in with Kanzius, a collaborator and some critics to see how the technique has progressed, or if it's just another example of Web-propelled junk science.

Kanzius' concept is simple: expose salt water to 13.56 MHz radio waves and light a match. Hydrogen separates from the water mixture and burns for as long as it's exposed to the frequency. The inventor actually made this discovery by accident: He was looking for a cure for cancer. Kanzius demonstrated it to local TV news stations as well as to Rustum Roy, a Penn State University geochemistry professor emeritus.

Roy collaborated with Kanzius on a paper confirming that radio frequency waves do indeed dissociate salt water into hydrogen and oxygen, and that the resulting mixture can be burned. News of the discovery was published in Materials Research Innovations (download PDF), a journal founded by Roy himself.

Burning hydrogen and oxygen to create energy is nothing new: It's been done in machines and automobiles for years. But the difference with Kanzius' would-be breakthrough is that the effect can be achieved with a much lower energy catalyst: radio waves are present in everything from microwaves to televisions. Roy cautions, however, that efficiency is still a major hurdle: "Nobody is claiming that you get more energy out than you put in," he says.

International interest in the technique has been huge, according to Kanzius and Roy. They say that researchers in countries such as France have begun using radio frequency in experiments that call for separating hydrogen from water. However, domestic investors have not been forthcoming, and the scientific community has been dubious. Richard Saykally, a chemistry professor at the University of California at Berkeley, called the recent paper's claims "pseudo-science" in an interview with Chemical and Engineering News.

Gary Friedman, a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering departments at Drexel University in Philadelphia, says Kanzius' discovery is far from groundbreaking. "People have reported for some time that electromagnetic radiation can enhance or affect water hydrolysis," he says. Still, he's not completely uninterested in their claims. "It seems promising, if it's true, that the electrolysis of water can be carried out without electrodes." Because electrodes wear out or change their behavior over time, Kanzius' method may require less maintenance than traditional electrolysis, which uses an electric current to separate hydrogen from water.

Kanzius and Roy hope that the increasing focus on the environment will enable them to get funding to continue their research. They even envision a future in which a vehicle can run off its radio's frequency waves.

But don't start filling your gas tank with salt water just yet.

16. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
How many BTUs go in. How may BTUs come out? Or how many in watts goes in and how many watts come out? It more come out then go in he has something and it would seem that there has been a break through is breaking down the H2O bond.

15. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
Questions: does this burning of the salt water leave a residue? If so, will that create problems with a future 'engine' application? Is there a certain salinity that when burned yields more power output? When we start to harvest the salt water from the oceans, will this have a similar impact to the weather as the increased levels of freshwater (melting polar caps, etc) being released into the oceans? Would we be able to simply add some salt blocks to big vats of freshwater to create saltwater reservoirs for fuel consumption? Will there be a government funded conversion for all privately owned gasoline burning motor vehicles?

14. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
Questions: does this burning of the salt water leave a residue? If so, will that create problems with a future 'engine' application? Is there a certain salinity that when burned yields more power output? When we start to harvest the salt water from the oceans, will this have a similar impact to the weather as the increased levels of freshwater (melting polar caps, etc) being released into the oceans? Would we be able to simply add some salt blocks to big vats of freshwater to create saltwater reservoirs for fuel consumption? Will there be a government funded conversion for all privately owned gasoline burning motor vehicles?

13. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
Assuming the microwaves specifically affect water molecules, I wonder if this could replace reverse osmosis as a more efficient method for large scale water production and purification. Dissociate the water into H2 and O2, leaving salt and impurities behind. Then run the hydrogen and oxygen through a fuel cell to recombine, recovering part of your energy and getting pure water back.

12. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
Simply amazing, if that technology could be developed further, who knows? maybe we could see coastal cities powered off of this form of energy in the future

11. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
Where can one get a radio wave device like the one on the video?

10. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
Hello?! You have to get the energy to power the radio frequency from somewhere. We can already extract H from water with electrolysis, and nobody sees a potential power source. The Hydrogen is no more valuable as a power source than the electricity that generates it.

9. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
The key phrase in this article is "Nobody is claiming that you get more energy out than you put in". To obtain more energy out then you put in would violate a few laws of physics, I am disappointed in PM for not pointing this out. This process could be used as a means to store energy in the form of free H2; but it is not an energy source. It also has the potential to be a less energy intensive means to desalinize sea water.

8. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
If this technology can be refined to actually produce energy, the most natural application would be to boats, which float on a virtually unlimited source of saltwater, and are inherently hugely inefficient.

7. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
Could we drain our seas and oceans? I don't think so. And if Kanzius' discovery can be harnessed into something then maybe we could give Mother Earth a rest from all those fossil based pollutants.

6. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
If all it takes is radio waves just have the government build radio towers everywhere and that way we could run our cars off salt water without any problems. You could even connect the radio towers to some clean energy power plant like solar, tidal, or geothermal. With TV's all being switched to digital we might not even need to build the radio towers.

5. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
for more info on the detail of Kanzius methodology including patents see http://nick2.wordpress.com/2007/06/01/saltwater-into-fire/

4. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
Website: http://aardvark.co.nz/hho.shtml
What is the point? If it takes more energy to create the flame than it produces then there seems little to talk about. If there is the suggestion that there is over-unity energy production then we all know what that means (hint: sc.m -- fill in the missing letter). Have you noticed how many of these energy "breakthroughs" have come about just as the price of oil hits all-time highs? I guess it's easier to get people to invest without doing due-diligence when the payoff looks that much bigger.

3. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
Huge offshore H2 farms? The environmentalists would scream bloody murder. You're killing the dolphins and whales!

2. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
I hope Kanzius is onto something here. If they can figure out the kinks, it would have huge implications and may be the dream source of H2 productions we've been looking for. Think huge offshore H2 farms, powered by solar and wind energy and sea water. It would be a perfect closed energy cycle. The H2 we burn would produce steam/vapor which would precipitate as rain and return to the saltwater oceans. If I had $millions I would donate it to Kanzius' efforts.

1. RE: Burning Salt Water on YouTube, Inventor Waits for Prime Time
If this works as illustrated it seems to me that we could convert out oil burning boilers to this process and heat our homes. At $5.00 for heating oil this could be a life-saver this winter.

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