Unless you have been living under a rock lately, you have more than likely have heard or seen ads touting “water for gas” or “fuel from water” on your TV and the Internet.
Okay, with gas at an all time high, you admit you are curious…so what is this water for gas stuff all about?
First let’s get some of the confusion out of the way. Since the 1870’s when American inventor and self-proclaimed “humbug” John Worrell Keely persuaded investors with his experiments in “ether liberation”, the concept of creating fuel from water or hydrogen fuel generation has always been a controversial one.
The History of Hydrogen Generation
Using electrical current to create hydrogen from water is really old news. It was back in 1800 that two Englishmen, William Nicholson, a chemist and naturalist, and his friend Anthony Carlisle, a surgeon discovered that they could use “water electrolysis” to separate H2O into oxygen and hydrogen.
A great discovery but nothing much happened after that since the process took a great deal of physical energy, usually by means of some guy rapidly turning a hand-powered crank generator to create an electrical current. Oddly enough the first working battery was also invented that year.
Hydrogen generation didn’t get its feet off the ground, no pun intended, until the 1900’s when the heyday of the dirigibles or airships started. At that time German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin designed a fleet of ocean crossing ridge airships that used massive amounts of hydrogen in gas cells or bags for buoyancy. Zeppelin is believed to have used water electrolysis to create this lighter-than-air gas for his many airships.
After 1937, when the tragic accident with the hydrogen airship Hindenburg happened, using water electrolysis became limited to just industrial uses in manufacturing and aerospace or in school science fairs as classroom lab experiments.
But in 1966, an American inventor named William Rhodes patented a type of “water for gas” “oxyhydrogen” welding system for manufacturing and the jewelry business. His self-contained unit was the first to make “water electrolysis” compact and portable and “on-demand”. Hydrogen didn’t have to be stored in heavy metal bottles.
Later in Australia, a Dr. Yul Brown patented his own version of the “water electrolysis” welder. Brown has been accused of “borrowing” heavily from Rhodes’s 1966 patent, but “Brown’s Gas” machine is believed to have a simpler design than Rhodes. Brown sold his version of this process worldwide to other inventors, small shops and home owners.
While apparently Brown may have had limited financial success with his welding machine; it is his technology that is has become popular as the basis for most water for gas or fuel from water kits available on the market today.
So there is some real science behind the water for gas movement and in the fact that compact hydrogen generators do work and have been used in various industries for years.