Possible Energy Source: Burning Seawater
Cancer Researcher Discovers Hydrogen From Salt Water Can Be "Burned" By Radio Frequencies
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Play CBS Video Video Waving Cancer Away Leukemia patient John Kanzius has developed a new cancer-fighting technique that uses radio waves to destroy cancer-causing agents. Benno Schmidt reports.
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Researcher John Kanzius, seen here experimenting with radio waves to kill cancer cells in a 2005 photo, discovered that salt water could be "burned" by exposing it to a radio wave generator. The finding has some excited about salt water's potential as an abundant fuel source. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
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John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies it would burn.
The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.
Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, has held demonstrations at his State College lab to confirm his own observations.
The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.
The discovery is "the most remarkable in water science in 100 years," Roy said.
"This is the most abundant element in the world. It is everywhere," Roy said. "Seeing it burn gives me the chills."
Roy will meet this week with officials from the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense to try to obtain research funding.
The scientists want to find out whether the energy output from the burning hydrogen - which reached a heat of more than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit - would be enough to power a car or other heavy machinery.
"We will get our ideas together and check this out and see where it leads," Roy said. "The potential is huge."
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The secrets of tennis legend 
You ask "has no one...?" Many of us have. But the suggestion is not politically correct. Neither are the observations that sea level was close to 5 meters higher than now, a mere 115 thousand years ago, and that there were no SUVs or coal powered generating stations back then. Nor even Exxon-Mobil!
I wish that the name actornaught gave me (Captain Obvious) were even slightly appropriate. Unfortunately, there seem to be many people (in addition to the reporter and at least two editors) who are ready to believe that sea water might be a fuel whose chemical energy can be released by microwave irradiation.
There are far more posts to this article by Major Credulous than by Captain Obvious!
A few month ago I read an account of a person in California that was quite proud of the fact that their new automobile was powered from a tank of liquified hydrogen at 4000 or more psi and about 300 to 400 degrees below 0, all located in the truck of their car.
Unfortunately while it was parked in their garage underneath their home it was setting off the homes hydrogen detectors. Tank was breaking apart!
Solution - Park it in the street & increase home owners coverage. Nothing like sitting on a Hydrogen Bomb.
You and quite a number of other posters keep making the same energy in/energy out point. Why? I think one Captain Obvious that doesn''t read all the other Captain''s posts, was one too many...
Producing a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen in this manner requires at least as much energy input (in the form of microwaves) as is produced when the hydrogen and oxygen burn to produce water. However, unlike electrolysis, this method produces an extraordinarily dangerous explosive mixture of fuel and oxidizer which cannot even be safely stored for later use.
A much better technique is to use a paired pump and generator. You will not produce any power, but at least you will not cause an explosion!
I wonder if they can drink sand in the middle east?
and what about coal and oil..... those take energy to extract them from the ground and transport them not to mention all the energy that went into them over the past couple million years
then think about ethanol that every one is so fond of lately.... it has less energy than gasoline (read less mpg meaning you have to fill up more often) plus it takes some form of energy (power plants etc) to produce it from corn/sugar cane/etc plus using corn to make it raises the price of food corn and animal feed therefore raising the price of meat and milk and other dairy products
The hydrogen is only created in the presence of radio waves. Those waves have to be a particular bandwidth frequency and focused. To create the kind of burn you''re envisioning, you would need a massive radiowave. It is not a case of random radio waves igniting the whole ocean. If that were the case, all of the radio activity from ships would have caused the sea to burn a long time ago. However, it is always wise to look at possible negative results. Could this have some of the same negative effects on humans as sonar on sea mammals?
John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies it would burn.
This is quite a story. Let''s see now we use high radio frequency energy to turn salt water into Hydrogen + Oxygen. That''s pretty terrific. We can now power our vehicles,etc using Hydrogen. Simply amazing. Except there has already been other less expensive and safer ways to do the same thing. Where''s the story? De Je Vu!
In the 1980s Swedish scientist Bjorn Ortenheim put a fog of water vapor into a magnetic field and pumped the water molicules into disassociating with a specific frequency of coherent light from a laser. The Hydrogen was released with less energy than the brute force method of electrolisis.
However, even if the H2 is a secondary fuel, it still burns clean and does not come from Iran.
There will be losses. There is no perpetual motion. So you supply electrical energy to electrolyse the water, and burn the resulting hydrogen. Why not just use the electricity to turn your motor instead and forget the added step that introduces added losses?
This is how it works folks: Water = H2O, so it has hydrogen bonded in it. If you expose the water to sufficient energy (which itself requires what is called the PRIMARY FUEL to create) the hydrogen will break free of the oxygen. It will escape the water as H2 gas. H2 gas can the be burned. This makes the H2 gas the SECONDARY FUEL, never ever primary when it is created from water. Repeat after me: Hydrogen released from water is NEVER EVER THE PRIMARY FUEL.
Conclusion: You need a PRIMARY FUEL to create the H2 gas. So what is it going to be? Hmm? Coal? Oil perhaps? So the idea of using ANY kind of water, salt or otherwise, as a primary fuel source is IGNORANT if not an outright con job. It most certainly is a waste of money to research. The research was done over a century ago.
Where H2 is useful as a secondary fuel is when it can be used as a method of storage of energy that can be captured and conveniently used later. An example is capturing wind power to generate electricity that is used to create the H2 gas that is stored in a fuel cell and later burned in a car.
So next time someone tells you that water can be used as a fuel, laugh and teach them otherwise.