Right, time for some alternative – fuel – news. Over in India, a mechanic has come up with a car fuelled by water. Well, not just water – there’s calcium carbide too, and together the combination forms the basis for the novel fuel.
According to news reports, Mohammad Raees Markani from Madhya Pradesh is the man behind the tech, and he’s worked at it for the last five years, modifying an 800 cc Suzuki engine to adopt the system.
“The car runs on acetylene gas, which is formed from a chemical reaction between calcium carbide and water. The gas is used for several industrial purposes including welding and portable lighting for miners. But in my case, I am using it to propel the car engines,” the 44-year-old said.
“I have made other changes to the engines, which helps the overall performance of the car. This idea struck my mind while I was gas welding a part of my car in my workshop many years ago. But I did not know how to go about it. Somehow, I made a start and it took five years to make this efficient engine,” he added. The reports add that a litre of the water/carbide mix costs only 13 sen to make.
Markani, a car mechanic with more than 15 years of working experience, has become something of a local celebrity following his invention. Now, armed with a patent for his water-powered tech, he has been invited by Chinese automobile companies to develop the idea further.
The news jogs the memory of something along similar lines, closer to home – back in 2006, there was a local attempt to commercialise a hydrogen-based system in LMG pick-ups and SUVs. Called Hydroxene, the system’s tagline was “Just Add Water.” Anyone remember that one?
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Yes I remember Hydroxene clearly and I suppose such novel ideas were killed by the oil giants. Just because we produce oil does not mean other means of better fuel has to be sacrificed. Yes. A lot job at stake but that is the sacrifice we need to make for our mother earth.
The basis for the Hydroxene machine seemed very much like a hoax. Anyone who has studied some chemistry before can tell you that the breaking down of water into hydrogen gas and water molecules is very energy consuming. Expecting a tiny canister to do what takes an industrial plant to do is very far-fetched.
This video as well, is full of misdirection. The narrator kept emphasizing that this car is powered by water except that it is not. Only on one instance, she said that the car is powered by acetylene gas which has the chemical formula of C2H2. That’s basically it: it’s a gas powered car operating on similar principles with natural-gas vehicles. For comparison, ethane is C2H6 while propane is C3H8 and butane is C4H10.
Calcium carbide reacts with water to create acetylene gas (I have much exposure to this process as combining the two is part of my work; the reaction gas smells bad and burns the eyes) as well as calcium hydroxide which remains in the remaining water. You’ll need to dispose of it eventually because it will build up to the point of saturation if left unchecked. I’m sure he has a drainage valve somewhere at the bottom of the reactor. Does it pose an environmental hazard to just dump this in your garage? Probably not, but it’ll be a maintenance chore for owners to remember to do once in a while.
Hydroxene was a scam that was peddled based on pseudoscience, and they roped in poor Badawi to make it look legit. Not a single one of their vehicles were verified to be running on some catalyzed hydrogen fuel. Many other charlatans started selling “oxy-hydrogen” kits that performs electrolysis and pipes the hydrogen and oxygen into the combustion chamber to supposedly reduce fuel consumption, without realizing that in the long term, hydrogen embrittlement will cause the engine surfaces to crack, which would lead to catastrophic failure.
Blame it on scientific illiteracy.. the idea that evil selfish oil giants are busy suppressing technologies is an overblown conspiracy theory that chimes well with the seductive idea that there are secret hidden technologies out there that can remove our reliance on fossil fuels overnight
i use it annually in my meriam buluh..
Where? i fail to see the terror. Terrific is the right term.
meanwhile proton is still reinventing the accord.
And whats wrong with dat?
Don’t pretend lah :-P
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So good to be true… but is really does global production like Hybrid…. BN Government will tax the car 200% – 300%. Rakyat time to change!
Change to a stronger BN! Yeah baby!
Will there be any issues on the environment and the engine itself?
Nobody cares about our motorbikes’ blue and black exhaust gasses because this is USA.
next minute this guy will dissapear without a trace
Why would he? This technology isn’t even viable to be scaled up. What about the solid waste residue left behind from the reaction? Are we gonna just dispose it daily, without reprocessing, without considering the safety or cleanliness?
In Malaysia, we use carbide for meriam buluh. Booommmm!
This uncle look like lebron James …hehe
Time to bring out the aluminium foil hat again.
and then the government will increase water price. the end
and then the government will increase water price by 38908231867489214012840%. the end
U mean the penang gomen? That cause the toilet-rolls panic?
No. Its the penang dictatorship that harangues others to open tender but their undersea tunnel is no tender projek
i guess someone forgot to tell him acetylene gas is super duper ultra flammable and a small leak will produce nice boom
sounds like a recipe for meriam buluh..
Hydoxene…yeah, the one that some stupid politician actually believe the conman doctor, then disappears with millions of grants
Oil prices getting low with all the shale oil craze, so to see this going up anytime soon other than backyard mechanics, is going to hard. However alternative fuels is one way to go in the future. Honestly I prefer my cars to be electric once battery technology catches up. I would leave the fossils fuels to power the energy plant for now until solar power becomes cheaper.
While I applaud his interest in making this, i am not sure where can we get carbide from nature. The same goes for hydrogen. Ok, storage is an issue but where can we mine H2 in its pure form to be combusted to give us energy?
We can argue H2 is in water, but water is not a fuel, its an “ash”, a by product of combustion.
H2 and Carbide is a good energy storage medium, but to make them, energy is required. For H2, most likely form of energy is electricity ( hopefully not from coal/gas power plant to be fully green ) while for highly reactive Carbide, some sort of endothermic chemical reaction involving coal, heat, raw material and some sort of catalyst.
Either way, it is an energy storage medium, not an energy source.
Water is not a byproduct of combustion, water is an extremely stable molecule and even exists in molecular form all over outer space. Yes, water may not be a “fuel” in its inherent form but neither is uranium and thorium. Neither are the deuterium and tritium that’s used for fusion reactions.
In the case of water, there’s chemical energy locked up in there, as you’ve mentioned it being a “storage medium”. Chemical energy is locked up in hydrocarbon fuels too. It’s just that it’s more easily liberated in alcohols, hydrocarbon fuels, etc. compared to water due to the stability of the chemical bonds of H20, i.e. ionic bonds vs. covalent bonds, and the intended method of liberating that energy, e.g. oxidation.
In the case of this guy’s invention, the energy density is far less than petrol and CNG, not to mention the slow rate of chemical reaction for acethylene gas to be produced from the carbide + water reaction. This will never be a viable technology to be scaled up beyond being an interesting science project.
I see that you are moving away from chemical energy to nuclear energy. Yes water contains trace amounts of tritium and deuterium. To extract nuclear energy from those two, you likely need a cold fusion reactor that unfortunately has yet to be invented. The suns energy comes from fusion too. Current method of achieving fusion on earth would be via particle accelerator ( few atoms at a time, huge size ), toroid reactors ( still infancy and weighs a building ) or HBomb, which consists of a nuclear fission bomb to initiate fusion. Not yet available in an engine sized device making automobile engines level of powet yet unfortunately. Either none at all or Hbomb levels of energy that can level city.
Good discussion point though.
And then it goes boom… Allahu akbar