Sep
11
In Defense of The Nutty Professor
September 11, 2007 | 4 Comments
Today, September 11, 2007 Fox news is running a story about “Burning Saltwater.” At first glance its sounds nutty. But a little reading gets you the news that cancer researcher John Kanzius happened upon the discovery while trying to desalinate seawater with a radio frequency generator that he was developing to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio wave emissions, it burned. See the story here:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296395,00.html
Now Rustum Roy a Penn State University professor of chemistry has been demonstrating this phenomenon at his lab in State College Station, PA. Mr. Roy says the radio emissions act to weaken the bonds between the elements the make up salt-water, thus releasing the hydrogen to burn. Mr. Roy is meeting this week with DOEnergy and DODefense officials in hopes of obtaining funding for more research.
Meanwhile the commentary alleges that while this is possible, one is burning the sodium and the process consumes much more energy than it produces.
OK. Lets get clear that “consuming more energy than produced” is a phrase commonly used to measure the input and output of both chemical, atomic and nuclear reactions. Yet keep in mind that reacting chemicals, splitting atoms and fusing nuclei are really very different things.
Then there is this news about using magnetic waves to enhance the production of ethanol, See:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070910100314.htm
While Mr. Roy is looking for a molecular dissolution into elements Brazilian researchers lead by Victor Perez are looking to enhance molecular reformation using yeast. It wasn’t so long ago that doctors started using magnetic emitters to help heal people’s broken bones.
The Fox news article seems to be a story trying to cover both sides and a little diversion thrown in to sex it up. I didn’t need to know in the same story that Mr. Roy “is a specialist in whole person healing and Christian sexuality.” These interests aren’t interesting to me but if Mr. Roy is interested, fine. I don’t connect to how these side interests diminish the potential of the discovery and research.
It would have been a lot more useful if the reporter had asked Mr. Roy some basic questions. Like what chemicals are coming off of the exposed water, what ignition source is there and what are the by products of the combustion? Now with the news out perhaps Mr. Roy could tell us how much energy is going in and how much is coming out? Should his research offer up that a lot more chemical energy is coming out than is used to power the radio wave emitter the good gentlemen may be on to something.
Thus I’m please to see that Mr. Roy has gotten the meeting with the DOEnergy and DODefense people. Lets hope that a little cash makes it way to State College Station to at least ascertain what the potential might be. If this cuts loose a lot of hydrogen for a small input it is as Mr. Roy puts it . . . “Huge!” Let’s see!
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Dr. Roy was kind enough to answer my email query on this. Though he plays his cards close, he apparently is doing some research at this time on the energy in:out question. From the paper RR published, it is clear that the process is simple to induce, therefore, to study. Seems to me if you merely knew the power input and reacted/weighed the off-gas then you’d have a first-cut estimate. Anyone with a lab done this?
JP Straley
Hickory, NC
Thanks for posting. Good to see that not everyone is using RSS feeds to build their blogs 😉
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