Thermal cracking of water & home power stations

[williamssteve]

Hi All,

This is a little off topic but worth noting.

A little experiment that I tried just after I had finished making dinner on our outdoors BBQ last night.....

NOTE - DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.
IT IS DANGEROUS. PROCEED COMPLETELY AT YOUR OWN RISK.
THIS INFO FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY.

As we know, water will thermally "crack" into H & O under high temperatures, usually in presence of a metal catalyst like iron oxide ( rust ) or copper or platinum or nickel.

Last night I got my wifes water squirt bottle she uses for the ironing, and gave the BBQ quite a few squirts of tap water in varying water densities ( mists ). I also tried injecting water mist into the gas flow as it entered the burner body. I got some orange flame but not a lot.

Next I tried different levels of misting by adjusting the nozzle. I had limited success. Then I leaned the water mist right off and I must have hit the burner just right and WOOOOOF!!!!!!! - one large orange flame ball about the size of a basket ball.

Proof of concept confirmed.

Now it occurs to me that if you could create a steel coil in the path of enough heat to get to about 1800F ( 900 C ) roughly, water will crack into H & O.

If you pumped water into the coil at one end, attach an expansion cyclinder of 2 inch diameter and 8 inches long the coil feeds into, and have an oulet pipe at the other end of the expansion tube so the H & O can be extracted, you could then feed & burn the H & O into a furnace and produce steam and create a home electricty generation plant using a simple turbine. The expansion tube should allow quenching ( stopping the H & O from recombining ). I thought of using copper tube but no copper solder will hold at 900 C, so maybe steel.

Interesting I thought.

[FlashBang]

http://www.propanecarbs.com/propane.html

Here is a link with some interesting data about several fuels including Propane and Gasoline. One of the more interesting is the "Peak Burn Temperature.

I was all prepared to suggest that your backyard grill could not possibly achieve a temperature high enough to perform Thermolysis, but I suppose I would have been WRONG. According to this source, the peak burn temp for propane is 3,614 F or 1,991 C which I think should be sufficient. Though I must admit, I have found conflicting values for the thermolysis temp of water at various places on the internet, so I do not know what the real value is.

Does anyone know the correct temp for water, with some linked references?

I have seen 2500 F and 2500 C... which is a huge difference, so IF its "F" then you could very well have sone just that. But I would say, that this sounds like "water injection" that is already being done.

FlashBang!

[williamssteve]

[mrgalleria]

Aloha,
If you have steam, as some are suggesting, then it should be a simple matter to convert that into plasma- see US Patent 7,384,619 B2, Bar-Gadda, Method for generating hydrogen from water or steam in a plasma. He recommends several different, simple methods to use plasma from voltage (see the plasma cell in my project folder for a simple alternative method). He even tells how to stabilize the gases so that they remain separate. In fact, this looks much more simple than electrolysis.
Also, decomposing water with a catalyst metal (like nickel alloy) can be accomplished at temps starting at 450 degrees. Again, a fairly low temp if exhaust is being used as a heat source. After all, water boils to steam at 212.
Bill

[williamssteve]

[mrgalleria]

[chemelec]

[Jehu]

Ok, this might be quite a bump but it occoured to me that this could be done very much like a gassifier but using water. also if there was positive air pressure on the burner side, it might produce enough heat to keep the reaction going. Hummm. I wonder how much energy is needed to keep the reaction going and if the thermolysed water can keep it going?