Run a Car on Water - Possible or Not?

The idea of using water as fuel has been around for years, and as the costs of conventional fuels have soared it has been the subject of many scams and fraudulent claims. Theoretically it is possible to extract from water the combustible gas hydrogen, through either electrolysis or other thermochemical processes, and hydrogen can be used to run combustible engines. However in reality technology has not sufficiently advanced enough to run a vehicle purely on water, as it simply does not contain enough of the combustible energy needed to run a modern engine.

When we are looking at water as a fuel, we need to understand how it is constructed on a chemical level. The reason why water is so abundant is that it is an extremely stable chemical compound, H20. It does not react with other chemicals in a volatile way, or become volatile when heated. Gasoline on the other hand, and other combustible fuels like wood and coal are not so chemically stable. When they are heated, the unstable bonds break apart, releasing a higher energy. The more unstable the chemical compounds, the more higher energy is produced and it is this combustion process that gives us enough energy to run a modern engine. This principle is based on one of the fundamental laws of thermodynamics, that to get a certain amount of energy out, you have to put a certain amount in. Water is simply to stable to produce higher energy levels through the breakdown of its chemical compounds and so according to the basic laws of physics it can never be considered a 'fuel', and never be used solely to run an engine.

That said however, you can extract a small amount of energy from water through various procedures such as electrolysis. This energy is not enough to run a car alone, but it can be used to supplement regular fuels, and help increase the efficiency and mileage of an engine. Through installing an electrolysis system to your car, you can extract hydrogen and oxygen from water to create a small amount of HHO gas. This gas can then be injected into the engine, where it reacts with the conventional fuel to cause vaporisation. This means that the engine is burning smaller particles of fuel without decreasing efficiency, and so the mileage is significantly increased. When you see advertisements for systems that allow you car to run on water, this electrolysis process is usually what they are referring to.

Some other systems that claim to run cars on water are those that use additives. As we know, water does not contain enough higher energy on its own, so some products use higher energy additives such as carbides to boost the water's fuel potential. One example of a common water/high energy mix is acetylene, which is a highly combustible liquid made from adding calcium carbide to water. However technically it is not the water that is the fuel through this process, but the higher energy additive, so these would be carbide-fuelled cars rather than water-fuelled ones.