I think your friend must have been referring to hydrogen; as there are two hydrogen atoms, and one oxygen atom in H2O. A hydrogen fuelled internal combustion engine (HICE) draws oxygen from the air to combust hydrogen fuel, and so recombines the H with the O - and hydrogen powered vehicles emit water vapour as exhaust. So it's true, sort of - cars can run on water, but that water needs to be pumped full of electrical energy first, to separate the atoms, which are then recombined to release energy.Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Sep 15, 2021 11:49 am Vitruvius, an old friend now deceased, told me sometime during the 1980s that cars can be made so they run on water. He was intelligently interested in both physics and motors whereas that was unintelligible to me then, and I still don't understand. However I think I have heard in recent years that cars can run on hydrogen , which is a large component of water. In that connection I also heard that Big Oil does not want to do that source of power as a switch to hydrogen would be big financial loss to them.
I presume that you yourself are encouraged by the success of electric cars? This could not have happened without political will. True, electric cars run off power from power stations but this technology is much more energy saving than fossil fuel directly from petrol pumps.
BTW, is magma energy safer than nuclear?
This is the main drawback with hydrogen; that it takes a lot of energy to produce; so it's rather like electric cars in that respect, where you say:
"True, electric cars run off power from power stations but this technology is much more energy saving than fossil fuel directly from petrol pumps."
In both cases, unless the primary source of energy is clean and renewable, then we are merely displacing emissions. However, given a virtually limitless amount of high grade clean energy, like you'd get from tapping into the molten interior of the earth, hydrogen can be produced in massive quantities from electricity and water, with no carbon emissions whatsoever - and that, a clean and sufficient source of energy is where our efforts should be focused, or we build our house on sand.
Is magma safer than nuclear? If all goes wrong, there's not a lot in it. Nuclear contamination is probably longer lasting - but a volcano can do a lot of damage. More to the point is that nuclear power has major safety issues as part of normal operations; nuclear produces toxic waste that must be kept safe forever after - and that's rarely factored into the budget. The UK is currently spending about £3bn per year on decommissioning. But I favour magma energy because I believe it can be developed relatively quickly, and is adequate to replace fossil fuels entirely, to reach net zero worldwide by 2050. Nuclear cannot do that because, given the safety issues involved - it takes too long, and costs too much to build.