On 11/28/2010 01:59 AM, Ted Frater wrote:

Are there any chemists here?
I ask because im interested to know why water makes it burn so much
hotter/faster etc.
Could it be that oxidising magnesium splits water, ie hydrogen oxide
into its seperate parts? of oxygen and hydrogen?
Yes, clearly so. If you do this, the odor of ammonia in the air is
unmistakable. The free hydrogen combines with the nitrogen from the
air. If there's hydrogen floating around, that must have come from the
water.
IF it does it might just be a keyto maing a car run on water if the
magnesium acts as a catalyst at its burning temperature..
First, you would have to supply a lot of magnesium and get it hot enough
to ignite. This is likely even more energy-intensive than
electrolyzing water, not to mention the fire hazards and cost of the
magnesium.

Well, as any chemist of physicist would know, the heat of formation of
water is really high, and there's no way to get at the hydrogen without
investing that much energy. There are tricks to lowering that energy by
moving into a different set of initial conditions, like heating the
water to 1000 C in a high pressure cell, and then recovering the heat
and pressure when you bring the H2 and O2 out of the cell. But, that
all involves more complicated machinery.

Finally, if you have to crack the water apart and then just want to burn
in in an IC engine, or use it in a fuel cell, you just get the same
energy back out, so it almost HAS to be a losing proposition.
If there was an easy way to circumvent the laws of thermodynamics,
somebody would have already figured this out by now.

Jon