One of my crazy hair-brained ideas

[tanilys]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7UkRafgxvc&feature=email

Now... correct me if I am wrong here... but isn't the 1st law of thermodynamics a big problem here?

Whatever energy you get out of a system, you must first add to that system. So obviously, the amount of energy you get by burning oxyhydrogen you must first ADD to the system via that of a

Comments

[bfdragon]

Bigtime Scam. I know you know better, and have a very dry humor, so I'll just pretend like this isn't a joke and give myself a chance to have a good rant };=>

Yes, using the electricity for heating the water is vastly more efficient then something like this. Firstly you lose energy in the prossess of electrolysis. (I love the part where they are sending a digital signal.. to water) You lose something like %70 of the energy there right off the bat. Plus, heating the water with flame isn't that efficient in the first place. You could use the heat of the electrolysis itself, of course, but thats a lot of cost and effort to get what in the end would be about the same efficiency.

The worst part is.. they recommend using an even less efficient photo voltaic cell to make the electricity to do this. This is mindbogglingly stupid when.. you can heat water directly with the sun. With proper insulation that water can stay hot well into the night. Some of the good water heaters use a glass tubes with the air evacuated. They insulate well enough that apperantly you can get water into the hundreds of degrees with snow on the ground. A lot cheaper then $4 a watt of photovoltaics.

Lastly, there is a way to improve the efficiency beyond just a heating coil if you really want to use electricity to heat and thats a plain old heat pump. These have excellent efficacy; Over %100 because they are moving energy from one place to another rather then simply using the power you put in directly for heat. I don't know of a water heater that uses a heat pump as such, but they are very easily found for heating a space.

There are loads of things you can do to make things both efficient and comfortable. But instead we build the same crappy houses when we've known how to do them right for decades.

Anyway, cute video, was a good laugh ;)

[tanilys]

Oh I thought it was bogus too :) I think this is a load of crap.. hence my criticism.