Eventually, someone will figure out how to use this as a weapon.

This is great news though, and a wild concept. It would be very nice if we could find a way to produce energy from the most abundant substance on the planet.

Unfortunately it looks like hype.

Frome Nature 9/4/07:

Fred, As Homer once said, “In this house we obey the laws of physics”.

It may be that this technology could be useful for producing hydrogen in a more efficient way than we currently do, but in order to be a true energy source this system has to produce more energy than the microwave consumes to produce the hydrogen. In effect this is the holy grail of perpetual motion.

I would be interested to learn that as I usually see the current  average EROI (Energy Returned on energy Invested) of oil energy products refined from conventional oil as being round  10:1 (regular gasoline being somewhat higher than premium, diesel slightly higher than gasoline) and  the EROI of gasoline from tar sands as being closer to about 3:1.

Although these are nothing close to the 200:1 EROI of a century ago, these are still positive numbers (>1). EROIs continue to drop for all fossil fuels. When the EROI for oil itself reaches 1:1 it will no longer be a primary energy source. It may continue to be produced however as it is useful stuff. The energy for its production will need to be provided by some other primary source. Canadian tar sand oil production is already approaching this problem. Currently most of the energy for tar sands oil production is provided by natural gas because it is cheap. None the less it still produce more energy than they consumes in its production.   

The fact that an internal combustion engine is only about ~25% efficient does not mean that the fuel had a negative energy ratio; it just means that the engine is inefficient. Oil is still a primary energy source, as are coal, natural gas etc… In order for water (salt or otherwise) to be a primary energy source it would need to produce more energy in it’s combustion than the combustion process takes. Otherwise the whole tank of water’s energy is used in the processing of the water and there would be none left to drive the car.

You mention the fact that cars do not carry refineries. This is true. That is why I said that this process could possibly lead to being a viable source of hydrogen production if the refining process turns out to be more efficient than current production methods. Currently hydrogen production methods have an EROI of around 0.5:1.  In other words it takes about twice as much energy to make hydrogen as the hydrogen will eventually yield. It will never be 1:1 because of the laws of thermodynamics. For this reason hydrogen will never be a primary energy source. Hydrogen  can serve to carry energy however, like a battery does. A vehicle powered by hydrogen derived from water (salt or otherwise) cannot truly be said to be powered by water however because more energy will be consumed in the process of converting the water to fuel. That energy can be provided by some other energy source.

Someone sent me a news clip the other day from the 1980s where an American inventor had discovered how to make an engine that ran on water.  He had it mounted to a dune buggy and was giving the news crew a test run.  He claimed that it would work with any kind of water, including melting snow, and that it could power any size car.  He claimed you could drive it cross country on about 20 gallons of water.  The news program said that the auto industry was in the process of buying the plans from the man and that it would be ready for mass production in 2 years.

Apparently they did buy the design from the inventor, then he developed a rare case of cancer and quickly died.  Afterwards of course the engine design was never heard from again.