Thank goodness for scientists.

This is a completely misleading headline. A couple of comments from a chemical engineer: The energy to run the vehicle comes from a chemical reaction of water and boron. The reaction creates boron oxide. But where did the boron come from? It came from a chemical plant that uses a chemical reaction to convert boron oxide into boron. That reaction requires energy. Where did that energy come from? -Your local utility company. There are basically two ways to add energy into a chemical reaction, electricity or heat. Chemical plants burn natural gas to make steam to heat reactors. Chemical plants either make electricity or buy it from the local power company just like you. That electricity probably comes from a plant using natural gas, coal or nuclear fuel. (Only a small percentage of electricity is made from hydro, wind, solar or other ”green” facilities.) So if you live in the US your ”water driven car” probably indirectly runs on coal. (Oops, there went the zero emissions.)

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for fuel cell vehicles and more efficient vehicles. I just didn’t like the headline.

Michael, you are free to disagree, but I would also like to bring a counter question — the post says ’ which relies on hydrogen fuel generated from a tank of water’– tell me, do you find any of the regular autos capable of using water this way? This is why I ahve highlighted the word in my post.

Quoting Michael: ”But where did the boron come from? It came from a chemical plant that uses a chemical reaction to convert boron oxide into boron. That reaction requires energy. Where did that energy come from?”

I believe there is an Israeli company that is developing a prototype of this vehicle. The idea they suggest for getting this energy is to use magnesium chloride in a reaction to get the boron away from the boron oxide. The resulting magnesium and chlorine is then converted back into magnesium chloride using solar energy.

It isn’t technically zero emissions: but this proposed process requires the only emission to be... oxygen!

This article appears not only misleading but inaccurate.
It seems to be a distorted account of the system developed byMillennium Cell Inc. to produce hydrogen from water and Sodium Borohydride (NaBH4).
Anyway, water is the prodcut of the reaction of hydrogen with oxygen, and to liberate the hydrogen from water would require an energy input. Tos say you could run your car on water is equivalent to saying you could heat your home with coal ashes, or with carbon dioxide, the products of coal combustion. A cycle which goes from water to hydrogen and back to water (by reacting the hydrogen with oxygen in a fuel cell or an engine) must have zero net energy output. Any energy outputs must be balanced by other energy inputs.

By the way, there are no mines where you can dig boron, or sodium borohydride or hydrogen out of the earth. They must all be produced by inout of enbery derived from other sources.

As a really old chemical engineer, I agree with Michael’s comments, as well as those of Mel. Obviously, energy is needed to extract the boron in the first place, and the amount required has to be at least as much as is made available to drive the car by burning the hydrogen produced by the reaction between boron and water. Perhaps, as M says, this energy could be solar, or wind power, but if these engines became popular, we would have to increase the electricity generated from these renewable sources manyfold. Also, since these kinds of energy are not reliable, the boron refinery must be able to shut down and restart easily, which is rather doubtful.

Let’s not forget the cost of boron. The article says you need 18 kg of boron to produce an amount of power equivalent to 40 litres of gasoline, which is a rather small tank. (My Buick has a tank that holds over 60 litres.) So we need at least 18 kg of boron to start. Current price of pure boron is $5 per gram for crystalline and $2 per gram for amorphous. At the $2 price, it would cost $36,000 for enough boron to drive about 400 miles (assuming you can get 40 mpg with your new little hydrogen-powered car) Then you would have to fill up the water tank, remove the boron oxide residue, and put in another 18 kg of boron. Of course this all assumes there is a network of stations to sell boron and accept the residue for reclaiming. (for which you would receive some kind of credit) Perhaps the price of boron would come down with the higher demand; or maybe it would become scarce and the cost would go up. Who knows?

I do hope they succeed with this effort. Will they be using the same car parts that the car came in default or will they be using entirely new mercedes benz parts for their project?

What about the ”water car” invented by Stanly Meyers? He has a patent on it...You can see him operating and explaining his car on YouTube...He was poisoned at a dinner in his honor so he would not go ahead with the car’s production...His car produced the hydrogen as it was needed, and not in tanks...He used an electronic device to split the hydrogen atom he invented....Also the Japanese have already came out with the same kind of car, but will not mass produce it out of fear of being cut off of their oil supply from the Middle East...The name of their car is m”Genepax.”

I think someone doesn’t want this technology to emerge.