Amazing Stories: September 1946

                  BURN WATER FOR FUEL
                  By W. C. HEFFERLIN

     All of us are familiar with brooks, rivers, lakes, seas, etc. The 
world is full of an inexhaustible supply of water, and many people even 
dink it and enjoy life. But to bum it! Well, some jokes even mention 
that, too.

     Yes, for many a long stretch of years, even centuries, too far back 
to find the beginning, water has been one of our important prime movers.

     Inventions and processes beyond count have been and many still are, 
used much in the original style, from before the first water wheel to 
tide motors and steam engines of all types. Steam turbines today 
generate electrical power to drive huge sea-going ships. The latest 
locomotive is use on railroad trains is driven by a steam turbine!

     Water is used to put out fires and the fire department is quite 
familiar to most of us. It is also used to help keep us cool. But 
something that will stop flame and heat will also bum? No, that's not 
double talk; it's true. Any high school student taking Physics knows the 
possibilities.
How?

     Let's examine water, what it is by nature. Its chemical symbol is 
H.O, which means that two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen (that 
stuff we breathe) are in combination. Hydrogen is a gas very explosive 
and has been used to lift balloons and Zeppelins, and in the presence of 
oxygen it will burn violently.

     There have been developed down through the years many methods of 
extracting either or both gases from water, etc. But one of the 
simplest, although the slowest, method is known to students as 
"electrolysis of Water." This is done by running about 12 volts of 
direct current electricity between platinum plates in a vessel of water 
containing a trace of acid in solution. Hydrogen will bubble off one 
plate and oxygen will bubble off the opposite plate.

     We refer you to the Hofman's apparatus familiar to all Physics 
students, and the following laws of electrolysis that were established 
by Faraday a century ago. 

     "1. That mass of an electrolyte decomposed by an electric current 
is proportional to the quantity of electricity conveyed through it."

     "II. When the same quantity of electricity is conveyed through 
different electrolytes, the masses of the different ions set free at the 
electrodes are proportional to their chemical equivalents." Quotes are 
from Page 329 and Page 425, Carhart and Chute Physics, Copyright 1912. 
Michael Faraday was born in 1791 and died in 1867.

     This process had never been speeded up until the fall of 1921, 
when, following a hunch and with some reasoning attached, a new and 
different method was evolved and first tests made with as crude and 
simple a set-up as was possible.

     If it worked under difficult and crude methods, then it stood to 
reason that the perfected and decently designed methods would be 
successful.

     A glass vessel was used (commonly called in a laboratory) a 
thistle-stemmed contort flask, one bunsen burner and a H. F. (high 
frequency) machine, one rubber two-holed flask plug and one glass valve 
inserted in the rubber plug, two wires and some steel wool, also some 
water.

     NOW we were ready for the simple test. The flask bowl was half 
filled with water and held by a bench stand and clamp at a 45 degree 
angle. One wire from one pole of the high frequency machine was slid 
down through the thistle neck into the regular neck of the flask; the 
other wire from the opposite pole of the machine was inserted into the 
regular flask neck through the rubber plug at the neck's upper end.

     The bunsen burner was lighted and placed under the bowl of the 
flask to boil the water. When the steam was showing inside the flask the 
H. F. machine was turned on, causing an electrical spark to jump between 
the wire ends inside the flask and through the steam.

     A red color showed at one end of the discharge and a blue color at 
the other end. This indicated hydrogen and oxygen.

     The glass valve in the rubber plug was opened, but no flame could 
be lighted from the gas rushing through the valve.

     Next, a small bunch of steel wool was placed between the inside 
wire ends and separated from them. Then the H. F. current was turned on 
again. The first discharge color area remained the same; but the second 
discharge color area in the flask showed very brilliant red and blue 
colors. Still, gas coming through the glass valve could not be ignited.

     So then a second steel wool bunch was inserted into the flask neck 
and separated from the wire and the other steel wool. Again the H. F. 
current was applied and at first. and second discharge areas the past 
colors were noted in their respective order. But at the third discharge 
area there was only one color-yellowish white.

     IT WAS BURNING!

     Still we could not ignite a flame from out of the valve. So the 
valve was closed and the heat removed, but the H. F. current remained on 
and the third area watched. The steam content grew less as the flask 
cooled down, when suddenly-
BANG!!
     
     The neck at the area of the third discharge was gone, rubber plug 
and glass valve. (We never did find even the rubber plug. Maybe the 
janitor did.)

     The rest of the neck and flask were unharmed. But a razor blade 
could not have cut wax any smoother than where the third area started. 
That proved that instantaneous electrolysis of water was a fact and our 
hunch was right. Plenty of hydrogen and oxygen were available in a 
hurry!

     When hydrogen is burned in the presence of oxygen it produces a 
very high temperature flame and there are no fumes. They just combine 
and form water again!

     The possible uses can be expanded far and wide, from heating the 
furnace to cooling the refrigerator; from running the auto to driving an 
air ship.

     A small and compact unit could be made and installed in a 
submarine. One emergency use inside a submarine would be to furnish 
oxygen to the air and hydrogen to the buoyancy tanks to raise it. And 
any water-salt, fresh, dirty-will do for a while in emergencies. 

                                                                               
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