From: Axil Axil A post from stefen as follows:
I agree totally with 'that takes insane amount of energy', and am surprised others haven't commented more on it. A quick trip to this graph <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_binding_energy#mediaviewer/File:Binding_energy_curve_-_common_isotopes.svg> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... shows oxygen binding energy at 8 MeV per nucleon. For 16 nucleons that implies roughly 100 MeV input to dissociate the nucleus. Here is why it is relatively easy to delude others (if you have bad intent) with a superoxide type of reaction. This scenario is purely illustrative of a point - and not intended to suggest what is going on in actuality with SHT, since I personally have not witnessed their demo. One can in principle take a tank of oxygen gas and measure the gas going into a chemical retort. Therefore, a known amount of O2 enters the system. Let’s say there are several other processes involved and out of the last reactor we have a rapid stream of highly flammable gas. The “inventor” tells his assembled audience of investors that this output gas is hydrogen and in fact, to prove it, he shows that it burns like hydrogen, with an almost invisible flame, which will melt tungsten. A accurate flow meter shows that for every oxygen molecule going into reactor one, 4 molecules of “hydrogen” err… a flammable gas are coming out of the final reactor. Thus, the “inventor” claims he is transmuting oxygen into hydrogen, but guess what, the gas going in was indeed O2 but the gas coming out is a mix of O2 and H2. It is highly flammable, true. And depending on how careful the inventor has been with wording (i.e. what is the meaning of “is”) no untruth has been spoken. What is happening is that water in the system is catalytically converted to hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) or equivalent, which is then being split into H2 and O2 without combustion by catalysts. Every oxygen molecule converts 2 water molecules into 2 cold hydrogen molecules and 2 cold oxygen molecules, for a total of 4, apparently using ambient heat as there is no violation of CoE. Actually there are other processes involved which require consumption of chemical inputs, but the whole setup will allow an inventor to claim, with some modicum of proof, that he is converting oxygen into hydrogen, so long as he can keep prying eyes away from the actual details (and the reagents). Again, this is illustrative only… your results may vary… :-)
