This is pretty incredible; the Aqueon fireplace provides a homey flame using nothing but electricity and water. That’s right, water. No magic involved; the unit uses an electrolysis process to pull hydrogen out of the water, and burns the hydrogen.
I wrote a post on Gadgetopia about this, not knowing a lot about the electrolysis process, and conjectured that it may be possible in the future for the processes efficiencies to be refined to the point that the hydrogen produced could be used to drive the electrolysis process and perhaps produce a surplus of energy. Some bozos responded to my post, thinking I was suggesting some sort of perpetual motion machine. What the???
Am I really misunderstanding the potential of this technology that much?
I did a little digging around on the ‘net tonight & found that the only ones who think that it’s possible to use water to power anything but a pop bottle rocket are the guys hawking conversion kits so you can run your car on water. Great.
I guess it might be possible someday to use hydrogen extracted from water to supply our energy needs, but not real soon.