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[–] 0 pt

In the video he says he adds HH+ to the water which is a very reactive compound that is effective at separating hydrogen from water

[–] 4 pts (edited )

None of this changes the actual math of the chemical process. You have to add energy to the chemical bonds to break them apart. I suppose people are trying to make the point that the process is either cheap enough or it doesn't take very much energy to do so.

The problem, as a generalized problem, is that if anyone ever figures out how to break h2o bonds for less energy then you get out of that reaction, all water on earth becomes a bomb. Can someone perhaps figure out a catalyst or a catalyzing agent that fiddles with the bonds in such a way that it reduces the energy required to break the bonds? Yes. However, the problem is the law of conservation of energy won't allow you to split those bonds with less energy than is in that bond triad so you will first need to spend energy making the catalyst and THEN you will need to spend energy applying the catalyst to water to split the atoms which in totality as a system will always require more energy than the energy that is holding those atoms together.

It's not automatically obvious and I have been on the side arguing for this stuff. I used to think that permanent magnet perpetual motion machines were possible and had an offset design that I thought would work. Then it dawned on me is that perment magnetic fields are symmetrical and you could never actually create a perpetual motion machine because of that symmetry. The reason that symmetry prevents perpetual motion machines is that energy isn't actually thing, energy is just a potential or a differential between one state and another that is stuck somehow and once it is unstuck the "energy" can be harnessed as the stuck system rushes to get back into equilibrium.

Anyway, the problem here is the law of conservation of energy. In order to break the bonds of h2o you will always need to add more energy into that system than you get out which means you will need to find energy from other places in order to break those bonds because those bonds are in the lowest energy state possible, as far as we understand physics. Which always bring up the question of wouldn't it just be cheaper to use that energy we are putting into the system directly and use that energy to move cars. Which we do through carbon fuels.

Where the splitting of h2o makes sense is where the total cost of the final system is somehow less than the cost of inputting energy into splitting h2o. For example, space travel is so costly that a hydrogen cel is totally worth the total cost to produce it (including splitting h2o) that you can make it work.

// EDIT: just checked out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqOHVN2pPi8

Again, I don't think the math actually works, but I have an open mind and would be happy to be proven wrong.