Salt, an abundant mineral of which there are 14,000 known uses. The body contains about 75 grams of salt for a 110 pd (50 kg) human. We literally can not live without it.

Salt is composed mostly of sodium (an alkali) and chloride. The feedstock of the chlor alkali industry just as petroleum is for the petrochemical industry. Mix salt with water and then pass electricity through it, you get compounds like caustic soda, chlorine, and hydrogen. The essential building blocks in everything from food, clean drinking water, to pharmaceuticals.

Now let’s skip the other 13,990 some odd uses for the sake of time, space, and an imprint of the keyboard on your forehead, and get down to something a little more exciting.

What if salt water could end the quest for fresh water AND alternative energy in one process? While researching a way to kill cancer cells using a radio frequency transmitter, inventor John Kanzlus stumbled on a way to make salt water burn and release hydrogen.

Demonstrating the process using a test tube of unaltered sea water from the Gulf of Mexico, and a cork (to simulate a piston), Kanzlus places it within a certain radio frequency field. The signal breaks the hydrogen-oxygen bond in the water molecules, releasing hydrogen and oxygen. This energy expands and out pops the cork allowing the recombination through combustion of the hydrogen and oxygen, producing a flame.  Same scenario as a piston in a gasoline combustion engine. But the beauty of this is the by-product is distilled water.

There are still hurdles to overcome. For instance, it takes more energy to generate the radio frequency than the releasing hydrogen produces. And the role of the salt is not yet fully understood. But what is known is that this process does not work with plain water. Still, the possibility is ecological nirvana.

SO, how’s that for number 14,00ONE ?!

Tags: Business, Chlorine, drinking water, energy, environment, Gulf of Mexico, sodium hydroxide, Water Resources

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 8:30 am and is filed under Going Green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.