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Stanley Allen Meyer’s idea for fueling his dune buggy with water may have been crazy, but the strange occurrences of his life and death will ensure his cult status and inspiration for individualistic inventors and story lovers.
A recent article from the Columbus Dispatch gives a summary of Meyer’s research, his claim of a dune buggy that could cross the US on 22 gallons of water, and his mysterious death nine years ago.
Meyer, his twin brother Stephen, and two Belgian investors were celebrating Meyer’s creation of a dune buggy that could turn water into hydrogen fuel efficiently enough to power the vehicle in lieu of fossil fuels. It was March 20, 1998, in a Cracker Barrel in Grove City, Ohio. After a sip of cranberry juice, Meyer clutched his throat, ran outside, vomited profusely, and died. According to his brother, his last words were: “They poisoned me.”
Stephen was confused at the sudden death of his 56-year-old brother. But when he told the Belgian investors the next day that his brother had died, their complete silence and lack of sympathy aroused his suspicions. Local police investigated the death for three years, but in the end, the coroner’s report listed the cause of death as a brain aneurysm.
After nine years, why is Meyer’s story resurfacing now? According to the Dispatch, Meyer’s more than 20 patents on his water-fuel technology will be expiring by the end of the year. In this time of leaving no rock unturned in the quest for alternative fuels, curious researchers may be interested in looking into Meyer’s idea. Once and for all, the controversial science will be either confirmed, or discounted as science fiction.
Besides his self-created documentary in 1980, he was featured in a BBC documentary in 1995, and is part of a book by Kentucky Water Fuel Museum owner James Robey called Water Car published in 2006.
In the BBC documentary, called It Runs on Water and narrated by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, Meyer demonstrated his “water fuel cell” in a car. He said that his 1.6 liter Volkswagon Dune Buggy could cross the US on 22 gallons of water. This is because the car could supposedly run perpetually without fuel since the car’s battery could be continuously recharged. He never demonstrated this claim, though, and lawsuits followed.
Meyer’s water fuel cellThe idea behind Meyer’s innovation is the simple process of electrolysis. By passing an electrical current through water, the bonded hydrogen and oxygen can be separated and burned to power a car engine. Electrolysis has been known since at least the 1800s, and is used today to create a small amount of hydrogen in power plants, to produce certain elements, and to produce the oxygen breathed by astronauts in space.
High-temperature electrolysis (HTE) is even currently being investigated for hydrogen car fuel, although scientists explain that HTE is much less efficient than other methods for producing hydrogen.
That’s where Meyer’s claims become dubious to experts. According to Michael Faraday’s First Law of Electrolysis in 1832, the amount of elements separated by an electrical current is proportional to the amount of charge applied. This amount of electrical energy is very large, and as a law
of physics, it can’t be changed.
Meyer’s work, however, claims an ultra-high conversion efficiency-in essence, defying the law of conservation of energy.
Yet, a few of his inventions did work. For example, Charles Hughes, who gave Meyer use of his garage for private work space in the late ‘70s, said that Meyer repaid him by making him things, some of which worked and some didn’t. One invention that worked was rigging up Hughes’ tractor to run on well water for 15 minutes. Hughes said that, when he smelled the exhaust, there were no fumes-only pure clean air.
Like all science, Meyer’s claims can’t be believed until thoroughly tested and validated, if anyone ever takes that initiative (and finds funding). Even if his ideas went a bit too far, his innovations can be considered one of the earliest investigations into an improved hydrogen fuel. From reading about his buyout offers and threats to stop his work by foreign governments, it’s clear that at least some people believed in his work.
More information on Meyer’s research, lawsuits, interviews, and patents can be found on Wikipedia’s Water Fuel Cell page,
List of Water Powered Car Inventors
Hi I have been following the trail of potential water powered cars for a few years now, over this time I have compiled a list of successful inventors!
Here they are!
Andriah Puharich
Archie blue
Bob Boyce
Carl Cella
Charles H. Garrett
Daniel Dingel
Hector Pierre Vaes
Nakamatsu Yoshiro
Sam Leslie Leach
Stanley Meyer
Steven Horvarth
And a few other unidentified people!
The most noteable of these was Stanley Meyer who is dead unfortunatley! In fact so are Carl Cella & Hector Pierre Vaes all before there time and under suspicious cercumstances! The rest have either been threatend, sold out or keep to them selves! Apparently it’s not a good idea to threaten Big Oil companys. An internet search will find info all of these individuals!
A car fueled solely by water, with zero carbon emissions?
If you think it sounds like it’s too good to be true, you’re not alone.
After last week’s introduction of its new fuel cell Water Energy System (WES), Japan-based Genepax Co. appears to be soft-pedaling its claims of a breakthrough fuel cell that uses water and air.
Cleantech Group caught up with the company this week, and learned it is facing “criticism and non-supporters,” and that as more coverage appears highlighting the technology, the more it runs into “non-supporters criticizing us.”
“We understand these criticisms since we cannot [reveal] the core part of this invention,” said Jun Onishi, company spokesperson.
Onishi went on to explain that the company is currently working with a “legal third party” to gather “factual data of [the] generator” and anticipates announcing the results soon.
Genepax, with great fanfare, showed media last week a small vehicle with an energy generator that the company claimed extracts hydrogen from water poured into the car’s tank. The generator was said to release electrons that produce electric power to run the car.
Onishi did not give a timeframe for when the public will have more data points regarding the technology, but did state the company expects information to be updated “within the next weeks.”
According to Genepax, the system generates power by supplying water and air to the fuel and air electrodes, and because the new system does not use methanol as fuel, this new system does not emit carbon.
According to the company, any kind of water can be used as an acceptable form of fuel for the system—including rain, river, sea or even tea water.
Genepax said the design of its system is similar to the basic power generation of a traditional fuel cell, except Genepax’s system uses a membrane electrode assembly (MEA), which contains a material capable of breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen through chemical reaction.
The company was reluctant to reveal details about its system, but maintains that it is “a well-known process to produce hydrogen from water to the MEA.”
With the new process, the company said the cell only requires water and air, eliminating the need for hydrogen components such as a reformer and high-pressure tank.
The company also said that since the MEA doesn’t require catalysts, the amount of rare metals such as platinum is almost the same as existing systems.
Genepax was unable to say how long this system would last, as it has been collecting data from its prototype for about a year and it plans to continue gathering information.
One system runs approximately ¥2,000,000 (or about $18,700—not including the car), but the company claims that if it can get it into mass production that could be cut to ¥500,000 or less (or just under $5,000).
Onishi told Cleantech Group that the company has secured partners to assist in mass production of the product, but was reluctant to name names or a timeframe.
The news comes at a time when news regarding fuel cell research dollars and technology improvements is a plenty.
Globally, governments, corporations and investors continue to earmark money for fuel cell research. Just this week, Honda Motor (NYSE: HMC) introduced its new FXC Clarity as an answer to Toyota Motor’s (NYSE: TM) improved fuel cell hybrid (see Honda starts production of fuel cell car and Toyota boosts range of fuel cell hybrid).
Last month the U.S. Department of Energy put $130 million toward researching more advanced fuel cell technology, and the European Union committed €470 million for a joint project to make the technologies available by 2020 (see U.S. DOE to put $130M into advanced fuel cells and Europe speeds fuel cell, hydrogen production).
There are a number of online marketing offers of kits that will convert your car to “run on water,” but these should be viewed skeptically. These kits, which attach to the car’s engine, use electrolysis to split the water into its component molecules — hydrogen and oxygen — and then inject the resulting hydrogen into the engine’s combustion process to power the car along with the gasoline. Doing this, they say, makes the gasoline burn cleaner and more completely, thus making the engine more efficient.
But experts say the energy equation on this type of system is not, in reality, efficient at all. For one, the electrolysis process uses energy, such as electricity in the home or the on-board car battery, to operate. By the laws of nature, then, the system uses more energy making hydrogen than the resulting hydrogen itself can supply, according to Dr. Fabio Chiara, research scientist in alternative combustion at the Center for Automotive Research at Ohio State University.
Moreover, Chiara says, the amount of greenhouse gases produced by the vehicle “would be much larger, because two combustion processes [gasoline and hydrogen] are involved.” Finally, there is a safety consideration for consumers who add these devices to their cars. “H2 is a highly flammable and explosive gas,” he says, and would require special care in installation and use.
The electrolysis process could be viable in saving energy if a renewable, non-polluting energy source such as solar or wind could be harnessed to power it, although capturing enough of that energy source on board the car would be another hurdle.
Researchers today put more focus on using hydrogen to power fuel cells, which can replace internal combustion engines to power cars and emit only water from the tailpipe. And though hydrogen is combustible and can power an internal combustion engine, to use hydrogen in that way would squander its best potential: to power a fuel cell.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are gaining traction, but commercialization of hydrogen fuel has not yet been accomplished. “The potential benefits of fuel cells are significant,” say researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). “[H]owever, many challenges must be overcome before fuel cell systems will be a competitive alternative for consumers.”
The state of California operates a “Hydrogen Highway” program that supports development of hydrogen fuel cell technology and infrastructure. And many companies are working on ways to produce, store and dispense hydrogen. Cars powered by fuel cells are in prototype stages now, nearing production.
While we all wait to see how that shakes out, the best choice today for high mileage and low emissions is still the gasoline/electric hybrid car.
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Pingback by Car runs on water, inventor dies mysterious death « Godssecret's … | dunebuggies August 22, 2009 @ 1:40 pmThat perfect article. THANKS! You guys do a great blog, and have some great contests. Keep up the good work.
Comment by shylove September 24, 2009 @ 7:36 pm[…] For more details on his death: Inventor Dies Mysterious Death […]
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[…] of people who claimed to have built an engine that runs on water. For a complete list, you can go here, or here, and one common theme you will notice along the way is how they are all either […]
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