ENERGY EFFICIENT?
OR SNEAKY SCAM????

COMMON FALLACIES ABOUT ENERGY

The following are commonly believed fallacies in the field of energy production and use:

1. The oil companies buy up alternate technologies to keep people from buying less oil.

   This is ridiculous. If the oil companies do have such inventions, they could make more money by selling such devices than they could by selling oil. The only explanation for such a claim (that companies bought up technology to suppress it) that makes any sense is that it is a cover up for the fact that the technology either was fake, or didn't work as claimed.

2. Oil companies can control the price of oil.

   If an oil company raises its prices, the other oil companies can make more money by NOT raising their prices. They then gain the business the company that raised its prices loses. Only an entity with a monopoly can control prices. Oil companies are not monopolies. But some governments, and OPEC, do have monopoly powers.

3. Hydrogen is an energy source.

   Hydrogen is a means for storing and transporting energy. But any process used to get hydrogen uses up more energy than is returned by using the hydrogen as a fuel.

4. Hydrogen engines and fuel cells produce only water as an exhaust.

   If air is used instead of pure oxygen, the process of using the energy stored in the hydrogen also produces nitrogen oxides, which are considered to be pollutants.

5. Salt is just a catalyst, and does not enter the process of water electrolysis.

   Not only does the salt enter the reaction, but it changes the products of the reaction. Instead of hydrogen and oxygen, the electrolysis of salt water produces hydrogen, chlorine, and sodium hydroxide. The last two are deadly poisons.

   One place where it looks like there is a gain in energy due to this reaction is that the chlorine so produced is released into the atmosphere, but oxygen taken from the atmosphere is used to burn the hydrogen. The trouble with this is that the chlorine and sodium hydroxide are released into the environment as pollutants, in exchange for the energy gain. The chlorine then contributes to acid rain or lung diseases.

6. It is possible to find a catalyst that reduces the energy needed to electrolyze water to the point that more energy can be obtained from the hydrogen than is put into the electrolysis.

   Catalysts can reduce the activation energy of an exothermic reaction. But electrolysis of water is endothermic. There is no possible way to reduce the energy required to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. (Salt water reduces the energy by changing the products.) Anyone searching for such a catalyst is wasting his time.

7. Chlorophyll is a catalyst.

   Chlorophyll fits the definition of a catalyst only in the sense that it is not consumed in the reaction, and that it does produce a reaction. But the difference is that chlorophyll uses light energy to power the reaction.

8. Vehicles can be built to get any desired gasoline mileage.

   There is a finite amount of energy in a gallon of gasoline. How it is used depends on the design. But you can't get more energy than the gasoline contains. The variables to be traded off are acceleration rates, vehicle mass, vehicle strength, and available power.

9. Devices that make hydrogen from electrical power taken from the engine can increase gas mileage.

   This is a scam. The energy taken from the engine to electrolyze the water is always greater than the energy the hydrogen so produced can deliver.

10. Government can do the best job of finding alternate energy sources.

    Government is ill-equipped to do any kind of research properly, because most government officials put politics above finding the truth.

Alternate energy does not gain from the false beliefs listed here. Instead, the false beliefs cause others to think the entire alternate energy movement is an attempt to impose socialist beliefs on others.