Turn water into fuel

A cancer researcher happened to discover how to burn salt water. An ingenious trick, but is it really useful?

Last winter when inventor John Kanzius was trying to perform a feat that was as utopian as a radio-frequency machine - his device happened to bring another success: he did for salt water to catch fire. Since the short film about his discovery, the blogging community, eccentric people, and even doctors have been boiling in a bitter debate. Can water burn? If so, what are the benefits?

Water Torch: A test tube containing salt water producing flame 4000 ^o F. (Photo: Courtesy ISM)

Some people are immersed in the potential of this invention in splitting salt as well as cheap energy. After all, seawater also covers most of the earth's surface. Exploiting this heat source can provide energy for all activities. Skeptics believe that Kanzius' radio equipment does not produce so much energy, it is just a 'disguise' in certain conditions.

Kanzius is currently out of the discussion. Some retired television and radio store owners also said the salt water story is interesting, but what Kanzius really needed was a breakthrough in cancer treatment. Diagnosed with leukemia in 2002, the following year he started making sound wave devices right after the disease recurred. A lifelong passion for radio has inspired him. He knew that radio antennas could make the observer's metal eyeglasses heat up. If he could transplant the nanotechnology metal element into cancer cells and destroy them with sound waves, he might be able to cure the cancer and still maintain healthy tissue.

The strange thing happened when a successor assistant brought a test tube filled with salt water along with radio waves. The tubes acted with radio waves and suddenly flashed. Curious, Kanzius swiped a match, "burning water is like burning with propane gas ," he recalls.

' Everyone says it's simple. There are hidden electrodes in the water, 'says Rustum Roy, a material researcher at Penn State University. He visited Erie, Pennsylvania and the inventor in his lab in August after watching the video on Google Video. An experiment made him believe. 'This is a traditional scientific discovery,' he said. Roy thought that sodium chloride in the water could have weakened the link between the oxygen and hydrogen atoms and then released by radio waves. He explained that these gas molecules were burned, not water. The experiment showed that the reaction stopped when radio waves ceased. Roy intends to conduct more experiments to fully understand this mystery.

Meanwhile, researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center have made progress in applying Kanzius's technology against cancer in animals. They published their discoveries in Cancer last month.

How to turn salt water into gas?Inventor John Kanzius burned salt water to produce energy.Here are the steps:

1. A 14 mega hec radio radio.

2. Radio waves dissolve salt and water.

3. What happens next is still a mystery, but one theory holds that sodium chloride can weaken the link between oxygen and hydrogen atoms in the water.Sound waves break the bonds and release flammable hydrogen gas molecules.

4. Matches burn hydrogen, generate flames.

5. Heat generated can power a simple motor.