Original title: middle school students should be able to see that 'water hydrogen engine' is a hoax
Recently, a news published on the front page of Nanyang daily in Henan Province -- "water and hydrogen engines are off the line in Nanyang, praised by the Secretary of the municipal Party committee!" has aroused heated discussion among netizens.
According to the introduction, its basic principle is: the special conversion setting in the car can convert water into hydrogen, and then input it into the hydrogen fuel reactor, namely the hydrogen fuel cell, to generate electric energy, and then drive the on-board motor and engine, so as to drive the vehicle. The biggest secret of water hydrogen fuel vehicle is a kind of special catalyst. Under the action of this kind of special catalyst, water can be converted into hydrogen. Finally, the 'youth water hydrogen fuel vehicle' can achieve a driving range of more than 500 km and a car driving range of 1000 km without refueling or charging and only adding water. The catalyst can convert water to hydrogen at almost zero cost and generate electricity through hydrogen fuel cells.
The catalyst does not alter the energy release
If you see the above passage, do you think it makes a little sense? There is a chemical term "catalyst" mentioned in it. Let's look at the role of catalyst: in middle school chemistry, we learned that catalyst only changes the chemical reaction rate without affecting the total amount of chemical reaction energy. So it's ridiculous to say that water can be turned into combustible hydrogen with some kind of catalyst.
In nature, there is indeed a process of catalyzing water to hydrogen, that is, plant photosynthesis! Plant photosynthesis obviously needs energy, that is, energy from the sun.
The law of conservation of energy does not allow
From a more general point of view, it is also obviously impossible, that is, the law of conservation of energy in middle school physics: energy can neither be produced out of thin air nor disappear out of thin air, it can only be transferred from one object to another, and the forms of energy can also be converted to each other.
Therefore, the process of decomposing water into hydrogen and oxygen without energy, and then changing it back into water after burning to release energy, and then changing it back into hydrogen and oxygen obviously violates the law of conservation of energy, which is the modern version of 'perpetual motion machine'.
Before the 19th century, before the law of conservation of energy was established, patent offices of all countries received all kinds of patent applications for perpetual motion machines. After the conservation of energy was established, the Patent Office rejected all such inventions.
Some people may wonder why we believe that the conservation of energy must be correct. This is because we have not found anything against the conservation of energy from small particles to the universe. From a more general symmetry point of view, the conservation of energy is the result of the invariance of time translation of the laws of physics. It is the cornerstone of the whole modern physics building and can not be overthrown by any kind of electric vehicle device.