If we could just burn salt water, we'd never run out of fuel

If we could just burn salt water, we'd never run out of fuel

By Frank Markus
Photography by Lionel Deluy Art By Atomos

Have you seen the sensational TV-news video running around YouTube? A test tube full of salt water is blasted with radio waves and ignites with an orange flame that powers a small sterling engine. Power from salt water, the most abundant substance on earth -- Eureka!

The story is a compelling one. Retired TV-station owner and broadcast engineer John Kanzius was conducting experiments for a cancer cure, in which metallic nanoparticles coated to target certain diseased cells are bombarded with radio waves superheating the particles and killing the cancer cells. (This line of research is ongoing and reportedly shows promise.) With the nanoparticles suspended in a salt-water solution, the test tube unexpectedly ignited. Somehow the water was dissociating into hydrogen and oxygen and then burning, allegedly giving off more energy than went into generating the radio waves.

Fountain of unlimited energy or hype and hoax? Before setting out to visit Mr. Kanzius's Erie, Pennsylvania, lab I consulted the oracle of Google, which pointed me to myriad blogs and technopundits declaring the idea thermodynamically impossible. Energy must be conserved, and everyone knows it takes more electrical energy to bust hydrogen-oxygen bonds than you get back when the two burn. Obviously, the guy's a crackpot.

Kanzius's lab demonstration offered little to convince me otherwise. Sure, a test tube of pure water sat there in his radio-wave gizmo with nothing happening, then a quarter teaspoon of Morton's salt was added and, presto, the radio waves prompted it to catch fire. The gauge on the radio-wave generator read 200 watts, but there was no telling how much heat was coming off the flame or how much power was coming out of the wall, so I had no way of knowing whether this was an energy-losing parlor trick or a breakthrough.

Then I contacted Dr. Rustum Roy, an authority on the structure of liquid water at Penn State University, which houses one of the foremost microwave research labs. He hadn't met Kanzius, but his enthusiasm for the concept was palpable. No hard research has been conducted as yet -- it's only been a few months since the water first caught fire -- but Dr. Roy speculates that because the 13.56-MHz radio frequency is a harmonic of the natural frequency of sodium ions, the waves are causing these positive ions to vibrate intensely. Van der Waal's effects attract the oxygen end of water molecules to the positive sodium ions, and the vibration shakes the oxygen molecules hard enough to break the hydrogen bonds, freeing the hydrogen gas, which then ignites and burns. If true, the radio waves may be giving us electrolysis at a deep energy discount, allowing the flame to produce a net energy gain without breaking any thermodynamic laws.

The pure salt-water flame is fairly weak, but Kanzius has researched doping the salt water with various undisclosed substances that generate a much more intense flame. I'll postulate that it's some sort of alcohol, which mixes well with water, but it could be something else entirely. Years of research lie ahead, but he suspects that his doped salt-water could pack sufficient punch to power an internal- combustion engine, with a ceramic "window" in the top of the cylinder through which radio waves would enter to ignite the mixture.

Or maybe salt proves too corrosive for use in engines, and the technology just gives us a clean, economical means of producing hydrogen to power fuel cells. In any case, John Kanzius may have stumbled upon a scientific phenomenon with the potential to brighten our increasingly gloomy energy future. At least we'd never have to go to war over salt water.