It's roughly 260k joules of energy to split 1 mole of water into hydrogen and oxygen.
1 mole of hydrogen offers roughly 280k joules of potential energy at combustion. And we would have two moles of oxygen or roughly 12k more joules burning that up. Let's just say there's 10% "more energy" from the process to keep things simple. Awesome! Thats why the water car theory seems to make sense.
The issue is that you need to produce 5x more energy for an ICE car to get the 260k joules to split the water molecules (cars have about 20% efficiency). Or 1,300,000 joules. Now you've lost a ton of energy. But at least it's not gasoline, right?
Because it takes 4x more energy to split the atoms than you would get from burning the atoms, the system can't run using only water. You would need electricity in a battery that couldn't be recharged or you would be burning gas in a horribly inefficient manner.
If you did overcome the efficiency problem of a combustion engine and got to 100%, you'd net about .15 miles per gallon in the average car, as you'd only have available the net difference between splitting molecules (takes energy) and burning them (creates energy). That's not a good solution.
Simply put, ICE engines cannot run on water. Period.
Maybe this will help...
It's roughly 260k joules of energy to split 1 mole of water into hydrogen and oxygen.
1 mole of hydrogen offers roughly 280k joules of potential energy at combustion. And we would have two moles of oxygen or roughly 12k more joules burning that up. Let's just say there's 10% "more energy" from the process to keep things simple. Awesome! Thats why the water car theory seems to make sense.
The issue is that you need to produce 5x more energy for an ICE car to get the 260k joules to split the water molecules (cars have about 20% efficiency). Or 1,300,000 joules. Now you've lost a ton of energy. But at least it's not gasoline, right?
Because it takes 4x more energy to split the atoms than you would get from burning the atoms, the system can't run using only water. You would need electricity in a battery that couldn't be recharged or you would be burning gas in a horribly inefficient manner.
If you did overcome the efficiency problem of a combustion engine and got to 100%, you'd net about .15 miles per gallon in the average car, as you'd only have available the net difference between splitting molecules (takes energy) and burning them (creates energy). That's not a good solution.
Simply put, ICE engines cannot run on water. Period.