If Jeremy's post last week piqued your interest, here's the video to prove it. Found in the magical realm of YouTube, this news story was originally on NBC News. John Kanzius was trying to find a way to cure cancer via a specialized bombardment of radio waves. What he accidentally discovered was that when he put a test tube of salt water in the beam of radio waves, it disrupted the bonds between hydrogen and oxygen and ignited a flame that burned up to 3000 degrees. Needless to say, this is an alarming discovery.

While Kanzius is using the flame to run a small model steam engine, it may perhaps have greater potential as a substitution for an electrolyzer. Or, if the system can be miniaturized and made cost-effectively efficient, it could combust in the cylinder of an ICE directly. There is also a lot of valid criticism regarding this idea, which many of you commented on last week. In any case, Kanzius' discovery could greatly impact the transportation industry, as well as find the cure to cancer he was looking for in the first place.


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Related Video:

• Salt water into fire

[Source: YouTube -- Thanks for the tip, Sean!]

Biofuels are often criticized for using too much land that could otherwise be used for farming food. Turns out, one of the better sources of biofuels, acre for acre, is algae and it grows great where real estate is a steal: the sea! There are also fresh water algae fuel projects and there have been tests conducted using iron to cause algae blooms in the ocean, a wacky solution to global warming. Researcher John Munford did some number crunching and an algae farm the size of the North Sea (pictured) could produce enough fuel to replace all the fossil fuels we use today. There are real questions of how to harvest algae in the sea but whoever cracks that nut will be rich. There is simply not enough land to spare to grow biofuel crops economically. But, wiht the Earth being 70 percent ocean, I think of that moment in The Graduate: if you are a smart, young, kid not sure where to focus your research, I got two words for you: saltwater algae. That's how it went, right?

Related:

• How about mobile carbon capture to feed algae for biodiesel?
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[Source: The Economist]

Salt water as fuel? Not exactly, but kinda. John Kanzius discovered that by focusing certain radio-frequencies on a test tube of salt water, he could ignite the contents, which would them become hot enough to melt the test tube. The process has been independently verified by Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist. According to Roy, what is actually happening is the hydrogen is being separated from the salt water and ignited. As long as the water is bombarded with the radio-frequency, it continues to burn after being ignited. This could be a possible breakthrough, depending on how much energy it takes to separate the hydrogen from the water compared to how much hydrogen can be extracted.

Additional research will be necessary into this discovery. The effect was actually discovered while Kanzius was researching heated nanoparticles as part of a novel cancer treatment. So, really, not all accidents are bad, huh? According to our source article, Dr. Roy will be meeting with officials from the DOE and DOD to discuss the discovery and to seek funding for further research. We'll see where it goes from there.

[Source: Post Gazette, thanks for the tip Aaron!]

According to Sunita Narain, the head of the Centre for Science and Environment in India, biofuels are "good as an idea, bad in practice." She insists that instead of making more biofuels, we should be concerning ourselves with how to use less fuel in general. The problem that she cites is one not often heard: water. "If you want to use water for it (biofuel production), you must cut down on the consumption of biofuels," she said. The problem is that to make the biofuels, water is required to irrigate the crops. That water usually goes towards the irrigation of crops that people consume, and both cannot increase without running out of fresh water. It's easy to see that point, considering that in many parts of the world, fresh water for drinking is already in short supply. Indeed, even in some parts of the United States, where fresh drinking water is usually a given, water is diverted from other parts of the country. There are some strains of algae being tested which could be used for biofuels that grow well in the sun-drenched southwestern U.S. This algae can and does grow in saltwater, of which there is plenty. There are also some groups using seaweed for biofuels. This would alleviate the problem of biofuels stealing water away from crops for public consumption.

[Source: Physorg]