Does anyone know who invented the water engine and what happened to him and his invention?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105788/

http://netmar.com/~maat/archive/watercar/h20car2.h...

hmmmm

http://netmar.com/~maat/archive/feb2/carplans_doc....

This never happened, it is a myth. And here is why it did not happen: because it cannot. It is a physical impossibility to have any kind of useful power from a set up like that.

To break down water into hydrogen, you need electricity. And the electrolysis process is not 100% efficient, as it releases heat, so you do end up wasting about 20% of the electricity (and by the way, you cannot use distilled water for electrolysis, as it does not conduct electricity well enough -- you need to add an acid, an alacali or a salt into it). Now you take the hydrogen and burn it. If you had a PERFECT engine, you would get back the power of the hydrogen, but if you are using a real existing system, you can expect 60% efficiency if you are using a state of the art fuel cell, and 25 to 30% if you use an internal combustion engine (and by the way, after the alleged system "releases" the oxygen in the air, it needs to RECAPTURE the same amount of oxygen from the atmosphere to support the combustion of the hydrogen -- except by then, it is not pure anymore and that is another reason to lower the efficiency...)

So, to sum it all, you have an overal efficiency of 0.8 * 0.6 = 0.48 (i.e. 48% efficiency) if you use a fuel cell, and 0.8 * 0.3 = 0.24 (i.e. 24% efficiency) if you use an internal combustion engine.

Use a battery to DRIVE the wheels with an electric motor (some electric motors can achieve 90% efficiency) and you get a lot more useful power from your battery.

If this still has not you convinced, here is the final argument I can offer, that of logic.

If the guy was forced to never mention his "invention", how come you heard a rumor about it?

I don't know about conspiracy theories or locked up and unused patents, but Hydrogen fueled cars are a fact not a myth.

Working Prototypes were made by Roger E. Billings in the 1960s, but there are some technical problems, e.g. with the storage, hydrogen has a very low volumetric energy density, the hydrogen fuel that can be stored in a normal size tank is used up rapidly. Another problem; Water is not an energy source, but an energy carrier, to get the hydrogen out of the water you need energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_car

BUT now there's this;

http://www.leftlanenews.com/2006/08/07/project-pro...

You're talking here about more than perpetual motion; perpetual ENERGY. It takes energy to 'break down' water--infact, a bit more than you get back when you burn the hydrogen, which, BTW, consumes as much oxygen as the original breakdown releases....

I heard this same story in HS in 1956. Then it was the myth of the 100 mpg carburetor that was corraled by GM and hidden away to protect their profits.

The story has to be fictitious. Breaking down water to extract hydrogen necessarily uses more energy than can be obtained by using the hydrogen, even in a fuel cell.

my teacher told this story in class. she told that he was killed by a company because his invention was the cause of their bankruptcy. He did not invent the water engine; he had invented the engines working by fuel cells which are used in modern cars, today. it is the story i heard from my teacher

It's a silly theory and completely unprovable...call it an urban legend and let it go.

ah never existed - urban myth sorry, but what a nice one it would be.