ZPEnergy.com - A Closer Look at the Genesis Technology

I have not examined the GWE Edison Device. The following comments are based solely on an examination of the GWE web site description and speculation with regard to its feasibility based on that description.

At first glance the description of the Genesis Technology given on the GWE web site in the section entitled "The Science behind Genesis" seems very vague. But closer inspection reveals some very creative design work.

When we consider all the various features claimed for the Edison Device, we find that almost every one involves a well-established technology. For example, the hydrolysis of water by electricity is a simple procedure anyone can do at home with a battery, a beaker of water, and a couple of test tubes. Combustion of hydrogen is recognized as a major clean energy source. The fuel cell is a rapidly evolving technology. All else is details.

The critical feature that makes the Edison Device practical -- if indeed GWE has achieved what it claims -- is a technology for efficiently disassociating water into its component gases, hydrogen and oxygen. This efficiency means that there is much less consumption of energy in the hydrolysis process than is released by the combustion of the gases as they recombine or their generation of electricity in a fuel cell. The ability to recycle the end product water is a neat, but not critical feature, since water is an abundant resource and any water lost into the environment is ultimately recoverable as it cycles in the environment.

So how does GWE get an over-unity coefficient of performance from its Edison Device? The key is a catalytic thermo-electric process that occurs in three stages. Everything else is secondary. Let's look closely at these three stages and see how it MIGHT be done. (This essay just presents a sci-fi guess. There are probably several viable ways to do it, and presumably GWE found one -- not necessarily this one.) All we have to go on is the section entitled "Extracting Hydrogen and Oxygen from Water: the gCell Process" plus a few other comments scattered around the site.

The goal of the process is to detach the hydrogen molecules from the oxygen atoms in water using significantly less electrical energy than can be derived from a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell using only the gases derived from said hydrolysis. The clue GWE gives us is that they set up a situation where the components behave the way "magnets with opposing polarities push away from each other."

1) According to GWE, in the first stage of the process the water passes "over special catalytic reactants" and generates "voltage". A catalytic agent facilitates a process, but the catalyst does not appear among the end products of the process. Thus you can use the catalyst over and over many times, though it may degrade in effectiveness gradually over time. How does the GWE catalyst get electricity from water? Let's explore. The water molecule is a dipole. It is a little permanent magnet. The two hydrogen atoms attach to one side of the oxygen atom with an angle of 104.4 degrees between them. Actually a water molecule has a tetrahedral shape (slightly distorted from regular tetrahedral shape), with two vertices occupied by oxygen electron pairs and two vertices each occupied by a hydrogen atom. The shared electron pairs and the unshared electron pairs repulse and narrow the bond angle down from the expected 109.5 degrees. Thus the molecular shape of water, ignoring the oxygen electron vertices, is nonlinear, roughly resembling a 3-D version of a "Mickey Mouse" silhouette. The O--H bond length is 96 pm. Water has a dipole moment of 1.86 debyes. This plus the hydrogen bonding causes it to form evanescent chains and other structures in its liquid form. Thus water has high viscosity. Also, the presence of hydrogen ions (protons) in water forms "aqueous hydrogen" ions in which the proton bonds with four water molecules on the "oxygen" side. So we get a roughly tetrahedral structure with a proton in the middle with four oxygen vertices and pairs of hydrogen atoms appended to each oxygen atom. This structure has a weak positive charge. You can also have tetrahedral arrangements with the oxygen component of a water molecule at the core (two molecules attached by O to H, and two attached by H to O). There is also a corresponding aqueous hydroxide ion built from 3 water molecules and a hydroxide ion (OH). So there's a lot of interesting electromagnetic geometry to play with in a drop of water.

Suppose now that our catalytic membrane is a kind of nano-filter that "excites" passing water molecules in two ways. First, it squeezes the hydrogen "ears" closer together. To accomplish this, suppose we make the narrow "walls" of the filter strongly positively charged and shaped so the molecule can only pass, let's say "oxygen side first" in an orderly stream. The hydrogen atoms are pushed away from the walls and forced to get closer together. This causes the dipole magnetic effects of the water to increase in strength. Secondly, the filter causes the squeezed molecules to be lined up and wiggling as they pass. The lining up helps to squeeze the ears also, so you get a chain of little magnets all stuck together -- (H2-O)(H2-O)(H2-O)(H2-O).... The wiggling of large numbers of water molecules in a coherent manner (imagine the chain zig-zagging along) also generates a usable electric current. This current, plus some additional current supplied from a battery (at startup) or from recombining a reserve supply of the separated gases in the fuel cell then separates the hydrogen from the oxygen in stage two. The force that drives the water through the filter may just be ordinary gravity. Hence the Edison device may partially be a gravity machine. You feed water in at the top, and it works its way down through the system.

2) Having derived some electricity from the distortion and vibration of the water by the nano-filter (or an initial phase of the filter), the distorted molecular shape is further used to facilitate splitting off of the component atoms. The hydrogen atoms in their ion form are basically protons. They will repel each other. On the other hand, the hydrogen and electronegative oxygen atoms are attracted to each other. So when the "ears" are squeezed together and then chained, the whole geometry shifts. As the ears swing close together, we apply a tiny bit of electric current in just the right way to transform the whole situation as if by magic. For example, imagine that the chains of "squeezed" water molecules are coherently lined up in the filter as follows:
.........
(H2-O)(H2-O)(H2-O)(H2-O)....-->
(H2-O)(H2-O)(H2-O)(H2-O)....-->
..........
Notice that this gives us a coherent grid set up organized by the geometry and permanent charges of the stationary membrane. The application of a tiny electrical pulse switches the grid in the same way we can switch a liquid crystal array in a calculator or cell phone from one geometry configuration to another by a slight electrical pulse.
........
(H2)-(O)(H2)-(O)(H2)-(O)(H2)-(O)....|^|
(H2)-(O)(H2)-(O)(H2)-(O)(H2)-(O)....|^|
.........
Now look at the grid vertically instead of horizontally. Imagine that the tiny pulse reorients the grid so the components of the chains now move normal to their original direction. What was water in the filter's grid a moment ago is now instantly and totally transformed into two separate gases. The electric pulse also supplies the electron flow to facilitate the covalent bonding of H ion pairs into H2 molecules and O ion pairs into O2 molecules. The entire process occurs as a global, massively parallel transformation rather than as a serial process of one molecule at a time interacting with an electrode. The H2's are already together, and the O's are right next to each other, so they simply shift en masse into diatomic gas mode when exposed to the right geometry, temperature (thermal component), and electrical conditions. If the angles in the grid are lined up properly, just a tiny jiggle should be enough to cause a dimensional shift of phase state from liquid water to a pair of diatomic gases. This technique of hydrolysis utilizes massive parallel processing. One slight nudge does the whole job at once on all the water currently in the grid phase of the filter.

3) The third stage in the process is the generation of the additional electricity needed for stage two by recombining a small portion of the liberated gases. This is a straightforward procedure and needs no further comment. The significant point here is that the electricity needed for the feedback loop is only a small portion of that gained from the hydrolysis process.

At the end of these three stages the gCell has produced a significant excess of hydrogen and oxygen beyond what is needed to run its own process.

So the extra boost needed to finesse the separation of the component gases from molecular water while using much less electricity than the resultant gases can produce may come from several reasonable sources. These can include gravity, charges in permanent magnets, appropriate temperature in the membrane, the geometry of specially designed nano-scale electro-mechanical "switchable wave guides" similar to liquid crystal arrays, and electricity generated from coherent dipole movements of the water molecules.

I do not find any of this particularly mysterious -- just clever use of resources. Of course, all of the above is merely my "sci-fi" vision and not to be taken too seriously. GWE may use an entirely different approach. Or it could be a scam. But the Edison Device just might be for real. And, if not, we could probably make it for real with an intelligent, coordinated effort. The GWE Mission statement is a fine goal. Advanced materials science is no longer in the realm of putzing around trying this or that to see what happens. The designer deliberately calculates the exact properties of matter that he needs for a particular task and gives the specs to the material scientist who then conjures up the required material made to order using various ingenious and increasingly sophisticated technologies. My point is simply to suggest that the Genesis Technology is quite feasible and simply makes directed use of extra energy that is readily available in the environment. It is thus a modern "free energy" device in the ancient and accepted tradition of windmills, waterwheels, and solar cells. What makes it notable is that it is so compact and can run 24/7 in almost any location. If it works, I'll buy one.

Douglass A. White, Ph.D.
dpedtech@dpedtech.com

PS: A lot is happening these days, at a very fast pace. Stay tuned.