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I suspect physicists look at it for a moment and realize: Converting electricity into radio waves with energy losses, sent through the air with energy losses,

I suspect physicists look at it for a moment and realize: Converting electricity into radio waves with energy losses, sent through the air with energy losses, to bombard molecules, which then resonate with the waves to use electromagnetic forces to split molecules, will always be less efficient than simply using that original electric current to do the same thing directly with less energy loss. This will always be energy inferior to simple electrolysis.

dr_dshiv 7y ago
That may be; I don't know the proof. There may be combined approaches, too, with potential for lowest system cost. Here is a patent from an Israeli company on this topic, granted just this year: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2911976A4/it https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2911976A4/it
- ChrisLomont 7y ago
  >There may be combined approaches, too, with potential for lowest system cost. This simply violates basic physics. Turning electricity into radio waves only to turn them back into electricity is always going to lose energy. This is fundamental. In a simplistic undergrad setting the absolute best you could hope for is zero loss, but there is no gain. In the real world with real materials there will be loss. >Here is a patent from an Israeli company on this topic, Patents are granted on all sorts of nonsense. Having a patent is not proof of usefulness, or efficiency, or marketability, or even if it is better than any other competitor. A patent means the material seemed novel enough to the patent inspector that after repeated rounds of claim modifications and paperwork he wan convinced the claimed item is new. Usually patents are on a small piece of a technology, since it, like this one, builds on a lot of pieces coming before it (hence all the other patents cited).
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    Every transformation will lose energy. Electrolysis isn't lossless either, hence the possibility for efficiency gains (or real-world cost reductions) through a combined approach.

dr_dshiv 7y ago

That may be; I don't know the proof. There may be combined approaches, too, with potential for lowest system cost. Here is a patent from an Israeli company on this topic, granted just this year: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2911976A4/it https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2911976A4/it

ChrisLomont 7y ago
>There may be combined approaches, too, with potential for lowest system cost. This simply violates basic physics. Turning electricity into radio waves only to turn them back into electricity is always going to lose energy. This is fundamental. In a simplistic undergrad setting the absolute best you could hope for is zero loss, but there is no gain. In the real world with real materials there will be loss. >Here is a patent from an Israeli company on this topic, Patents are granted on all sorts of nonsense. Having a patent is not proof of usefulness, or efficiency, or marketability, or even if it is better than any other competitor. A patent means the material seemed novel enough to the patent inspector that after repeated rounds of claim modifications and paperwork he wan convinced the claimed item is new. Usually patents are on a small piece of a technology, since it, like this one, builds on a lot of pieces coming before it (hence all the other patents cited).
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  Every transformation will lose energy. Electrolysis isn't lossless either, hence the possibility for efficiency gains (or real-world cost reductions) through a combined approach.