Last February 2005, I was given this opportunity to see the popularly claimed as a Filipino invention, the water powered vehicle by Daniel Dingel. The event was entitled as a “technical presentation” and was held at the Department of Energy (DOE). Before the presentation, I was expecting that this will be really a technical presentation where the presentor, Daniel Dingel, will discuss the scientific proof and basis of his invention. Unfortunately, it never happened. What was happened is just a video presentation of his claimed invention, a car running using water as a fuel. Indeed a presentation but not a technical presentation, no discussion of the theory on how it works. They just showed that the car runs just using water as fuel. That’s it.

This might be the reason why many are doubtful and only few believe on his invention.

I, myself is doubtful on his invention. Okay, he might be intelligent enough and his invention is not a hoax, but what makes me, and maybe, other people needed to believe on his invention is a scientific proof of his invention. Aside from just showing a running car using only water as fuel on each of his presentions, why don’t he provide a technical paper that discusses the theory behind his invention. If his invention is real, then it’s not hard for him to provide a proof. But he is not providing any concrete proof.

How does a car run just using water as fuel?
A water-powered vehicle is not impossible to implement. Nowadays, there are already some water powered vehicles all around the globe. And I think, Daniel Dingel is not the only guy who has this idea.

But the important thing to note about this is that, it is not water, per see, that makes the vehicle run. It is the hydrogen, the lightest known element on earth that burns like LPG and gasoline that makes the car run. Hydrogen can be extracted from water. Hydrogen can be produce by splitting water (H20) into hydrogen and oxygen. That is, two water molecule can produce four hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

This is what supposedly happening inside the engine of Daniel Dingel’s car and any water fueled vehicles. A water inside the tank is splitted into oxygen and hydrogen, then the hydrogen will be feed to the engine, just like a gasoline. The engine will burn the hydrogen to run the vehicle. The exhaust of the vehicle powered by hydrogen is purely water vapor. Thus, it is 100% clean.

But the big question about this kind of invention is how to economically split the water into oxygen and hydrogen?

Well, it seems, based on what I observed from the presentation of Daniel Dingel, that he used the process of electrolysis. In electrolysis, electric current is passed through an electrolyte, which splits the water into oxygen and hydrogen. There are also, of course, other methods of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen and electrolysis is just one of them. In one of the TV shows that I watched in the National Geographic Channel which features a bus ran using water as a fuel, the scientists who are doing this kind of project used a catalyst to split water into oxygen and hydrogen.

It is important to note that in the process of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen using electrolysis, the input energy required to split oxygen and hydrogen is, always, greater than the energy given off in the reaction (burning of hydrogen) of combining hydrogen and oxygen to produce water, which is what is happening inside the engine when the hydrogen is burned to run the vehicle. In the case of Dingel’s invention, he used a DC battery for the electrolysis. So, in short, it is like the DC battery that runs the car, which is pretty much impossible because the energy stored in the DC battery is so small to run a car, like what Dingel showed.

This is the point of discussion, how did Daniel Dingel do that? If he merely used the process of electrolysis to split the oxygen and hydrogen to run the vehicle, then what he had claimed to be his invention is either a false invention where he just cheated on his presentation, or he violated the law of nature in the chemical reaction process. The latter is obviously impossible to happen. If his invention is real, then he must show a basis to make it acceptable to everyone.