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Category Archives for Eco Nonsence

Run your car on water; nonsence!

Loads of websites offer to teach you the secret of how to run your engine on water, mostly for a fee. For example Water4Gas.com say, on there enormously long and infomercial-like web page, you can halve your mileage and boost your performance by running your car on water. Sound like bullshit to you?

This “technology” is not to be confused with hydrogen powered cars or hydrogen fuel cells, this is a form of the water-powered-car myth; see the links at bottom of this article.

The theory

The theory goes something like this; electricity from the engine’s battery is used to separate the water into its components, oxygen and hydrogen, which are then burnt in your engine, sometimes along with the fuel it was running on in the first place but also displacing some of it, so you use less fuel and get better mileage.

Thermodynamics

Even if it did work, and it does not, the thing is it takes a lot more energy to separate the oxygen and hydrogen than there is energy available in it, and the energy is coming from your engine which means it is coming from your fuel, so you use more energy creating your miracle fuel than there is available to gain from it.

To put it another way, if the device operated as claimed the combustion cycle would start and end in the same state (starting with water and ending with water) while extracting usable energy, thereby violating the first law of thermodynamics, a perpetual motion machine.

Stanley Meyer

It all comes from a guy called Stanley Meyer who’s invention in the 1990s was claimed to use high frequency pulses of electricity to separate the water into its component parts. His claims about his Water Fuel Cell and the car that it powered were found to be fraudulent by an Ohio court in 1996, there is no evidence that any of these devices operate as claimed, and he was forced to refund his investors.

Here is another example of this nonsense, www.waterforfuel.com (this guy even has an eBay shop selling this rubbish).

If you still want to try it:

If you still want to try it then don’t pay for the information, it is all freely available on line here: waterpoweredcar.com/stan.html.

Firther reading:

Although all Wikipedia entries, and therefore of dubious reliability, these happen to all be of excellent quality and well cited:

Water fuelled car http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fuelled_car

Hydrogen powered vehicles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_car

Written on 01 April 2008 by Jon under Bad Science, Biofuels, Eco Nonsence, Myths & poor logic with 10 Comments

Magnetic nonsense

[this page is getting a lot of hit at the moment, must be somthing to do with fuel prices, I'd apprecate your opinion and feedback, comment at the bottom of this page]

Too good to be true
You instinctively know what something is too good to be true, don’t you? And things which seem that way almost always turn out to be just that, too good too be true. I am constantly coming across products for sale on the internet which are such obvious bullshit, and yet someone must be buying them.

MagnoFuel
Recently, while researching for my book on bio-fuels, I am coming across loads of magnetic miricles. These things simply attach around your engine’s fuel lines, attached with zip-ties, and enhance the fuel magnetically; reducing pollution, increasing performance, reducing consumption, increasing range.

Sound too good to be true? Well obviously! If these things worked they would be fitted as standard to all new cars, in fact it would probably be compulsory.

The “science” behind them
The makers offer very pseudo-scientific language to explain what they do and how they work and then fail to back any of it up with any proof, beyond the dubious and anecdotal, that they have any effect whatsoever.

For example, ecozone.co.uk say here that:

“Magno-Fuel has been tested to give fuel savings of up to 15%, provides better combustion and more power from your engine while reducing pollution.”

Tested by who? When? Where? Or am I meant to just take your word for it?

“Only after a short time will oxygen molecules be embedded between the fuel molecules, ensuring a better combustion.”

What does thins even mean?

And they go on to say:

“Bloch and Purcell were awarded the Nobel prize for their work on magnetic fields on solid, liquid and gas substances.”

Sure they were, Physics prize in 1952 “for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith”, what does thins have to do what the MagnoFuel? Nothing whatsoever, that is what!

Other magnetic bullshit
One can also buy magnetic toilet descalers, magnetic washing machine descalers, an amazing array of magnetic jewelery and loads of other miracle magnetic gizmos avalabel to the gullible, from water treatment and fuel treatment to health (for you or your dog or cat or horse); there is tones of it and all of it complete bullshit!

And even more nonsense
EcoFlow and MagnoFlow and BioFlow, BioGuard pendants to protect you from your computer, BioPhone to protect you from your cell phone, Vitaflow for your water, Motoflow for your fuel, Thermoflow for your boiler/furnace and (my favorite) Vinaflow to protect you from your wine!

How can this be legal?
Well how can this be legal? I have no idea, I guess it isn’t. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof, this is blatant modern day snake oil, a scam, a con……. it is complete bullshit!!

Written on 20 March 2008 by Jon under Bad Science, Eco Nonsence, Miscellaneous, Myths & poor logic with 1 Comment

Eco Balls are no better than nothing, they are just another eco-scam.

I have been running a little, admittedly unscientific, experiment; I don’t use any laundry liquid, or other detergent, when washing my clothes and I have not noticed if they come out of the wash any dirtier than if i did use detergent. They don’t come out of the machine smelling of detergent and fabric softener, but they don’t come out smelling dirty either, they just smell of nothing much and appear clean.

There are exceptions, heavily soiled clothes do not come up clean, but how much of ones washing is heavily soiled and I can always use some detergent if I need to, the point it that about 95% of the time I don’t.

There is a product on the market called Eco Balls, it has been about for years, it claims to use “ionized oxygen” to get your clothes clean, no need for any nasty washing machine detergents. All you have to do is pop them into the machine along with your clothes and, as-if-by-magic, they come out clean. There are exceptions, apparently, heavily soiled clothes need some detergent, as well as the Eco Balls, to get them clean.

According to the literature they “produce ionized oxygen that activates the water molecules naturally and allows them to penetrate deep into clothing fibers to lift dirt away” but they fail to provide any evidence to support this claim, let alone explain what this pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo means. I have emailed then several times to ask, but they choose not to answer.

Somehow Eco Balls simultaneously reduce your need for detergent by 85% and cost you only £0.03 per wash. Eco Balls, it seems, don’t last forever, they have to be refilled every once and a while, not that there ire any chemicals getting into the wash, of course, so I guess they must just vanish. They cost £35 and last 1000 washes, that is £0.035 per wash not £0.03, a 20% inaccuracy in their maths. Additionally, they “reduce the cost of detergent by 85%”, so you are still using 15% as much detergent as you were? I cant make any sense of it, can you?

Apparently they also kill all sorts of nasty dangerous organisms which I did not know where in my clothes; frankly after reading the list of nasties in my wash-basket it is amazing that I am alive at all, for not using either detergent or Eco Balls, just forty-degree water.

One can also now buy Dryer Balls which apparently do way with the need for softening dryer sheets and fabric softeners. Again, no evidence or mechanism to explain how they work or how they differ in performance from, for example, tennis balls, or indeed, not using them at all. If you are looking for a green way to dry your clothes I recommend a washing line.

According to ecoballsdirect.co.uk Eco Balls are made by ecozone.co.uk - neither company has responded to my requests for explanation of how their product (or indeed, any of their other miracle products such as their magnetic toilet descaler or magnetic washing machine descaler) work, or any scientific data on them, or any peer reviewed studies carried out on them.

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof these are blatant modern day snake oil, an eco-scam designed to part well meaning consumers from their cash, if they are not then feel free to sue me. I dont understand how this can be legal.

Written on 19 March 2008 by Jon under Bad Science, Eco Nonsence, Myths & poor logic with No Comments

Ecotopia and their Facebook Forest

Ecotopia, not the fine people who cycle across Europe every year but the peddlers of “environmental and ethical shopping” (an oxymoron if ever i heard one), have created the “Facebook Forest”, a place on Facebook where, in return for our joining up and inviting our friends to join up, Ecotopia will plant one tree for every fifty of us who join up.

Ecotopia are one of a large number of companies selling eco-nonsense, blatant eco-cons and fraudulent eco-snakeoil products. While I am sure some of the products Ecotopia sell are great, they also sell EcoBalls, magnetic toilet descallers, magnetic fuel savers, Aqua Balls and Magno Balls; none of these products offer a any proof that they work, indeed i am quite certain that they don’t work, they are a cynical exercise in extracting money from well meaning people. More info on what I think of EcoBalls here and the magnetic products here.

Ecotopia were shortlisted for an award for Observer Ethical Awards as Ethical Business of the Year, but they seem to have been removed.

At face value the Facebook Forest seems a worthy enough cause, does it not, or at worst a fairly benign, albeit cynical, marketing exercise? However, they came in for a lot of hard questioning and criticism on the Facebook site (at least in part from me, but from many others too) which they chose to edit and delete rather than publicly respond to. Sure some of people were out-and-out nasty but others, such as myself, were not; we asked fair questions and Ecotopia deleted them. Funnily enough this annoyed people and they posted their outrage on the Facebook Forest site, resulting in further deletion until eventually Ecotopia withdrew the facility to post messages to their page entirely.

Now the FacebookForest page of Facebook is rather dull and lifeless because the “wall” and the “discussion” sections have been removed, making it a very one way experience; a very old school, read only internet rather than the bold, two way, “web 2.0″ Facebook experience.

It seem obvious to me, though clearly no to them, that it is a bad move to use social networking sites and viral marketing to jump on the environmental bandwagon to try to sell pseudo-eco ideas and products. This is presumably because they don’t see the irony of selling the idea of planing trees, with Ecotopia-branding on them, to somehow offset their/our guilt for having bought into the oxymoron of eco-consumerism and selling eco-shit, while trying to get us to attract our friends to their web site, presumably to sell them things they otherwise would not have bought and do not need and probably don’t work. They seem to be muddling the altruistic idea of planting trees with the not so altruistic idea of marketing crap, and they have chosen the wrong place to do it.

Problem for Ecotopia is that if they censor people on the internet in one place then the censored material will pop up elsewhere on the internet, where they can’t do anything about it. Anyone who would like to comment on this is welcome to, please fill in the form at the bottom of the post.

[ Facebook Forest on Facebook and Facbook Forest on Ecotopia's site. ]

Written on 01 March 2008 by Jon under Bad Science, Eco Nonsence with No Comments

Mummy, what happened to the ancient forests?

Well Dear, I used them to wipe my arse.

Sorry to be so crude, but this is the bottom line, Kimberly-Clark are still cutting down ancient forests to make toilet rolls!

It insane but true, rather than use sustainable sources of wood pulp or even recycled paper, Kimberly-Clark cut down forest which has been standing where it is since the beginning of time to make toilet tissue for us to wipe our bums on.

Please:

buy recycled or FSC bog roll.
get involved with the campaign and take action
join the Facebook groups and spread the word

Written on 16 November 2007 by Jon under Eco Nonsence with No Comments

Jon’s Burninator / propane puffer

I said I was going to have a go at making one of these here and I have a working prototype now. Its ignition system is not yet working, I want it to be automatic and electrical, but we tried it out last night with a small methylated-spirit burner instead and it worked well!

We only ran it up to about 2 bar but it did exactly what I wanted it to, it blew large brief balls of yellow flame into the night sky when i hit the go button - what is more it did not blow up or kill anyone, which was a relief.

How it works:

The propane gas builds up pressure in in the second pressure chamber (limited to 2 bar for now by the regulator) and is released by the solenoid (bought from eBay for next to nothing but quite expensive normally) in short bursts.

At the same time as the electrical pulse opens the solenoid, the car ignition coil is (supposed to be) fired, igniting the gas as it escapes - but as of yet I have not built the necessary driver for it (i tried to make one using just a relay, but it did not work).

[ later note - while the square wave driver bought worked well for making the ignition coil make decent sparks they were not strong enough to ignite the gas as it escaper, so it is back to using a pilot light. ]

A friend suggested i look up Ruben’s Tubes……. and they do indeed look fun!

Written on 12 August 2007 by Jon under Eco Nonsence, How to make a with 3 Comments

The Burninator

So I wanna make on of these:

so, it is as eco as nothing, but i still want to make one!

Et1pjXyoaek

Some Flickr pictures.

…..and for 2007, the “Burninator X” !!

PS - Made one, click here!!

Written on 31 May 2007 by Jon under Eco Nonsence, How to make a with 4 Comments

CheatNeutral - the movie

I hate carbon offsetting. Beth and some mates have made a movie to go with their website, www.cheatneutral.com - full length version on YouTube here:

Longer, more informative and with more swearing, join them on their adventure through the world of offsetting, hear from the people who’ve taken them seriously, and watch them read emails while hungover……..

Written on 09 May 2007 by Jon under Eco Nonsence with No Comments

Mini hydro miracle - nonsence!

According to multiple news sorces, a Mr Gilmartin from Cumbria has re-invented the water wheel.

Apparently the 60-year-old electrician and inventor, who does not own a television (so what? nor do I) and has never lived in a house with electricity (??), has invented a micro hydro power station which can power a house from a stream with only 8 inches of head. This has been reported as some how miraculous and how he has solved a century’s old problem in building a micro hydro (there is nothing new about micro-hydro schemes). What actually is miraculous is the idea that one can run a house from a stream with only 8 inches of head (seems he has solved the problem of how to break the laws of physics), this is risible nonsense; by my calculations that is 1.7 cubic meters of water per second for a mere 2kW load (an conservative average UK household load)…….. 1.7 cubic meters of water per second!! That would fill a bath tub twice, every second; quite some stream.

A Danny Miller, in this wiki, comes up with a very similar conclusion:

2000W is 2000 joules/sec. 1 joule is the energy of raising or lowering 0.7376 lbs over 1 ft. So at 100% efficiency, you’d need to move 2212.8 lbs/sec over 8″, 276.6 gal/sec. 16,596 gal/min. Water turbines have had 80%-90% efficiency for over 100 years when used under ideal circumstances. As such it’s notable that while a small, economical, low draw waterwheel may be something new, it cannot possibly produce much more power than turbines have in the past. The 70% specified is a somewhat low performer but operating on such low head may be something new. So let’s take 70% specified in. Then we need 23,709 gpm through the turbine to generate 2KW. That’s a pretty powerful stream @ 8″ of head! This would fill a 50m by 25m by 2m Olympic swimming pool in 27.8 minutes. I have to note that since the speed of water in a natural stream is usually limited to a few feet per sec, the width of the device depicted is perhaps a meter, and the height of the water channel’s cross sectional area must be only a small fraction of the 8″ head then I don’t see how such a volume could flow through a device of the width depicted. I get 89.9 cu meter/min through a 1 meter wide by 2cm high cross section (10% of head) requires 74.8 m/sec flow rate, or 167.3 mph!

So what is going on here, bad science, another Windsave, or just bad reporting?

Written on 24 April 2007 by Jon under Bad Science, Eco Nonsence with 2 Comments

Why home wind won’t work

I have every intention of writing something of my own here one day, but until i get around to it, here are some links…….

Home wind turbines are significantly under performing and in the worst cases generating less than the electricity needed to power a single light bulb, according to the biggest study of its kind carried out in Britain: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/06/windpower.alternativeenergy

Nice page from CAT’s Info Department:
http://www.cat.org.uk/information/info_content.tmpl?sku=info_faq_roofwind&subdir=information

Two very good “rants” on Windsave:
http://scruss.com/blog/index.php?p=31
http://scruss.com/blog/?p=236

Short clip from a Panorama documentary detailing that the average U.K households have only a six meters per second wind speed, B&Q are selling us something that will save us £10 annually for a £1500 outlay. In it a Windsave man does a terrible job of trying to tell us why they are still good, despite the company’s enormous backpedaling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVo0WvuX7K0