How do you think of WES (Water Energy System)?

Question

A small Japanese company demonstrated WES (Water Energy System) technology by connecting it to the battery of a small electric car according to a TV recent news article.

WES seems to separate H2 from H2O temporary and let the electron of H2 to travel separate path than its proton. Electrons extracted are fed to the battery. The mortar connected to the batter runs. Electrons come back to WES and reunites with protons and then O. Finally reconstitutes Water. It is almost a perpetual machine, but it is not. During this process the material used in WES deteriorates. You need to replace this material. The challenge is how to make WES cost effective and mass producible. Once it is achieved, it can be used as a back up system for any battery system. You just keep adding water to the unit. It keeps producing electricity until it needs replacement. It consumes precious metal rather than oil. An immediate use is for electric cars. Do you think they've got something?

Answer 1

The energy needed to reduce the metal will exceed the energy derived. Now that does not mean the system will not 'work'  because several metals have very  high energy density, (energy per kg).

However, it may be a redundant step to convert it to hydrogen and then to battery power. We can get the  power directly by oxidizing the metal with oxygen from the air.

In principle this is just a battery that is charged up externally. ( reducing the metal  is equivalent to charging up the battery.)

Answer 2

It is very expensive, and not a reasonable alternative.

We have plenty of oil.  It may never run out!

Wait until it does, maybe 100 or 500 years from now.

By then new technologies will make switching easy.