Using a silica gel dryer system to adsorb water vapor how can you separate and collect the hydrogen?

Question

I have heard that you can use an electrical process to collect the hydrogen molecules and the same for the oxygen molecules. How would you separate them? By pressure and sift out by weight/chambered tanks? My theory is you can create steam from water to get the vapor and then use dryer pressured tanks to adsorb the molecules. If you can collect them seperately, then you could in turn power a vehicle with the Hydrogen and burn it thus creating more heat to produce more steam.

Answer 1

Following what you wrote, it sounds like you want to

1) Boil water.

2) Absorb water in silica gel.

3) Release hydrogen and oxygen through undetermined process (electrolysis?).

4) Burn hydrogen.  Use excess heat for step 1.

5) Repeat.

Could work... except for step numbers 1, and 2.  Creating steam is self-defeating, as you would need liquid water to perform step 3.

You *could* use a desiccant (the silica gel) to capture the steam, but you would then need to use heat to cause the desiccant to release the water so that you could move on to step 3.  This is also a self-defeating step.

And in step 3... well... you don't really identify the process by which the water would be decomposed, but you mention an electrical process, so I'm guessing it would be electrolysis.

As for how the hydrogen and oxygen are separated in electrolysis... Oxygen is collected at the anode, while hydrogen is collected at the cathode.  By simply placing these electrodes beneath their own containers, hydrogen will collect in one, and oxygen will collect in the other.

And of course the biggest problem with this cycle... burning the hydrogen will never produce enough energy to repeat it.  You will always end up with less energy at step 4, than what you used in steps 1 through 3.

As for where you might have heard about silica desiccants in relation to hydrogen...  The gas collected above the cathode will be a mixture of hydrogen and water vapor.  Generally, if you are going to pressurize or liquefy the hydrogen,  that water vapor will cause a problem.  Usually, water will build up in the pressurizer, requiring regularly draining.  Some have proposed using a desiccant to dry the hydrogen.

Answer 2

Yep.  He thinks that since water vapor is a gas, and because water consists of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, then it follows that water vapor must consist of free molecules of hydrogen and oxygen which can be then separated with a molecular sieve of some sort.   It'd work great, except that water vapor really consists of lots of very tightly-constructed water molecules which hang on to their H and O components with great resolve.  Only a lot of energy--typically electrical, though enough heat will do it, too--will break that strong H-O bond and release hydrogen and oxygen.

Answer 3

It will never work.

Amount of energy it takes to break the H and O bond from water will equal to amount of energy it generates by combining H and O into water.  So the net gain of the system is 0 or less.  

It won't work.   Conservation of energy, chemistry 101

Answer 4

Wrong!!!!

   The hydrogen will collect around the positive . The oxygen will collect around the negative . There U have your fuel and oxidizer which generates a lot of power. The only problem it it cost about 3 times the energy u will get out of the hydrogen and oxygen.