Genepax

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Genepax
Type	R & D
Founded	October 10, 2006
Headquarters	Osaka, Japan
Key people	Kiyoshi Hirasawa, President
Products	Manufacture and sales of electricity generation systems R & D of electricity generation technologies
Total equity	43 million yen (approx. 400,000 USD)
Website	http://www.genepax.co.jp/en/

Genepax is a Japanese corporation that claims to have created a car which can run on nothing but water.^[1] According to the company, a proprietary unit, a type of membrane electrode assembly (MEA), breaks water apart into hydrogen and oxygen using a chemical reaction, which provides fuel for a hydrogen fuel cell to run the car.^[2]

Currently, the Genepax product appears to violate the First Law of Thermodynamics. Energy must be supplied to break the water into hydrogen and oxygen to produce the hydrogen fuel for the fuel cell. Oxidizing the hydrogen within the fuel cell can at best produce only as much energy as it took to break apart the water in the first place, leaving no energy left to power the car. Yet the company claims that water is all that is needed to make the car go.

1 Possible explanation
2 References
3 See also
4 External Links

[edit] Possible explanation

A report in TechOn magazine states that a "well-known process to produce hydrogen from water" is employed and that "This process is allegedly similar to the mechanism that produces hydrogen by a reaction of metal hydride and water."^[3]

It is well known that certain metal hydrides will react with water to produce hydrogen^[4] - which could in turn be used to power the car. The problem is that the metal hydride is the "fuel" - not the water - because it is consumed by the process of reacting with the water. So sooner or later (probably sooner) the car will need to be refilled with more metal hydride - and the first law of thermodynamics guarantees that the energy cost of producing the hydride will be greater than the energy needed to drive the car.

Genepax demonstrated the car in the Japanese city of Osaka on 12 June 2008. One liter (2.1 pints) of any kind of water -- rain, river or sea -- was all that was needed to run the engine for about an hour at a speed of 80 km (50 miles). How this is possible from an engine which generates only 120 watts of power remains to be explained.

There is no infrastructure required to recharge your batteries, which is usually the case for most electric cars. The car will supposedly continue to run for as long as you have water to top up with from time to time."^[5]