Eli5: Why do automobiles operate with diesel or petrol but not with water?
In: Physics
Vehicles with traditional engines use a chemical process called combustion to generate power.
They take a fuel molecule and react it with oxygen to release heat and generate pressure.
Now consider water – H2O. It already contains oxygen – it’s actually mostly oxygen by weight. It’s not combustible, it’s hydrogen that has already been combusted.
You can’t burn it again, so no more energy can be realistically extracted from a water molecule unless you have something much more dangerous than oxygen around to react it with.
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