While academia has been spurning the topic, hundreds, if not thousands of hobbyists and independent investigators worldwide are working on various electrolysis-like projects which put out more energy than was required to run the electrolysis unit. These pursuits go by various names such as "Brown's gas" and "water fuel cells"; and have various heroes, such as the late Stanley Meyer, and more recently, John Kanzius, who is "burning" salt water using radio frequencies. A number of commercial interests are involved in the research and development of the various approaches as well.

The famous 19th century scientist, Michael Faraday, defined a limit of output energy possible in any standard electrolysis scenario. It is well known in thermodynamics that it takes more energy to dissociate water into hydrogen and oxygen than can be returned when the hydrogen is burned.

But these rogue experimenters of today are reporting output from their set-ups that exceed Faraday's limit many times over, claiming 7x, 10x, or even more, producing as much as one liter of gas per hour using just 1/2 Watt of electricity. The factors that seem to contribute to these effects include using a large number of stainless plates close together, the plates roughed to facilitate releasing the bubbles, driving the cell using square wave, pulsed DC at Kilohertz frequencies, and constantly modifying the frequency to optimize gas production.

Moray King, who has published three seminal books on zero point energy, recently put forth a scientific model in which he suggests that the excess energy being observed in these unusual electrolysis set-ups comes from zero point energy, by producing charged water gas clusters, which somehow achieve a self-organizing criticality that coherently activates and absorbs zero point energy.

The experimental set-ups are typically rather simple, which is leading to a proliferation of the number of people reproducing and working to improve the effect and its consistency to the point where it can be used to serve as a practical, primary energy source -- an energy generator that could operate anywhere there is water. Zero point energy is everywhere in the universe; it is the foundation of the fabric of space. Other groups, such as Xogen Technologies, are using these processes to purify water. These energy sources could actually produce culinary water as a by product.

The day of water power, via zero point energy, is arriving. Welcome to the future. http://watercell.info

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Further resources:

Water Powered Car - good start to get introduced to the subject

Panacea University - has a elaborate Practical Guide to Free-Energy Devices and great resources and explanations of the patents of the devices that can revolutionaze the world if they go into mass production.