14 DAY TRIAL // Water puts out fire. This has been true for eons. Scientists, however, when they discovered the chemical formula of water (H2O) spared no time in theorizing that you can use water to make fire too. Now, they have been proven right.
To be fair, the concept of turning water into fire, then the fire into water again, has been possible to put into practice for years.
The only problem was that it was too expensive for commercial applications. Now, that problem has been solved, at least for welding flames.
What you can see in the video embedded below (we could only find it in Italian), and the photo up on the left, is the Safeflame.
Created by a team of researchers led by one Andrew Ellis, the flame splits the water into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis.
Chemists have managed to come up with new formulations of membrane to boost the performance of the electrolyzer. They also researched new catalysts.
“We've got a whole team of chemists working on new formulations of membrane, which have shown increases in the performance of the electrolyzer,” Andrew Ellis told Euronews.
“We've also been doing lots of research on catalysts, trying to reduce the amount of platinum and looking into much cheaper materials that can be used in the cells. And this research has led to big reduction in the cost of electrolyzer systems.”
To use the Safeflame, all you need is a standard power socket and water. The water is split into hydrogen and oxygen gases, then fed to the torch, where the flame is produced (oxygen and hydrogen bonding back together is a rather... violent process).
The best part is that the only byproduct of the reaction is water. Steam as it were. Which means there is no byproduct at all.
A final benefit of Safeflame is that the torch itself never heats up, since the entire reaction happens outside of it. You can touch the tip even during operation without problems. Just don't stick your finger into the fire itself, since that's still as unhealthy as ever.
