Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Yes indeed, yet another science question. My question is that if water can be created by combining elements.

I first got this idea, because I once saw someone create water, when they put jet fuel into a water bottle, shook the bottle, poured out the jet fuel, popped in a match, and it created pure water. They claimed it was because of the ammonia in the jet fuel, but when I did the same procedure with raw ammonia, it didn't give me water. Can anybody help, or have an idea why this happened?

Lastly, does anyone have any good sites that deal with creating water with ammonia? Something along the lines of http://www.nsip.net/previous/winning/haber/haber_1.cfm Any help is highly appreciated.

I don't think this will help you make water but it might help.


Now, the hydrogen and oxygen idea :
In theory such reaction may be accomplished , and would produce pure water. Moreover, ultrapure water (especially isotopically labelled waters for assorted scientific applications) is indeed produced in such a way, industrially. However , hydrogen does not come cheap. In order to obtain it, one would need to electrolyze some water or run some sort of a chemical reaction (such as H2SO4 + Zn for example) . Energy needed for electrolysis would be more expensive than obtaining water in some other way. Now,if we were on say jupiter, H2 may be more abundant but then , oxygen would be a rare commodity.
H2+O2 reaction produces lots of heat and if we could utilize 100% of it than perhaps electrolysis *may* become practical. Unfortunately, basic laws of thermodynamics do not allow this to happen. Hencforth we are stuck with using naturally occuring water and puryfying it as necessary - by distillation, dialysis or other means.


Hope it helps