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According to a number of conspiracy sites (see Natural News and Newspunch), Buffalo shooting victim Aaron Salter Jr had just invented and patented a gas-free car that runs on water (implying that is why he was shot).

Ignoring the conspiratorial part of the claim (that is why he was shot), is it true that he had just invented a gas-free car? That would be pretty cool.

F1Krazy
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TheAsh
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    The first article states clearly it's a hydrogen fuel cell (i.e. "based on water") - does this really need challenging? Or are you asking did he invent hydrogen power cells or a variant thereof? He certainly seems to be publicising AWS Hydrogen Technologies LLP. – Jiminy Cricket. May 26 '22 at 09:34
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    @JiminyCricket. I dont understand what a hydrogen fuel cell is. Does it run on water? – TheAsh May 26 '22 at 10:31
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    @TheAsh No. No car can run on water. It can run on hydrogen, which can be generated from water using electricity. – gerrit May 26 '22 at 10:32
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    On Skeptics.SE, we require claims to be notable - they must be widely believed. It is hard to show that, so we accept a proxy of being widely seen or read. A popular article is perfect. Sometimes people confuse this meaning of notabiity with meaning the claim must come from a reliable source. That is not required. I have deleted such comments from this question, to avoid further confusing new users. – Oddthinking May 26 '22 at 11:49
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    Are Natural News and Newspunch widely read? I had not heard of the latter. – Karl Knechtel May 27 '22 at 02:48
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    @gerrit: While I agree with you, it sounds like the engine takes water as a input (the way a gasoline ICE engine needs both gas and a battery powered sparkplug), so it seems to me that to a layman it could be "running on water". – sharur May 27 '22 at 07:20
  • @KarlKnechtel: The latter at least is a common source of stupid fake news that gets reshared by e-mail/Facebook. It's not *remotely* reputable though; calling it a conspiracy site implies it's even *trying* to look for the truth; NewsPunch is just making up fake shit for clicks. – ShadowRanger May 27 '22 at 09:52
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    @ShadowRanger: The former is **also** a common source of stupid fake news that shows up on the front page of Google for a lot of health-related searches, which actually makes it worse because it is very very widely read and believed (7 million unique visitors per month according to wikipedia). – user21820 May 27 '22 at 10:02
  • @JiminyCricket. Well, I heard similar story. Dark forces killed an inventor of a car running on water. Oil company etc... Is there such question? – BЈовић May 27 '22 at 10:58
  • Sure, the search facility at the top of the page gave me a list, [this](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9064/does-a-prototype-car-that-runs-on-water-exist) was among them. @BЈовић – Jiminy Cricket. May 27 '22 at 11:01
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    @gerrit in principle, you could have a steam-powered car which could then be claimed to "run on water" as long as you ignore the annoying detail of needing some energy to convert the water to steam. – terdon May 27 '22 at 11:05
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    @terdon, in USA I remember hearing claims of someone having invented a "water powered" car back in early 90's. It was only "water powered" in the sense that it ran on hydrogen (which can be obtained from water through elecrtolysis) by detonating the hydrogen in the engine cylinders and thereby combining it with atmospheric oxygen, resulting in water in the exhaust. If this invention was something similar to that, it would not be a new invention. – alec May 31 '22 at 00:17

2 Answers2

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In short:

  • Is inventor Aaron W. Salter the same man as 2022 Buffalo shooting victim Aaron Salter Jr? Yes.
  • Did Aaron Salter have a patent related to efficiency of hydrogen-power engines? Yes.
  • Did Aaron Salter invent a car that runs on water? Absolutely not.

Was he the same man?

Aaron Salter had a Linked In profile that shows he was both a police officer in Buffalo New York and linked to his company AWS Hydrogen Technologies.

I have been a police officer for the last 27 years the last two I have been in the traffic division, I do the events at the First Niagara Center along with riding the motorcycle doing parades and races around the city of Buffalo. I'm a jack of all trades a master of none I'm always working on my vechicles and or my project of running engines on water for the last four years or so, I would like to realize my dream of getting cars to run off of water using my newly discovered energy source some day.

Images provided by the victim's family, e.g. in People Magazine match this YouTube interview of the inventor: in which he explains he is a Buffalo police officer.

Aaron Salter Jr

Did he have a patent?

Aaron Salter had a patent, filed in 2015 and granted in 2018: Method and system for using the by-product of electrolysis.

An engine system for generating hydrogen and oxygen, and a method using a by-product of electrolysis, for use in an internal combustion engine to improve efficiency and reduce emissions. The engine system has an electrolysis cell for generating hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis of an aqueous solution, a battery as a source of power for providing electrical power to the electrolysis cell, and cooling system for maintaining the temperature of the electrolysis cell to reduce problems associated with overheating of the cell during electrolysis. [...]

The patent has expired because fees were not paid.

Does this engine run on water?

In summary, this invention takes some water and a full battery, and ends up with hydrogen, oxygen, some sludge (from water impurities), and a flat battery. The claim is that the sludge can be used to make a hydrogen engine more efficient than other hydrogen engines.

This is not running an engine on water. It is essentially running on a battery. There is a cycle of turning water into hydrogen and oxygen and then back to water again.

In the above interview, he describes building a prototype of an "HHO" fuel system, where the hydrogen is mixed into the fuel intake of a gasoline engine. We have addressed HHO engines on Skeptics.SE before. They do not run on water.

He also describes a system where he ran an electrolysis cell (off a gasoline engine) until he built up enough hydrogen pressure to be able to run the car off hydrogen for several minutes. Again, this is not running off water. The fuel of the overall system is gasoline.

Arne
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Oddthinking
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    and the only reason it makes the car more efficient is that by filtering out the impurities as "sludge" you get rid of blockages in the hydrogen fuel cell that decrease efficiency... – jwenting May 26 '22 at 13:46
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    And for completeness, it's almost certainly *not* the reason why he was shot. He was shot because he engaged the shooter in his role as a security guard. (The shooter might have shot him anyhow for the same reason he shot everyone else, of course. But it's highly unlikely he knew anything about the patent or anything relating to it.) – Darrel Hoffman May 26 '22 at 18:52
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    Waiting 6 years to kill a man for inventing a "new" type of engine seems excessively long for an assassination attempt. Especially when the articles compare Mr. Salter to another inventor that died suddenly "right after" his invention. I mean, the patent had time to be issued *and* lapse for non-payment of fees. If the gov wanted to hide the design, they simply wouldn't have issued the patent in the first place, calling it "national security", if people are going to conspiratorial about it. Also, correlations is not causation, and his invention and death are very remotely correlated, if that. – computercarguy May 26 '22 at 19:38
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    Please use comment to improve or clarify the answer, not to share your opinions. – Oddthinking May 27 '22 at 02:46
  • @Oddthinking: While I agree with you, it sounds like the engine takes water as a input (the way a gasoline ICE engine needs both gas and a battery powered sparkplug), so it seems to me that to a layman it could be "running on water", in the same way that a traditional car "runs on the battery" via spark plugs. – sharur May 27 '22 at 07:24
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    @sharur: I disagree linguistically and technically. Linguistically, a layman's definition of "running on water" would be you fill the fuel tank with water (and not gasoline). I think that is what the OP was asking about. Similarly calling my car an "electric car" because it has spark plugs would be misleading. Technically, a gasoline ICE doesn't need the battery once the motor is started. The alternator drives the spark plugs - at least, that's true of my old car. – Oddthinking May 27 '22 at 07:42
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    @Oddthinking I'll bow out to your superior knowledge of ICE engines (I thought that spark plugs ran off the battery, with the alternator charging the battery while the car was in motion, rather than having a direct path, but its not a place of expertise). And in the described system, it sounded, at least to me, that you would be regularly filling the water reservoir (basically solving the infrastructure problem of transporting hydrogen, by carrying an on-board electrolysis set up to split the water into hydrogen for combustion). It didn't sound to me like the combustion byproduct was captured. – sharur May 27 '22 at 17:23
  • @sharur: Oh, you may well be right about having to re-fill the water reservoir. – Oddthinking May 28 '22 at 04:02
  • Another factor: non-payment of the fees. If the invention were actually valuable that wouldn't have happened. – Loren Pechtel Jul 09 '22 at 21:20
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Without knowing anything at all about the shooting or the person, I can state categorically that he did not invent a working water-powered engine for cars.

This is a Physics and Chemistry answer. Water is about as oxidized as it is possible to get. This means there is no way that doing anything with water and air can release significant further amounts of energy. The chemical energy in the hydrogen was all released when it got hitched with oxygen to make water (H2O).

These days they will take your money and give you a patent on almost anything. It's your problem if what you have paid for a patent on, doesn't work in the real universe.

People who might consider assassinating an inventor to suppress his invention, are surely likely to do the sort of due diligence that the patent office doesn't, before embarking on a course of action which could end with life in prison or maybe even the electric chair. So there's this against the conspiracy theorizing.

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    I would have flagged this as "not an answer" if there wasn't that small part about the chemical reason that water cannot be a _fuel_ in anything "running on water." Unfortunately, there is no source given for that statement. And the remaining rant is not helpful at all. – Dubu May 27 '22 at 13:57
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    "Water is about as oxidized as it is possible to get" <-- ClF3 would like to have a word with you. ;-) – R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE May 27 '22 at 15:23
  • @R..GitHubSTOPHELPINGICE, yep, so would sodium and anything else that reacts with water, or is oxidized by water, including steel and iron. – computercarguy May 27 '22 at 16:15
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    @computercarguy any sane person (except for a con-man) would call that a sodium- or whatever- powered car. Water-powered clearly implies that it's using water *in place* of petrol or diesel or other fuel, which is impossible. – nigel222 May 27 '22 at 16:22
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    ClF3 and similar exotics are why I said "about as oxidized". Things that will oxidize water are things that will never be allowed as car fuel! – nigel222 May 27 '22 at 16:25
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    @nigel222, I never said those reactions could or should be used in a car or to call them a water powered vehicle, I just said that there's more things that oxidize and react with water to contradict your statement of "water is about as oxidized as it is possible to get". You invoked chemistry, so I and the other comment also invoked chemistry to prove your statement wrong. We made no statements about these reactions being used as fuel. – computercarguy May 27 '22 at 16:27
  • The first 2 paragraphs actually worked as an interesting answer, and the 2 last paragraphs seem like it should have been in the comment section instead. – Clockwork May 27 '22 at 18:52
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    @computercarguy: Those "sodium and anything else that reacts with water" things you mentioned do not oxidize water. They reduce water, and are themselves oxidized. ClF3 is in a totally different category because "its oxidizing ability surpasses oxygen's". – Ben Voigt May 27 '22 at 20:38
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    [Welcome to Skeptics!](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/welcome-to-new-users) Please [provide some references](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/5) to support your claims. – Oddthinking May 28 '22 at 04:05
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    @Clockwork: Except that they shouldn't be in the comment section either! – Oddthinking May 28 '22 at 04:05
  • Could not water in some far-out theory perhaps be used as fuel for a fusion-powered vehicle (using a small bit of the energy from the fusion reaction to electrolyze the water)? However out-there a concept, it *would* for all intents and purposes be a water-powered car if the technology became somehow feasible in the future? (Ok, perhaps it's only the hydrogen truly reacting, but when you fill your car up with water, and the result is motion, you'll see that many will call water the fuel) – JeopardyTempest May 28 '22 at 11:24
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    This is not an answer that addresses the specifics of the question, as it only deals with a theoretical chemically powered car using water as fuel. But even theoretically, one could imagine a physically water-powered car (e.g. (1) a high reservoir of water on the car being used to covert potential energy to motion, or (2) a car being pushed by jets of water from the road), which again would only be relevant if that had been an invention by someone called Aaron Salter. – Henry May 28 '22 at 18:01
  • I remember hearing claims of someone having invented a "water powered" car back in early 90's. It was only "water powered" in the sense that it ran on hydrogen (which can be obtained from water through elecrtolysis) by detonating the hydrogen in the engine cylinders and thereby combining it with atmospheric oxygen, resulting in water in the exhaust. So a vehicle could be "water powered" in that sense. However obtaining hydrogen from water requires considerable energy and needs to be done outside of the vehicle because the process to separate water to hydrogen and oxygen is not very fast. – alec May 31 '22 at 00:27
  • @Henry No i can't. Considerations of stability and puotential energy density suggest a range far too small to be useful, and the probability of that vehicle ending up on its side before it runs out of range! – nigel222 Jun 01 '22 at 08:38
  • @Jeopardy_Tempest. I can't prove this *impossible* because physically, it's not. However, everything that is known about nuclear fusion says that if it's ever accomplished, it will take the form of a large power station. Of the easiest fusion reactions to achieve, all emit high energy neutrons. Without massive shielding, being near to one would be deadly. Even the "aneutronic" p-B11 reaction (also the only one that uses ordinary light hydrogen or protium) emits neutrons on a small fraction of side-chain reactions. For details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion. – nigel222 Jun 01 '22 at 08:44
  • @Jeopardy_Tempest physics and engineering aside, it's only in Hollywood that a lone individual solves a long standing engineering problem in all details on his own. It's like imagining that the Wright Brothers didn't just demonstrate that powered flight was possible, but presented the world with a fully developed Spitfire or Boeing 707. (Except controlled nuclear fusion is almost certainly harder than that! ) – nigel222 Jun 01 '22 at 08:48