Foxy, Fractelle, fully agree hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and thus is a desirable source of energy, but...
the bad news is almost all hydrogen on this planet is already combusted.
Good news is, combusted hydrogen is good stuff... in fact we could use more of it -at least in pure, unsalted form.
There is some interesting research happening at the moment, using aluminium/selenium alloys as a catalyst to separate H2O. Question will be, how much energy required to produce the alloy? There ain't no such thing as a free lunch... unless of course you own a bank...
Sorry, can't help myself.

RawMustard: "where did the energy come from that creates these alternatives!"

This is pure speculation on my part, but I don't think that is the right question.

We are surrounded by energy and in a decade or three we will have no trouble collecting it economically. An average household roof is 250 sq meters http://www.savemygarden.com.au/how_much_rain.html it you covered it with solar panels, it would collect an average 30 kW hr per day. (Based figures crunched from http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=performance&climate=536526513&town=South%20Brisbane&state=QLD&country=Australia&solarpanel=31 ). An average household consumes 23 kW hr per day.
http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/la/qala.nsf/0/CA25708400173F67CA25704600244D7C That is photovoltaic's, at todays efficiencies. They will get more efficient, and there is also solar thermal, wind, geo thermal, wave energy.

There are two things preventing us from using this energy right now. The obvious one is the price. But price is a disappearing problem. The price of photovoltaic's is halving every decade, and that is what we expect to happen given the economies of scale. In 3 decades photovoltaic's will be cheaper than coal is now. Wind has a lower starting price, so will reach parity faster. http://www.solarbuzz.com/StatsCosts.htm

The other problem is storage. Sure we can generate the power, but natural sources are intermittent, so it are near useless we can store it until needed. In fact when it comes to transport, or farming, or thousands of other applications the collected energy, be it coal, nuclear or renewables, isn't useful unless to can "bottle it" and use it later. The "bottles" we have now are batteries, hydrogen, compressed air and lots of other esoteric ideas. Unlike the energy collection problem, it is not obvious to me how or even if any of these solutions can scale to be a replacement for petrol.

Thus RawMustard, I think you have the question arse-about. We have the energy, we just need the "alternative" to store it in.

I did not realise this was a branch of the Sceptic Society,and had so many closed minds in it. How do you think they created those images on the plateau in South America at Nazca? How did they build the great Pyramid in Egypt? We dont know to this day how they did these things.

What if gravity coud be turned on and off? What if there is a perpetual motion machine, present in every atom in the world. What if the posit that energy can be neither created nor destroyed were substituted for matter? Some of the comments about Brown's gas are the comments of overeducated university brainwashed individuals, with minds befuddled,by preconcieved truth's that may not be truths after all.

They can make big bangs, by liberating the energy in a kilo or so of plutonium. If the minds of some people were dynamite, they would not even blow their hats off.

If you got off your ample derriere and went and saw the work this bloke is doing before you rubbished him, you would be a lot more use to both this forum, and yourselves. I once heard a sermon entitled I was there and I saw it. If Brown's gas is a scam, go and see for yourself, dont just have a cheap shot on the net.

There will be a demo at the Greenfest, 5th to 7th June in Brisbane. Go and have a look for yourself, but dont rubbish me until you have.

Peter,
I am rather ignorant on chemistry so I cannot really make a
knowledgeable criticism of brown's gas.
However I did notice that energy has to be used to break up the water
molecule. Fuel from water has been the holy grail for many a year.

Is the energy needed to breakdown the water the catch 22 ?

Bazz,

It is good to see a mind like Peter the believer's, untainted by education, can see the truth when hundreds of thousands of engineers (their minds clouded by facts) can only see a fat con job.

This link might reflect the opinions of us skeptics.

http://www.alternative-energy-resources.net/browns-gas-the-reality.html

As for most industries, energy is one of the largest cost items, the money that could be made from a super efficient source would far outstrip any profits the oil industries etc could protect. And the patent alone would probably exceed in value the net work of say Exxon, Shell etc together.

It would also be a very difficult secret to protect without shooting the designers. The patent laws require that the details of the technology are available for all to see, but the holder of the patent has the exclusive rights.

To protect the secret, the technology cannot be patented, and the technology owners risk that someone else will patent it and exclude them from using it. This scenario could only be seriously considered by someone with the experience and knowledge of the field such as PTB.

Bazz: "I am rather ignorant on chemistry so I cannot really make a knowledgeable criticism of brown's gas."

I think are being too kind to Brown gas. It is when it comes to the link Shadow posted above a deep understanding of the chemistry involved is required, but not here.

The energy released when you burn hydrogen is fixed. Since the oxygen is available in the air, the only thing the matters is the amount of hydrogen you can bring to the party. Dilute the hydrogen with something like oxygen and you _reduce_ the amount of energy available. It is that simple.

As an added bonus since oxygen is a gas you are still left with all the problems you had before - like Hydrogen's Houdini like behaviour, and it is still just as expensive to compress. And now since it is pre-mixed, it doesn't need to leak to explode, just a 20 microjoule spark. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyhydrogen This is why most torch systems like oxy-acetylene store the oxygen and fuel separately, producing the potentially explosive mixture at the last possible moment.

Peter the Believer: "I did not realise this was a branch of the Sceptic Society"

You are doing the equivalent of saying you get more mileage out of a tank petrol by leaving a air gap at the top, filling it with oxygen, and using the oxygen instead of the oxygen in the air. This is so obviously wrong I don't think disbelieving it could be called being sceptical. It is just applying common sense.

You can do tricky things with hydrogen, like storing it as a metal hydride. It is a solid in that form, and the bonds are weak so it is easy to convert it back to a gas. Unfortunately even doing that gets you nowhere near the density required, nor does it solve the problem finding enough platinum to make the fuel cells needed to use it.