Phlogistication of Water – new fuels

What a quirk: mainstream science may have lacked the ability to project the catalysis of HHO (a hydrogen gas useful as fuel) because it discarded an old alchemical concept; the phlogiston.  

The phlogiston is the essential energy / character expressed in the combustion process.  It is independent from the substance(s) flowing through the combustion.  Water may be said to have no inherent phlogiston.  However, the resonant RF devices that make HHO devise a way to phlogisticate water.  

If science had retained the concept that things could be phlogisticated then someone may have thought ‘hey perhaps we can phlogisticate water’ i.e. make it burn.

With due and agreeable respect to the OED, from who I cite:

phlogisticate Chem. Now hist. and rare.[< PHLOGISTIC adj. + -ATE suffix3. Cf. French phlogistiquer(1788; earlier as phlogistiqué (see PHLOGISTICATED adj.). Cf. slightly earlier PHLOGISTICATED adj.]     trans. To make phlogistic; to cause to combine with phlogiston.

phlogiston [< post classical Latin phlogiston (see quot. 1702) < ancient Greek φλογιστόν, neuter of  φλογιστός burnt up, inflammable <  φλογιζειν to set on fire (<  φλογ-,  φλοξ flame (see PHLOX n.) + -φλογ-IZE suffix) + -ιζειν, suffix forming verbal adjectives.  

The use of the term in sense 1 and the theory connected with it were introduce by Stahl i 1702, in his edition of Beccher’s Physica Subterranea of 1669:    1702 G. E. STAHL Spec. Beccherianum I. I. xvi. 19 in B.’s Phys. Subterr. (1732), Ad substantiam ipsam mixti, ut ingrediens..ut materiale principium, et pars totius compositi constitutiva, concurrit, materia et principium ignis, non ipse ignis: Ego Phlogiston appellare cpi.     The phrase ‘esse φλογιστόν’ had been used by Sennert in the sense ‘the being flammable’, i.e. flammability or combustibility as a quality of some substances, but not regarded as a substance or principle:   1619 D. SENNERTUS De Chym. Consensu ac Dissensu 283 At Colores, Odores, Sapores, esse φλογιστόν & similia alia, mineralibus, metallis, gemmis lapidibus, plantis, animalibus insunt.   The existence of phlogiston was denied by Lavoisier in 1775, and though stoutly maintained by Priestley, the belief in it was generally abandoned by 1800. 1. Chem. A hypothetical substance formerly supposed to exist in combination in all combustible bodies, and to be released in the process of combustion (by some identified with the element fire, conceived as being fixed in flammable substances). Now hist.


© 2001-2023. All rights reserved.

Powered by Hydejack v9.1.6