Hi Terry,
I'm probably the most skeptical guy in the world concerning all the claims of energy from water. I'm far from sold this development is necessarily workable or even functions as the articles claim. There are, however, two factors that make me a lot more reluctant to draw conclusions without more data.
1. They aren't claiming to draw energy from the water, but from contaminants in the water. This isn't the first time such a thing has been proposed. There is no reason you can't put dikes coated with semi-permeable membranes on river mouths that empty into the ocean and get energy that way. The fresh water and the salt water have different galvanic potentials and by introducing electrodes and membranes you can potentially extract electric power. It isn't free energy, there are electrochemical reactions taking place and they would have taken place anyhow, it is just that the membranes allow them to be harnessed.
2. When someone uses the term "catalyst" I get wary and start to look at things more closely. Catalysts can do some utterly amazing things like promote reactions without adding energy. It isn't that catalysts create energy out of nothing, they don't. But suppose we have two chemicals that are at a higher energy state than they would be if they reacted. They cannot react, however, because more energy needs to be introduced to cause them to start to react. Since the reaction drops them to a lower total energy state than which they started, more energy is released that is applied. This is hardly a novel condition, it happens every time you burn anything...the firewood sits there nice, cold and stable but if you add just a tiny amount of heat in the form of a match you get a huge bonfire.
Likewise, you can have hydrogen peroxide sit in a container for years and nothing happens, add a sliver of nickle and it will break down into high temperature steam and free oxygen.....and the nickle will be untouched. Nickle is a catalyst for many reactions. Catalysts are chemicals that act like a matchmaker, they introduce the parties then depart when things get hot...they promote chemical reactions without the need to cross as large an energy threshold. Often the energy in the material(s) such as ambient temperature is enough to kick off the reaction in the presence of a catalyst. If you've ever seen an explosion when pure oxygen hits grease, you can appreciate that you don't necessarily need to add energy to get a large energy release just so long as the energy state of the material(s) after the reaction is much lower than before. Catalysts can't promote a reaction that results in a material with more potential energy than was available before the reaction.
In the case in point, the navy says it is using catalysts to react molecules dissolved into the seawater into forms that can be used as fuel. The fuel would actually have less energy in its chemical bonds than the donor materials, but the energy would now be in a form that is readily released.
As I said, I am not vouchsafing this, I have no idea of how valid it is. I'm wary as all get out, actually. On the other hand, they don't seem to be claiming a process that violates basic physical law --- like every other energy from water process I've heard of. It seems within the realm of possiblity, so I really want more data before making up my mind.
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