By By Clif Knight, Hartselle Enquirer
With the price of oil hovering around $122 a barrel, an auto mechanic from Hartselle has
found a way to run a car on water.
Larry Thrasher, who operates an automotive shop on Blowing Springs Road five miles west of Hartselle, has developed a hydrogen fuel system that is more than doubling the fuel efficiency of his 1996 Cadillac (from 19 to 53 mpg) and has the potential to replace gasoline as the power source for any combustion engine. The same system enables his wife’s Toyota sedan to get 71 mpg on the interstate.
From the outside, Thrasher’s Cadillac looks like any other make and model of its kind. The difference is inside. A 14-gallon water tank is mounted in the trunk and two cylinders are mounted under the hood and behind the grill. One of the cylinders is used to extract hydrogen from water and the other produces a water mist that is used to control engine temperature, since hydrogen burns at a higher temperature than gasoline.
Thrasher said his fuel system uses filtered tap water, has no moving parts and doesn’t leave any pollutants behind. It uses about 1.5 ounces of water every 60 miles.
An ordained Baptist preacher, Thrasher said he started doing research on the internet for his fuel system about 18 months ago and began conducting experiments on his own car last August.
He said he knew immediately he had the answer he was looking for and he and his co-worker Larry Witt ran outside and circled their shop building hooping and hollering.
“People laughed at me when I told them God showed me how to run a car on water,” Thrasher said. “They did the same thing to Noah when he told them why he was building the ark. Now I’m telling them they can save themselves from being downed by the big oil companies by getting on the hydrogen ark I’m building.”
When asked about a patent for his fuel system he said he has a lawyer working on that.
Thrasher also said he wants the public to have more knowledge of what he is doing. To do that he has scheduled a conference at Calhoun Community College’s Aerospace Training Center on May 19 from 6 to 9 p.m. The registration fee is $60. Seating is limited to 200 people.
Thrasher also invites those interested to visit his website at www.hydrogenfuelsystems.org.