The Joe Cell - a Critical Look

by Peter Hunter, independent Science & Technology Investigator. (Copyright March 2008 all rights reserved - nonprofit use allowed).

This article is an analysis of material available on the internet, and I am endeavoring to present the facts fairly as an independent observer. I can only go by what is presented. If you feel that something has been misrepresented or omitted then please leave a comment. However, only polite comments will be posted.

Kids! don’t try this at home - talk to your parents first. Playing with electricity, chemicals, and fire, can be dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing.

Byron New Energy Presents…

There is a video getting about since last year (2007) made by a group in Byron Bay in Australia about a device called a Joe Cell that is supposed to run a car on a new form of fuel similar to, but not the same as, hydrogen fuel. The video is called byron new energy video of Joe cell.gvi. The group responsible for producing the video is BNE at www.byronnewenergy.com where the video is available for download.

Sometime before that I contacted NU-TECH 2000, a group said to be manufacturing Joe Cell parts seeking more information and received the cryptic reply: “No one has to buy or be involved but for those who seek they will find” - that was back in the 2002.

Well ok. So I sought, and I watched, and I read everything available on the subject, and I began to form some basic conclusions.

Lets get this bit out of the way: my intention is not to promote or discredit the Joe cell. I have no affiliation with the participants, nor their opponents. My aim is to share my thoughts with others and see what they think.

If you are not familiar with the Joe Cell or hydrogen fuel technology in general I recommend that you review some of the material that is available on the internet and watch some of the videos on youtube and google-video.

The Byron video did not show the face of the man doing the demonstrations, but from previous viewed videos I recognized the voice as that of “Joe” the inventor of the Joe Cell.

Nobody seems to know much about Joe, what his real name is, or where he lives, and from some of the video footage I have seen he seems to be a real-enough amateur researcher into hydrogen technology, having seen many different designs in videos. Hes not short of a word. He appears to be religiously minded, quoting scripture with verse numbers like a fully-charge fundamentalist, and appears to have much practical experience working with automobiles, possessing, at a guess, just a basic education.

Ok, that out of the way, lets take a look at the BNE video…

The Byron video claims to run a car engine on orgone produced by a Joe Cell. They claim also to burn water.

Joe Cell & Charged Water

This was apparently the car used in the demonstrations.

Joe had a practiced and quick hand as he removed the petrol line from the fuel-pump, as if he had done it a thousand times before.

He poured some liquid from a brown bottle into the fuel line, filling the carburetor bowl, and then sealed off the hose (On other videos he usually flushed the bowl with water first).

Reality check point 1:- The video tells us this liquid is ‘charged water’ but it could be anything. No sample was taken from the brown bottle for analysis just before Joe poured it into the fuel line. Surely, this is the most important check to make. How can you go any further?

The engine was turned over a few times and then someone placed the tube from a small Joe cell into the air intake of the motor.

Reality check point 2:- It is unclear what the fuel is. Is the motor supposed to run on charged water from the fuel tank, or on orgone from the Joe Cell?

“Start!’, shouted Joe. The engine turned over for a number of seconds, as if it would never start, and then suddenly rumbled into life!

The engine roared with confidence, occasionally coughing up blue flames out of the air intake.

It ran a while longer - and then stopped.

I timed how long it ran for:- 17 seconds.

Reality check point 3:- I tried to work out how long an engine might idle on only a carburetor bowl full of fuel - about 15 seconds? Maybe longer. And I wondered what kind of known liquid fuels might backfire with a blue flash?

So, I’m suspicious already, and I’m looking for the test drive event in the video. After all, that’s what the whole thing is supposed to be about - is it not - running a car on water?

But instead Joe toyed with balloons….

Does Water Burn 1?

“Does water burn?” stated the caption over a picture of an inflated balloon containing what looked like a few teaspoons of a clear liquid.

“That’s about two drops of negatively charged water”, claimed Joe as he grabbed a couple of small jumper leads connected to the car’s lead-acid battery and proceeded to electrify the contents of the balloon by pressing a clip on opposite sides of the balloon.

Reality check point 4:- Could you imagine being there with your child tugging at your coat asking very seriously: daddy, why is he putting the battery clips on the balloon? I’d be embarrassed, but I guess I might hang around because it is a nice day and I came all this way just to see a car run on hydrogen.

Joe continued, “If you don’t think that current is actually going through that, uhh, rubber insulated balloon by putting a…”, Joe strikes the crocodile clips together expertly causing a large spark, “…positive and negative jumper lead on each side of it I am going to show you that, uh, while you got a liquid in something - the AC and DC and spark and everything else - they are massive conductors.”

“oohh!”, remarked an onlooker.

“I’ll just show you *exactly* by this lead”, said Joe as he pulled away one of the high-voltage spark plug leads, “if it was an insulator then this here would not go through it - would it?”

“No.” agreed the onlooker.

“Start!”, shouted Joe, as he held the end of the spark-plug lead over the top radiator water-hose striking a spark into it.

Rubber Logic

Joe is asking his audience to believe that the rubber balloon will conduct 12 volt electricity because he can strike a high-voltage AC spark into a rubber water pipe. Further, he seems to be implying that the liquid inside the balloon is somehow helping the rubber to conduct.

Most materials have what is called a Breakdown Potential. This is the voltage at which a material begins to breakdown and conduct electricity - which is generally a very high voltage. Almost anything will breakdown and conduct a current if the voltage source is high enough.

The breakdown voltage of rubber is high, much higher that 12 volts. That is why jumper leads are coated with rubber to prevent them from shorting out. And rubber insulating gloves used by linesmen to handle utility poles are designed to have a breakdown voltage of at least 17,000 volts.

Spark plugs require a voltage of approximately 20,000 volts to ignite the air/fuel mixture in a cylinder, so rubber might breakdown under this strain. Some special rubbers, like carbon impregnated rubbers, are conductive and are used to coat conductive pads etc.

As far as Joe’s balloon is concerned:- there is a simple check. Put a multi-meter across a balloon on the highest resistance setting and measure the resistance. But, make sure the leads don’t touch any skin - flesh conducts. Alternatively, put an ammeter in series with one of the jumper leads to measure the current. If a current flows then the ammeter will register a reading.

There is another factor involved here. The 12 volt battery supply is DC while the ignition system is AC, but I don’t really want to get into a discussion about the capacitive effects of the water pipe on the AC spark - lets keep it simple.

In any event it is too easy to spray some conductive gunk onto the rubber hoses when no one is looking. This will cause the spark current to travel along the surface of the hose into the nearest chassis metal somewhere.

More on this in another post later…

Death to all Sparkplugs

Joe said ‘they are massive conductors’.

When he said *they* we assume he is referring to particles of orgone in the Joe Cell water, and in his brown bottle of charged water. He is implying that orgone has a very low resistance to electricity, or perhaps is even superconducting.

If this is true - even a little bit true - then the orgone would short out the spark-plugs and prevent the engine from running. And, since the motor did run - for 17 whole seconds - then the particles are not ‘massive conductors’ after all and the whole thing is either a hoax or there is something else at work here.

Ok, so the orgone ignites when the spark-plugs short out, but if this is true then why didn’t the balloon explode while he was ‘charging’ it? If the orgone is a massive conductor then it stands to reason that a MASSIVE current should flow through the balloon frying everything in sight because a 12 volt car battery is designed to deliver a very high current to the starting motor.

And If the conductivity of the rubber is reduced by the presence of the orgone in the charged water then the balloon rubber itself would shunt the current around the surface and bypass the liquid altogether!

And what of the spark leads themselves? Does the orgone also affect the leads? Why didnt the orgone cause the insulation to conduct and electrocute Joe? And the ignition coil? why didnt it breakdown internally and short out inside the coil? There would be no spark at all then…. and so on…

Do I need to continue..? By this time most reasonable folk might conclude that this whole thing is proving to be just a rubbishy scam, but lets continue with the investigation - you never know, we might just discover something else…..

Popping the balloon

Change of scene: a balloon is sitting on the grass outside at night with someone holding a flaming torch next to it.

The heat of the torch caused the balloon-skin to break, and the fluid inside squirted out onto the grass underneath the torch, ignited, and burned with a blue flame with pinkish tips.

However, the force of the escaping air immediately extinguished the burning fluid as the balloon rocketed away.

So Joe then ignited the balloon husk and the remaining liquid fuel around it (The torch flare-up occurred away from the liquid).

There was light applause as Joe capped off the experiment with “What a bang.”

“Hey! wheres the pizza?!”, exclaimed someone….

Reality check point 5:- Its clear from this episode that Joe’s liquid will ignite on contact with a naked flame and burn gently. Why, therefore, is he going to the trouble of pouring his liquid into a balloon? Why doesn’t he just burn it in a tinlid or something?

Does Water Burn 2?

The experiment was repeated again inside a garage - presumably the same night and location.

Joe filled a balloon with fluid from his brown bottle.

An assistant inflated the balloon and handed it back to Joe without tying it off first.

Joe then pressed some jumper leads against the balloon for a while, tied it off(?), and then placed it on the concrete floor.

During this procedure I got the impression that Joe had some kind of object in his left hand.

What was he holding in his left hand as he put the balloon down on the garage floor?

This is an unprocessed image captured just as Joe began to move his left hand behind his back:

Someone then used a butane cigarette lighter to ignite the balloon. The balloon by this time looked noticeably bigger than when it was first handed to Joe.

And BOOM! The balloon exploded with a yellow flash as the gas/air mixture in the balloon ignited.

And then quickly subsided….

Leaving the fluid from the brown bottle burning on the concrete floor - again with a blue gentle flame with pink tips.

And everyone present marveled at the wonders of new-age technology…..

Discussion

We know from flame chemistry that a yellow flame is a strong indication of carbon - most probably a hydrocarbon like butane etc found in cigarette lighters. This is a mystery because the balloon is supposed to contain only water - which consists of only hydrogen and oxygen. So where did the carbon come from? Did it come from the device concealed in Joe’s left-hand?

And I will even stick my neck out and hazard a guess as to what the burning liquid is: medical grade alcohol, or methylated spirits. Metho smells; an adroit magician would probably use pure alcohol.

In Conclusion

Joe poured an untested liquid into a car carburetor and made it run for 17 seconds - this is not proof of free energy. He also made a balloon explode - this again is not proof of free energy.

Everybody wants free energy. It seems the obvious answer to the world’s problems when 40% of all oil pumped out of the ground is destroyed forever in automobiles. But, the old maxim still applies: buyer beware.

Some simple basic tests upfront will eliminate most fraud. Be objective, test everything. Dont be fooled by sophistry, magic tricks, and stunts in place of sound science.

Good luck,

Peter Hunter,
Independent
Science & Technology Investigator,
and would-be magician.

Update 1 (apr’08):- According to www.thejoecell.com:- In 1991, an Australian named Peter Stevens, … met a man by the name of Graham Coe who had fitted two unusual pieces of equipment to his Toyota Celica. He claimed the twin cell type devices improved vehicle fuel economy by up to 70%. Peter … enlisted the help of his local mechanic - a man who today chooses only to be known as Joe … who was convinced these devices actually … improved both fuel economy and power.

Update 2 (apr’08):- Peter Stevens (BNE Joe Cell group) trip to the USA to deliver a talk at PESN in Salt Lake City Utah last July 2006 was cancelled after Stevens failed to provide validation of his claims. It now remains to be seen if the BNE group will demonstrate a Joe cell running a vehicle under controlled test conditions - and, yes, if I have my way, with a magician present.
-oOo-