How is the catalyst involved in the reaction?

No catalyst can catalyze water into oil because catalysts can only catalyze reactions that can actually occur, and they cannot help with reactions that cannot occur in the first place. For example, the ammonia reaction and the oxidation of sulfur dioxide are reactions that can actually occur, but in general these reactions proceed more slowly, so they need the help of a catalyst. 

The role of the catalyst is only to increase the speed of the reaction, to promote these reactions faster, but for theoretical can not happen, and then the magic of the catalyst can not promote the occurrence of the reaction. Water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, gasoline is a hydrocarbon, and the elemental composition of the two is inherently different.

This is like the emergence of ammonia technology, if there was no seeds of war in Europe at that time, then no matter how much ammonia synthesized by Germany, it would not have triggered the First World War. Now there is a new variant of "water to oil", and some people claim to have developed a catalyst that can make water decompose into hydrogen and oxygen continuously, and hydrogen is a much better and cleaner energy source, so what is the need for "water to oil", directly "water to hydrogen" is not on the line? It can be said that this statement is more confusing, because water can indeed decompose into hydrogen and oxygen, and this reaction is chemically feasible, such as electrolysis of water can occur to generate hydrogen and oxygen.

This is equally problematic, however, because while a catalyst can change the rate of reaction, it cannot change the thermal effect of a chemical reaction. We know that chemical changes are usually accompanied by a change in energy, and this change in energy is the thermal effect of the chemical reaction. 

For example, if 2g of hydrogen is burned completely, 18g of liquid water is produced, and about 286KJ of heat is released, and it is the presence of this heat that makes hydrogen an extremely desirable fuel. However, this heat is not produced out of thin air, as part of the chemical energy is converted into heat energy and released in the process of hydrogen combustion exotherm, so the total energy is still conserved. On the other hand, scientists know through calculation that if 18g of water decomposes to generate hydrogen and oxygen, it must absorb 286KJ of energy. In other words, the energy released by combining hydrogen and oxygen into water is as much as the energy required to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen.

So even if a catalyst is really developed that can make the decomposition of water into hydrogen and oxygen faster, this reaction must provide a lot of energy to achieve. Also, although the energy provided is theoretically the same as the energy that can be released by the combustion of the produced hydrogen, in practice the energy required to be provided is relatively much larger because of the presence of losses. 

Therefore, the current process of making hydrogen by consuming large amounts of energy to decompose water and then using it as a fuel to obtain energy is only done in some special cases, such as making liquid hydrogen, the fuel for launch vehicles. But this undoubtedly requires huge costs, and in the current technological conditions, hydrogen fuel cannot yet enter our daily lives.

But with the development of technology, especially the advancement of solar energy technology, we have every reason to believe that hydrogen fuel will one day sooner or later become the source of power and energy in our lives. Although solar energy does not need to be created by us, it is also a foreign energy. We should never imagine that no energy is consumed or less energy is consumed, and that energy can be created from nothing by a simple catalytic reaction, which is just like seeking fish from a log.