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I've actually built one of these and hold a couple of granted patents relating to it. However, mine only works in seawater, it most certainly uses the Lorentz force. My device is an underwater acoustic transmitter used in geophysical surveying. Using the Lorentz force to move a conducting medium is not even new to NASA - this is exactly how the Ion drive on some of their recent missions works, but it is a relatively inefficient mechanism.
It's also the same thing as the mythical silent drive in the novel 'The Hunt For Red October', and not only is it not quiet, but having every compass in the hemisphere point directly to you when you turn it on would be a 'pisser' if you were a sneaky submarine person.
Having tried to calibrate the theory against the actual performance of the device I'm very sure there is no mysterious 'extra' force appearing, and some of the magnetic fields we've generated are big enough to fry an iphone at 5m. The practice always comes up short - due to frictional losses, turbulent flow, ohmic heating of the seawater, etc etc...
Anyway, it makes for a good story! But also - whatever the doodad in the photo is, it was not made by NASA, and it is very old. It looks very 'Soviet era' to me.
cheers,
Andrew.
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