teejay
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- Sep 4, 2003
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Thanks,
Mark Driscoll, for your concise (and correct) explanation. Gotta love good stoichiometry and mass balance. We chemists sure do.
The hydrogen car? Here's my idea. Let's do some elementary nuclear physics first. The math is simple. Take some deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, each atom has 1 proton, 1 neutron and 1 electron. The stuff is everywhere, cheap. I'll just put two of these atoms together to make an atom of helium, 2 protons, 2 neutrons, 2 electrons. Simple, eh? So I'll put two kilograms of deuterium in my hydrogen car, run it through some sort of a cell/reactor and spew out nothing but helium. But, and this is important, someone realized a while back, I think it was 1905, that if you did this, those two kilograms of deuterium make only about 1.99 k of helium plus a "little" bit of energy. So now I have a hydrogen (deuterium) car that produces less than it consumes and makes some energy to run the car. Too good to be true? Negative pollution and a solution to the world's helium shortage? Can you say e=mc²? Thank you, Dr. Einstein, you were a good student.
The above is an oversimplification, of course. Oh, we've even done the nuclear physics part in practice, except the result was that that "little" bit of energy vaporized entire Pacific atolls rather than just pushing our hyper-efficient car around town and up to the mountains. Ever hear of an H-bomb?
The solution to the world's energy problems and it's consequences, global warming, acid rain, shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels, and on and on, lies in our learning to harness the energy from the atomic nucleus safely, controllably and sustainably without creating new problems such as nuclear waste. New fuels are not the answer. Ethanol is a ruse, it's just another fossil fuel (carbon, hydrogen and, tada, it even comes with its own oxygen) in disguise waiting to be burned producing CO2, water, heat and even a few nitrogen oxides from the air. Hydrogen, can someone tell me where all this hydrogen, or deuterium, is going to come from? The laws of thermodynamics are pretty simple. There ain't no free lunch and even if there were, you'd still have to leave a tip. The energy used to electrolyze water or to catalytically crack a hydrocarbon to make hydrogen, is more than the energy we'll get back from burning the hydrogen or running it through a fuel cell. If this were not true, then I have a perpetual motion machine I'd like to sell you.
How then, can I make deuterium and get back more energy than I used to make it? Sounds like the laws of thermodynamics have been broken. Remember that little 0.01 k that was "burned" up in my car. e=mc² again. No laws broken. Stoichiometry and mass (energy) balance.
The bottom line is this. The only true source of energy is in the nucleus of the atom. We use this energy now from nuclear (fission) reactors but that has its problems. We use this energy from the sun (fusion) through wind, photovoltaic, hydroelectric generators. Even the energy contained in the fuels we burn, fossil, plant, etc. ultimately came from the sun. So, as soon I've finished building my little deuterium fusion reactor, I'll be off to Stockholm to get my Nobel prize.
Anybody here ever hiked in Sweden? Gotta keep this on topic after all, right?
[/ramble]
teejay
Mark Driscoll, for your concise (and correct) explanation. Gotta love good stoichiometry and mass balance. We chemists sure do.
The hydrogen car? Here's my idea. Let's do some elementary nuclear physics first. The math is simple. Take some deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, each atom has 1 proton, 1 neutron and 1 electron. The stuff is everywhere, cheap. I'll just put two of these atoms together to make an atom of helium, 2 protons, 2 neutrons, 2 electrons. Simple, eh? So I'll put two kilograms of deuterium in my hydrogen car, run it through some sort of a cell/reactor and spew out nothing but helium. But, and this is important, someone realized a while back, I think it was 1905, that if you did this, those two kilograms of deuterium make only about 1.99 k of helium plus a "little" bit of energy. So now I have a hydrogen (deuterium) car that produces less than it consumes and makes some energy to run the car. Too good to be true? Negative pollution and a solution to the world's helium shortage? Can you say e=mc²? Thank you, Dr. Einstein, you were a good student.
The above is an oversimplification, of course. Oh, we've even done the nuclear physics part in practice, except the result was that that "little" bit of energy vaporized entire Pacific atolls rather than just pushing our hyper-efficient car around town and up to the mountains. Ever hear of an H-bomb?
The solution to the world's energy problems and it's consequences, global warming, acid rain, shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels, and on and on, lies in our learning to harness the energy from the atomic nucleus safely, controllably and sustainably without creating new problems such as nuclear waste. New fuels are not the answer. Ethanol is a ruse, it's just another fossil fuel (carbon, hydrogen and, tada, it even comes with its own oxygen) in disguise waiting to be burned producing CO2, water, heat and even a few nitrogen oxides from the air. Hydrogen, can someone tell me where all this hydrogen, or deuterium, is going to come from? The laws of thermodynamics are pretty simple. There ain't no free lunch and even if there were, you'd still have to leave a tip. The energy used to electrolyze water or to catalytically crack a hydrocarbon to make hydrogen, is more than the energy we'll get back from burning the hydrogen or running it through a fuel cell. If this were not true, then I have a perpetual motion machine I'd like to sell you.
How then, can I make deuterium and get back more energy than I used to make it? Sounds like the laws of thermodynamics have been broken. Remember that little 0.01 k that was "burned" up in my car. e=mc² again. No laws broken. Stoichiometry and mass (energy) balance.
The bottom line is this. The only true source of energy is in the nucleus of the atom. We use this energy now from nuclear (fission) reactors but that has its problems. We use this energy from the sun (fusion) through wind, photovoltaic, hydroelectric generators. Even the energy contained in the fuels we burn, fossil, plant, etc. ultimately came from the sun. So, as soon I've finished building my little deuterium fusion reactor, I'll be off to Stockholm to get my Nobel prize.
Anybody here ever hiked in Sweden? Gotta keep this on topic after all, right?
[/ramble]
teejay
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