Posted on 11/04/2020 11:00:36 AM PST by DUMBGRUNT
Many industries use heat-intensive processes that generally require the burning of fossil fuels, but a surprising green fuel alternative is emerging in the form of metal powders. Ground very fine, cheap iron powder burns readily at high temperatures, releasing energy as it oxidises in a process that emits no carbon and produces easily collectable rust, or iron oxide, as its only emission.
If burning metal powder as fuel sounds strange, the next part of the process will be even more surprising. That rust can be regenerated straight back into iron powder with the application of electricity, and if you do this using solar, wind or other zero-carbon power generation systems, you end up with a totally carbon-free cycle. The iron acts as a kind of clean battery for combustion processes, charging up via one of a number of means including electrolysis, and discharging in flames and heat.
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
Rosie O’Donnell is skeptical.
I used to have an old car that was part rust.
Stars do that just before they go Nova...................
I always wondered how she thought steel is forged in the first place...
Gee, when a star gets down to burning iron, it explodes.
I dunno. This sounds stupid. Like borderline perpetual motion stupid.
Loz Blain last took Science in fourth grade. Loz is severely handicapped with that moniker, so we can excuse him this once.
1. The production of iron uses much energy from carbon sources.
2. The electricity to convert the iron oxide back into iron is mostly generated by carbon fueled sources.
3. Those generators do not run on unicorn farts.
Hey imbeciles, do you have any idea how much non-green fossil fuels went into turning iron ore into steel just so you idiots could burn it back to iron oxide in your green/clean process.
Isn’t that one of the law of thermodynamics?
Would seem to violate the laws of energy - neither created nor destroyed just transformed from one form to another. Doesn’t sound like a perpetual motion machine or renewable. Something has to be used to ignite the metal, and the electricity used to regenerate iron oxide back into iron powder would seem to net out the energy created from the process.
Rust cannot burn. It is already oxidized.
Iron burning in stars is a nuclear process. Iron burning to iron oxide is a chemical process.
I know...............
If it is pretty close to 1.0 efficiency, or at least more efficient that conversion of other intermittent energy sources (like solar, wind or unicorn farts) into battery power, hydrostorage (pump water to the top of a dam during high production times to let it flow down through turbines during high use times), hydrogen fuel cell/electrolysis systems, etc., it could be useful. It could also be good to allow power sources which run best at constant output, like nuclear reactors, to do something useful with the energy during the night.
This seems to have some interesting potential.
We live in a rural area. It’s often occurred to me that we have a significant overabundance of heat in the summer. If there was only some significant way to capture it and store it for 6-12 months, we could then heat the house for free all winter.
Earth tubes are one way, but it’s not all that efficient and the extensive excavation is expensive. Heating groundwater is even more expensive. If you use water tanks, you’ll lose a lot of the heat in the meantime. You could convert water to hydrogen, but hydrogen’s hard to keep in a container and would require high pressures to not require acres of storage.
Seems like by comparison, iron powder has a lot of advantages. You could use solar all summer to convert the rust back into iron and all you’d need to do is store it in a sealed container. I’d guess it would last indefinitely. I’m guessing you only have to powder it once at the start of the cycle and then the conversion process keeps it that way. It’s pretty dense and not all that hazardous to keep around. Right now, iron is barely worth scrapping because the price is so low. If you had an abundance of heat available, making electricity isn’t all that difficult even on a small scale.
Sure seems a lot easier than cutting, hauling, splitting, stacking and burning wood.
Of course, the devil is in the details...
Instead of electric cars, we’ll all be drivin iron cars- oh wait-
[[3. Those generators do not run on unicorn farts.]]
Of course not- everyone knows there aren’t any unicorns,
Instead, they run on Chupacabra farts
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