Posted on 10/10/2004 7:23:59 PM PDT by ckilmer
Big recent news generally overlooked:
"Hydrocarbons could be formed inside the Earth via simple inorganic reactions -- and not just from the decomposition of living organisms as conventionally assumed -- and might therefore be more plentiful than previously thought."
Petroleum under pressure
14 September 2004
Scientists in the US have witnessed the production of methane under the conditions that exist in the Earth's upper mantle for the first time. The experiments demonstrate that hydrocarbons could be formed inside the Earth via simple inorganic reactions -- and not just from the decomposition of living organisms as conventionally assumed -- and might therefore be more plentiful than previously thought.
Methane is the most abundant hydrocarbon found in the Earth's crust and is also the main component of natural gas. Reserves of natural gas are often accompanied by petrol, usually only a few kilometres below the Earth's surface. The possibility that hydrocarbons might exist deeper in the Earth's mantle, or could be formed from non-biological matter, has been the subject of debate among geologists in recent years.
To explore these questions further Henry Scott of Indiana University in South Bend and colleagues at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, Harvard University and the Lawrence Livermore National Lab subjected materials commonly found in the Earth's crust to temperatures of up to 1500°C and pressures as high as 11 gigapascals (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. to be published). These conditions are similar to those found in the Earth's upper mantle.
The set-up
Scott and co-workers squeezed together iron oxide, calcium carbonate and water between two diamonds with flattened tips while heating up the device. The advantage of the "diamond anvil cell" technique is that the sample can be analysed in situ -- through the diamonds -- using a variety of spectroscopic techniques. The US scientists found that methane was most readily produced at relatively low temperatures of 500°C and pressures of 7 gigapascals or below.
The sample
In 2002 J F Kenney of Gas Resources Corporation in Texas and co-workers in Moscow found methane and other hydrocarbons in similar experiments. However, their apparatus did not allow them to follow the formation process in situ (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 99 10976).
Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton believes the results are important because they could help answer the question of whether natural gas and petroleum could be created inorganically. "If the answer turns out to be inorganic, this has huge implications for the ecology and economy of our planet," says Dyson.
However, Scott is more cautious about his team's results. "Although I believe the Earth's mantle could contain a significant quantity of even heavier hydrocarbons, I cannot constrain how much of this reaches the Earth's surface, or the extent to which it may augment resources that we exploit commercially," he told PhysicsWeb. "I do not want to suggest in any way that these hydrocarbons are likely to represent an untapped energy reserve."
About the author
Belle Dumé is Science Writer at PhysicsWeb
Jojoba.
Steam is a power plant that is simple and easy to operate. Is it the answer? Maybe and maybe not..but it worked before and back then they were crude. But they worked and worked with less than one third of the moving parts of todays cars.
Take a gander at the power plant on steam car news page 2..scoll down the opening page. Its a simple four cylinder and is nearly direct drive. Then some of the articles like to guy who has built them and gets about 25 MPG..and this guy does this by himself! What could be done with a big corp with advanced engineering developing this type of power plant. The boilers could be made smaller and better and no doubt they could come up with a engine that would reach the 300 HP range and get 40 to 50 MPG burning your type of fuel..or any type of fuel. LPG, Methane, whatever.
The ideas are there and have been since the turn of the 20th century..heck they made electric cars in the late 1800s I believe..I have some pics of them someplace around here someplace. Wish I knew how to post them on here I would.
"...if they would get off the hydrogen "high" and find another way to generate power."
From the standpoint of the laws of physics there are only three sources of "free" energy available to us on Earth.
1)Geothermal (the heat remaining inside the Earth)
2)Nuclear power (either fission or fusion)
3)Solar (this includes hydrogen and fuel cells, all petroleum including coal, natural gas, propane etc. and burning of any kind).
The source of power that has the largest energy yield and the least running cost is fusion. Now if only we had lots of fusion plants laying around ready to be turned on ;>)
And what energy source are we gonna use to heat the organics to 900 degrees?
Uh huh. It's coming, and soon.
Stay safe and keep your powder dry.
Just think of the whistle a guy could put on one of those cars! MPG would drop quite a bit with the whistle I'd put on mine.
Remember the Challenger?
Challenger actually broke up due to "external dynamic forces" when the plasma leak through the booster, cut through a supporting strut on the external tank (like a cutting torch). This caused the shuttle to get sideways during flight, and at many thousands of MPH the whole thing instantly breaks up.
I'd prefer not to try it with gasoline. Diesel fuel would extinguish the match without question, but a 'pool' of gasoline is likely to have a layer of fuel/air mixture directly above it.
I'd suggest a different experiment: create a moderately fast leak in a gasoline tank and a hydrogen tank, wait a minute, and strike a spark. I would posit that the gasoline is much more likely to 'pool' in air than is hydrogen, which is much more likely to dissipate.
To be sure, storing a pressurized gas poses issues, but I don't know that hydrogen is any worse than e.g. methane in that regard. To be sure not as nice as propane or butane (which liquify under reasonable pressures) but not an unsolvable problem.
Michael Moore?
Is the Earth getting smaller, are there big holes down there where oil and gas came from? What happens to all the hydrocarbons we burn? We don't gain or lose much to space so they must still be here in a different form. Why is inconceivable that the planet recycles those too? For that matter why aren't we up to our necks in humus, maybe oil making is an on-going geologic process. We never seem to run out of lava either.
What about the concept of a piston engine which uses the burning fuel as the working fluid instead of steam, but burns it in a combustion chamber prior to feeding it into the drive cylinders? While I'll admit that the state change of water contributes greatly to the effectiveness of a steam engine, efficient heat transfer from the fuel to the water is difficult. If the fuel/exhaust were the working fluid, the heat transfer to the working fluid would be 100%.
Great comments, how true. These people are evil and if they had their way, would destroy our civilization. They are the enemy of freedom.
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