Posted on 05/17/2007 4:09:52 AM PDT by saganite
Sure, you could spin a turbo with it maybe?
So where’s the savings?
***
Ultimately, the savings would be huge if we no longer were dependent upon oil from foreign countries, especially those that are hostile to us.
Sounds like the old lye water trick we used to fill balloons with : cut up beer cans into strips, put them into a 5 gal glass jug, pour in water; and WA-LA : H2 comes out. Put neck of weather balloon over the mouth of the jug. When it’s inflated, tie off w/gas-soaked string. Light string just before you release it. About 200’ up it goes WHOOOSH. Great fun at a kegger.
What Liberals will do is demand a government research project to develope this. That will delay a practical implementation by 20 or 30 years.
Not to mention that if the alumina is recycled using a stand-alone nuke plant, no oil is consumed. No oil means no oil revenues for the sand monkeys. No revenues for the sand monkeys means no money for terrorists.
Even at break even vs gasoline, it would be a good deal just for that.
Sponateous HydrogenPing!.......
350 pounds of aluminum! The tank would be the size of a trunk!.......
A single plant will cost upwards of $10 billion and take 10 years to build. The time factor is the issue. Any utility that wants to build one of these plants will only be able to do so when it presents a capital plant to the market that the market will want to bid on.
The crucial point here is that building a plant ties up capital that some third party is willing to put at risk until the plant can pay off. That cannot occur until well after completion. If we embark on a program to build dozens, if not over a hundred new plants, each will end up almost sequestering billions of dollars from the pool of private capital. These plans will have to be attractive to attract funding and that will bid up the cost of capital for other activities such as biotech, manufacturing, and indeed all other business capital spending.
Why should an investor tie up his money in a project with a 10 year payoff rather than one that has a 3 year payoff? Only because the return must be higher. An make no mistake about the risk premium: a project in its 9th year could be stopped by a single successful environmental lawsuit.
Building 100 new nuclear plants will require raising almost $1 Trillion in capital in the open market. Our entire GDP is what, maybe $13 Trillion? Lest anyone suggest that government provide financing, even government money doesn’t grow on trees. Money is fungible and there is no way to avoid the substantial distortions such funding will induce.
The bags would need to be tightly sealed. The reaction is triggered by water. Imagine a bag breaking open on a muggy, humid day. The water vapor in the air would start to react with the aluminum, which would start to get hot ...
Drop aluminum foil into a jug of Liquid Plummer and you’ll get hydrogen.
But we have thousands of square miles of desert where the sun shines more than not....solar could suppliment the electrical need for the process.
Buried inside every new Hydrogen energy transport article is pitch for renewables.
What they're doing is un-refining aluminum and scavenging the energy.
That's legitimate...fuel is a an energy storage medium, after all...but it appears doubtful to me that this technology will ever become really competitive with fossil fuels. Not this century, anyway.
Nothing wrong with renewable energy, Just so we stop sending money to people who want to kill all Christians and Jews.............and anybody else they don’t like..............
Yes I read it and understood it. From the lack of relevance of your comment, I think you missed my point. As you said, the H2 generation is coming from the oxidation of Al on demand. However, the AL has to come from someplace, and the production of aluminum is VERY energy intensive. (the heat of formation of al2o3 is about -1600 kJ/mol) This is just shuffling the energy requirements of hydrogen production to aluminum production. Aluminum is just an energy carrier in this scheme.
Above the clouds, the sun is always shining.......
That's because the energy yield from hydrogen combustion is exactly equal to the energy required to make free hydrogen in the first place, minus inefficiencies.
Hydrogen fuel is like a spring. You can wind it up, and as it unwinds it will release energy...but then you have to wind it up again. The energy that comes out of the process is always a little less than the energy that went in.
This is not an indictment, per se...it's true of all fuels. We're just not used to having to manufacture fuels, instead of pumping them out of the ground.
We don't use solar electricity now because it costs too much and other reasons too. Why would this suddenly make it viable?
Drop a pass from Jake "The Snake" Plummer and you'll get booed out of the stadium........
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.