[SaltWaterPower]

http://www.autoblog.com/2007/09/12/v...-happen-sorta/

Before all of you armchair chemists start yelling about the thermodynamics and how energy can't be created, let me preemptively point out this is NOT creating energy. There is energy stored between the hydrogen and oxygen molecules as a bond. When bonds break, energy is released. It is NOT creating energy. It is merely taking an existing material (in this case, saltwater), breaking the bonds (hopefully efficiently), and burning the hydrogen from the saltwater, ALONG WITH a lot of oxygen from the surrounding air. It's still an exothermic reaction, because it is burning something, and although water vapor is one of the exhaust elements, it is NOT THE SAME AMOUNT OF WATER VAPOR. You can't simply burn the same water over and over again. That's silly. A reader's post summed it up quite nicely:

"This is not an "energy in = energy out" situation. This is releasing energy which the earth has already stored within it.

You can walk into the forest, pick up a stick, light the stick on fire, and I'll bet it produces more energy than was involved in setting the fire.

We mine and burn coal for a reason. We pump and refine petroleum for a reason. We process plutonium for a reason. Positive energy generation for natural sources.

We didn't put the energy in, we're just taking it out."

Pretty interesting, I think.

[Dakarʒ]

Yeah, I saw this earlier this week. It's down right creepy (The paper doesn't burn?).

[turtle777]

Not addressed in the video is how much energy is needed to power that ray beam pointed at the water. Splitting water into its basic elements requires more energy than is released, and we'll be very surprised if this method is any different.

Minor detail.

-t

[osiris]

This is like 2 years old, but it's nice to see it go mainstream finally.
I hope these guys don't get whacked by Cheney.

[SaltWaterPower]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Minor detail.

-t

We'll see. The amount of energy needed to get oil out of the ground on the other hemisphere, take over other countries, ship it accross the globe, refine it, truck it around the country, and pump into a car is also pretty enormous.

[osiris]

I think it's a matter of cost effectiveness. As oil becomes more expensive, alternatives will become more practical.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by SaltWaterPower 

We'll see. The amount of energy needed to get oil out of the ground on the other hemisphere, take over other countries, ship it accross the globe, refine it, truck it around the country, and pump into a car is also pretty enormous.

Compared to the price of pulling natural gas and coal out of the ground, shipping them wherever, refining, shipping that to power plants, producing electricity with an average Carnot efficiency of 60% then transporting that electricity to charge batteries at another loss, then finally discharging that electricity?

[nonhuman]

There's absolutely zero chance that this technology could be used to power something. In order to break the bonds between Hydrogen and Oxygen in water, you need to apply power. This is how nuclear submarines obtain breathing air: the use some of the massive amounts of power generated by their nuclear reactor to take seawater, break it up into Hydrogen and Oxygen, and then create a breathable air mixture for the crew. Yes that H2 O2 gas mixture can then be burned, which is what is happening here, but the amount of energy released through the combustion of the gas is smaller than the energy required to liberate it from water.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by SaltWaterPower 

Before all of you armchair chemists start yelling about the thermodynamics and how energy can't be created, let me preemptively point out this is NOT creating energy. There is energy stored between the hydrogen and oxygen molecules as a bond. When bonds break, energy is released. It is NOT creating energy. It is merely taking an existing material (in this case, saltwater), breaking the bonds (hopefully efficiently), and burning the hydrogen from the saltwater, ALONG WITH a lot of oxygen from the surrounding air. It's still an exothermic reaction, because it is burning something, and although water vapor is one of the exhaust elements, it is NOT THE SAME AMOUNT OF WATER VAPOR.

Well, yeah, it's burning something. But what that means is that you're reacting hydrogen with oxygen to basically reconstitute the hydrogen-oxygen bonds that you broke in step 1. So unless the salt has something really major to do with it, I don't understand how this could produce more energy than what you spent to break apart the water molecules.

[SaltWaterPower]

Originally Posted by nonhuman 

There's absolutely zero chance that this technology could be used to power something. In order to break the bonds between Hydrogen and Oxygen in water, you need to apply power. This is how nuclear submarines obtain breathing air: the use some of the massive amounts of power generated by their nuclear reactor to take seawater, break it up into Hydrogen and Oxygen, and then create a breathable air mixture for the crew. Yes that H2 O2 gas mixture can then be burned, which is what is happening here, but the amount of energy released through the combustion of the gas is smaller than the energy required to liberate it from water.

You're talking about electrolysis. That works completely differently from this. Here is how electrolysis works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis

This method, using radio waves, is completley different from that. It is not using electricity directly. It is using radiowaves.

[CharlesS]

What do you think is being used to power the machine that makes those radio waves?

[Dakarʒ]

Beat me to it.

[SaltWaterPower]

Electricity. Doy. And where does this electricity come from? Generally from coal. It's **** we found in the ground, created tools to extract it, then 'burn it' to harness the energy from the exothermic reaction that takes place. This is not much different.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by SaltWaterPower 

Electricity. Doy. And where does this electricity come from? Generally from coal.

Right you are. So that energy is not being created from salt water, but rather it is coming from coal. This might be a more efficient method than electrolysis to extract hydrogen from water, but it is not water as a fuel source by any means - that energy is coming from somewhere else.

It's **** we found in the ground, created tools to extract it, then 'burn it' to harness the energy from the exothermic reaction that takes place. This is not much different.

And if the end result of the process was that burning the coal caused it to turn back into the asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk we found in the ground, then that would be true.

[SaltWaterPower]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Right you are. So that energy is not being created from salt water, but rather it is coming from coal. This might be a more efficient method than electrolysis to extract hydrogen from water, but it is not water as a fuel source by any means - that energy is coming from somewhere else.

Depends on where you stop looking. Coals energy comes from dead biomass millions of years ago. Where did it's energy come from? You can keep going as long as you like. The point is, this method, like electrolysis, does require electricity, but this might be a LOT more efficient. Maybe. Or maybe it'll turn out to be less efficient. Who knows. Point being is that it's different from what people generally think of, and innovation is where it's at.

And if the end result of the process was that burning the coal caused it to turn back into the asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk we found in the ground, then that would be true.

It kinda is, eventually. We use coal to make power, and with the power, we create all sorts of biomass, and put them in big piles called dumps. Eventually it too, might be coal.

[turtle777]

Speaking of pulling energy out of thin air:
Are there any theories / devices that can harness the difference in gravitation as caused by the moon ( -> tides) ?

-t

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by SaltWaterPower 

Depends on where you stop looking. Coals energy comes from dead biomass millions of years ago. Where did it's energy come from? You can keep going as long as you like. The point is, this method, like electrolysis, does require electricity, but this might be a LOT more efficient. Maybe. Or maybe it'll turn out to be less efficient. Who knows. Point being is that it's different from what people generally think of, and innovation is where it's at.

Well see, if the energy comes from coal, then the salt water isn't the fuel source. That's the problem. This isn't energy from saltwater - it's just converting electrical energy (from coal) into chemical energy (in hydrogen). It's not a new fuel source.

You're not going to get a water-powered car from this.

It kinda is, eventually. We use coal to make power, and with the power, we create all sorts of biomass, and put them in big piles called dumps. Eventually it too, might be coal.

Hehe, you're missing the point. Water is the end result of burning hydrogen. But you got the hydrogen in the first place by splitting water! So you start with water, and you end with water. Where is the extra energy you're supposedly getting from this supposed to come from?

When you burn coal, you don't end up with coal. The energy from the biomass that created the coal in the first place came some something other than coal, and when you burn that coal you end up with a worthless byproduct that you throw away.

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Speaking of pulling energy out of thin air:
Are there any theories / devices that can harness the difference in gravitation as caused by the moon ( -> tides) ?

-t

Well, there's tidal generation. It doesn't pull energy directly from tidal forces, but it does it indirectly through the tides in the oceans.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by nonhuman 

Well, there's tidal generation. It doesn't pull energy directly from tidal forces, but it does it indirectly through the tides in the oceans.

I know about tidal generation.

I was wondering if there is any way to exploit the gravitational change directly, not indirectly (like through water) ?

-t

[Laminar]

I'm actually taking a class this semester focusing entirely on alternative energy sources like this. Ever think of using photosynthesis for power? A few square miles of algae in the sea can convert sunlight into as much power as an 800MW power plant.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

I'm actually taking a class this semester focusing entirely on alternative energy sources like this. Ever think of using photosynthesis for power? A few square miles of algae in the sea can convert sunlight into as much power as an 800MW power plant.

How does that compare to current photovoltaics ?

-t

[Laminar]

Standard crop photovoltaic efficiency is about 1%. Sugar cane is anywhere from 3-6%. An average photovoltaic cell is 20%, but cutting edge stuff is about 50-60%.

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

I know about tidal generation.

I was wondering if there is any way to exploit the gravitational change directly, not indirectly (like through water) ?

-t

The problem is that you need to have a substance that's massive enough for the tidal pull to have an appreciable affect on it while at the same time fluid enough that it will move in a useful way. I can't think of any worthwhile way of doing that when we have the much simpler option of just using the oceans.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

Standard crop photovoltaic efficiency is about 1%. Sugar cane is anywhere from 3-6%. An average photovoltaic cell is 20%, but cutting edge stuff is about 50-60%.

So what advantage would manmade photosynthesis have over photovoltaic ?

-t

[Laminar]

Well letting algae grow in the ocean naturally is cheaper than manufacturing photovoltaic cells. In theory, at least.

[Dakarʒ]

Ban ahoy!

[Laminar]

The mods should give me a ban hammer. I swear I'd have him nailed in 2 or fewer posts every time.

[Dakarʒ]

I don't think the admins trust any of the regs, else I'd have this place secure 40 hours a week.

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

Standard crop photovoltaic efficiency is about 1%. Sugar cane is anywhere from 3-6%. An average photovoltaic cell is 20%, but cutting edge stuff is about 50-60%.

Right, so why would we use photosynthesis when our own photovoltaics are already more efficient? I suppose we could try and engineer plants that are vastly more efficient at photosynthesis (using purple chlorophyl, for example), but then how would we get at the energy? Plants take in CO2 and H2O, then use the energy from sunlight to convert that to O2 and C6H12O6.

Let's assume that whatever plant we get has 6% efficiency when it comes to photosynthesis. How efficiently can we use that glucose? Our current best method, as far as I'm aware, is by fermenting it into ethanol and then burning that ethanol. I'm not sure how efficiently we can convert glucose into ethanol, but there are bacteria that do it at around 97%, so let's assume that. So we've not converted sunlight into ethanol. In doing so we've lost just about 94% of that energy with just under 6% (5.8%) remaining. So how efficiently can we convert that ethanol to electric energy? I'm not sure, but I think it's pretty obvious that there's no way in hell this is going to even come close to competing with even a really crappy photovoltaic cell, and certainly not the cutting edge ones we've been seeing that are breaking 40% efficiency.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by nonhuman 

Right, so why would we use photosynthesis when our own photovoltaics are already more efficient? I suppose we could try and engineer plants that are vastly more efficient at photosynthesis (using purple chlorophyl, for example), but then how would we get at the energy? Plants take in CO2 and H2O, then use the energy from sunlight to convert that to O2 and C6H12O6.

Let's assume that whatever plant we get has 6% efficiency when it comes to photosynthesis. How efficiently can we use that glucose? Our current best method, as far as I'm aware, is by fermenting it into ethanol and then burning that ethanol. I'm not sure how efficiently we can convert glucose into ethanol, but there are bacteria that do it at around 97%, so let's assume that. So we've not converted sunlight into ethanol. In doing so we've lost just about 94% of that energy with just under 6% (5.8%) remaining. So how efficiently can we convert that ethanol to electric energy? I'm not sure, but I think it's pretty obvious that there's no way in hell this is going to even come close to competing with even a really crappy photovoltaic cell, and certainly not the cutting edge ones we've been seeing that are breaking 40% efficiency.

Well, the simplest method is just to burn it. The idea isn't that it's more efficient at turning sunlight into electricity, but that it's cheaper to grow algae on the surface of the sea than it is to manufacture photovoltaic cells.

Ethanol's another discussion entirely. This class has made me so sick of it already.

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

Well, the simplest method is just to burn it. The idea isn't that it's more efficient at turning sunlight into electricity, but that it's cheaper to grow algae on the surface of the sea than it is to manufacture photovoltaic cells.

Ethanol's another discussion entirely. This class has made me so sick of it already.

Hmm, I suppose we could just burn it. That hadn't occurred to me.

I'm not convinced that it would actually be cheaper, but it's certainly worthy of discussion.

[Laminar]

Here in Ames the city sorts the garbage and actually burns the combustible stuff along with coal at their power plant.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by Dakarʒ 

I don't think the admins trust any of the regs, else I'd have this place secure 40 hours a week.

I'd nominate you for mod. I think you'd make a great mod.

[Dakarʒ]

Somewhere, a lot of regulars are laughing their asses off at the thought.