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Re: (TFT) Power
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Haley"
Subject: Re: (TFT) Power
The burning salt water looks cool, but it's not a fuel source. The
energy required to break up the water molecules has to be at least as
much as the energy you'd get back by burning the hydrogen. In
practice, the system would waste a lot of electricity.
Zeroth and first...
I'd note that hydrogen is not so much an energy source as an energy carrier
because it takes a great deal of energy to extract it from water.
When you burn hydrogen, it turns into water. Water is the ashes from
that fire. If you could just burn the ashes, that would be creating
energy from nothing. If you could do that, you'd be violating really
basic laws of physics that people have been trying to break for
centuries and always failing. Give that man a Nobel, it's time to
rewrite the physics & chemistry textbooks.
I don't believe that he accidently discovered this by putting a
container of salt water in his gadget either. There's no use for
brine in an electronics lab. We've known for centuries that water
molecules break apart when you get them hot enough, and we've known
since the '50's that you can heat water with radio waves.
Let's see...
Okay, I've got Cavendish ploping zinc into sulfuric acid and noting the
"phlogiston" or inflamable air rising.
I have Lavoisier identifing it as an element.
In 1806 Davy demonstrated Electrolysis.
By 1847 Verne has an enginer in his novel "The Mysterious Island" when asked
what men shall burn when coal and other fuels are gone reply "water. Yes my
friends, I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that
hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will
furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light..."
By the late 1890's Poul La Cour was burning hydrogen and oxygen, seperated
by wind-generated electric power, with zirconium to light the Askov, Denmark
high school where he taught.
This was the setup described on a broad scale by J.B.S. Haldane in his 1923
Cambridge lecture.
Rudolf A. Erren reprotedly had scores of "errenized trucks" running the
highways of the Ruhr Valley on modified internal combustions operating on
hydrogen in 1938 when he fled west.
By the late 60's dozens upon dozens of possable light synthetic petroleum
product substitutes were known with some of the more common ones based on
acetylene, ammonia, hydrazine, methane or methanol.
Hydrogens two major advantages are the cyclic nature you mention, where
"burning" the broken down hydrogen and oxygen produces water, (and nitrogen
oxide in minor amounts TANSTAFL) and it's lightness gives it the highest
energy per unit weight of all possabilities.
The only 2 hydrogen powered cars in the 1972 clean air car race took first
and second, with the winning Volkswagen from BYU running emmissions so pure
that it actually exausted cleaner air than it'd take in within a city
enviroment.
A year eariler at the Energy Conversion Engineers' Conference in Boston a
system that collected the water exaust to be used as an engine coolant, in
other words exaustless) was demonstrated.
By the early 70's Dr. Lawrence Jones of the University of Michigan observed:
"I have been frankly surprised to note that apparently every serious effort
to run an engine or an automobile on hydrogen fuel has been successful."
All this durring an age where the money spent on the consumption of fossil
fules was an order of magnitude greater than monies alloted for all energy
research combined (at least in the u.s.).
At 1 atmosphere of pressure hydrogen is stored as a liquid at -434.6F
compaired to current LNG at -260F (Hydrogen rates at 325 BTU's per cubic
foot compaired to about 1,000 BTU's for LNG, but bear in mind the lower
densety gives the hydrogen a bit over twice the rate of flow but ya still
need 3 times the hydrogen compaired to LNG)
Dr. Jones figures from a 1972 Science article suggest that it would take a
dewar vessel of over 25 cubic feet in volume and approaching half a ton in
weight to get the same mileage of a 20 gallon gasoline tank.
He also noted that hydrogen was about 50% more expensive than gasoline on an
energy-per-unit weight basis.
Brookhaven National Laboratory developed a "fuel tank" composed of powered
magnesium charged with gaseous hydrogen into magnesium hydride.
The hydrogen gas is released when engine exaust heat is pumped into the tank
under presure to release the metalic bond.
The tank takes up to six times less space than dewar vessels and weigh a
third as much.
That cuts Dr. Jones' tank down to something around 350 lbs. in about 4.5
cubic feet.
Pratt & Whitney developed and field tested in '72 - '73 the TARGET fule cell
for home use.
The central A/C sized unit was designed to produce 12.5 peak kilowatts,
considered adequate to meet any power needs in a home of 1973.
A 37.5 killowatt fule cell was also developed for the Public Service
Electric and Gas Company in Newark, New Jersey.
Assuming a 50% conversion efficiency for these cells, 50% of the LNG piped
to the cell is converted to energy (not considering loss from the steam
reformer and DC inverter).
Used at a power plant there is then the issue of transmission loss.
The Pratt & Whitney cells actually had about a 40% efficiency, the same as
conventional power plants.
The fule cells ability to reach full power within seconds and maintain a
high energy conversion efficiency even when not operating a peak load are
significant advantages over turbines.
The three 2.2 kilowatt fuel cells that landed on the Moon in '69 were Pratt
& Whitney's, but NASSA didn't care about cost, with Dr. Ernst Cohn
estimating average fuel cell costs from $50,000 per killowatt for experiment
up to $300,000 per kilowatt for actual space aplications.
hummmm, a cubic foot of water is 28 kg or 62.4 pounds without the salt.
Your absolutly correct that there is simply too little information in that
report to make any kind of conclusions from, but the bit with them waving
their hands and then flouresing that light leeds me to think that the actual
power used by that machine may not be too great.
I also agree that the claim that he somehow accidentally found out that he
could light salt water on fire with the thing dosen't quite pass the sniff
test.
I'll see if I can get some actual data on this thing.
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