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It amazes me the potential of this invention, yet at the same time it almost makes me sick to my stomach that no one is taking inventions like this seriously, and we're still dealing with oil. What gives?
Alternative energy opportunities are clearly out there, yet why must we take a one-ticket ride to hell in a hand basket?
In an ideal world this would have been snapped up by a car company and used for its intended purpose. Sadly, in the real world the car manufacturers have nothing on big oil companies who are probably the ones who will buy this guy out to protect their market.
Infrastructure is one of the biggest barriers to alternative energy. We have gas stations literally everywhere that can pump gasoline quite effectively. The problem here is that to turn that invention into a widespread car, you have to start replacing gas stations with salt water stations. And then you need something to create the radio waves. A car battery and alternator may be able to do the job, but if not, that poses a new problem. If indeed outside electricity must be brought in, that electricity has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere usually being coal-fired powerplants.
I'm more interested in how this actually works. Is it splitting the water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen? If so, then why saltwater? I can't remember the colour of burning salt, but is it red?
I think the goverment want problems in the world just to say there doing something.
Cool invention. I wonder if it's energy efficient. That is, if it produces more energy than is used to split the water molecules. However, I see one potential problem in using it to treat cancer. Humans are full of salt water.
Sodium chloride burns with a yellow or a yellow-orange colour.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvo
I looked into it a little and they said the water burns then reforms into water. So the byproduct is water. Which means you put in salt water, and get out energy and pure water. Forget running cars on this. If the numbers work right you can produce clean drinking water from salt water possibly for free, possibly with a net gain of energy.
If you get a process that creates energy and clean drinking water, no car or gas company is going to stop that.
Now if the numbers don't work out, and it takes more energy to run the radio wave generator than you gain from burning the water, all is not lost. Desalination can be very expensive, so as long as there is very little loss of energy in the process it may make desalination far cheaper in the future.
Clean water for everyone is in my opinion an even better goal that cheap car gas.
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Nobody takes it seriously Deery because, unfortunately, it's crackpot science; naturally with the exception of news channels whose science reporters increasingly seem to have literally no understanding of the subject they report on.Quote:
It amazes me the potential of this invention, yet at the same time it almost makes me sick to my stomach that no one is taking inventions like this seriously, and we're still dealing with oil. What gives?
Alternative energy opportunities are clearly out there, yet why must we take a one-ticket ride to hell in a hand basket?
This 'invention' has been invented time and time again by amateur technicians for more than a century. However, all you need to know to understand why it can't possibly work is the First Law of Thermodynamics which is possibly one of the most basic and simple principles in the whole of science... it's literally one of the first things you ever learn as a kid.
The first law says that you can't get something for free; you can't create energy.
What this device does is electrolyses water into oxygen and hydrogen, and then burns the hydrogen (bearing in mind that burning is just reacting with oxygen), turning it back into water.
Just consider what would happen if you kept doing this over and over; you'd have an infinite source of free energy, which is impossible.
What actually happens here is that the amount of electrical energy you have to put into the water during electrolysis will be equal to the amount of heat energy you get back out of it; and, as no process is anywhere near 100% efficient, if you were to repeat this what would actually happen is that you would very quickly lose energy.
All this process does is store electrical energy in the form of hydrogen, and then release it. In other words, it is no more a source of energy than a battery is; that is to say, not at all.
Oil on the other hand is not something we have to put energy into; the energy is already there. That's why oil is a fuel.
What this technology is useful for is that it provides a good way (there are others) of turning electrical energy into a store of energy that can be used for transport. As Mario says though, at the moment most of our electrical energy comes from non-renewable sources in the first place, so the problem is not averted at all. Only when all of our electricity is generated by clean sources, and we have a hydrogen infrastructure in place, will this be of any use.
This is all true, though I still wonder why it has to be saltwater. I guess if he had said ordinary water, it wouldn't sound as convincing or revolutionary.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
Khh, the salt in saltwater is natrium chloride, not sodium chloride. I might be mistaken, but I don't think they produce the same flame colour.
The laws of thermodynamics are lies! Fuck the government!Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucidness
This is possible, if they are breaking down salt and that releases energy. Though the more I look into it, it doesn't appear as if they are doing anything to the salt at all.
Saltwater is a better conductor and electrolyzes faster. From my days of making hydrogen and blowing shit up >_>...Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvo
Edit: In fact, completely pure water doesn't conduct electricity at all.
I suppose that is true, though it's difficult to get a hold of water that doesn't conduct electricity.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartiate
Really? Why not?Quote:
Edit: In fact, completely pure water doesn't conduct electricity at all.
I think it has to do with ions in the water. Most water usually has some sort of ion in it...calcium, sodium chloride, nitrates, whatever. The ions conduct the electricity. The water only serves as a medium into which the ions are dissolved. Pure distilled water makes a shitty conductor.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
Salt water seems a bit...cumbersome for any extended period. The salt will build up and coat nearly any surface. An acid will conduct electricity just as well as salt.
This invention doesn't work by electrolysing the salt (I don't think so, anyway), it works by electrolysing the water into hydrogen and oxygen... a process in which the water effectively conducts electricity. I don't see any reason other ions need to be included to allow this to happen...
Pure water actually has a small ionic component; there's an equilibrium between the water molecules and hydroxide and hydrogen ions.
You are correct that it elecrolyzes the water, not the salt. The salt ions, however, help to conduct the electricity. Think of an electric fence. The wire conducts the electricity, but anything that touches the wire is also affected.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
Xei, H2O practically can't conduct electricity.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_conductivity
Look at the conductivity of water, compared to drinking water. Extremely low.
Yes I know all that. This isn't really related to Spartiate's assertion though that water alone can't be electrolysed.
Ah, I'm actually not sure about that. I asked my brother, he said no, but I'm not sure.
Apologies Marvo, I was responding to Mario and didn't realise you posted.
In response to what you said; there's not really such a thing as 'practically impossible' in science... lots of zeros may make a number look small but all this means is that you need to increase various variables which typically allow for huge variation; for example, in this circumstance there's no practical reason you can't just increase the voltage a thousandfold with a transformer.
If it was 'practically impossible' for pure water to conduct electricity, then how do we get hydrogen from electrolysing water; something which is most definitely possible?
Salt water conducts a lot easier because it just electrolyses the salt ions instead of the hydroxide and hydrogen ions, which are much more abundant in the solution.
in addition: why would anybody in the oil industry ever want there to be access to a (purported) energy source like this? a lack of innovation can be profitable, unfortunately.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
I'm not sure what you mean by that... what's the relation of desalination to this?
Heh, I don't know enough about physics and chemistry to really answer any of this. I'm not even sure if the effectivity/speed of the electrolysing process is any quicker if the water is highly conductive or not.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
The reason for practically not being able to increase the voltage a thousand fold is that such a transformer wouldn't be practical :P
We did an experiment in class to this effect once. We found that there was a very distinct difference between distilled water and water with ions in it. Ions do, in fact, improve the rate of electrolyzation, and significantly at that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvo
Yeah but... not the rate of electrolysis of the ions of the water?
woops i didn't really tie that thought into what i was typing... i just edited it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
Oh... I'm still not really sure 'what the oil industry wants' has much to do with this. This thread is essentially about a private inventor... there's no reason he couldn't make a business out of this (if it actually worked, which it doesn't).
If he was able to keep them from getting money by replacing oil and there was nothing else they could do they would probably assassinate him. lolQuote:
Originally Posted by Xei
The ions aren't electrolyzed. When present in water, they speed the reaction. That's all I'm saying.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
How did you measure the speed of the reaction? Current?
I don't see how you don't know it was going faster because you just put a load of ions in the solution which could actually be electrolysed, far in excess of the number of ions naturally present in pure water.
Xei, pure water is a very good insulator. It conducts electricity about as well as space conducts sound (that is to say not non-existent, but of no practical significance). I'd feel pretty safe jumping into a pool of distilled water holding on to a plugged-in toaster.
As for the rate of electrolysis... well try this experiment. Take a glass of tap water and put copper wire in it connected to each lead of a lantern battery, then do the same with a glass of the same water with a couple spoonfuls of table salt in it. You'll notice a lot more action in the second glass. If you can get a hold of some laboratory grade distilled water and try the same thing, you probably won't notice any reaction at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
yeah. it has A LOT to do with it, Xei (aside from the details you were getting at). as i said, innovation is often a danger to industry. there could be a number of perceived threats, especially when it gets anywhere near the scale the OP was thinking of - she seemed to be wondering about the potential and what's holding us back from that.Quote:
Originally Posted by MadMonkey
Our rig consisted of tubes over either end of the electrodes. As the water was electrolyzed, the gas would displace the water. Using a stopwatch, we timed several concentrations of ions and marked how much gas was produced. Not extremely precise, but we did observe a very noticeable difference. We used HCl as our ion source.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
i find it interesting how everyone wants to points out how, even with the technology possible, it would still cause more harm than good. that is a very backward way, logically and historically of seeing something of major change. the people really thinking jump on ideas end up changing the world forever. god bless boss.
Well this is my point; how do you know you were electrolysing hydrogen ions from water molecules, and not from the HCl? What I'm saying is that I'm not convinced adding ions increases the rate of breakdown of H2O. I wouldn't be surprised if it does but this doesn't seem like the experiment to show it.
People often get worked up about oil companies. In reality there is no stranglehold on academia, and it's virtually impossible to censor information like that these days.Quote:
yeah. it has A LOT to do with it, Xei (aside from the details you were getting at). as i said, innovation is often a danger to industry. there could be a number of perceived threats, especially when it gets anywhere near the scale the OP was thinking of - she seemed to be wondering about the potential and what's holding us back from that.
Sure, but all I'm talking about is if it's possible or not to electrolyse water. Electrolysing aqueous salt seems kind of irrelevant. I'm pretty sure that the idea of hydrogen economy is based on using electrical energy to electrolyse water (as opposed to where we currently get hydrogen from; that is to say, cracking hydrocarbons).Quote:
Xei, pure water is a very good insulator. It conducts electricity about as well as space conducts sound (that is to say not non-existent, but of no practical significance). I'd feel pretty safe jumping into a pool of distilled water holding on to a plugged-in toaster.
As for the rate of electrolysis... well try this experiment. Take a glass of tap water and put copper wire in it connected to each lead of a lantern battery, then do the same with a glass of the same water with a couple spoonfuls of table salt in it. You'll notice a lot more action in the second glass. If you can get a hold of some laboratory grade distilled water and try the same thing, you probably won't notice any reaction at all.
Well, if we were somehow obtaining chlorine and hydrogen gases, we would have detected the smell of chlorine in the oxygen. The hydrogen we burned, which was fun.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
I'm not sure I follow, you're still getting the hydrogen from the water, there's no hydrogen in salt... I'm pretty sure that commercial electrolysis (do they even do that on an industrial level) doesn't use distilled water.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
I can't even begin to fathom what's going on in this post. Are you saying that we are backwards, because we immediately discredit the invention in the OP?Quote:
Originally Posted by poopman
When he burns the water, he is basically breaking up the hydrogen and oxygen, which are both gases. As the hydrogen burns it rejoins with the oxygen to form pure water, and the salt is left behind, I assume still in a solid state. If the energy put in is the same as the energy you get out, which it should be(minus efficiency problems with creating the radio waves) the you basically have free water filtration. Even with some efficiency problems, it may still be better than current methods to remove salt from water.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
Well, that ain't really that convincing. Did you actually test for oxygen? The most common way is to get it to relight a splint.Quote:
Well, if we were somehow obtaining chlorine and hydrogen gases, we would have detected the smell of chlorine in the oxygen. The hydrogen we burned, which was fun.
I never said anything about getting hydrogen from salt. All you ever claimed was that salt water would be more 'active'. This could be because of the electrolysis of the salt. With a couple of tablespoons in there, the concentration of salt ions is going to be literally billions times higher than the concentration of hydrogen and oxygen ions in your solution.Quote:
I'm not sure I follow, you're still getting the hydrogen from the water, there's no hydrogen in salt... I'm pretty sure that commercial electrolysis (do they even do that on an industrial level) doesn't use distilled water.
I just don't see at the moment how this works, chemically or thermodynamically.
Minus efficiency problems? You don't realise how huge a factor efficiency is. To turn the heat energy back into electrical energy you'd have to use a steam generator. Steam generators generate almost all of the world's electricity, yet nobody has got them to run at more than 50% efficiency. This is because of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics; heat is the most natural, diffuse form for energy to be in, and it takes energy to get it back into some more useful form.Quote:
When he burns the water, he is basically breaking up the hydrogen and oxygen, which are both gases. As the hydrogen burns it rejoins with the oxygen to form pure water, and the salt is left behind, I assume still in a solid state. If the energy put in is the same as the energy you get out, which it should be(minus efficiency problems with creating the radio waves) the you basically have free water filtration. Even with some efficiency problems, it may still be better than current methods to remove salt from water.
It wouldn't work like this anyway. Salt is a classic ionic substance; when you electrolyse the water, the first thing that's going to happen is that the metal component of the salt will build up on one electrode, and the gaseous component bubble of the other.
Yea but they are using radio waves, not electrodes. So they solve any sort of problem with salt build up on them. Lets say you are losing 50 percent of the power that is crated, you are still recouping 50 percent of the power needed. The important question is, how much power is that? You can't really argue which method of filtration is better, if you don't know how much energy it takes.
Things like reverse osmosis are pretty expensive, especially in large scale. Right now desalination is almost never used, because its so impractical and consumes so much energy. So any new technology in that area, needs to be seriously looked at.
Table salt already splits up into Na+ and Cl- ions when it is dissolved in water, it can't be electrolyzed further. The salt acts as an electrolyte that propagates the electric field of the electrodes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
And by more active I mean the cathode will be much more bubbly (i.e. more hydrogen).
I'm sorry but I don't think you know what you're talking about.
Electrolysis works by neutralising ions.
NaCl splitting up into ions isn't electrolysis, it's dissociation.
When you put a positive and negative electrode in the solution, electrons are pulled off the Cl- ions forming Cl2 gas molecules, and electrons are forced onto the Na+ ions forming Na metal.
This is why a current flows.
I don't really see the difference between using radio waves to boil the water and using other methods of heating to boil the water. This isn't new.Quote:
Yea but they are using radio waves, not electrodes. So they solve any sort of problem with salt build up on them. Lets say you are losing 50 percent of the power that is crated, you are still recouping 50 percent of the power needed. The important question is, how much power is that? You can't really argue which method of filtration is better, if you don't know how much energy it takes.
Things like reverse osmosis are pretty expensive, especially in large scale. Right now desalination is almost never used, because its so impractical and consumes so much energy. So any new technology in that area, needs to be seriously looked at.
You are not using radio waves to heat water, you are using it to separate the salt from the water, and as a by product it creates heat. The heat is then recycled to reduce the energy cost of running it.
Yes I know, I was responding to this:Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
At this point I'm not sure what it is you don't understand... All the electrolyte is there for is to make a current flow.Quote:
When you put a positive and negative electrode in the solution, electrons are pulled off the Cl- ions forming Cl2 gas molecules, and electrons are forced onto the Na+ ions forming Na metal.
This is why a current flows.
What exactly are you arguing, that pure water will produce the same amount of hydrogen as salt water for a given current input?
No, he's explaining to you what electrolysis is, because you don't seem to have understood it quite.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartiate
When you use electrolysis, it's the electrolytes themselves you're interested in. The electrolytes are ions, and during electrolyses they're "deionized", so that for instance Cl- becomes Cl (which then bonds with another Cl and becomes Cl2).
edit: For the record, if you're trying to produce hydrogen gas from water, having other positive ions in the solution would be a bad idea, cause they'd likely get "deionized" before the hydrogen would.
No all I've ever said is that water may conduct better when you add salt because you've just put a load of ions in to electrolyse, not because you're making the water itself easier to electrolyse. :lQuote:
Originally Posted by Spartiate
You say all the electrolyte does is 'makes a current flow' but the way electrolytes do this is by being electrolysed. How, chemically, do the ions help the electrolysis of the water?
There is no context in which this makes any sense.Quote:
Table salt already splits up into Na+ and Cl- ions when it is dissolved in water, it can't be electrolyzed further.
This is exactly what I thought... I could have sworn I was making perfect sense, I thought I was going crazy. :lQuote:
Originally Posted by khh
I don't care about that, we don't want to electrolyze the salt, we want to electrolyze the water. The salt is there to propagate an electrical field in the water. I know that if you use salt as an electrolyte you'll also end up with some chlorine bubbling around the anode.Quote:
Originally Posted by khh
Lol I don't think we've been on the same page from the start. All I've been saying is that pure water can't be electrolyzed because no electrical field can propagate in it. The water will always be electrolyzed to the same degree for a given amount of current it is exposed to (regardless of what is floating in it). The electrolyte exposes the water to a larger amount of the current that is put in, that is why I said it improves the process of electrolysis (I may have used a series of terms that weren't 100% accurate).Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
Yes, it can. In pure water you'll always have a few H3O+ and OH- ions, so if you expose the water to a direct current, you'll get Hydrogen and Oxygen gas.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartiate
If you've got chloride gas bubbling at the anode, you're not really electrolysing water the water, but you may get hydrogen gas depending on what positive ions you've got in the solution.
True, but in practical terms the amount of hydrogen released is insignificant.Quote:
Originally Posted by khh
If you're using table salt, you definitely get hydrogen on the cathode, makes for good homemade fireworks :P.Quote:
If you've got chloride gas bubbling at the anode, you're not really electrolysing water the water, but you may get hydrogen gas depending on what positive ions you've got in the solution.
When I was younger, we would fill plastic bottles 1/5 full with small balls of tin foil and then fill 1/2 of it with HCl, put the cap on the bottle, shake it real quick and then throw it far away. Basically the pressure of gasses build up inside and eventually explode the bottle, making an incredibly loud boom. We're not sure which gasses came out of it though. Probably hydrogen and chloride. Yummy! Collapsed lungs!Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartiate
/derail
For an even simpler homemade "bomb", try mixing milk and chlorine (like for a pool) in a bottle. Pretty dangerous though so be careful.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvo
And HCl is a strong Acid, so if the bottle explodes it's a fair bet it's flying around. Why would you do something as dangerous as that, when there are easier ways of making things explode?Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvo
It was over the counter HCl, I think 18% it said on the bottle.Quote:
Originally Posted by khh
In hindsight, somebody could've gotten acid in their eyes. That never occured to us I think. We were more afraid of the gasses really.
Which kind of bomb would be better? Fireworks will blow fingers off :P
I suppose that's true. So in essence, people shouldn't play around with explosives until they're old enough to handle the materials properly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvo
Ideally yes, but you know people. If something goes boom, we want to try it out ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by khh
Yes, I know. I was playing around with fireworks as a kid too, you know :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Marvo
Sorry for the delayed reply...moving into dorms and whatnot. >.< To answer your question, we did do the splint test for oxygen, and found that it was, indeed, quite present. The difference between the two experiments was how quickly we obtained the same amount of oxygen. The solutions with higher ion concentrations performed much more rapidly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
Hey, Chemistry time!
Pure water can conduct electricity because there will always be a few molecules that dissociate into H3O+ and OH- ions
Self-ionization of water
Of course, pure water doesn't conduct very well, but in the real world there's almost always something dissolved in it because it's such a good solvent.
You'd get Tin Chloride and Hydrogen being given off. Definitely no Chlorine.Quote:
When I was younger, we would fill plastic bottles 1/5 full with small balls of tin foil and then fill 1/2 of it with HCl, put the cap on the bottle, shake it real quick and then throw it far away. Basically the pressure of gasses build up inside and eventually explode the bottle, making an incredibly loud boom. We're not sure which gasses came out of it though. Probably hydrogen and chloride. Yummy! Collapsed lungs!
The speed can be worked out by looking at the gas evolved, and the rate will change over time, but higher currents mean faster reactions - the rate at which charge flows is higher.Quote:
How did you measure the speed of the reaction? Current?
It's completely right to say you'd add a salt to electrolyse water. The rate is determined by the current that flows, and higher conductivity allows a larger current to flow for a given voltage (as given by Ohm's law).Quote:
I never said anything about getting hydrogen from salt. All you ever claimed was that salt water would be more 'active'. This could be because of the electrolysis of the salt. With a couple of tablespoons in there, the concentration of salt ions is going to be literally billions times higher than the concentration of hydrogen and oxygen ions in your solution.
I just don't see at the moment how this works, chemically or thermodynamically.
The product that is formed at the anode and cathode preferentially is due to the electrode potential. In simple terms, it's easier to oxide / reduce certain things than others.
Chemically? Not at all. It's purely physical, by allowing a larger current to flow. Larger currents cause more reactions, which will shift the equilibrium point.Quote:
How, chemically, do the ions help the electrolysis of the water?
Using a bunch of energy to produce a radio wave for a small vial that will produce a small amount of energy would result in a loss. In this case, it isn't viable.
The question is does the strength of the radio wave determine the amount of energy produced? Why not just build a massive plant out in the ocean with this technology? If it covers a large enough surface area on the ocean, it should result in a net gain of energy. It would be just like a power plant, which the tides would constantly renew the salt levels so that it would continually provide energy. If there isn't a net gain due to energy being required for the radio wave, throw up wind turbines for the ocean breeze. Give it an power storage supply that it can put energy into to keep the radio wave going in case the ocean breeze ever stopped.
Sounds viable in revolutionizing power plants. Clean energy and basically free through exploiting nature.
P.S. I wonder if this could cause spontaneous human combustion.
I remember seeing this on Youtube a couple years back.
I thought it was amazing and that it WOULD infact change a lot of things, as we can see that it happens it makes me wonder.
My thought is that big oil companies bought the idea and threw it in the trash, to prevent them from being run out of business. I think that the main reason we haven't come with a successful break-through is because that there is a lot of people who don't want to loose money. These people have almost limitless amounts of money, so they can do whatever they want to try and prevent fair business from being had. Kinda like trust's and monopolies back in the day.
I didn't read anything in the thread, I am just posting this, so don't yell at me if this is something someone already said
Anyways, that's my idea:D
http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/1316/emotvn.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by Meeshu
Less time making up conspiracy theories, more time educating yourself on basic science.Quote:
I remember seeing this on Youtube a couple years back.
I thought it was amazing and that it WOULD infact change a lot of things, as we can see that it happens it makes me wonder.
My thought is that big oil companies bought the idea and threw it in the trash, to prevent them from being run out of business. I think that the main reason we haven't come with a successful break-through is because that there is a lot of people who don't want to loose money. These people have almost limitless amounts of money, so they can do whatever they want to try and prevent fair business from being had. Kinda like trust's and monopolies back in the day.
I didn't read anything in the thread, I am just posting this, so don't yell at me if this is something someone already said
Anyways, that's my idea
If you'd even bothered to read this thread alone, you'd have learnt why this idea is nonsense. Namely, this could only ever store energy (like a battery), it's not an energy source (like oil). And you can't replace energy sources with energy storages.
Hydrogen as a way of storing energy definitely is interesting though, the problem is that it doesn't really help the energy crisis that much. It could improve electrical vehicles drastically, though that won't be through combustion, but rather some very advanced process in which the nucleus is split from the electrons and the electrons are run through a system. This is a very superficial explanation though and it's been a while since I've read about this stuff. Essentially, some countries have a lot of spare energy, like in Denmark we sometimes get more energy through windmills than we need, so practically we could use that energy to produce pure hydrogen for later use.Quote:
Originally Posted by Photolysis
Electrolysing water and then immediately burning the hydrogen has no practical application though.
Damn, post seems to have been eaten.
I don't think hydrogen would be that practical as an energy storage solution for vehicles, because to get the energy density to a usable value involves compressing it, and that creates all kinds of challenges. It lends itself far better to the power generation scale of things where they're better equipped to store it safely.
Improvements in battery technology and regenerative braking could make this obsolete as well.
Invention does not drive our economy, capitalism does. Capitalism has a fundamental flaw where what's best isn't always what's used. What's cheapest in the short term is what's used. So even though in the long run, this might be something that changes the world, the immediate cost far outweighs the immediate gains.
Not sure if this is going to contribute anything, but I read this a while ago and thought I'd just post it since it's related.
"Magnesium sulfate is the primary substance that causes the absorption of sound in seawater.[1] Absorption, in this case, means the conversion of acoustic energy to heat energy. The conversion is a strong function of frequency. Lower frequencies are less affected by the salt, so that the acoustic energy travels much farther in the ocean. Boric acid also contributes to absorption; but the most abundant salt in seawater, sodium chloride, has no known effect on sound absorption."
Actaulmly in this world the oil companies simply buy the patents on cars on water. They have already been invented 50 years ago. Theres just a few guys who want to be rich so they decide to fuck over the entire planet. That is the said truth behind our reality.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArcticDreams
No.
Brilliant logical argumentation you got there. Did you come up with that all by yourself? Impressive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
I can't give a counter argument if you don't actually give any reasons or evidence.
You can't use water as a fuel.
Actually you can use anything as a fuel. It's just a matter of whether it is worth it and whether we know how to get the energy out of it.
No, a fuel is something that can make energy from a normal state. Sure you can heat up water and use that in a steam engine, but then what you're heating the water with is the fuel, not the water.Quote:
Originally Posted by tommo
.... E= mc2
Yes, fitting a fusion reactor into a personal vehicle will be no problem.Quote:
Originally Posted by tommo
It doesn't matter whether it's fucking convenient or not. I was simply pointing out that you are wrong to say you can use water as fuel.Quote:
Originally Posted by tommo
Well, if you're being REALLY pedantic, then yes, water has energy stored in the form of mass which could be used as a fuel... theoretically.
Of course, heating the water up to a hydrogen-oxygen plasma and confining it to get fusion to work would be insanely impractical because it requires much better confinement, and much higher temperatures.
And with our present understanding, annihilating water with anti-water is also not practical, because even if we could generate enough and control it, it takes far more energy to make anti-matter than annihilation produces.
Such points don't really help cases like this though, where they only confuse the ignorant.
Because that's not hypocritical at all? You know, since you just made an assertion, and Xei has at least explained why this is a bunch of bullshit earlier in the thread.Quote:
Originally Posted by ChaybaChayba
You can run along elsewhere and make up more conspiracy theories now.
I see what you're saying tommo. It just isn't really productive to the conversation, considering the only way I can think to get energy out of water would be to heat it to a billion degrees so that it starts to fuse. Perhaps Chayba has some other idea, but as has been said, he was only making assertions so we don't know.
Plus, I don't really think it is possible to get energy out of anything. How does that follow from e = mc^2 ? When stuff is fused, what really happens is that the fuel loses mass because it loses energy, not that it loses energy because it somehow lost mass; this happens with every kind of energy process, including chemical reactions. How could you get energy out of lead?
Well, what I was saying is that everything with mass contains energy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
It just depends on whether we can figure out a way to get the energy out efficiently.
Of course this way is stupid, and I don't know if we have any other more efficient ways, but that's besides the point I was making.
Anyway, do you think if we could make water a fuel like this guy is saying, that it would really be that great for our planet?
Water droplets in the air also heat up our planet. Imagine how fucking humid it would be with billions of cars emitting steam.
Again, I think that would be vastly overestimating the importance of humans. The amount of steam would be dwarfed by natural sources such as oceans.
WOW, that makes no sense whatsoever, well done....
My intelligence is greater than yours, therefore yours doesn't exist....?
Personally I think you're wrong. I prefer chips over peanuts any day. You can simply do so much more with chips. There is a wide array of different tastes and you can use dip. Peanuts do have some application in cooking, but in the end, chips come out on top.
Er... what? How was that my argument?Quote:
Originally Posted by tommo
A better analogy would be my intelligence is a lot greater than that of an earthworm, so if you're worried about somebody developing a new chemical weapon for terrorist purposes you should probably spend one hell of a lot more time investigating me than investigating the fucking earthworm.
But it's still a terrible analogy.
There's nothing wrong with the analogy.
If you want something more specific....
There's almost 7 billion people on Earth consuming nearly every resource we have. What's one more going to do?
Yeah. Barely anything.
Water vapour is a natural constituent of air. It's not poisonous. It doesn't cause the deaths of puppies. If it rises by one seven-billionth... who cares?
Wrong answer. The correct answer is - "consume more fucking resources".
And by one more I clearly do not mean one more, it's like people saying, "what is one person going to do?" It's never just one, it just keeps adding up.
Water vapour is like insulation in the air. Insulation holds heat in, too much heat = bad for almost every living thing.
So yeah, kinda poisonous.
Congratulations on becoming confused by your own analogy, that's impressive. You were making an analogy between the relative size of all humanity's vapour emissions and natural vapour sources, and the relative size of one person to all of the people on the planet.
So saying there is a kind of slippery slope because as soon as one person decides to pollute then the next person decides to pollute etc. is nonsense because it corresponds to another entire population of Earth deciding to emit water vapour.
And er, no, not poisonous. Do you know why Earth isn't as barren as the surface of the moon with its extreme temperature variations? Guess what, it's greenhouse gases. Insulation from space is poison? Okay. You realise your sentence reads like something on trollscience.com ?
No I think you just got confused by my analogies.
Clearly you don't believe greenhouse gases cause global warming so I'm just gonna leave now. No point arguing with a moron.
Uhuh. It's not like I just said the exact opposite of that in the post before yours.Quote:
[What stops the Earth from freezing?] Guess what, it's greenhouse gases.
Glad you were able to substantiate your claims.
Please don't make a habit of insulting other members, by the way.