not something you hear very often
May. 18th, 2006 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdThis is the funniest article I have ever read involving gold futures. Which, admittedly, is a very small pool, but g'wan, lookit. The charts made me laff.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-18 06:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-18 06:42 pm (UTC)A little off topic...
Date: 2006-05-18 07:10 pm (UTC)I came across this today and I was curious to get your take on it. I'm sitting here pretty amazed. Especially because of this claim they make:
Considering the poor energy return for things like ethanol, I was wondering if I'm really right in thinking that I might be looking at an actual workable alternative fuel solution.
Company: Hydrogen Technology Applications, INC.
Product: Aquygen™ gas
Website: http://hytechapps.com/index.html
Re: A little off topic...
Date: 2006-05-18 08:09 pm (UTC)Mind you, from what I can tell about Brown's Gas, it's highly unstable in low-density (under 200 psi) storage. It explodes a lot. So presumably this isn't quite the same thing. Regardless, it's still a battery, even assuming their claims are real.
However, their claims about energy density are patently silly, since you can't do the original breakdown without a separate energy input. This is why their only product so far is a welder; you can plug it in. I'm sure it burns real good, too, tho' a little research indicates that their claims about dissimilar materials welding to be... questionable at best.
Also, they talk about the worldwide crisis of oxygen depletion. Um, what?
Their car application appears to be a unit that flows oxygen (and hydrogen) into the fuels flow - a lot like a NOX booster. It should work as well as a a NOX booster, maybe a little better. But you still have to get that gas made, and you need an external energy source for it. So you'd be burning gasoline, but with this "Aquygen" booster.
Regardless, it's not an energy producer. It starts with water, you add electricity (not shown, but look at that welder, of course it's electricity) and you get hydrogen and oxygen. Recombine that and you get water again. Thermodynamics says you can't do better than break even, and that's in a perfect world, so clearly you're losing energy somewhere. That energy is made up by adding electricity in the down side of the energy transfer, i.e., when water is broken down into H and O.
Poking around, I find a couple of chemists who have gone through the paper on the website (which has not, you'll note, been published) and so far, everybody has universally said that the paper shows no understanding of basic chemistry. In the words of one reader, "It's junk science... and this contraption is a ticking bomb on wheels."
Re: A little off topic...
Date: 2006-05-18 08:19 pm (UTC)Re: A little off topic...
Date: 2006-05-18 08:23 pm (UTC)Also, the "run your car on WATER!" thing is the oldest automotive scam in the book, so whenever you see that particular claim, take it apart very carefully.
Re: A little off topic...
Date: 2006-05-19 01:13 pm (UTC)So what is this "Water Fuel Museum" in downtown Lexington? I keep seeing signs for it but nobody I've asked knows what it is.
Re: A little off topic...
Date: 2006-05-24 12:43 am (UTC)Re: A little off topic...
Date: 2006-05-22 06:53 pm (UTC)Re: A little off topic...
Date: 2006-05-22 07:06 pm (UTC)What you're describing - a machine that one started, runs forever without additional inputs - is called a perpetual-motion machine. Such a thing could be possible in theory in a perfect (meaning, in this case, not actually possible) environment. if it were frictionless, produced zero waste heat and was immune to all other forms of energy loss, then you could do something like that. It is arguable that the universe as a whole could be seen as such a machine, if recent math about entropy deltas turns out to be true - but such couldn't do any work, as work requires energy, and the engine can't produce that energy out of nothing.
The reason regular engines work is that they use a little energy (electricity, making sparks) to release a large amount of previously stored energy, contained in gasoline or diesel fuel. The original source for this energy - the place where the energy got stored came from in the first place - is in fact, primarily solar and geological, and compressed into small form via heat and pressure (particularly pressure - this is where the geological comes in) over millions of years. Solar energy was needed for the plants and animals to grow; geologic activity provided the compression and heat needed to convert it to high-energy-storage carbon-rich molecules. When we burn these chemicals in an internal combustion engine, we're releasing that stored energy.
Re: A little off topic...
Date: 2006-05-23 08:57 pm (UTC)So ... the (a) electrical energy required for electolysis > than the (b) HHO energy required to run an engine powerful enough to create (a)+ enough power to drive wheels. Therefore, at best, HHO would only useful in a hybrid (automotive) application. Correct?
Do you think of that there might be a better-than-today's (practical) possibility of using this HHO thing in a hybrid auto ... one that would exceed the 32 mpg I'm getting on the future equivalent of my Escape 4wd by a significant (50%?) margin? End goal ... minimize gasoline consumption.
Re: A little off topic...
Date: 2006-05-24 12:31 am (UTC)有賀と。私のあえごじょすですね？ ^_^
the (a) electrical energy required for electolysis > than the (b) HHO energy required to run an engine powerful enough to create (a)+ enough power to drive wheels.
Yes. In fact, whenever you have a closed reaction loop like this, the answer is yes.
Why? Because all these are basically chemical reactions. (As is true for all fuels.) Some chemical reactions require energy to be added in order to make them happen. In this case, the reaction that needs energy to happen is the breakdown of water (H2O) into hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O), the elements that make up the water. And the reason that reaction needs energy is because you're basically throwing electrons - as in the kind that, when moving, power light bulbs in your house - at the water. The H2O, which is very stable left alone because it already has the right number of electrons, suddenly finds itself with more electrons than it knows what to do with in that configuration. So when that happens, the hydrogen and oxygen break apart - and into a configuration that can hold more electrons.
That's a bit of an oversimplification1, but it's essentially what you're doing. When you're adding energy, you're actually adding stuff - in this case, electrons. You can even count the number you add if you want, or at least get a really, really good approximation.
That's how the power gets added; that's basically its form: actual, countable electrons. You're adding some to water, which raises the energy level of the water, which causes the water to break up into its component parts so that it can hold that extra charge.
When you recombine that hydrogen and oxygen into water, that reaction produces energy. But it can't produce any more energy than it took to separate the H2O to begin with, because all you're doing is taking those electrons back out2. (Burning, in that heat-and-light way, is more or less doing the same thing - the heat and light are the waste products of an inefficient reaction!) In a fuel cell, this electron removal is done very cleverly with a catalyst - that's a chemical that helps a reaction take place without being consumed by that reaction - which is why they're so wicked efficient. A fuel cell is basically a box with gas inputs, a catalyst, and plates to pick up the recovered electrons, which, when in motion, are the electricity3.
This same thing is true for all closed-loop chemical reaction serieses. You can add some electrons and take some back out, but as long as it's a closed loop of reaction products, you're not going to be coming up with any new electrons, any new energy, just because you can't make something out of nothing4. And because you lose energy to real-world inefficiencies (waste heat and leakage, to name two) you come out losing ground every time through the cycle.
Does this make sense so far?
Now, in the case of using it as a booster for a gasoline reaction: it might! They're certainly claiming it does. This raises the question: why? For that answer, see the next comment.
Re: A little off topic...
Date: 2006-05-24 12:31 am (UTC)Because you're using an amount of energy (we'll call it "X," to get all Algebraic on your ass) to make H2 and O2, and then are adding that to a separate chemical reaction, one powered with an external fuels supply - the gasoline or diesel from the gas tank. In this case, the extra oxygen and hydrogen would make the gasoline (or diesel) reaction chain happen more efficiently and completely. You're not just reversing the original chemical reaction; you're helping with a completely different chemical reaction. More efficiency means more useful recovered energy (we'll call that amount "Y," because we like you) from the same fuel.
So the question in that case would be: is the improvement in yield out of the gasoline ("Y") higher, in total energy, than the amount of energy needed to break water into hydrogen and oxygen ("X")? If it is - if "Y" is bigger than "X" - then that's potentially very useful. If it's enough bigger so as to make up for the extra energy costs of carrying around the equipment and the inevitable losses due again to real-world losses like waste heat, then this would be a net gain. That's harder to do than the company pushing this stuff wants to admit, but maybe they've got something that works. It would help, if they do; time will tell.
1: Okay, it's a lot of one. But it's an accurate oversimplification. Whoever this is probably doesn't want to hear about wave-particle theory, positrons, phase states, or anything else like that right now.
2: I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.
3: This is even more oversimplified, but again basically true, and it gets the point across.
4: Because in our universe as we understand it, mass and energy are interchangeable and convertable, but cannot be destroyed outright, or created from nothing. And you, in back, wearing the Hawking Radiation hat? STFU. You're still not creating something out of nothing but it's too hard to explain right now why and doesn't apply here anyway.
Re: A little off topic...
Date: 2006-05-25 05:55 pm (UTC)Re: A little off topic...
Date: 2006-05-25 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-18 08:01 pm (UTC)