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Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it
    #7233350 -

I see a lot of debate on this free energy stuff recently, it appears it is stemming from the realization that we are not working in harmony with our planet.  It also appears that we are looking for a quick fix (free energy devices) something which is highly unlikely to happen.  Us humans - always looking for the quick fix :thumbdown:

Anyway, we already have free energy - it comes from the sun, the wind, the temperature, running water and the tides of the sea.

The fact is we don't use them.  As a race we could of decided to work ing harmony with our planet but we knew it was easier and cheaper to just make a mess and pump shit into the atmosphere.  Back to that quick fix thing again...

Anyway its too late now, which major corporation is willing to spend a shit load of money on harvesting the huge amount of free energy required by todays modern lifestyle?  None, because its not cost effective.  The are making a hell of alot more MONEY doing it the messy way - so thats pretty much how we are doomed to stay.

I don't have the answers but I suggest if you really want to help the planet on an individual scale then you must convert to the methods of clean energy which I stated.

Personally I think, so what if the human race dooms itself?  I may be a DNA programmed being that is supposed to prevail the existence of my species by any means but my logical mind is telling me otherwise.  I don't know where all this shit is headed, so I don't care if we fuck ourselves up.  I do feel some sympathy but I really don't understand what this DNA being that we are all apart of is trying to do in the long run.

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: Ego Death]
    #7233387 -

The fact is we don't use them.

You're right and as you said, the problem is profit motive. Even at $3 a gallon, oil is still the cheapest way to run a car.

But I'm not as pessimistic as you. Not because I have faith in the human race but because eventually oil WILL run out and when that happens, renewable energy sources will become cost effective (and without oil revenue the Middle East will revert to the cesspool it is).

Something that bugs me no end is that the trillion or so dollars we've just spent stirring up hatred and fundamentalism in Iraq (and that doesn't count the ongoing medical and retirement costs for all those soldiers for the next 60-something years) could have been spent developing clean and renewable energy sources.

A trillion dollars would have gone a long way toward that end. Fucking George Bush and his ego. Grrr!


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: Diploid]
    #7233434 -

Heres a question for you,

How much energy is produced from a solar panel?

Now I know theres several factors involved - sun intensity, size and efficiency of the panel ect

If made up some dimensions and an average sun intensity etc we could work out a rough idea of the output.

Now, if that output was used in the electrolysis of water and the resulting hydrogen and oxygen was combusted in a hydrogen engine / generator - how extra energy would we get - than just using the solar panel alone???

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: Ego Death]
    #7233444 -

At 40 degrees latitude, about 600 watts reaches the Earth over an 8 hour summer day per square meter (meaning there will be more watts at noon than at morning/dusk, but that it averages out to 600 watts for 8 hours).

Solar cells are, on average, between 10% and 20% efficient (cheaper ones being at the low end)....so that means only about 60-120 watts of that is available. Over the 8 hours of light you get, thats about 480-960 watt/hours per square meter.


--------------------
Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: Ego Death]
    #7233487 -

To add to Tendal's reply, the practical upshot of all that he said is that even covering the entire roof and yard of the typical home with very expensive solar cells will often not be enough to power the home, especially if it's air conditioned, which it would be if it were in a sunny place.

The highest efficiencies that have been achieved in labs is around 40%. That technology is still WAY too expensive for practical use. Even if we could make 100% efficient cells, the sun only lands about a kilowatt per square meter when it's overhead at the equator, and less as you move away from the equator. That's a lot of energy on the whole Earth, but not much on the roof of a home.

On top of all these problems, in order to use solar power effectively, you also need a giant battery bank to handle night time and cloudy days, plus inverters and assorted electronics to convert the power for home use, and all that stuff, especially the batteries, need maintenance and have to be replaced every few years.

All that can up to double the cost of a home, so naturally there is no demand. Nobody will pay $600,000 for a solar home when they can get it for $300,000 and live off the electric grid.

Solar is not the solution for the foreseeable future, if ever. I think investing in more nuclear power and especially continuing to research and develop hydrogen fusion power is the ultimate solution. Hydrogen fusion power is clean, and will be cheap and practically unlimited once the technology is commercialized.

Naturally, we're wasting money on sending people to mars instead of developing fusion technology. Freekin George Bush. Grrr!


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: Ego Death]
    #7233712 -

I see a lot of debate on this free energy stuff recently, it appears it is stemming from the realization that we are not working in harmony with our planet. It also appears that we are looking for a quick fix (free energy devices) something which is highly unlikely to happen. Us humans - always looking for the quick fix

People have been trying to break the laws of thermodynamics since they were discovered. You're right that more people today are putting faith into an ultimate solution but it's usually to be fashionable.

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: trendal]
    #7234596 -

How much energy is in a glass of water?

If the electrolysis process was used, and a hydrogen generator (no idea the efficiency)?

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: Ego Death]
    #7234844 -

What do you mean hydrogen generator? Do you mean combusting the hydrogen with oxygen? If that is the case then there is negative energy in a glass of water ( it will take more energy to pull the hydrogen out then you get by combusting it back to water)

If you mean fusion of the hydrogen then that is another story, water has a ton of energy in it.




Quote:
Naturally, we're wasting money on sending people to mars instead of developing fusion technology.

How much money are we wasting sending people to mars? Not much I suspect.

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: DieCommie]
    #7235096 -

How much money are we wasting sending people to mars? Not much I suspect.

About $80 billion by the time we get there in ~2020. I don't have beef with going to Mars. What I have beef with is sending humans there. That makes the mission many times more expensive and for little advantage. Robots can do almost everything humans can do at this early exploration and basic science stage. Eventually, yes, I agree humans have to go, but that's when robots have done all they can do and a human is needed for further progress. I just don't think we're at that point yet.


Aside from that, I think there's a lot of confusion among non-techie type people regarding hydrogen, so lemme try to expand on what DieCommie said.

Hydrogen can be used two ways: as an energy storage system (like a battery) or as an energy generating system (like a nuclear power plant).

In the energy storage mode, two hydrogen atoms are 'burned' together with one oxygen atom. The result is that energy is released, and the three atoms end up stuck together as H2O (water) which is the waste product of the reaction so it's very clean. Burn hydrogen and you get energy and water as waste.

The problem is that it takes at least as much energy to liberate hydrogen in the first place as you get back by burning it. One way to do this is to start with H2O (water) and put energy into the system. This separates the two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms so you can store the hydrogen for use later. It's a battery, essentially.

Now, even though all this type of hydrogen technology can do is store energy, not generate it, it's still very useful because hydrogen can be used in fuel cells that are very simple with no moving parts so they're very reliable. The technology can be used in everything from cars to laptop computers like this one that can run for a month on a single charge of compressed hydrogen gas.

What I described above is a chemical reaction. The other way hydrogen can be used is through fusion, which is a nuclear reaction, not a chemical one.

If you take two hydrogen atoms and smash them together v-e-r-y hard, the two nuclei will 'fuse' into one helium atom. In the process a relatively (heh, pun) large amount of energy is released. This is the same kind of energy that's released inside the sun and from a thermonuclear bomb, but it's very safe because, unlike a bomb where there is a runaway chain-reaction, if something goes wrong with a fusion reactor, the reaction just dies out. In fact, keeping the reaction from stopping is one of the biggest technical problems that has to be solved to make the technology work.

So in summary, hydrogen can be burned to release stored energy in a very convenient and clean way, or it can fused into helium in giant fusion reactors to generate energy.

The thing to understand here is that once fusion technology is commercialized, the amount of clean energy that will become available to mankind will be so enormous, that it will end hunger, remove many of the biggest barriers to the development of the third world, and maybe even bring peace to the Earth.

Energy hungry water purification technologies like distillation and reverse osmosis will become available even in the poorest countries and so will eliminate diseases that cause so much misery and death. Hydroponic agriculture under artificial light will become affordable everywhere, even in places where nothing grows. With so much clean energy everywhere, there will be little left for people to fight about other than maybe religious hatred.

In the first world, the abundance of clean energy will make oil obsolete. It will bring us great benefits like cheap electric bills, ubiquitous electric cars, less expensive manufactured goods, and the list goes on.

That said, there are still some very hard science and engineering problems that have to be solved for this to work. That's going to take time and money and it's why I think trying to send humans to Mars before solving fusion puts the cart before the horse.

I'm a little stoneded, so I hope all that made sense. :wink:


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: Ego Death]
    #7235990 -

How much energy is in a glass of water?

If all the energy in a 250 gram glass of water were turned into energy, the calculation would go like this:

Start with Einstein's most famous result: E = m * c^2

E is energy in joules

m is mass (the .250 kilograms in this case)

c^2 is the speed-of-light times the speed-of-light. Light travels at about 300,000,000 meters per second, so that times itself is  90,000,000,000,000,000. That's 90 quadrillion.

Plug the numbers into the equation and you get:

E = .250 * 300,000,000 * 300,000,000

So E = 22,500,000,000,000,000 joules

To change joules to kilowatt-hour, you multiply by .00000028.

So a glass of water converted entirely to energy becomes 6,300,000,000 kilowatt-hour. That's 6.3 billion kilowatt-hour!

The average home in the US uses about 1,000 kilowatt-hour in a month.

6.3 billion kilowatt-hour is what the US consumes in electric power in about a month, unless I *still shifted a decimal point somewhere, which is entirely possible, but I'm not stoned any more so now I don't have an excuse. :tongue:

* Edit: fixed stoneded error


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

Edited by Diploid (07/30/07 07:41 AM)

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: Diploid]
    #7239089 -

> E = 250 * 300,000,000 * 300,000,000 [joules]

You are off (too large) by three orders of magnitude.


--------------------
Just another spore in the wind.

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: Seuss]
    #7239226 -

Only three? That's better than my usual stonded accuracy.

OK, mass is in kilograms, not grams. Slide the decimal point over three times for everything I said. :tongue:


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: Diploid]
    #7239327 -

> That's better than my usual stonded accuracy

My old physics adviser used to say the difference between engineering and physics is accuracy... now assume we have a spherical chicken...


--------------------
Just another spore in the wind.

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: DieCommie]
    #7239858 -

DieCommie said:
What do you mean hydrogen generator? Do you mean combusting the hydrogen with oxygen? If that is the case then there is negative energy in a glass of water ( it will take more energy to pull the hydrogen out then you get by combusting it back to water)


Hydrogen generator = An engine that runs on hydrogen and oxygen and uses an motor in reverse as a generator to make electrical power!

I'm talking about breaking the h2o apart by means such as solar, river/sea generators etc

This is my question - will you get more energy out of the system by using the hydrogen generator OR just keeping the solar/river etc generated electricity?

I'm no science expert - I am merely posing questions to those in the know!

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: trendal]
    #7239922 -

If we were to build a giant frickin' island made of solar panels in space, and propelled it near the Sun, and used that collected energy to power a giant frickin' laser that transferred the energy to Earth... how efficient do you think that would be (moving solar panels closer to the Sun, that is)?


--------------------
As the life of a candle,
my wick will burn out.
But, the fire of my mind
shall beam into infinite.

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: psyka]
    #7240021 -

psyka said:
If we were to build a giant frickin' island made of solar panels in space, and propelled it near the Sun, and used that collected energy to power a giant frickin' laser that transferred the energy to Earth... how efficient do you think that would be (moving solar panels closer to the Sun, that is)?


About as efficient as saying "Hey, I wanna move this Pyramid! Let's ship in 1 million horses and pull it away."  :lol:
The trillions of dollars it would take to achieve that, would probably perfect fusion far before that project could even be completed.

Theoreticaly, I have no idea how much power that would generate, or what the efficiency of the cells would be like.
May wanna look up the cells used on the ISS, or the ones used on satelites.


--------------------
~Happy sailing~

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: Ego Death]
    #7240032 -

Hydrogen generator = An engine that runs on hydrogen and oxygen and uses an motor in reverse as a generator to make electrical power!

It's a zero-sum game. You have to put in 100 units of energy to electrolyze water and release enough hydrogen to get 100 units back out (minus a few points for inefficiency). That's what I mean when I say that hydrogen used this way is an energy storage method, not an energy production method.

You have to initially get the energy from somewhere in order to liberate the hydrogen. Getting that energy back out of the hydrogen is very clean, but if you burned coal to get the energy to electrolyze the water to get the hydrogen in the first place, then you're back where you started.

This is what non-geeks don't get and it's why I typed up all that stuff ^^^ up there a few posts back. Hydrogen is not the end-all solution until we solve the fusion problem. All hydrogen can do for us right now is store and transport energy in a very clean and convenient form.

To PRODUCE energy with hydrogen, you need giant petawatt lasers and a fusion reaction chamber, and that's what we're currently trying to figure out how to do.

When we figure out how to do fusion, then we can fuse hydrogen and PRODUCE enormous amounts of energy that can then be used to split water molecules in order to STORE the energy for clean use later.

Summary: fusion GIVES you energy and electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen STORES your energy.


BTW, cool science experiment for you to try at home:

1. Take a bowl of water and stir in a bunch of salt until it saturates.

2. Drop an AA battery in the water

3. Watch as a stream of bubbles starts coming off each end of the battery.

You've just performed electrolysis. The bubbles are the result of breaking apart water molecules into atoms of hydrogen and oxygen. If you look closely, you'll notice that the stream of bubbles on the negative end of the battery is about twice as thick as the one on the positive end. This is because water has two hydrogen atoms to each oxygen atom: H2O

Pure hydrogen bubbles come off the negative terminal of the battery, and pure oxygen bubbles come off the positive terminal.

Cool, eh?

The thing to realize is that it takes energy to accomplish this. That's what the AA battery contributes. If you captured the streams of hydrogen and oxygen, mixed the two gases together, then put a spark to it, there would be a small explosion which instantly releases the same amount of energy your AA battery originally put into the system to split the water molecules. Along with the explosion, you'd also get a drop of water which is the recombined H2O.

Anyway, to answer your question: This is my question - will you get more energy out of the system by using the hydrogen generator OR just keeping the solar/river etc generated electricity?

You DO NOT get more energy out of the system by using hydrogen. You'd get slightly less (due to inefficiency) than you used to produce the hydrogen.

One benefit you WILL get is that you don't have use a mechanical motor/generator assembly like you're describing. A hydrogen fuel cell produces electricity DIRECTLY by combining hydrogen and oxygen and it has no moving parts.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: RuNE]
    #7240091 -

I don't know, "Hey, I wanna move this Pyramid! Let's ship in 1 million horses and pull it away," doesn't as unrealistic as some of the goals our political leaders pawn off to us. The question is how big would it have to be to power the demands of a city?


--------------------
As the life of a candle,
my wick will burn out.
But, the fire of my mind
shall beam into infinite.

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: Diploid]
    #7276149 -

I remember doing that electrolysis experiment at home, but applied it to molten sodium chloride....    :evil:
Sodium the metal, is pretty f'n cool....!    :muppet:  And DaMMiT, I wanted to make my own to play with.....!    :smile:
I had a big thimble crucible, a little butane torch, and melted the volume of about 4-5 pennies worth of salt (it was glowing/molten)....
Stuck the electrodes in, and it worked....!    Only one little problem....
The tiny stream of molten sodium that was produced would surface from the salt, and be exposed to the air....
Thus giving me the indicator that it was working because I could see the distinct orange glow of it burning up upon oxidizing....  :smirk:
(I later looked it up, and you need an inert gas or a closed system with no gasses to produce it the right way....)

Then suddenly, things took a little turn for the worse....  :frown:    The bottom of the crucible cracked right off....
Spilling molten salt onto the unprotected surface of my wooden desk in my bedroom....    :rolleyes:    :tongue:
I remember lots of smoke.....!    :smirk:    Still got the mark on my desk to prove it....!    :lol:


OK, these may be stoooopid questions, but hey.....    :ohwell:

1) What is the deciding factor in electrolysis that makes the different elements (from the separated molecule) go to the positive or the negative poles....?

2) Why don't us humans use natural geo-thermal locations as a power source....?
Like, lava + water > steam > turn some turbines > produce electricity....

Yellowstone has a lot of heat relatively close to the surface that could be exploited pretty easily I would think....(?)   
(Or, is this already an existing resource that we use....?)


>^;;^<


--------------------
I'll be your midnight French Fry....  :naughty:

"The most important things in life that are often ignored, are the things that one cannot see...."
>^;;^<

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Re: Random ramble about free energy, the energy crisis and the philosophy of it [Re: PhanTomCat]
    #7276232 -

1) All "ionic" bonds are made between something that carries a positive charge and something that carries a negative charge. That is why electrolysis works in the first place! In salt, for example, you have a positively charged Na+ ion and a negatively charged Cl- ion. The Na+ goes to the negative electrode, and the Cl- goes to the positive electrode.

2) We do, where the land permits. Look at Iceland, for example.


--------------------
Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

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