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It looks like there will not be any serious commitments made at COP26. It is kind of funny in some ways. Everyone (mostly) accepts that the outcome of not doing enough will be catastrophic and yet here we are haggling over money.
Perhaps if the world stopped spending $1.92 trillion on the military (2019 figures), it would have enough money to save our home.
On a related note, the fossil fuel industry was subsidised to the tune of $5.9 trillion in 2020 with not one single country pricing its fuels to reflect their full supply and environmental costs.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-fuel-industry-subsidies-of-11m-dollars-a-minute-imf-finds
“When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money."
(possibly a quote from Alanis Obomsawin, an Abenaki (American) Indian)
"Setting fossil fuel prices that reflect their true cost would cut global CO2 emissions by over a third" ermm no it wont coz everyone will still pay the price no matter what. these people really are furkin muppets.
at the moment we are stuck in a rut and have no option but to use fossil fuels until there is a clean, sustainable, on demand alternative. we cant go back to using horse and cart as the shizz piles in cities would be as big as Ben Nevis.
at the moment we need a passive catalyst (the big boys know what this but wont tell) that can separate the H and O in water then a power cell to combine them again. its not a perfect solution as its turning one resource to another but it would be better than relying on total "e" power. e power is not as clean as it makes out to be. yes the cars dont emit pollution but everything else connected to them does. you have to remember that most vehicles are a minimum 60% plastic so are made from crude oil. and lets not even get started on how dirty battery's are to the environment. then you have the way the electricity is made. NOTHING IS CARBON NEUTRAL and saying so is lies.
the whole reason that there is a big fuss about the public using fossil fuel is the extension of it for industry. think of what would happen if fossil fuel run out tomorrow. no more planes, ships, farming etc.etc. people would be thrown back to before the invention of steam. that means only local produce in the shops and billions of deaths worldwide. even the enviro-mental-ists would be crying out for fossil fuel to return coz they can get their muesli.
its not about global warming its about milking the gullible public for everything they have. and scaremongering them into higher prices.
..... we need a passive catalyst (the big boys know what this but wont tell) that can separate the H and O in water then a power cell to combine them again. ....
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by a "passive catalyst", (I'm guessing what it infers), but there is a fundamental thermodynamic issue that you cannot separate a compound/molecule and raise the potential energy of the constituents without applying MORE energy than that increase. If you could it would be a perpetual motion machine. There is always a loss (increase in entropy). When you recombine them you will release less energy than it took to get them separated. You cannot separate them with a catalyst which has no energy input.
Hydrogen from electrolysis is a viable way to store energy, but there is always a loss involved in any such process. Most commercial hydrogen comes from oil/gas at the moment, blue not green. Hydrogen from electrolysis seems to be around 80% efficient from a quick search, so you need to put in 25% more energy than you can recover from reacting the hydrogen, and that's not allowing for losses in the fuel cell etc. If you have loads of spare electricity on tap then it makes a lot of sense. It certainly makes no sense to use a gas fired power station to produce electricity to do the electrolysis.
passive catalyst is a material that reacts to other materials without the need of external ignition/energy. think sodium in water. you would use lets say it was sodium as the fuel but only when it comes in contact with the water the reaction separates the O and H. you then recombine the two together at which point you get heat and power from the power cell. pure H2O is the by product so used again and again in the cell.
i'm using sodium as an example as we do not know (but i suspect the powers that be do) what element or combination of elements would work as the fuel (catalyst). its theoretical. the big problem is we would mine for the elements (think coal) which creates a whole new problem.
you would fill the vehicle with the catalyst like you would petrol...
you dont have to burn stuff to create energy.
johnnyrod
13-11-21, 09:27 PM
As Embee says, there is no free lunch. It requires energy to separate the hydrogen and oxygen and according to Hess's law, you will get the same energy back, but on a purist level. In the real world 100% efficiency is impossible (yes this is a scientific fact) so yu have losses along the way e.g. resistance heating.
A catalyst makes a reaction go faster but is unable to affect the overall energy change involved, these are two different parameters in the same way that the spark from a spark plug is not related to the energy released from the petrol burning. Catalysts are not consumed in the same way that you do need to fill your tank with petrol but the spark plugs fire many times.
On the one hand big money causes problems, on the other I'm not one for conspiracy theories. If someone really had the secret to "clean" energy they would be limitlessly rich.
......
you would fill the vehicle with the catalyst like you would petrol...
you dont have to burn stuff to create energy.
As johnnyrod says, a catalyst influences the rate at which a reaction takes place, it is not changed as a result of the reaction. Precious metals in a vehicle catalytic converter are not changed or depleted, they attract the reactants and provide a site and conditions for the reaction to take place and then release the products. A 3-way catalyst for example can encourage the transfer of oxygen in NOx molecules to move over to HC or CO molecules to gve H2O and CO2 (leaving N2 free), the reason it works is that energy is released, the resultant compounds have a lower energy state than the reactants.
You still need to provide the reactants. If you're putting a substance into a reaction and it gets changed and releases energy then it's a fuel not a catalyst.
You cannot create energy (except in a nuclear sense of converting mass into energy), chemical reactions "release" potential energy, burning is just one form of reaction (oxidation), but it's the most common way to release energy from a "fuel". If you want to force the reaction backwards, e.g. having burned hydrogen and formed water and releasing energy as heat, to then split the water back into free hydrogen and oxygen you must put at least the same amount of energy back in to re-establish the potential energy of the hydrogen.
You cannot do it simply with the presence of a catalyst, it won't happen, it's thermodynamics.
there is no free lunch. yes i know as it would use "fuel" to separate the H and O. its the reaction of the "fuel" to the H2O that causes the molecules to to separate. the separated molecules are then fed into a fuel cell where they are combined its the reaction of the combining of H and O back to H2O that creates heat and electricity.
its the "fuel" thats the problem as we do not know what it is. the "fuel" is passive as it requires no combustion only a chemical reaction. as said sort of like a nuclear reaction.
the problem with hydrogen fuel cells is the by product waste is H2O and given the amount of vehicles on the road we have rivers not roads it also takes masses of energy to produce hydrogen in factories.
throw the text books away and think out the box. if it were not for people pushing the boundary's of science we would still be in the dark ages. classic example is the link between helicobacter problems in your stomach and ulcers. the person was ridiculed by his peers until it was proven fact, i think he won a Nobel prize...
if producing a steady supply of clean power were really the problem then why do we not have tidal powered generators instead of stupid windmill type that rely on wind. tides are guaranteed....
if producing a steady supply of clean power were really the problem then why do we not have tidal powered generators instead of stupid windmill type that rely on wind. tides are guaranteed....
You mean like this one:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-57991351
Your question should have been why aren't they more common and that's because it's harder/much more expensive to make a durable product that is immersed in sea water. There is also the question of how much sea life will be affected. Wind turbines are cheaper.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/why-hasnt-tidal-power-taken-off-yet/
Since wind turbines are at the mercy of the wind and sometimes have to be shutdown because they're not needed (and/or unbalance the grid) why not use their spare capacity at those times to generate hydrogen through electrolysis?
You mean like this one:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-57991351
yes buy why do they need to be so effin complicated. why not a fixed structure with topside maintenance platform. sort of a mix between Thames Barrier and dyson "fanless" air fan but it works the other way.
and we could also drill down to magma for thermal energy like Iceland does. lets face it the worst that can happen is we get a volcano that we can then charge tourists to visit.
johnnyrod
15-11-21, 07:43 PM
The problem with fuel cells is that the source of hydrogen isn't very green, and they are about 50% efficient in converting chemical to electrical energy. Way better than ICE which is more like 20%, but not as good as a battery. That and carrying around pressurised hydrogen is not for the fainthearted.
ethariel
16-11-21, 12:36 AM
32 million cars in UK
Assume (it will never happen) that they were all replaced by 100% electric vehicles?
Country wide total blackout as 32 million cars will take about 1.5-3x the total grid supply to charge at just 3.7kW (single phase home charging is 3.7 to 7kW) and a car battery is what, 100kWh so a nominal 24h to charge (usually the battery will not let you touch the last 10% or it faces destruction if really run totally flat) from 'empty' to full. Without taking into consideration any other e-vehicle type (vans, busses, lorries etc).
That's not including all the usual electricity consumption.
We simply don't have close to the capacity available to cope with that full stop, the answer?
Hydrogen fuel cells in cars, meets the general city air quality targets but is nowhere close to carbon neutral (joke words) ever or just stick to burning petrol/diesel.
We simply don't have close to the capacity available to cope with that full stop, the answer?
the answer is simple. stop making guns and fighting wars. if we put that effort and money into third world country's to produce bio fuels, solar, wind and hydro power there would be enough for everyone. its only a tiny fraction of the worlds landmass that is used for "human consumption". the rest sits empty looking pretty.
we know full electric is not going to work so best make bio hybrid better.
ethariel
16-11-21, 10:45 AM
we know full electric is not going to work so best make bio hybrid better.
And where does all the biofuel come from?
Generally in the UK we are a net importer of everything grown, we simply don't have the landmass to 'grow our own' biofuel.
Electrolysis of seawater using offshore wind farms and supplying the Hydrogen back to shore for storage imho is a far better solution (However living near a Hydrogen Storage area would leave me with the screaming heebie-jeebies every time i see a naked flame).
All I can be sure of is it looks like I'll see the death of the loud/noisy motorcycle in my lifetime :(
And where does all the biofuel come from?
Generally in the UK we are a net importer of everything grown, we simply don't have the landmass to 'grow our own' biofuel.
Electrolysis of seawater using offshore wind farms and supplying the Hydrogen back to shore for storage imho is a far better solution (However living near a Hydrogen Storage area would leave me with the screaming heebie-jeebies every time i see a naked flame).
All I can be sure of is it looks like I'll see the death of the loud/noisy motorcycle in my lifetime :(
see my answer above. at the moment we in the UK import pretty much all of our crude oil so it would just be the same but bio fuel.
its about time we stopped making guns and started getting along.
hydrogen does not have to be stored in liquid form it can be stored as a powder which as far as i know is not as volatile as its liquid counterpart.
people moan about E10 when we should be praising it and asking for more ethanol to be added like the E85 in california. if we all do that then crude will last 4 times longer so instead of 50 years we will have 200 years to find a solution.
Hydrogen can stored as a metal hydride but that process is in its infancy.
if we all do that then crude will last 4 times longer so instead of 50 years we will have 200 years to find a solution.
...with 200 more years of burning fossil fuels there won't be a biosphere left for anyone to worry about it.
lets face it its not as bad as it was during the age of coal and steam.
if we really want to save the planet then how about population control. one child per married couple. and yes they will have to be married to have children and even if they get a divorce they are still not allowed to have more children... less people less burning of fossil fuels... simples. round my area pretty much anyone who turns the age of 17 goes and passes their test so that ends up around 5 cars per household coz they bread like furkin rabbits.
i said find a solution i did not say we have to use fossil fuels for that amount of time. even just taking away gas will cause chaos never mind making all the vehicles on the road electric.
Someone on reddit pointed out this link to an article on large (undeclared) methane leaks
https://www.space.com/satellites-discover-huge-undeclared-methane-emissions
Methane is a much more "efficient" green house gas than carbon dioxide but has a shorter atmospheric life (it oxidises into CO2 and water eventually).
johnnyrod
16-11-21, 09:43 PM
hydrogen does not have to be stored in liquid form it can be stored as a powder which as far as i know is not as volatile as its liquid counterpart.
Hmm, well as the free element, the answer is no. It is possible to absorb it into some pretty funky solid matrices but we are not talking mass usage.
Biofuels have dubious green credentials (depending on how they are made, it varies) but the sheer quantity needed to compare with oil is insane.
Someone on reddit pointed out this link to an article on large (undeclared) methane leaks
https://www.space.com/satellites-discover-huge-undeclared-methane-emissions
Methane is a much more "efficient" green house gas than carbon dioxide but has a shorter atmospheric life (it oxidises into CO2 and water eventually).
i have a methane processing facility about 10 miles away and when they are "flaring" you dont need your car lights on going up the bypass. the flare tube is constantly lit so why dont they make electricity on site with the waste methane that would otherwise light the flare... that way the plant would be self sufficient. why all the waste??? best bit is that there is a wind farm right next door, always gives me a giggle when i'm going past.
Hmm, well as the free element, the answer is no. It is possible to absorb it into some pretty funky solid matrices but we are not talking mass usage.
Biofuels have dubious green credentials (depending on how they are made, it varies) but the sheer quantity needed to compare with oil is insane.
we have to think of something as that "insane" amount of crude is running out at an alarming rate. if it dried up tomorrow covid death numbers would be drop in the ocean. who cares about biofuel's green credentials.
Biker Biggles
17-11-21, 05:10 PM
Anyway this COP that has been so much in the news -----------------
Honestly now--------
Without looking it up---------
I asked myself what does COP stand for. I was sure I knew but just couldnt remember but I was wrong. So I asked all my family and everyone I met for a couple of days and not one person knew what the letters stood for.
My sister looked it up in the end and I realised that I never knew and hadnt forgotten. I was underwhelmed.
conference of plonkers? creating other payroll? care of pensioners?
its a big boys club where they get to divvy up who gets to do what and make money out of it.
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