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Making Fire From Water
LexNaturalis writes "Gizmodo has a story out about a new product that makes fire from water. Gizmodo explains how it works: 'Ordinary tap water (preferably distilled) is supplied to the fireplace through a pipe or tank, a 220 volt electrical service then separates the hydrogen and oxygen atoms through electrolysis, the Aqueon ignites the hydrogen, and ta-dah, fire! The oxygen is then added for color and brightness, while the rest is released into the room. It doesn't require venting because it doesn't produce any harmful emittents like carbon monoxide -- just water vapor.' The manufacturer's website has more information on the science behind this new product. While splitting water to get hydrogen and oxygen is not new, this product will likely make the technology more accessible to the masses and might hopefully show that hydrogen is a more attractive fuel than petroleum-based fuels."
"This product ... might hopefully show that hydrogen is a more attractive fuel".
A *fuel* eh? Just like my lead-acid car battery is a fuel.
Wake up folks; water is the most stable chemical form of hydrogen and oxygen. Breaking water to form hydrogen is an inefficient (wasteful) process.
The only potentially viable way to generate hydrogen is to "burn" biomass or mined gasses/oils. Biomass has to be grown, thus putting a strain on farmland and possibly promoting world hunger (we'll burn their food for energy). There are cleaner, more efficient ways of extracting energy from petroleum than converting it to hydrogen.
Hydrogen is merely a "cool" idea for porkbelly projects. As a non-naturally ocurring fuel, it is a non-starter.
No, what this shows is that hydrogen is simply a derivative of fossil fuels, and is in fact an extremely expensive, inefficient and almost useless way to store and transport energy.
Let's see, we start with huge lumps of coal, convert them to steam, convert the steam to electricity, and then use the electricity to make hydrogen which (in a fuel cell) we can convert back to electricity. Energy is lost at every step along the way. In particular, compressing the hydrogen from atmospheric pressure to storage tank pressure loses about HALF the total energy, so even if the fuel cell is 100% efficient, you've still lost HALF the energy you started with.
But commercial hydrogen is not produced by electrolysis. It's produced from natural gas and steam. So let's see, we start with natural gas, a product which has the following properties:
- Cheap
- Easy to store and transport with widely available equipment
- Can run through cheap, widely available engines
- Fairly clean burning (compared to diesel)
- High energy density in compressed tanks
and we convert that to hydrogen which has the following properties:- Very very expensive
- Very difficult to store. The only real-world proven way to store it at a high density is to liquify it. That will never be a practical option outside of aerospace industry
- Can be burned in regular engines, with regular engine efficiency, or can be burned in extremely expensive fuel cells. There is no realistic possibility of fuel cells becoming cost competitive in the foreseeable future.
- Low energy-density for real-world storage (compressed tanks, etc). Fuel cell cars have a range of less than 200 miles usually.
- Oh, and it's clean burning! Finally after all the bad things about H2 we come to one good thing!
- It makes the whole global warming and oil dependency problems worse becomes it takes so much energy is wasted in the process of converting fossil fuels into hydrogen.
The one thing that could help is that you can make hydrogen from clean nuclear energy and from clean solar energy, but given that hydrogen electrolysis is not cost-competitive with even cheap fossil fuel electricity, why should it be cost competitive with much more expensive solar electricity?I regret that our government is involved in subsidizing this whole boondoggle, but I have no worries that it will continue in the long-term. Some small improvements in lithium batteries, and some reasonable production economy in lithium batteries will make electric cars competitive with plain old ICE cars, and the hydrogen fuel research pork programs will shrivel up and die.
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It didn't seem to be April 1. Surely they're pulling our legs. I can think of no good reason for this thing. Just using the electricity to produce heat is way more efficient. I've seen electric fireplaces that give an amazingly good simulation of flames. How about a natural gas fireplace. They heat the room up well and add useful heat and do a reasonable imitation of a wood fire.
It's a long time since I've seen such a pointless waste of money.
With some mumbo jumbo about future fuels to sell it to people. In reality it's an electric heater. Almost all uses of electricity are electric heaters, and unless they affect things outside the room, they're mostly 100% efficient electric heaters. It's easy to be 100% efficient at turning useful energy into heat, after all. (furnaces are not 100% efficient because they must vent waste gas outside, along with some heat.)
This just happens to turn electricity into heat in an amusing way, at a high price. There are, of course lots of other interesting ways to turn electricity into heat. My computers are doing plenty of that right now.
If they really were pitching this as a way to heat the house, it would be as bad an idea as any other electric heater. They are way poorer in total "well to home" efficiency than gas furnaces, but often used because they are cheap to install (expensive to run), very easy to meter (for landlords), and on the positive side, can be easily individually controlled on a room by room basis, which sometimes can make them more efficient than heaters that either heat the whole building or nothing at all.
But I doubt this is meant as such a heater. It's meant as an art piece, to wow your fellow millionaire friends.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
What a load of bullshit about marketing alternative fuels. This sounds like a great geek toy, a fabulous special effect, even an interesting way to have open flames inside without toxic fumes needing exhaust. Isn't that enough?
Because as an "alternative energy" demo, it's a travesty. Thermodynamics means that all the energy released in the fire had to be put into the O2 and H2 cracked from the water, by the high-voltage electricity. Which electricity had to be generated far away, losing at least half its power in the transmission. Then the cracking inefficiency, and the power consumed in moving around the gasses, all make this a terribly inefficient waste of power. Which is generated, no doubt, by burning petro fuels. Which are not only running out (the relatively clean and cheap stuff, anyway), but which are pumping lots of pollution into the air at the plants - even when you we don't see them.
This toy is clearly a much bigger waster of power than even the worst home heating systems that rely on electric baseboards. Because it does what they do, then a bunch more stuff, before the heat is released. What we have here is a sick little example of "greenwashing": covering up an environmental destruction with PR about how it's good for the environment. If we convert all our heating, all our toys, to these greenwashed little wasters, our environment will consist of entirely simulated nature - for those of us who survive the detachment from the food chain, clement weather, and our current civilization.
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make install -not war
> Well well, we can tell who's a right winger.
... and farmlands will grow in size. ... Thus, overall food output will increase ...
Uncalled for ad-hominem.
> Besides, electricity can be derived from anything these days.
I agree, but why waste electricity creating hydrogen? As the most versatile form of energy known to man, why not use it directly?
>
Massive corporate farms with the requisite processing equipment would grow in size. The guys in small or dry countries wouldn't have a chance. Also, organic/sustainable farming would not be possible at this scale; fertilizers and pesticides would be needed in greater abundance.
Increasing demand is not a good way to increase supply. Unfortunately, most economic models show that increased supply comes only *after* an increase in price. Prices only decrease when a specialty product achieves economies of scale. I'd say farming is already rather large.
(my own cheap shot) Maybe you'd be happy if I cleared a few million acres down in the Amazon to grow your cheap biofuel.
But that's not true. According to a May 2004 article in SciAm (sorry, only available for purchase, check it out at your local library instead) says the total green house gases produced by coal plants used to generate the electricity needed to generate the hydrogen produces more green house gases than used by current gasoline engines.
They even include the supply chain side of transporting and storing hydrogen vs gasoline. They found that a fuel cell driven by gasoline actually produces less emissions than a fuel cell driven by coal.
The problem is the loss of effiency. To convert water to hydrogen via electrolysis from coal, the loss from coal to tank is 78%. After the hydrogen is used in a fuel cell, it loses an additional 43%, for a total loss of 92%.
Compared to gasoline.. pumping a gallon of oil, transporting to a refinery, turning it to gas, and transporting the gas to a filling station takes away 21% of the energy potential of the oil. For a conventional IC engine, 85% of the energy in the gas tank is lost. That brings it to a total of only 88%.
The plans are here: http://www.spiritofmaat.com/archive/feb2/carplans. zip I'm not 100% sure of all the engineering or the electronics behind it, but the general theories of it all seem as if it was something that could eventually prove useful.
Don't you think that it might be possible to use a catalyst in the electrolysis reaction and actually have it require less energy to split the H2O than you would get by reforming it?
(This is my first /. post)
You might as well take a solar powered light and shine it on itself.
Oh, hey, cool! I'm going to use that for the headlights on my car powered by the windmill on its front bumper.
KFG
Actually I did read the summary. When hydrogen burns it combines with oxygen. Two hydrogen atoms for each oxygen atom. There's an excess of oxygen due to the oxygen dissolved in the air, probably enough for the hydrogen to burn on its own. Adding more oxygen won't do anything at all, chemically.
In other words, either the hydrogen will all oxidize, or some of it will, but I don't see how that would change the color, unless the heat is high enough to cause visible black body radiation.
Either way, you're still an idiot. I did read the summary, but it didn't make sense to me, because I had a high school education (unlike yourself, apparently).
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Fucking hell, who modded this drivel up?
About the only passably informative thing in this post is the US power transmission losses.
Secondly, "nothing is created, nothing is lost". When you're trying to heat up a room with electricity, waste heat is a good thing. This hydrogen fire device has multiple conversion stages, all of them inefficient - in that they release waste heat. In the end, all of the energy that goes into the system is converted into heat.
What they have is a giant, ineffecient H2O splitter. The whole apparatus is not in the one place. It's likely that 90% of the heat generated is not directed where you want it, in the room. There are many good ways to direct heat into a room. This is not one of them.
Do you know about heat pumps ? Those devices are basically air conditioners acting in reverse....BLAH BLAH BLAH
all the heat pump has to do is extract a little bit of energy from the outside and spit out lots of waste heat...
This is the most retarded statement I have ever encountered about heat pumps. Heat pumps average 3 or 4 HUNDRED percent efficiency. There's fuck-all waste heat from the compressor heating your house.
And I fail to see what the fuck this has to do with the GP's post.
Any electrical devices that doesn't move outside air around is an efficient heater. Your toaster, your computer and your electrical chainsaw are just as efficient as your room heater, when it comes to producing heat.
(cough) unless your heater is a heat pump.
And the heat is produced by all those devices is a by-product of it's intended purpose. The device in question goes through a lengthy set of processes to generate heat. It's not elegant. It's not simple. And its not necessary.
Anyway, your post is a travesty of science and logic. You were inspired by a hampster and your reasoning smells of elderberries
Your post is rambling and offensive to anyone with a modicum of scientific and engineering skill.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
I used to work for a guy who used a variant of that technique to get rid of groundhogs. He kept sticks of sodium stored safely in a bucket of kerosene. When the critters got too pesky, he would fish out a couple of sticks and stuff them down the groundhog hole. He's then grab the hose and fill the hole from about 20' away.
BOOOM!
No more groundhog, and a lovely crater about which to tell stories.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Does anyone else find this funny?
Let's see - water splits into 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom...hydrogen in the presense of oxygen can be ignited to produce water vapor, which contains...umm...2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, leaving...ummm...nothing?
What excess oxygen are they talking about? Sure, the hydrogen could combine with the oxygen in the room that's already there, and therefore there would be excess from the original separation, but we are talking a net zero gain...it's no like we're adding oxygen to our home, which really has no benefit...
rm
Sci-Fi Storm
I found a bbc article about this. It seems that Iceland plans to do away with fossil fuel altogether in a few decades.
A latent existence
Where does one acquire sticks of sodium?