"Besides, why burn hydrocarbons in a power plant if you can get 3x more energy out of them by separating out the hydrogen and using them to power a fuel sell?"
How? how? how? The only way you can get less energy from burning hydrocarbons than by burning only the hydrogen extracted from the same hydrocarbons is if breaking the C-H and C-C bonds takes more energy than forming the C-O bond releases. Humph, my CRC Handbook is at home....
Burning hydrocarbons to generate electricity to liberate hydrogen from water is indeed silly. I only mentioned it because people seem fixated on the idea that energy must ultimately come from fossil hydrocarbons.
I still think you're figuring in only the energy used to run the process, not the *total* energy input to the process, which in the case of cracking hydrocarbons is dominated by the latent energy in the hydrocarbons, MUCH OF WHICH IS DISCARDED IN THE PROCESS. It's turned into pollution, not work.
Oh, wait, I think I see it: there's that factor of three. You get *that* because hydrogen is compressible. A liter of gasoline occupies 1000cm^3 no matter how hard you sit on it, but you can compress hydrogen quite a lot before it liquefies. Apparently at practicable pressures a given volume of hydrogen has three times the energy density of the same volume of (uncompressed) diesel fuel, but how much diesel would you have to crack to get that much hydrogen? A whole lot more than three times as much, I think. Where's a phase diagram? Blotz, Handbook at home....
As for storage and transport, I see natural-gas powered vehicles all the time, and they have the same problem. LNG is a liquid, but does not exist at STP; LNG vehicles also store their fuel under considerable pressure. The infrastructure must be upgraded and expanded, but it is there. We have a large and expensive network for delivery of gaseous fuels already in place, and the opportunity to make more money off it will not go un-noticed even if the necessary preparations are expensive.
The chicken/egg problem appears to have been solved. If the Army want it badly enough, they'll get it, at whatever price they can negotiate, and then the manufacturers will be wanting to achieve greater economies of scale by expanding into other markets. The same guys who are saying today, "oh, you don't want hydrogen" will, without even blinking, begin chanting, "you WANT hydrogen".
You are ignoring the energy that the oil represents *as oil*. Burning the oil gives you 2.H2 + O2 -> 2.H2O + delta(1), *plus* C + O2 -> CO2 + delta(2). The hydrogen extraction process throws away the carbon so in burning the resulting hydrogen you only get delta(1); delta(2) is not in the resulting fuel because the carbon is not there. Burning the hydrogen gives you less energy than burning the hydrogen plus the carbon.
The *only* way this makes sense for the Army is that they can pack more energy into a given volume, meaning that vehicles go farther without resupply, meaning fewer resupply runs and delays plus recapture of battle opportunities that would have had to be foregone because the range of their vehicles made the operations too risky. It's especially attractive if they have it and the enemy doesn't, because that gives them a vital "edge" over the competition. They are going to pay a premium for something that is worth it in their situation.
*sigh* If you go back and read my original posting, you'll see that I said liberating hydrogen from hydrocarbons was not the way to go, for precisely the reasons you give.
"Have you got any other suggestions? There are only two widely available sources of hydrogen. The first is water, which is all well and good except that you only ever get out less energy than you put in (ie it's purely an energy transport mechanism, you still need a power plant to provide the electricity in the first place)."
How many times does this have to be said? Extract hydrogen from hydrocarbons and you no longer have the hydrocarbons for use as fuel, so cracking oil costs roughly as much energy as cracking water. The only difference is what you put in (expensive oil vs. cheap water) and what you throw away (carbon vs. oxygen).
If you absolutely must remain dependent on fossil hydrocarbons, you can burn 'em to generate the energy to crack the water. It would still be cleaner and more efficient to operate 100 huge cracking plants with regular maintenance than 100 million consumer-grade IC engines, most of which don't get nearly the kind of maintenance they need.
"...ethanol...that is cheap and easy to transport and adapt to our existing infrastructure."
And contains carbon, meaning we get carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide when we burn it. This causes both political and practical problems, and is one reason we're looking at something other than fossil hydrocarbons in the first place.
Alcohols are also corrosive and hard to keep dry.
Plus, how do you explain to the greens that now you're cutting down *trees* to make your car go?:-/
"And considering that most of the energy output from the process came from the fuel at the input, your (energy applied)/(energy retrieved) is well in excess of 100%."
Rubbish. The energy input to a catalytic oil-cracker includes *all of the energy you could have got by burning the oil*. As ALWAYS, you get out useful energy that is less than 100% of the useful energy you put in.
As for burning elemental carbon, take a look at any coal-fired engine to see it happen. C + O2 -> CO2 + delta. Did I miss something?
If you'd think for a moment, you'd realize that the fuel tank is just about the least of a tanker's worries. He's riding in a vehicle that carries hundreds of pounds of high-explosive ammunition.
They deal with this problem by carrying the dangerous stuff outside the main hull until they want to use it. Obviously the fuel tank can be put there too.
Think a little longer. Getting hydrogen from oil *also* consumes as much energy as it gives back, and then some. The oil is destroyed. The oil represents every bit of the energy latent in the hydrogen, plus some more. Breaking down water might turn out to be *more* efficient since nearly all the energy put in will be stored in the output, while the energy that could be gotten from burning the carbon in oil goes, well, where *does* it go? I hope it's used in driving the hydrogen production process, since we get stuck with the combustion products anyway. (Please tell me we're not throwing away millions of BTUs via cooling towers just to get the hydrogen. That would be pathetic.)
People do talk as though hydrogen is free energy, but I can't help it that so many didn't listen to primary-school discussions of thermodynamics. All we can do is to correct them until the light dawns.
Those hydrogen ships would of course be guarded, just as big slow aircraft carriers are guarded. A carrier battle group is just about the most dangerous thing you'll ever encounter at less than interplanetary scale. I wouldn't mess with one, and a nuclear-powered ship full of vital fuel will likely be protected as well or better.
Since there are no wells of molecular hydrogen anywhere on the planet, hydrogen will *always* be only a storage medium, *never* a direct energy source. Hydrogen production will be coupled with some other source of energy because that's the only way to get free hydrogen around here.
But the extraction-from-hydrocarbon method has got to go. Notice the byproducts: carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide. Sound familiar? Aren't those a large part of the reason people have been whining about the need for alternative fuels?
The nice thing about hydrogen is that you can make it from many different energy-producing processes and ship it fairly easily. (Try loading 40 tons of electricity on a truck.) We *should* be looking into efficient industrial-sized water electrolysis, or maybe some kind of thermolytic or photolytic process. The wind, wave, and solar power installations that some think will save the world can easily drive an electrolytic converter, for example, and the only byproduct is oxygen. So the air is actually *better* downwind of an electrolytic hydrogen plant (if they don't bottle all the oxygen and sell that too), and the system is closed and fully recycling, since burning the hydrogen gives you the water back.
Liberating hydrogen from oil is expedient in the short term, but it's stupid in the long term. Isn't short-term thinking how we messed up our atmosphere in the first place?
That said, I'm happy to see an outfit with the size and clout of the U.S. Army getting serious about hydrogen. They can drive development to the point that the consumption end is a going concern, whether the production end is well thought out or not. Once there's a sizable demand for hydrogen fuel, there'll be money enough for bright people to tune up the supply side.
"Huh? I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here."
That is quite plain.:-)
"In that case, you blocked the IP addresses. However, if SPEWS continues to have those addresses on the list, knowing full well that some servers will block them, then they will also be blocking those addresses."
THINK for a minute. Notice "(or not to consult)". If I make the latter choice, then by your formula SPEWS has just unblocked those addresses and will continue not to block them as long as I don't change my mind. Clearly there is something wrong with your notion of causality.
"SPEWS does not know that that specific server will block an IP address, but they do know that if they list an address, it will be blocked by a large number of servers."
They know nothing of the sort. Every sysadmin in the world could decide today to remove SPEWS from their configurations, and without any change on SPEWS' part the addresses they list would no longer be blocked anywhere (on their recommendation).
More locally, if I configure my boxes to ignore SPEWS then nothing that SPEWS does with its list can affect in any way my customers' ability to receive mail from anywhere. The simple proof is that I have done so and the result is as I have indicated.
[what would happen to a company that concentrates on long-term appreciation through repeat business from satisfied customers?]
Look around you. The companies that are on their second or third *generation* of management are, in many cases, what you described. They may not be squeaky-clean, but averaged over the years they tend to be decent enough. (Was it Warren Buffet who remarked that you can't do good business with bad people? An awful lot of folks believe this even if they can't put it into words, and they reward good businesses and punish bad ones by their choices. The bad businesses tend to be like Icarus: they fly high for a little and then burn out.)
No, it really is idiotic. If I open a can of baked beans with the intention of landing a man on Neptune, and a man lands on Neptune, did I really cause the landing on Neptune? Aren't we discussing the classic fallacy called "post hoc, ergo propter hoc"?
"If I perform an action, with an intended result, and the result happend, then I have caused the result to happen. This changes it from advice to a deliberate attempt to block IP addresses, and is not just advice."
Please explain how SPEWS gained administrative access to my ISP's servers and configured them in accord with SPEWS policy regarless of my ISP's policy. Otherwise SPEWS is not blocking anything. The person who adjusted the equipment to block is doing the blocking.
Let me turn your argument around. If you perform no action, and a result happens, did you cause the result? Because if I reconfigure a box to consult (or not to consult) SPEWS, they likely will never know about it, and have not done anything they were not already doing, yet the behavior of the network changes. Who changed it?
Well, some people seem to have the attitude that it is better for 99 legitimate messages to die than to let one UCE enter, and they may choose blocklists which cater to that attitude if they wish. It's a pain but what can one do? Anyone has a perfect right to feel that discarding unwanted messages is more important than reading wanted messages.
If one is having a problem with a blocklist, one needs to get the person at the *other end* of the attempted communication to switch to another list. Much more difficult than just changing something you have complete control of, especially since the other person is blocking you.
There is still plenty of academic content out there, and a whole movement setting up to vastly increase the amount of research that is made available directly from the writer to the reader, gratis. (Would you pay $2000/yr for a magazine subscription? Your school library does, and they are *not* happy. Neither are an increasing number of researchers who find that their work is getting less and less exposure as libraries cut more gold-plated subscriptions to meet tighter budgets.)
...is that I never go to any of the sites that were mentioned. It's not a matter of some principle; they just don't appeal. Now they won't appeal even more.:-P
One way is to say that the company has these problems. People do not want to be surprised by problems, and bosses may try to get rid of the messenger instead of the problem.
The other way is to say that the company could do even better than it is now by making these positive changes. Bosses like to hear that the company can improve its performance and they may be inclined to really listen. It's the same message as before, but now you're *selling* what you want to do rather than complaining about something you want to stop doing.
While you're working out a positive approach, also try to cast your observations, suggestions, and logic in business terms. It helps to get the right kind of attention, and at least shows that you're not just some geek who doesn't understand or care about what *they* hold dear. Find some way to answer the question, "how does this help us end the day with more money than we would have had otherwise?"
...or cell phones will become send-only devices when millions of us learn to keep them turned off all the time as the only way to preserve a little peace in our lives.
(When will advertisers learn that what many of us want most from them is SILENCE? How hard is it to understand "go away and *stop bothering me*"?)
It wasn't Star Trek anyway; they just used the names of various races from Star Trek to tell a different story. Maybe it's from the "mirror" universe....
(But I'm still bummed that _Enterprise_ the TV show wasn't anything to do with the novel, so recipe cum grano salis.)
Um, is it possible to prove trademark infringement when the trademark is *never displayed* by the allegded infringer? Because I'm not aware that the defendants ever put up any text or image with the word "playboy" or "playmate" in them.
If someone went to a newsstand and asked for _Playboy_, and the clerk silently handed him _Hustler_ instead, it may be poor customer service and lousy supply-chain relations, but is it trademark infringement?
If a telephone book publisher puts competing businesses on the same page (since they are trading in the same market), is that trademark infringement?
Hoho. Of course *we* all knew that, but now it's been blessed by science. Good news.
How many conversations have *you* had, or how many alarmist articles have you read, which basically boiled down to, "how can you spend hours playing with that email stuff instead of interacting with *people*?":-O It's like there's a sizable group of humans with a cognitive deficit which leaves them incapable of believing in the reality of anyone not physically present. Scary.
Slashdot Mirror
"Besides, why burn hydrocarbons in a power plant if you can get 3x more energy out of them by separating out the hydrogen and using them to power a fuel sell?"
How? how? how? The only way you can get less energy from burning hydrocarbons than by burning only the hydrogen extracted from the same hydrocarbons is if breaking the C-H and C-C bonds takes more energy than forming the C-O bond releases. Humph, my CRC Handbook is at home....
Burning hydrocarbons to generate electricity to liberate hydrogen from water is indeed silly. I only mentioned it because people seem fixated on the idea that energy must ultimately come from fossil hydrocarbons.
I still think you're figuring in only the energy used to run the process, not the *total* energy input to the process, which in the case of cracking hydrocarbons is dominated by the latent energy in the hydrocarbons, MUCH OF WHICH IS DISCARDED IN THE PROCESS. It's turned into pollution, not work.
Oh, wait, I think I see it: there's that factor of three. You get *that* because hydrogen is compressible. A liter of gasoline occupies 1000cm^3 no matter how hard you sit on it, but you can compress hydrogen quite a lot before it liquefies. Apparently at practicable pressures a given volume of hydrogen has three times the energy density of the same volume of (uncompressed) diesel fuel, but how much diesel would you have to crack to get that much hydrogen? A whole lot more than three times as much, I think. Where's a phase diagram? Blotz, Handbook at home....
As for storage and transport, I see natural-gas powered vehicles all the time, and they have the same problem. LNG is a liquid, but does not exist at STP; LNG vehicles also store their fuel under considerable pressure. The infrastructure must be upgraded and expanded, but it is there. We have a large and expensive network for delivery of gaseous fuels already in place, and the opportunity to make more money off it will not go un-noticed even if the necessary preparations are expensive.
The chicken/egg problem appears to have been solved. If the Army want it badly enough, they'll get it, at whatever price they can negotiate, and then the manufacturers will be wanting to achieve greater economies of scale by expanding into other markets. The same guys who are saying today, "oh, you don't want hydrogen" will, without even blinking, begin chanting, "you WANT hydrogen".
You are ignoring the energy that the oil represents *as oil*. Burning the oil gives you 2.H2 + O2 -> 2.H2O + delta(1), *plus* C + O2 -> CO2 + delta(2). The hydrogen extraction process throws away the carbon so in burning the resulting hydrogen you only get delta(1); delta(2) is not in the resulting fuel because the carbon is not there. Burning the hydrogen gives you less energy than burning the hydrogen plus the carbon.
The *only* way this makes sense for the Army is that they can pack more energy into a given volume, meaning that vehicles go farther without resupply, meaning fewer resupply runs and delays plus recapture of battle opportunities that would have had to be foregone because the range of their vehicles made the operations too risky. It's especially attractive if they have it and the enemy doesn't, because that gives them a vital "edge" over the competition. They are going to pay a premium for something that is worth it in their situation.
*sigh* If you go back and read my original posting, you'll see that I said liberating hydrogen from hydrocarbons was not the way to go, for precisely the reasons you give.
"Have you got any other suggestions? There are only two widely available sources of hydrogen. The first is water, which is all well and good except that you only ever get out less energy than you put in (ie it's purely an energy transport mechanism, you still need a power plant to provide the electricity in the first place)."
How many times does this have to be said? Extract hydrogen from hydrocarbons and you no longer have the hydrocarbons for use as fuel, so cracking oil costs roughly as much energy as cracking water. The only difference is what you put in (expensive oil vs. cheap water) and what you throw away (carbon vs. oxygen).
If you absolutely must remain dependent on fossil hydrocarbons, you can burn 'em to generate the energy to crack the water. It would still be cleaner and more efficient to operate 100 huge cracking plants with regular maintenance than 100 million consumer-grade IC engines, most of which don't get nearly the kind of maintenance they need.
"...ethanol...that is cheap and easy to transport and adapt to our existing infrastructure."
:-/
And contains carbon, meaning we get carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide when we burn it. This causes both political and practical problems, and is one reason we're looking at something other than fossil hydrocarbons in the first place.
Alcohols are also corrosive and hard to keep dry.
Plus, how do you explain to the greens that now you're cutting down *trees* to make your car go?
"And considering that most of the energy output from the process came from the fuel at the input, your (energy applied)/(energy retrieved) is well in excess of 100%."
Rubbish. The energy input to a catalytic oil-cracker includes *all of the energy you could have got by burning the oil*. As ALWAYS, you get out useful energy that is less than 100% of the useful energy you put in.
As for burning elemental carbon, take a look at any coal-fired engine to see it happen. C + O2 -> CO2 + delta. Did I miss something?
If you'd think for a moment, you'd realize that the fuel tank is just about the least of a tanker's worries. He's riding in a vehicle that carries hundreds of pounds of high-explosive ammunition.
They deal with this problem by carrying the dangerous stuff outside the main hull until they want to use it. Obviously the fuel tank can be put there too.
Think a little longer. Getting hydrogen from oil *also* consumes as much energy as it gives back, and then some. The oil is destroyed. The oil represents every bit of the energy latent in the hydrogen, plus some more. Breaking down water might turn out to be *more* efficient since nearly all the energy put in will be stored in the output, while the energy that could be gotten from burning the carbon in oil goes, well, where *does* it go? I hope it's used in driving the hydrogen production process, since we get stuck with the combustion products anyway. (Please tell me we're not throwing away millions of BTUs via cooling towers just to get the hydrogen. That would be pathetic.)
People do talk as though hydrogen is free energy, but I can't help it that so many didn't listen to primary-school discussions of thermodynamics. All we can do is to correct them until the light dawns.
Those hydrogen ships would of course be guarded, just as big slow aircraft carriers are guarded. A carrier battle group is just about the most dangerous thing you'll ever encounter at less than interplanetary scale. I wouldn't mess with one, and a nuclear-powered ship full of vital fuel will likely be protected as well or better.
Since there are no wells of molecular hydrogen anywhere on the planet, hydrogen will *always* be only a storage medium, *never* a direct energy source. Hydrogen production will be coupled with some other source of energy because that's the only way to get free hydrogen around here.
But the extraction-from-hydrocarbon method has got to go. Notice the byproducts: carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide. Sound familiar? Aren't those a large part of the reason people have been whining about the need for alternative fuels?
The nice thing about hydrogen is that you can make it from many different energy-producing processes and ship it fairly easily. (Try loading 40 tons of electricity on a truck.) We *should* be looking into efficient industrial-sized water electrolysis, or maybe some kind of thermolytic or photolytic process. The wind, wave, and solar power installations that some think will save the world can easily drive an electrolytic converter, for example, and the only byproduct is oxygen. So the air is actually *better* downwind of an electrolytic hydrogen plant (if they don't bottle all the oxygen and sell that too), and the system is closed and fully recycling, since burning the hydrogen gives you the water back.
Liberating hydrogen from oil is expedient in the short term, but it's stupid in the long term. Isn't short-term thinking how we messed up our atmosphere in the first place?
That said, I'm happy to see an outfit with the size and clout of the U.S. Army getting serious about hydrogen. They can drive development to the point that the consumption end is a going concern, whether the production end is well thought out or not. Once there's a sizable demand for hydrogen fuel, there'll be money enough for bright people to tune up the supply side.
"Huh? I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here."
:-)
That is quite plain.
"In that case, you blocked the IP addresses. However, if SPEWS continues to have those addresses on the list, knowing full well that some servers will block them, then they will also be blocking those addresses."
THINK for a minute. Notice "(or not to consult)". If I make the latter choice, then by your formula SPEWS has just unblocked those addresses and will continue not to block them as long as I don't change my mind. Clearly there is something wrong with your notion of causality.
"SPEWS does not know that that specific server will block an IP address, but they do know that if they list an address, it will be blocked by a large number of servers."
They know nothing of the sort. Every sysadmin in the world could decide today to remove SPEWS from their configurations, and without any change on SPEWS' part the addresses they list would no longer be blocked anywhere (on their recommendation).
More locally, if I configure my boxes to ignore SPEWS then nothing that SPEWS does with its list can affect in any way my customers' ability to receive mail from anywhere. The simple proof is that I have done so and the result is as I have indicated.
[what would happen to a company that concentrates on long-term appreciation through repeat business from satisfied customers?]
Look around you. The companies that are on their second or third *generation* of management are, in many cases, what you described. They may not be squeaky-clean, but averaged over the years they tend to be decent enough. (Was it Warren Buffet who remarked that you can't do good business with bad people? An awful lot of folks believe this even if they can't put it into words, and they reward good businesses and punish bad ones by their choices. The bad businesses tend to be like Icarus: they fly high for a little and then burn out.)
No, it really is idiotic. If I open a can of baked beans with the intention of landing a man on Neptune, and a man lands on Neptune, did I really cause the landing on Neptune? Aren't we discussing the classic fallacy called "post hoc, ergo propter hoc"?
"If I perform an action, with an intended result, and the result happend, then I have caused the result to happen. This changes it from advice to a deliberate attempt to block IP addresses, and is not just advice."
Please explain how SPEWS gained administrative access to my ISP's servers and configured them in accord with SPEWS policy regarless of my ISP's policy. Otherwise SPEWS is not blocking anything. The person who adjusted the equipment to block is doing the blocking.
Let me turn your argument around. If you perform no action, and a result happens, did you cause the result? Because if I reconfigure a box to consult (or not to consult) SPEWS, they likely will never know about it, and have not done anything they were not already doing, yet the behavior of the network changes. Who changed it?
Well, some people seem to have the attitude that it is better for 99 legitimate messages to die than to let one UCE enter, and they may choose blocklists which cater to that attitude if they wish. It's a pain but what can one do? Anyone has a perfect right to feel that discarding unwanted messages is more important than reading wanted messages.
"You misunderstand." -- Gnut
If one is having a problem with a blocklist, one needs to get the person at the *other end* of the attempted communication to switch to another list. Much more difficult than just changing something you have complete control of, especially since the other person is blocking you.
There is still plenty of academic content out there, and a whole movement setting up to vastly increase the amount of research that is made available directly from the writer to the reader, gratis. (Would you pay $2000/yr for a magazine subscription? Your school library does, and they are *not* happy. Neither are an increasing number of researchers who find that their work is getting less and less exposure as libraries cut more gold-plated subscriptions to meet tighter budgets.)
...is that I never go to any of the sites that were mentioned. It's not a matter of some principle; they just don't appeal. Now they won't appeal even more. :-P
One way is to say that the company has these problems. People do not want to be surprised by problems, and bosses may try to get rid of the messenger instead of the problem.
The other way is to say that the company could do even better than it is now by making these positive changes. Bosses like to hear that the company can improve its performance and they may be inclined to really listen. It's the same message as before, but now you're *selling* what you want to do rather than complaining about something you want to stop doing.
While you're working out a positive approach, also try to cast your observations, suggestions, and logic in business terms. It helps to get the right kind of attention, and at least shows that you're not just some geek who doesn't understand or care about what *they* hold dear. Find some way to answer the question, "how does this help us end the day with more money than we would have had otherwise?"
...or cell phones will become send-only devices when millions of us learn to keep them turned off all the time as the only way to preserve a little peace in our lives.
(When will advertisers learn that what many of us want most from them is SILENCE? How hard is it to understand "go away and *stop bothering me*"?)
It wasn't Star Trek anyway; they just used the names of various races from Star Trek to tell a different story. Maybe it's from the "mirror" universe....
(But I'm still bummed that _Enterprise_ the TV show wasn't anything to do with the novel, so recipe cum grano salis.)
Um, is it possible to prove trademark infringement when the trademark is *never displayed* by the allegded infringer? Because I'm not aware that the defendants ever put up any text or image with the word "playboy" or "playmate" in them.
If someone went to a newsstand and asked for _Playboy_, and the clerk silently handed him _Hustler_ instead, it may be poor customer service and lousy supply-chain relations, but is it trademark infringement?
If a telephone book publisher puts competing businesses on the same page (since they are trading in the same market), is that trademark infringement?
Axel may take offense. He might even hit you with an axle.
Always remember that there is a person in the "real world" at the other end of that packet stream.
Hoho. Of course *we* all knew that, but now it's been blessed by science. Good news.
:-O It's like there's a sizable group of humans with a cognitive deficit which leaves them incapable of believing in the reality of anyone not physically present. Scary.
How many conversations have *you* had, or how many alarmist articles have you read, which basically boiled down to, "how can you spend hours playing with that email stuff instead of interacting with *people*?"