Page 2 of 5 FirstFirst 12345 LastLast
Results 11 to 20 of 43

Thread: Has the 5 trillion watt laser been discused yet?

  1. #11
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Posts
    1,725

    Default

    Below fallows an "open brain" conversation I just had with myself regarding this thread: Please don't expect it to be linear or even make much sense, it is after all the after effects and unprocessed effects of random neuro-chemical firing in my head:

    Allright, From the top:

    Gizmodo can bite our collective asses, we already have better pictures of NIF in the PL user gallery courtesy of Yadda. It is a sight to behold, in all respects. Seriously. Check out that YAG rock. NIF as I understand it is a tripler to get "buckets of watts" of non ionizing UV radiation.

    http://www.photonlexicon.com/gallery...rance/album09/

    For a funny outlook on LHC check this out:

    http://xkcd.com/401/

    The LHC is a beautiful piece of machinery however I personally have higher hopes for NIF in the fact that their "end goal" is to exceed what has classically been calculated to be "just how much energy" you can shoe-horn into any given piece of three dimensional space. Think about that for a second: The first full power shot *will* exceed our collective understanding of E=MC^2. Who knows what will happen. Quantum Physics and Thermodynamics be damned to hell.

    Doomsday scenarios aside, creating a star in a bottle is terribly sexy. As to whether or not we should try to create the star before understanding what processes govern the star formation or not... Thats not for me, you, or anyone to understand just yet. I say: "Well, Lets find out." I do feel confident there is not a framework and lattice structure holding the sun together and by proxy would be primarily held together by poorly understood gravitational constants. It is, as evidenced by solar spectrography 97ish percent hydrogen... at least on the surface. That, to my piteous brain, is a mindbogglingly large amount of gravity. There was an interesting "thought experiment" on the idea a decade ago, I can't remember the source for the life of me but it basically goes as fallows: Something like LHC is turned on. Tiny little black holes *may* be created and they would gravitationally be attracted to the core of this planet. Eventually they would dance around until one day two of these infinitesimally small black holes would collide causing all sorts of "neat stuff(Tm) that is the computer science equivalent of dividing by zero *and* getting the right answer. While I don't put too much stock in stable black holes being produced by any Terran method it is damn interesting brain exercise to think about much akin to electrons in orbit colliding.

    D2O is easy to produce just terribly expensive when energy costs are calculated given Mostly due to the electronegativity of H2O bonds. Still, its viable. Another neat thing about D2O: seeds refuse to germinate in it. Why? Maybe the plants prefer Evian. Though I think it has something to do with osmotic transfer through cellular membranes and the relative viscosity of Dt

    Fuck Tokamak reactors: We have billions of fusion containment devices in the known universe and none of them happen to be toroidal in design. Gravatational constants being what they are, we as piteous little humans will always be looking at ways to use the small percentage of "trash" that is produced from them. IE: Solar. Brayton cycle heat loops. Thermo couplers.

    In short: "Skip the middleman: Go Nuclear."(Tm)

    Hydrogen is all over the fucking place and easy to confine, once again just expensive. If what I read a million years ago in college is correct the easiest "net positive" collection method is compressing and super cooling a volume of air into its liquid state then skimming it off the top. Literally.

    Current theory suggests that hydrogen is an after effect of low level nuclear collision. Check the upper atmosphere, buckets of hydrogen up there, mostly to molecular bombardment of heavier items slamming into lighter items till we are left with hydrogen at the bottom of the food chain, so to speak.

    There are, and this is a technical term, Metric Shitloads(One order of magnitude below "Metric Fucktons" and one order of magnitude above "Ultra buckets" as measured on the scale of speed where R13 is clearly way too fast) of gold in the worlds oceans in addition to Deuterium. Problem once again is net output. Read an article a while ago that stated to get 1 troy ounce of gold out of the ocean one would have to process, vaporize, and reconstitute 60 million gallons of water... Thats some expensive shit. Just the pumping of that water would be way more expensive than whatever the current $X per T oz". I imagine the process for collecting Dt would be similar.

    Now if anyone wants to make Billions of useless US currency: Find a cheap way of pulling non ferrous metals out of the water. Think magnetics for non ferrous material.

    Speaking of Billions of dollars: Devulcanization of rubber. That sulphur bond is a bitch.

    Oil is used because it is a cheap net positive energy source. Thats it. Period. As Buffo stated, Net output/input is 30-40:1. Shale and "rock oil" is is amazingly more abundant however the suits only get 5ish:1 on their investment, thus making it, and I am sure you have all heard this before: "Not cost effective".

    Fuel prices are a joke. Prices are currently outrageous yet at the same time Oil cracking companies (Look up Oil Hydro Carbon Cracking) have once again exceeded the threshold for windfall profits and the US reserves are as higher than ever. Its a cheap ass carnival trick and we are stuffing dollars into the slot machine.

    Ethanol is also a fucking joke: The *only* reason it is being called cheap is because the process used to produce it is economically cheap *when* combined with corn subsidies. Remove the subsidies and look at that, its terribly expensive again. All that aside: Its definitive roll is food. Diverting corn stock into fuel further tightens the noose on this food supply problem we have been butting heads with for years.

    Tocket: Gold production from these open pit mines is far far cheaper. Now $450ish a troy ounce, Used to be far cheaper when there were actual veins of gold in the dirt, though all known supplies of that has been exhausted. Current "tech" does the fallowing: 10 tons of "bearing rock and soil" are pulverized and then it is rolled and sprayed with cyanide which will dissolve the gold in the dirt. The slurry produced is then evaporated at atmosphere and burned off leaving relatively pure particulate gold behind. Yep, Cyanide. Check out the Rand refinery in South Africa.

    Solar cells are promising because they are "clean" and have a positive image associated with the "source" of energy. But once again you are just harnessing the waste of a rather large and untapped reactor that is both simultaneously super critical *and* self moderating. Nuclear reactors get a bad rep because the word nuclear itself is mentally associated with the picture of a nuclear bomb and all that shit that goes with it. Damn shame too. Please see my just made up (Tm) above.

    Another interesting trinket about Nuclear reactors: They produce infinitely less radiation than Coal burning plants. Coal burners are terribly nasty places.

    Solar energy is a lot better than it used to be, the costs of "oil" has risen to the point where its now economically viable to research it. I consider the "machine" that publicly trades oil futures to be a perfect example of "Bureaucromancy" in action. That word should surely be be self explanatory... All joking aside, Current monolithic solar cells combined with an optical concentrator are a good example of new exciting tech. A lot of the current energy of solar is tied up in thermal properties... To extract all of it would require some rather neat and not-yet-existent heat-exchange technology, though for the time being photons slamming into electro voltaic panels that shit out electrons is more than adequate, Just need to get more of those photons entangled in the cell. For what its worth, I believe that the current research cycle is broken... How many times, in our short time on this planet have we seen phenomenal research and development *halted* the exact second a high profit consumer application is found? Way too many.

    Ive got a few oddball energy production ideas buried in the back of my head. Don't worry though my fellow citizens: I'm not one of those insane Free-Energy cretins who believes that "big oil" runs the world. As a matter of fact: I believe that any change from an oil based economic engine would be welcomed by society at large. Hell, look what cheap "plentiful" Oil(energy) got us in the first place: The industrial revolution. I hope I live long enough to see the next one.

  2. #12
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    Charleston, SC
    Posts
    2,147,489,446

    Cool Re: alternate energy, fusion, black holes, cheap oil, and other stuff...

    Warning: long rebuttal follows!
    Quote Originally Posted by Dr Laser View Post
    Well ok "cheap" oil but do you know how much is to extract oil from sand. It's up to 5 times more expensive. Who will pay that much money.
    Dude - do some research already. Canada is already supplying the US with nearly a million barrels of oil EACH DAY - much of it from tar sands. The process is profitable as long as oil stays above $70 per barrel. A few years ago Shell Oil famously claimed that they would spend 5 billion to build new tar sand oil production facilities if oil ever hit $90 a barrel and stayed there for 6 months. Then they were caught flat-footed when oil rocketed past $90 per barrel and the other companies that saw it coming had already started to build tar sand facilities. Now Shell is playing catch-up, but they're doing a damn fine job of it...

    Bottom line: oil from tar sands is already feasible, both from a chemistry standpoint as well as from an economic one. It's being done right now.
    Fusion...they already cracked it. But it's too expensive to produce Deuterium
    They have not "cracked it". They have reached break-even energy for short duration runs. When they can produce significant net-positive energy continuously, for long durations, then they will have "cracked it." (Seriously, why do you think they're building the national ignition facility if they've already cracked it? They wouldn't need to do more research if they already knew how to make it work reliably!)
    It's bigger brother can be only made by electrolysis or chemical reaction.
    It's a lot cheaper to make hydrogen (either via electrolysys or chemical reaction) than it is to separate deuterium. But hydrogen fusion is a lot harder than deuterium fusion, and *that* nut is really hard to crack. Plus, the byproducts of deuterium (helium 4) are non-radioactive, so that's a win, too.

    Of course, you can fuse tritium instead of deuterium, and it's easier to get tritium to fuse than regular hydrogen. Also, tritium is readily made in a conventional fission reactor, but then you end up with radioactive byproducts when you fuse the tritium. (Too many neutrons!)

    No, deuterium fusion will be the trailblazer. Later on (probably *much* later), we'll be fusing either tritium or hydrogen.
    Solar panels are not efficients enough to provide any meaningful power.
    I said "concentrated solar", not solar panels. Photovoltaics are not really practical without spending *incredible* amounts of money. But concentrated solar is cheap and *very* effective.
    Wind turbines? You need shitload of them.
    So? How many wind turbines can you buy for a billion dollars a day? Think about the amount of money the US is spending in Iraq right now and then tell me we couldn't afford to build a shitload of them.
    Plus oil corporations kill anything related to discover and use of alternative sources.
    The oil companies are looking at the bottom line. If it's cheaper to get your energy buy buying oil from a country that has a lot of it, then that's what you do. When it becomes economical to produce oil from domestic fields, then you do that. And if it becomes cheaper to produce energy from alternate energy sources (wind, geothermal, solar, tidal, etc), then *that* scenario will win out. The problem is that most people only look at the dollar cost once the thing is running, but energy companies look at contruction costs, licensing costs, public approval costs, litigation costs, and a whole shitload of other factors that get swept under the rug by the average consumer.

    For example, wind farms sound great, until they tried to build them in the Chesapeake bay and off the coast of Massachussetts... Then suddenly all the rich people living there decided that they didn't want to look at the ugly windmills when they looked out their windows. Poof! just like that, the cost of those wind farms (in terms of public resistance) became unbearable, despite the fact that they were a good idea on paper.

    Energy companies aren't really evil, and they're not conspiring to keep us on oil. They're looking for the next energy market as hard as we are. Maybe even harder. You show up with an invention that increases the efficiency of any alternative energy source by 15% and you're an instant millionare. Come up with three such inventions, and you'll change the world.
    Quote Originally Posted by tocket View Post
    Fuel cost will be the least of your concerns when it comes to fusion power.
    An excellent summary to your well-written post, Tocket! I couldn't agree more.
    Quote Originally Posted by DZ View Post
    They had 1 turbo charged hydrogen powered Hummer called the H2H.
    They were using hydrogen in an internal combustion engine? That's just dumb. Heat engines can't match the efficiency of a fuel cell. (Carnot efficiency for a car engine is less than half of what you get from a fuel cell.) And given that hydrogen is *way* less dense than gasoline to begin with, you already need to carry an awful lot of it to get the same total energy (ie: range). Wonder why they'd give up so much in terms of efficiency? The only think I can think of is that they're looking to jump-start the hydrogen economy by adapting current engines to run on hydrogen, rather than forcing the switch to fuel cells. But they're paying a *huge* efficiency penalty there.
    I also asked here what would stop someone from building a device in thier garage to produce the hydrogen to fill up the vehicle, she said, "nothing!"
    There isn't anything preventing you from doing that right now. (Well, maybe local zoning restrictions or fire codes...) But is it practical? And how do they plan to generate all this hydrogen to run these cars? If they use electricity to split water, where is the extra electricity coming from? (Chances are, at some point in the chain, the answer will be: burning fossil fuels.) So the hydrogen economy merely moves pollution from the tailpipes of millions of cars to a few thousand smokestacks at power plants. True, that may be better, since you can install scrubbers on those stacks, but you're still using oil and coal. The key to unlocking the whole thing is affordable, sustainable energy production from either fission (likely in the begining), and fusion (later, once we've ironed it out), or else a massive investment in renewable energy sources.
    Quote Originally Posted by steve-o View Post
    I watched the 1st vid, and I think they're going to blow something up
    Oh, come on now Steve! Surely you don't ascribe to that nonsense! The whole idea of "creating a star" is more hyperbole than anything. Plus, they've been doing it at the Nova research facility for decades. It's not going to destroy the planet!
    hydrogen fuel cells that run at astronomical temperatures
    Um, most fuel cells operate at temperatures much lower than the internal combusion engine in your car, dude. They're a hell of a lot safer, too.
    If we took all that money and invested it in a new solar cell technology in order to derive all the energy from the sun, we could store it, use it, have it and do it all!! ... day or night ...
    True - the sun is the ultimate source of energy. In fact, apart from fission and a little bit of tidal energy, *all* other energy sources on this planet relate back to the sun in one way or another. If we switched to solar energy for our primary needs, we'd be a hell of a lot better off. But it would require *massive* investment in our power distribution network, not to mention even more investment in solar power stations. But the technology is available right now. All it takes is money.
    Quote Originally Posted by dream beamz View Post
    My problem is, creating an actual star has so many unknowns, what if it lives like a normal star and dies like one. What if it creates a black hole when it dies and sucks us all down with it.
    Dude, they're not going to have 3-4 solar masses in that thing! The fusion pellet is tiny! There's *no* chance of creating a black hole!

    Not all stars die a firey death and leave black holes behind... Only the largest ones do that. (Even our sun will not form a black hole. It will end up as a white dwarf.) That's why I get so peeved when the media blurts out stupid shit like "Creating a star in a bottle"... It's misleading, but they feel that they need a sensational headline to sell the story.

    Really, what they're doing at the NIF is nothing different that they were doing at the Nova lab. We're not all going to die. We *might* just learn something about fusion though, and that could lead to cheaper energy for all of us.
    Also, I have always had a problem with nuclear energy of anytype even if it is not radioactive. The thing is, you are going against the way the earth was meant to sustain itself and actually adding to the planet where something didnt exist.
    Really? You do realize that there are places on our earth where fission chain reactions have been going on for thousands of years, right? All without any input from man or beast. There is nothing "unnatural" about nuclear energy. It is all around you. (The sun is nothing if not an immense fusion reactor.)
    Its like going and grabbing a ton of energy off another mass in space and bringing it to the earth, it messes up our over all equilibrium.
    As oppossed to the billions of masses that have come to our planet from throughout the solar system in the form of meteorites and comets? Dude, our planet is continually bombarded by masses from other parts of our solar system, and so far it hasn't upset our equilibrium one bit.

    Granted, when an asteroid nearly 3 miles wide struck the earth (Chicxulub), it disrupted the equilibrium of the local life for a few million years, but that wasn't because of the mass transfer, but rather the enormous kinetic energy transfer. And even so, it didn't kill the planet.

    Bottom line - going out and harvesting an asteroid won't hurt our planet one bit. Crashing an asteroid into our planet might hurt some of the life on the planet (including us), but the planet will recover just fine. She's been holding her own for nearly 4 *billion* years, and will do equally fine long after we're gone.
    I am sure in time our earths orbit actually suffers due to this although i have never bothered to google it.
    Then you really should google it, because the orbit of the earth has not changed significantly since it was formed. The earth's orbit will probably decay once our sun enters it's red giant phase, because the orbit will likely be engulfed by the balloning sun, but that's 5 + billion years from now.
    Quote Originally Posted by Admin View Post
    While I don't put too much stock in stable black holes being produced by any Terran method it is damn interesting brain exercise to think about much akin to electrons in orbit colliding.
    The problem with creating a black hole is that you either need a *shitload* of matter, which you let collapse while somehow preventing it from fusing, which releases energy and resists further collapse, or else you need a metric fuck-ton of energy. The latter approach is the only viable means we have at our disposal to even contemplate creating a black hole.

    Remember though, that black holes are not truly black; they radiate energy at a rate inversely proportional to their mass. Heavy holes radiate very little. Lightweight holes radiate a lot, and in the process, they loose mass. On the scale we're talking at the NIF, even if it *was* theoretically possible to create a black hole (and most scientists think it can't be done), it would evaporate nearly as fast as it formed in a burst of energy. There is no danger of creating something that would then consume the planet. (That's just the media trying to "jazz up" the story.)
    Fuck Tokamak reactors: We have billions of fusion containment devices in the known universe and none of them happen to be toroidal in design.
    That's because gravity isn't repulsive. But magnetism can be, which is why a tokamak makes sense. Though, admittedly, the NIF folks have stuck with the sperical reactor (more for practical targeting reasons, but still), so it may be that our eventual fusion reactor resembles the shape of a star rather than a doughnut. Time will tell I guess.
    In short: "Skip the middleman: Go Nuclear."(Tm)
    Amen, brother!
    If what I read a million years ago in college is correct the easiest "net positive" collection method is compressing and super cooling a volume of air into its liquid state then skimming it off the top. Literally.
    That's how they make nitrogen... In fact, at the plant where I work, we don't buy nitrogen from Praxair anymore. We make it ourselves with an on-site cryogenic air-liquification plant.

    Not sure if it's cheaper to do that with hydrogen vs electrolysis though, because there isn't much hydrogen in the air to begin with. You'd need to chill a hell of a lot of air. (Plus you need to get it a lot colder!)
    Read an article a while ago that stated to get 1 troy ounce of gold out of the ocean one would have to process, vaporize, and reconstitute 60 million gallons of water... Thats some expensive shit. Just the pumping of that water would be way more expensive than whatever the current $X per T oz". I imagine the process for collecting Dt would be similar.
    Yeah, but when the energy produced by fusion of that 1 ounce of deuterium is equal to the energy in 70,000 gallons of gasoline, suddenly those 60 million gallons of seawater don't seem all that hard to pump!
    Oil is used because it is a cheap net positive energy source. Thats it. Period. As Buffo stated, Net output/input is 30-40:1. Shale and "rock oil" is is amazingly more abundant however the suits only get 5ish:1 on their investment, thus making it, and I am sure you have all heard this before: "Not cost effective".
    Excellent summary. I need to learn to be less verbose!
    Ethanol is also a fucking joke: The *only* reason it is being called cheap is because the process used to produce it is economically cheap *when* combined with corn subsidies. Remove the subsidies and look at that, its terribly expensive again. All that aside: Its definitive role is food. Diverting corn stock into fuel further tightens the noose on this food supply problem we have been butting heads with for years.
    Have a look at the price of wheat, the price of rice, and the price of corn. Look at the prices over the last 20 years, and then look at the last 2 years for comparison. We're going to starve Asia so we can feel good about burning our food supply in our cars. (And what's worse, the process is largely energy neutral; that is - when you consider the amount of energy it takes to produce a gallon of ethanol from corn, you end up with the same amount of energy! So why the hell are we doing it? Subsidies...) Sugar beets might be a better feedstock, and bamboo certainly would be better, but neither crop has subsidies.
    Solar cells are promising because they are "clean" and have a positive image associated with the "source" of energy. But once again you are just harnessing the waste of a rather large and untapped reactor that is both simultaneously super critical *and* self moderating. Nuclear reactors get a bad rep because the word nuclear itself is mentally associated with the picture of a nuclear bomb and all that shit that goes with it. Damn shame too. Please see my just made up (Tm) above.
    Damn Spec, if you ever decide to run for office, you've got my vote!
    Another interesting trinket about Nuclear reactors: They produce infinitely less radiation than Coal burning plants. Coal burners are terribly nasty places.
    True. People often forget this. Though coal had enough problems as it was already. (Miner deaths, carbon emissions, etc.) The extra radiation released in the smoke should have been the final nail in the coffin, yet we're still using the stuff. (And just wait 'till China gears up...)
    Current monolithic solar cells combined with an optical concentrator are a good example of new exciting tech. A lot of the current energy of solar is tied up in thermal properties... To extract all of it would require some rather neat and not-yet-existent heat-exchange technology,
    There are hybrid technologies available now that combine photovoltaics with traditional thermal solar collectors. Though I'm also a fan of concentrated solar when used with either a sterling engine or a steam-turbine cycle that uses molten salt to move the heat from the concentrating tower to the steam generator. The rub is that building power plants is expensive.
    How many times, in our short time on this planet have we seen phenomenal research and development *halted* the exact second a high profit consumer application is found? Way too many.
    We're chasing the "perfect" technology rather than doing as the Japanese and the French have done, which is to take something that is "good enough for now" (ie: fission) and deployed it on a massive scale. We could learn from them...
    Hell, look what cheap "plentiful" Oil(energy) got us in the first place: The industrial revolution. I hope I live long enough to see the next one.
    That next revolution would be one worth sticking around to see, I'll admit. Don't know if it will happen in our lifetimes though. (Hope so...)

    Adam

  3. #13
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    Pflugerville, TX, USA
    Posts
    1,977

    Default

    I think the future will be in electric cars. It makes no sense for every vehicle to have it's own inefficient powerplant (as they are today) when they can run on stored electricity that costs pennies on the dollar as compared to gasoline. The only hurdle is figuring out a way to handle long range driving and what to do when people run out of charge. You can't just instantly fill up the tank and keep going like with gasoline. But for daily commuting, it makes perfect sense even now.

  4. #14
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Orlando, FL
    Posts
    8

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr Laser View Post
    Deuterium (Hydrogen-2) was used in high power chemical lasers for over 30 years now. Burst from that laser can actually destroy all optical sensors and optical elements (shattered lenses!) on Earth orbiting satellite. Also Deuterium is a great source of fusion energy. Only problem it is BLOODY expensive and very rare element on Earth! (theory sugest that Moon is a great source of Deuterium) and No it'll not solve energy crisis.

    Actually Hydrogen is expensive to produce too. So don't expect Hydrogen powered vehicles in your neighborhood by 2010!

    And yeah Oil reserve will run out in about 40 years...So we are doomed!
    Why do you say hydrogen is expensive to produce? You do know that the most abundant element on the earth contains hydrogen right? H20 can easily be separated through electro hydrolysis and fed into a slightly modified gasoline engine.

    Do a quick youtube search you will find tons of people who have converted their cars to run off the hydrogen in water.

    You don't need hydrogen gas stations when you can make your own all within the engine bay. Also check out the work of Stanley Meyer for more info on the subject.
    -Pangolin graphics designer

  5. #15
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Location
    Toronto Canada
    Posts
    1,120

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Ian View Post
    Why do you say hydrogen is expensive to produce? You do know that the most abundant element on the earth contains hydrogen right?
    You need to put an efford to make something and this efford is expensive.
    All those efforts add up and you get a very expensive price tag. There are only few ways to make Hydrogen. They all very expensive.

    H20 can easily be separated through electro hydrolysis and fed into a slightly modified gasoline engine.
    Ohhh my. This is another BS circling around interweb. I can't believe so many people have fallen for that shit. By putting this thing you will kill your engine in no time. Piston rings will rust. Cylinder walls will ruts. You well get water in oil. Crank shaft will rust. Bearings will rust. Internal combustion wasn't designed for that. Water/Alcohol injection is used in drugsters to cool down the mixture after compression. But that is a different story.
    I hired an Italian guy to do my wires. Now they look like spaghetti!

  6. #16
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Location
    Toronto Canada
    Posts
    1,120

    Default

    Dude - do some research already. Canada is already supplying the US with nearly a million barrels of oil EACH DAY - much of it from tar sands. The process is profitable as long as oil stays above $70 per barrel. A few years ago Shell Oil famously claimed that they would spend 5 billion to build new tar sand oil production facilities if oil ever hit $90 a barrel and stayed there for 6 months. Then they were caught flat-footed when oil rocketed past $90 per barrel and the other companies that saw it coming had already started to build tar sand facilities. Now Shell is playing catch-up, but they're doing a damn fine job of it...
    Actually I have few friends in Alberta working in this oil trade. Actually I asked them instead of internet. It's not a solution but just a mild help. Originally oil from send was expensier but now artificially inflated prices for regular oil made sand oil cheaper. But due regulations and anti dumping policies in Canada. They can't sell their oil cheaper then the market price.

    Actually talking about Fusion. Yes they cracked in but on small laboratory scale. And it's usually a very small crew of in University or some private R&Ds. I happen to know the situations with R&Ds. How they find sponsors and how they push their products to the market. It's bloody hard work. Investors don't want to invest into things that will not make them instant money. I know many and many devices that now collecting dust. Revolutionary devices that can change many things but devices noone wants. Actually let me change the working a bit.
    No one wants to invest without making instant money. Thats what stops everything.
    I hired an Italian guy to do my wires. Now they look like spaghetti!

  7. #17
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    Charleston, SC
    Posts
    2,147,489,446

    Cool

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr Laser View Post
    There are only few ways to make Hydrogen. They all very expensive.
    They are expensive when compared to the ease with which we can pump energy from the ground in the form of oil, yes. But when you make the realization that hydrogen is *not* an energy source, but rather an energy storage medium, then the picture changes. Using hydrogen to store energy is actually fairly efficient - at least when compared to other storage technologies like batteries. Ultracapacitors and high-speed flywheels with magnetic bearings might one day be able to compete, but those technologies aren't ready for prime time yet.

    Re: Hydrogen as a fuel for your internal combustion engine:
    By putting this thing you will kill your engine in no time. Piston rings will rust. Cylinder walls will ruts. You well get water in oil. Crank shaft will rust. Bearings will rust. Internal combustion wasn't designed for that.
    Dude... What the *HELL* are you talking about? Internal combustion engines most certainly were designed for this! Gasoline has two major components: Hydrogen and Carbon. When you burn them you get Carbon Dioxide and Water! So you've already got water in the engine - lots of it - yet it's not killing the engine.

    If you run the engine on pure hydrogen, all you get is water (or more appropriately, steam) in the exhaust. (Yeah, yeah, we'll ignore oxides of nitrogen for the moment - that's not relevant anyway.) You won't get water in the oil, and the crankshafts and bearings won't rust. As for the piston rings, they are either chrome plated, ceramic coated, or made of other exotic metals so they won't rust.

    Seriously, internal combustion engines have already been running on methane for *decades*, and you know what? They last a *hell* of a lot longer than engines that are run on gasoline. Running pure hydrogen would be even better, at least from an engine longevity standpoint. All that would be required is a slight modification to the carburetor or fuel injection system, and a corresponding change to the ignition control computer. (In fact, they sell kits that will allow you to modify your truck so it can run on just about any gaseous fuel, including methane and propane. Hydrogen would work too, if it weren't for the storage problem - see below.)

    Who have you been talking to about hydrogen? Because they either don't know shit, or they have an agenda and have been intentionally misleading you. Hydrogen *does* have issues, but killing engines isn't one of them.

    The problem with using hydrogen as a fuel for an internal combustion engine is that it has a very low energy density, so you have to carry a lot of it in order to get the same range. And with this requirement comes another problem: In order to store a lot of hydrogen in a small space you either need to chill it to absurdly low cryogenic temperatures, or else pressurize it to dangerous levels. Neither option is attractive for an automobile.

    This is why using the hydrogen to power a fuel cell makes more sense. You only need to carry half as much hydrogen (actually, even less than half) to get the same range, because fuel cells are so much more efficient than internal combustion engines.

    However, in an effort to spur hydrogen use, I can see why car companies might release a vehicle that uses a standard engine but runs on hydrogen. It spreads out the changeover costs and helps build interest in a hydrogen supply infrastructure, which is crucial if we're ever going to switch to a hydrogen economy. But it's going to have a huge honkin' tank in the trunk somewhere...

    Adam

  8. #18
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Orlando, FL
    Posts
    8

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr Laser View Post
    You need to put an efford to make something and this efford is expensive.
    All those efforts add up and you get a very expensive price tag. There are only few ways to make Hydrogen. They all very expensive.
    Seperating H20 is not any mystery, you can find designs on the internet that show how to build a electrolysis machine that runs off 12v.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr Laser View Post
    Ohhh my. This is another BS circling around interweb. I can't believe so many people have fallen for that shit. By putting this thing you will kill your engine in no time. Piston rings will rust. Cylinder walls will ruts. You well get water in oil. Crank shaft will rust. Bearings will rust. Internal combustion wasn't designed for that. Water/Alcohol injection is used in drugsters to cool down the mixture after compression. But that is a different story.
    This is true that some parts will rust, however simply switching over to stainless steel internals (pistons, valves, exhaust, and manifold) will fix this. You don't seem like you know much about engines considering the combustion chamber is sealed off from the lower part of the engine, so the risk of the crank shaft or piston bearings rusting is none. The combusted hydrogen will simply flow out the exhaust valve.

    For extensive information about what im talking about check out this PDF
    http://waterpoweredcar.com/pdf.files..._Full_Data.pdf

    Daniel Dingel a man form the Philippians who has been running his cars on water to hydrogen process since 1968.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVhXrvCCILw
    Last edited by Ian; 04-25-2008 at 09:13.
    -Pangolin graphics designer

  9. #19
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Location
    Toronto Canada
    Posts
    1,120

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Ian View Post
    Seperating H20 is not any mystery, you can find designs on the internet that show how to build a electrolysis machine that runs off 12v.

    This is true that some parts will rust, however simply switching over to stainless steel internals (pistons, valves, exhaust, and manifold) will fix this. You don't seem like you know much about engines considering the combustion chamber is sealed off from the lower part of the engine, so the risk of the crank shaft or piston bearings rusting is none. The combusted hydrogen will simply flow out the exhaust valve.
    Electrolysis machine is easy to make. Everyone in chemistry class had to make one. Just it seems kinda stupid to use gasoline to run a generator which charges the battery which separates H2O which is feed by intake manifold vacuum into the engine to do something.

    About water in crankshaft casing. Cylinder walls and rings are still being oiled. And this oil does recirculates.

    Switching to composite materials stainless steel titanium and aluminum is a solution. Actually thats what major components of drugster's engines are made of. But again cost factor. Dragster engines are 100+k$ on average.
    F1 engines about 300+k$ And they only have to last for a race or for few 1/4 of the mile.

    With All my respect to Buffo I had some hands on experience in this field. 5 years in Touring car championship (No it's not a NASCAR))) and 15 years in car performance. Actually cars were my drug of choice before Lasers came. There was nothing ... I say NOTHING that wasn't tested by car nuts. Most of that small easy and cheap stuff was thrown away. And It's jolly megafunny when this shit comes back. And some Duded claims it works. It may look good from a chemical point of view but from mechanical it's a disaster to happen. To make this work you need a computer controlled direct injection into cylinders. It has to be synchronized properly. And even then it'll cost more to make system then the money it will save.

    PS. My dad gave me idea. What about using a gasoline engine to run Hydrogen making facility?! I think it's a brilliant idea!
    I hired an Italian guy to do my wires. Now they look like spaghetti!

  10. #20
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Orlando, FL
    Posts
    8

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr Laser View Post
    Electrolysis machine is easy to make. Everyone in chemistry class had to make one. Just it seems kinda stupid to use gasoline to run a generator which charges the battery which separates H2O which is feed by intake manifold vacuum into the engine to do something.

    About water in crankshaft casing. Cylinder walls and rings are still being oiled. And this oil does recirculates.

    Switching to composite materials stainless steel titanium and aluminum is a solution. Actually thats what major components of drugster's engines are made of. But again cost factor. Dragster engines are 100+k$ on average.
    F1 engines about 300+k$ And they only have to last for a race or for few 1/4 of the mile.

    With All my respect to Buffo I had some hands on experience in this field. 5 years in Touring car championship (No it's not a NASCAR))) and 15 years in car performance. Actually cars were my drug of choice before Lasers came. There was nothing ... I say NOTHING that wasn't tested by car nuts. Most of that small easy and cheap stuff was thrown away. And It's jolly megafunny when this shit comes back. And some Duded claims it works. It may look good from a chemical point of view but from mechanical it's a disaster to happen. To make this work you need a computer controlled direct injection into cylinders. It has to be synchronized properly. And even then it'll cost more to make system then the money it will save.

    PS. My dad gave me idea. What about using a gasoline engine to run Hydrogen making facility?! I think it's a brilliant idea!
    All fuel injected cars already require an EMS (engine management system) which controls all the functions of engine combustion, from spark timing to the amount of fuel added. All you need to tweak this system is a after market EMS that you can plug into a laptop.

    As far as it costing $100K+ to upgrade a cars internals to stainless steel and aluminum, thats almost laughable. The reason these engines cost so much is because they are high performance high strength parts used for making well over 500hp and over 2000hp in the drag cars.

    None of the points you brought up hinder the possibility of running a hydrolysis machine off a 12v car battery. Yes oil is always lubricating your pistons but the oil itself never enters the combustion chamber, it simply flows by the pistons and keeps the piston and cylinder wall lubricated. Therefore the only thing you need to worry about rusting is your pistons ($2k-$4k for stainless steel replacement), valves ($1k for stainless steel replacement), and exahust ($800 for stainless steel replacement), also cylinder walls if your engine head isn't made from aluminum but 95% of modern cars now have aluminum heads.

    If you have more questions just check the pdf file I posted. No disrespect but I think your concepts and ideas for why it wont work are far outdated.
    -Pangolin graphics designer

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •