Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:05 pm Post subject: Re: The Hydrogen economy - The physics
agomemnon wrote:
I am rather surprised at the negative statements concerning the use of hydrogen.
Surprised?
The last thing we need is a new energy consumer. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 9:32 pm Post subject: Re: The Hydrogen economy - The physics
agomemnon wrote:
MonteQuest wrote:
agomemnon wrote:
I am rather surprised at the negative statements concerning the use of hydrogen.
Surprised?
The last thing we need is a new energy consumer.
Really please explain.
Hydrogen is a consumer of energy.
It takes more energy to make it than you get in return.
Basic law of physics. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 9:00 am Post subject: Re: The Hydrogen economy - The physics
agomemnon wrote:
Really please explain.
OK, let's explain once again to the newbies:
Free hydrogen isn't found anywhere on Earth, because it's a gas so light that gravity can't keep it near the surface, like it does with all the rest of gases in the atmosphere.
The only way of getting hydrogen is by breaking it down from another compound, like water or natural gas. The problem is that to get hydrogen from water, you need to provide energy. When you burn the hydrogen you get water again, and you get exactly the same amount of energy you needed to put in to divide the water into hydrogen and oxygen. This is one of the basic laws of chemistry.
Because nothing is ever perfectly efficient, in fact you would be losing energy in the total process.
Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 11:29 pm Post subject: Re: The Hydrogen economy - The physics
Doly wrote:
agomemnon wrote:
Really please explain.
OK, let's explain once again to the newbies:
Free hydrogen isn't found anywhere on Earth, because it's a gas so light that gravity can't keep it near the surface, like it does with all the rest of gases in the atmosphere.
The only way of getting hydrogen is by breaking it down from another compound, like water or natural gas. The problem is that to get hydrogen from water, you need to provide energy. When you burn the hydrogen you get water again, and you get exactly the same amount of energy you needed to put in to divide the water into hydrogen and oxygen. This is one of the basic laws of chemistry.
Because nothing is ever perfectly efficient, in fact you would be losing energy in the total process.
RE: bolded sentence. You get less useable energy than you put in due to the loss from entropy.
1st law minus 2nd law.
You cannot get more energy out of a system than you put in, due to this entropy loss. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Joined: May 28, 2007 Posts: 125 Location: Tempe, AZ
Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 11:55 pm Post subject: Re: The Hydrogen economy - The physics
MarkR wrote:
The fuel cell is not a new technology, it just stagnated because no one could make them affordable.
Mark, I do not entirely disagree with you to here. However, I think that the price of fuel cells has not come down because another, cheaper, method of converting energy into motion still exists. Fuel cells, or another manor of energy conversion, probably would have come to dominate our infrastructure if oil, and various internal combustion engines, had not done it first. Of course, whether or not one of these methods of energy conversion will save us from some sort of post peak apocalypse remains to be seen.
dontworryaboutpeakoil wrote:
Remember when PC's cost 12,000? or more? Remember when PCs were the size of buildings?
Today, the PC is $500? tha'ts 24x cheaper than what it was when it was first introduced.
A PC can not drive you to work. Perhaps a better analogy is the million dollar price tag that many prototype hybrids once carried versus the current $20,000+ price tag that a Prius currently carries. I think your point is pretty close to being right on, but your analogy was, perhaps, a tad off target.
rerere wrote:
Right. Now, how many people have the $80,000 for the PV panels? And the 700 sq foot of space to put up the panels?
Well?
Anyone who lives in a house has 700 sq ft on which to mount solar cells. Now, coughing up 80 grand is another story. Do those PV's come with financing?
king coal wrote:
Oil and natural gas are the basis of our chemical industry. Shortages of either or both ripple through the supply chains of many industries before getting to the consumer.
How dramatic will the effects of a diminished oil supply be on our chemical industries when the oil they consume is such a small fraction of what is consumed by the energy sector?
I am not challenging your assertion. I simply do not have the answer for this. However, I believe that the chemical industry will have an easier time making this transition than will the energy industry. Also, not only does the chemistry industry use a comparatively small amount of oil, but it can use other sources for the manufacture of goods. For example, rayon is made from trees. Who knows, the chemical industry may find that it has more oil to work with after the world converts to a non-oil-based energy infrastructure. Ok, that last guess may be a bit unlikely… but it could happen… right?
Oilgood wrote:
Being an economist-in-training myself, I would like to say that I realize that scientists and engineers are not magicans or wizards, and that they can't just pull solutions out of their hats/arses on command.
Says you buddy! Maybe you can't do it, but don't sell other people short because of your own difficulty in this area. I'm sure you're a fine economist. Me, I stink at economics. But, given a pencil, paper, and a half way decent shop, I can "pull out" just about anything.
If you economists can't get it right, then we really are all screwed. Of course, if the oil stops one day, then again, we're all screwed. I highly doubt that the oil will just stop all at once though.
trespam wrote:
And note that Shale Oil is not a source of energy right now. In your model, I think it permissible to introduce a slightly positive EROEI for shale oil. But you must incorporate the energy require to create the shale oil processing facilities, as well as the tar sands processing facilities.
Fast forward to today. Tar sand refineries are up and running.
Aaron wrote:
Of course as oil becomes more expensive we will explore alternatives like hydrogen fuel cells, solar, wind etc... (Although not "air" cars... the very idea is a scam)
Oh look! My favorite, a rotary motor! Woo hoo! Maybe rotaries have a future after all!
That's enough responding to 3 year old posts for me tonight. Maybe next time I'll respond to 2 year old posts. _________________ Brian Jackson: Weird, old, and rare car preservatinist.
61 Corvair Van, Turbo Charged 62 Corvair Rampside, Retired SCCA Improved Touring 74 Rx2 Road Race Car, 75 Rx4 Sedan, 79 Triumph Spitfire, and a couple of boring practical cars.
Joined: May 28, 2007 Posts: 125 Location: Tempe, AZ
Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 12:24 am Post subject: Re: The Hydrogen economy - The physics
Shoot, I just can't help myself.
trespam wrote:
I think there are opportunities to generate hydrogen from solar and/or biological means (such as the above article) or to produce biofuels from vegetable oils (e.g. algae).
But...it will not be utopia. The EROEI is no doubt nowhere near that of easy oil.
Just remember: there are some on this board who would like to see a collapse for a variety of reasons: (1) they don't like the impact of modern industrial society on the environment and think there will always be too many people without a collapse; (2) they are into survivalist crap, having watched too many B rated movies and spent a little too much time camping with the boy scouts; (3) religious fanaticism--we actually don't seem to have too many of those here.
I'm not in any of those camps. I do think we're overshooting the environments ability to support us. And I think we have a major energy problem lurking out there. I think human ingenuity will help out, but we're facing a much lower energy planet in the next 100 years. I currently see no way around it. And our consumer, debt based society is going to need some major reengineering.
There are people on this board packing their bags, ready to run for the hills. I think they are wasting their time. Having a provision of supplies, food stuff, energy generation capabilities to run off grid--they are all good in and of themselves, for a variety of reasons. But one year from now, people will still be communicating about peak oil on this board. In two years. In five years, the same. I think you get my point. Collapses happen over hundreds of years, not tomorrow.
But we're very very likely to have decreased GNP and lower standards of living as a constant during the next 100 years.
I could not have said it better myself. _________________ Brian Jackson: Weird, old, and rare car preservatinist.
61 Corvair Van, Turbo Charged 62 Corvair Rampside, Retired SCCA Improved Touring 74 Rx2 Road Race Car, 75 Rx4 Sedan, 79 Triumph Spitfire, and a couple of boring practical cars.
Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 12:34 am Post subject: Re: The Hydrogen economy - The physics
trespam wrote:
But one year from now, people will still be communicating about peak oil on this board. In two years. In five years, the same. I think you get my point. Collapses happen over hundreds of years, not tomorrow.
Sounds like someone with a crystal ball who knows what the decline rate of oil production will be, the URR's, and how the monkeys will react.
We have no way of knowing these things.
The market cannot give us price signals.
Energy drives all physical activity.
When the prime mover becomes scarce, collapse could come like a thief in the night. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 8:46 am Post subject: Re: The Hydrogen economy - The physics
MonteQuest wrote:
trespam wrote:
But one year from now, people will still be communicating about peak oil on this board. In two years. In five years, the same. I think you get my point. Collapses happen over hundreds of years, not tomorrow.
Sounds like someone with a crystal ball who knows what the decline rate of oil production will be, the URR's, and how the monkeys will react.
We have no way of knowing these things.
The market cannot give us price signals.
Energy drives all physical activity.
When the prime mover becomes scarce, collapse could come like a thief in the night.
Let's say that the assumption of Peak Oil as imminent is wrong.
If it wrong...it still doesn't matter because the effect that we will feel will be teh same as if its true. World consumption of oil is outpacing production and nothing can fix that.
With this fact the effect is the same as if oil started to dry up.
As someone said long ago America has two modes: Apathy and Crisis.
Crisis is when we're at the worst and make the dumbest decisions. Kinda like when the gov't decided 100 years ago to break the lead-acid battery monopoly by getting cheap oil from the Middle East
Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 9:02 am Post subject: Re: The Hydrogen economy - The physics
agomemnon wrote:
Let's say that the assumption of Peak Oil as imminent is wrong.
If it wrong...it still doesn't matter because the effect that we will feel will be teh same as if its true. World consumption of oil is outpacing production and nothing can fix that...Crisis is when we're at the worst and make the dumbest decisions.
It is our endless pursuit of a "fix" that is the problem.
Quote:
I tend to be an optimist, at least by the standards of peak oil activists (which isn't very hard). By that I mean that I believe in individual action and I believe that we could overturn the system that we live within and make better choices. But I also think this is less likely than that we'll do the wrong thing, and part of it is that our brains are trying to kill us (or at least our kids). That is, we've gotten into habits of thought so destructive and so automatic that we don't even recognize their basic failures. And if we don't recognize the failures in our own heads and overturn them, we're in big trouble. One of those problems is that we can't stop looking for a quick fix.
I liked this essay by James Kunstler quite a bit, and I recommend it to you, because he has a useful grasp of essentials,
" It only made me more nervous, because this longing for "solutions," strikes me as a free-floating wish for magical rescue remedies, for techno-fixes that will allow us to make a hassle-free switch from fossil hydrocarbon power to something less likely to destroy the Earth's ecosystems (and human civilization with it). And I think such a wish is, in itself, at the root of our problem -- certainly at the bottom of our incapacity to think clearly about these things.
It matters not if hydrogen or fusion is in the near offing; we should not go there, as they are merely gasoline on an already raging fire of overshoot.
As the author of Overshoot: The Ecological Basis for Revolutionary Change says:
Catton wrote:
"We must learn to live within carrying capacity without trying to enlarge it. We must rely on renewable resources consumed no faster than at sustained yield rates. The last best hope for mankind is ecological modesty."
There is no "techno-fix."
We must powerdown and depopulate. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Joined: Aug 17, 2005 Posts: 576 Location: Portugal
Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 9:59 am Post subject: Re: The Hydrogen economy - The physics
MonteQuest wrote:
You cannot get more energy out of a system than you put in, due to this entropy loss.
Actually, technically speaking, we should replace "energy" by "gibbs free energy" in all our discussions.
Energy is conserved all the time. It's the free energy that always goes down due to the 2nd law The bad news is that we can only use free energy to move stuff around The non-free type of energy doesn't do work.
Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 1:19 pm Post subject: Re: The Hydrogen economy - The physics
MonteQuest wrote:
There is no "techno-fix."
We must powerdown and depopulate.
What kind of fascistic society are you trying to bring about here.
depopulate?? Are you an adeherent of the Malthusian religion? What are the right people? What are the wrong people?
Isn't the fact that the 1st World is trying to depopulate Africa through population control and planned HIV pandemics not enough or you?
Come on! Even in the United States, Sanger's planned depopulations of blacks (i.e. the Negro Project) is still in full swing. But let's not talk about that.
Power down? Why not simply being intelligent. Hydrogen is an energy carrier. That is true. Its also combusteable for internal combustion and its storeable. It can be used to store energy from renewable sources rather than keep burning coal or oil.
My goodness. Depolulate and power down. I suppose you don't want vaccinations, health care for children, and I suppose you support euthanasia as our 3rd Reich friends did. hmmmm?
Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 7:11 pm Post subject: Re: The Hydrogen economy - The physics
agomemnon wrote:
MonteQuest wrote:
There is no "techno-fix."
We must powerdown and depopulate.
What kind of fascistic society are you trying to bring about here.
depopulate?? Are you an adeherent of the Malthusian religion? What are the right people? What are the wrong people?
Isn't the fact that the 1st World is trying to depopulate Africa through population control and planned HIV pandemics not enough or you?
Come on! Even in the United States, Sanger's planned depopulations of blacks (i.e. the Negro Project) is still in full swing. But let's not talk about that.
Power down? Why not simply being intelligent. Hydrogen is an energy carrier. That is true. Its also combusteable for internal combustion and its storeable. It can be used to store energy from renewable sources rather than keep burning coal or oil.
My goodness. Depolulate and power down. I suppose you don't want vaccinations, health care for children, and I suppose you support euthanasia as our 3rd Reich friends did. hmmmm?
Another one in denial.
Read my threads on overshoot or better yet....read Catton's Overshoot: The Ecological Basis for Revolutionary change.
I don't debate irrational rancor. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 8:57 pm Post subject: Re: The Hydrogen economy - The physics
MonteQuest wrote:
agomemnon wrote:
MonteQuest wrote:
There is no "techno-fix."
We must powerdown and depopulate.
What kind of fascistic society are you trying to bring about here.
depopulate?? Are you an adeherent of the Malthusian religion? What are the right people? What are the wrong people?
Isn't the fact that the 1st World is trying to depopulate Africa through population control and planned HIV pandemics not enough or you?
Come on! Even in the United States, Sanger's planned depopulations of blacks (i.e. the Negro Project) is still in full swing. But let's not talk about that.
Power down? Why not simply being intelligent. Hydrogen is an energy carrier. That is true. Its also combusteable for internal combustion and its storeable. It can be used to store energy from renewable sources rather than keep burning coal or oil.
My goodness. Depolulate and power down. I suppose you don't want vaccinations, health care for children, and I suppose you support euthanasia as our 3rd Reich friends did. hmmmm?
Another one in denial.
Read my threads on overshoot or better yet....read Catton's Overshoot: The Ecological Basis for Revolutionary change.
I don't debate irrational rancor.
As I suspected an adherent to the religion of Malthus. Catton is another cleric from the Malthusian religion.
Irrational beliefs like Malthus and population explosion and blaming the mere existance of human beings (apart from our actions) are what you write.
This misanthropic view is even worse that the utopian beliefs. Their results are HIV pandemics, justification for wars, pestilence, disease, murder etc etc. Their adherents are found in WWI praising the war as a form or Darwinian balance for the population and the 3rd Reich in their determining of who was and who wasn't the 'right' people to survive.
Irrationality are those claiming a 'power down' when in reality we need to build homes and buildings that use the least amount of energy possible and excess energy be stored for use when needed.
Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 4:37 am Post subject: Re: The Hydrogen economy - The physics
agomemnon wrote:
MonteQuest wrote:
agomemnon wrote:
MonteQuest wrote:
There is no "techno-fix."
We must powerdown and depopulate.
What kind of fascistic society are you trying to bring about here.
depopulate?? Are you an adeherent of the Malthusian religion? What are the right people? What are the wrong people?
Isn't the fact that the 1st World is trying to depopulate Africa through population control and planned HIV pandemics not enough or you?
Come on! Even in the United States, Sanger's planned depopulations of blacks (i.e. the Negro Project) is still in full swing. But let's not talk about that.
Power down? Why not simply being intelligent. Hydrogen is an energy carrier. That is true. Its also combusteable for internal combustion and its storeable. It can be used to store energy from renewable sources rather than keep burning coal or oil.
My goodness. Depolulate and power down. I suppose you don't want vaccinations, health care for children, and I suppose you support euthanasia as our 3rd Reich friends did. hmmmm?
Another one in denial.
Read my threads on overshoot or better yet....read Catton's Overshoot: The Ecological Basis for Revolutionary change.
I don't debate irrational rancor.
As I suspected an adherent to the religion of Malthus. Catton is another cleric from the Malthusian religion.
Irrational beliefs like Malthus and population explosion and blaming the mere existance of human beings (apart from our actions) are what you write.
This misanthropic view is even worse that the utopian beliefs. Their results are HIV pandemics, justification for wars, pestilence, disease, murder etc etc. Their adherents are found in WWI praising the war as a form or Darwinian balance for the population and the 3rd Reich in their determining of who was and who wasn't the 'right' people to survive.
Irrationality are those claiming a 'power down' when in reality we need to build homes and buildings that use the least amount of energy possible and excess energy be stored for use when needed.
Who are you to decide who lives and dies?
Hey hey...cool down guys...debating about peak oil should not be too harsh. Everyone are entitled to their own believe
Optimism is the only thing holding the current market share right now to prevent a immediate collapse. We need to prepare for the eventual wake up of the masses.
Inflation will comes when dollar got deflated, oil prices rises, economic depression...alternative energies are only available to DIY ppl no longer the masses.
Those manufactured ones are too expensive to be adopted world wide....
those "free energy" technology are mostly scams but one way or another we can combine these ideas and DIY a more conservative energy decent plans...
Conserve fuel, reduce consumption, increase efficiency, recycle, renewable if possible and grow your own food...defend your rights.
The denials of the "naive" people who continue to waste their lives slaving to service their luxuries and debts will one day wake up and find themselves jobless and desperate. Without cheap food, water, electricity and shelter.
Don't be fooled by those "new technology" that will come in a decade or so because when the economic goes down...nobody will use it...even if you can afford it...it will be stolen or robbed within days or minutes of using them in the public.
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