On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 20:21 +0200, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> Sorry, but that forum is located in just the right place: in the
> vicinity of other pseudoscientists and ufologists. Water has been
> their favourite topic for ages (I mentioned the "Age of Aquarius"
> deliberately). If you want some more water quackery, check
> this gallery: http://www.chem1.com/CQ/gallery.html
The tragedy is of course that there **IS** some good science being done
in sheds, back bedrooms and basements, it is just that this is NOT it!
If these guys would put half that effort into actual research (or at
least into building some decent calorimetry), then they might actually
discover something interesting.
Hell, there are people doing D-D fusion under those conditions (with the
neutron meteorology to prove it), and while not all their science is
good, some of it is, which is more then can really be said for that
site.
Speaking as a guy who actually WORKED on hydrogen cars for a while (The
Think C264 project for Ford/GM), I can assure that anything which quite
so blatantly violates the laws of thermodynamics (without extraordinary
proof) does:
A: Fail the giggle test.
B: Not work as anything other then a lossy way to convert electrical
energy into a not terribly practical fuel gas (H2 has a very low energy
density at reasonable pressures, and if liquefied suffers from requiring
almost as much energy cool as it releases when oxidised)!.
Still, it is a mostly harmless activity (Unlike say publishing fake stem
cell results which wastes the time of folk who could be doing something
worthwhile).
BTW: The cheapest way to make H2 in reasonable quantities is still what
amounts to a redox reaction between steam and carbon (often from natural
gas). CH4 (or similar) + 2(H2O) = CO2 + 4H2. In practise this often
results in CO rather then CO2 (which is fine, CO is also a fuel gas).
Guess what process would have ended up being used at a local 'hydrogen
filling station', and guess where the CO2 would have ended up....
For all the theoretical advantages of a fuel cell stack (No Carnot cycle
limit), it is actually very hard to beat the ~1/3rd efficiency of an IC
engine in a practical machine (especially for short trips where the
energy cost of heating the cell stack to operating temperature can
dominate).
Having drifted WAY off topic...
Now me, I think that if you are going to do a hydrogen powered car, do
it right! A tank of LH2, a tank of LOX, a turbopump and a thrust
chamber - this is known to work and the acceleration can be really
something!
Regards, Dan (who only has A level physics, but is slowly working his
way through the Feynman lectures to improve that omission).
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Received on Wed Aug 6 16:15:06 2008
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