Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: AquaShrimp on September 15, 2006, 06:22:50 PM
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From ScienceDaily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060913100628.htm
Put a certain type of bacteria in a vat, heat the vat to 150-180 degrees, and feed them pure glucose.
So really, all that will be required is glucose. Glucose, a hexose sugar, has 12 hydrogens for every 6 carbons. Cellulose, the Beta form of glucose, is the most abundant organic compound on earth. If the U.S. could find a cheap way to convert B-glucose into A-glucose, we would be overflowing with cheap energy. And even if that weren't feasible, its still very easy to obtain glucose in mass quantities.
I really think this is the way the U.S. is going to obtain its hydrogen for the future. It appears to require alot less energy than electrolysis.
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nurd.
rofl:rofl :rofl :t :O :O :rofl :rofl :rofl :D
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You'll have to create the glucose though. Through plants.
That's close to what the Brazilians already do, using excess plantmass to make alcohol, which the burn in car engines.
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No blood for glucose!
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Ahh, this:
"If the U.S. could find a cheap way to convert B-glucose into A-glucose"
B glucose is available in big quantities, i.e. straw.
Straw can be converted to digestable form for ruminants by applying ammonium. Not sure of the chemical formula though.
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Can I try it in my bathtub?
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Well, making ethanol should not prove too difficult...
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Now that's a promising find.
I've always been a big proponent of US energy-independence via hydrogen, but it's always been held up by the difficulty in producing, on Earth, the most abundant element in the Universe (well, second most abundant after Stupidity). Ironic, ain't it?
If this pans out, and the economics hold up (that'll be key), it would be a major stride forward. Would be nice of farmers grew stuff, instead of getting paid not to.
Cross your fingers...
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It doesn't look to be an energy source if you have to heat it to obtain the hydrogen. The question, I guess, is how much energy it takes to make hydrogen vs how much you can obtain from the hydrogen.
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I am very interested in the hydrogen idea because it i believe will be the technology that names the next world power. Whoever can implement this will be in position to stop depedemcy on foreign oil. THis means that the wackjobs we are currently forced to fund will be up ****e creek with out a paddle. I believe that i saw Toyota was working on a station that could convert water to hydrogen using solar energy. Was wondering if anybody else had seen that.
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Anyone heard of the new electric drive motors the army is playing with? I've seen a little about them. Apparently the motors also have an electrical generator that is geared in such a way as to generate more electricity than the motor uses when operating. I understand that the ultimate goal is to create a vehicle that has one of these motors as the drive motor for each wheel, with a small deisel engine to provide additional power when needed. I heard that the prototype was going over 300 miles cross country and only using 5-6 gallons of deisel to do it.
Imagine if this technology is perfected for the civilian market. An all wheel drive car that makes more electricity than it uses. A small engine to provide additional power. You could drive coast to coast on a tank of fuel.
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I would think methane would be an easier gas to produce than hydrogen.
Then again. If you put a couple lumps of uranium together it makes it's own energy all by itself.
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Originally posted by Mini D
It doesn't look to be an energy source if you have to heat it to obtain the hydrogen. The question, I guess, is how much energy it takes to make hydrogen vs how much you can obtain from the hydrogen.
just put these things in the cooling system of a nuclear power plant...
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Originally posted by Blooz
I would think methane would be an easier gas to produce than hydrogen.
The methane congress produces in a day could power a city for weeks.
Making energy is great and all, the real question is what kind of new alcohol do we get?
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Originally posted by Mini D
It doesn't look to be an energy source if you have to heat it to obtain the hydrogen. The question, I guess, is how much energy it takes to make hydrogen vs how much you can obtain from the hydrogen.
The reactors will create enough energy to heat themselves. Think about it, if a reactor couldn't produce enough hydrogen to heat itself to 150 degrees, it would be producing too little energy anyways to be of any use.
So glucose is the most abundant compound on earth. It comes in two forms, as sugar, and as cellulose. Wheat, potatoes, and most grains and tubers are actually just made of enormous amounts of glucose molecules linked together into starch.
The cellulose form is what grass, trees, and leaves are made of.
So what we will have a is a closed vessel, with low oxygen levels, a temperature around 150-180 degrees F, and higher than normal pressures. Dump a bunch of glucose in, and hydrogen is produced. A little bit of that hydrogen will go to heat the reactor, the rest will be free to use as fuel.
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Imagine if this technology is perfected for the civilian market. An all wheel drive car that makes more electricity than it uses.
What you're speaking about there, Sir, is nothing other than Perpetum Mobile and that defies laws of physics. Don't trust your source. :lol
Besides Toyota has production vehicles as we speak that run 300 miles with 5-6 gallons of diesel off-road. Without electrical gadgets attached. Hell my Mercedes Benz 320cdi runs 300 miles on tarmac with less than that! :aok
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Originally posted by AquaShrimp
The reactors will create enough energy to heat themselves. Think about it, if a reactor couldn't produce enough hydrogen to heat itself to 150 degrees, it would be producing too little energy anyways to be of any use.
LOL! Think about it. All it would have to do is create enough energy to create itself and still have enough left over to power something else. Ummm... no.
The main shortfall of Hydrogen is production. This does not look like an efficient way to get it. Unfortunately, any attempt to produce bacteria that would do this with room temperature water would only mean that we'd all have to learn to breath hydrogen.
There will be easier ways to produce hydrogen, but nothing that will compare to fossil or hydro-electric power generation.
Why would you use the power generated by a nuclear reactor to generate hydrogen when you could just generate electricity from it?
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Theres 4500 (kilo)calories per kilogram of glucose. It takes one (kilo)calorie to raise a kilogram of water by 1 degree celcsius. Considering an ambient temperature of 80 degrees (F), it will take about 26 degrees of (C) to reach 150 degrees (F).
So basically, out of the 4500 (kilo)calories of energy you have in a kilogram of glucose, only about 25 kilocalories are going to be needed to heat the vessel to operating temperature.
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Finally somebody who knows the law!
(Actually my school had 4600 kcal/kg).
Watch it though. That's pure sugar. Starch is different.
An 85% dry kilogramme of Barley contains some 1650 kcal.
Well, it still balances out.
This:
"If this pans out, and the economics hold up (that'll be key), it would be a major stride forward. Would be nice of farmers grew stuff, instead of getting paid not to."
On a nice soil, you'll get 1.200 litres of rape oil pr. ha (2.5 acres), which burns directly on a diesel engine. That's enough for quite some driving!
For the work put into the field you will have to subtract some, something like 5-10% for the fuel for a very good job.
Most of the biomass of the food rape is still left, and is a very good cattlefood!
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What is the remaining product after the hydrogen has been separated from the glucose?
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Now THAT is a good question.
Some carbon, actually quite some, as well as oxygen, but in what form?
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Originally posted by AquaShrimp
Theres 4500 (kilo)calories per kilogram of glucose. It takes one (kilo)calorie to raise a kilogram of water by 1 degree celcsius. Considering an ambient temperature of 80 degrees (F), it will take about 26 degrees of (C) to reach 150 degrees (F).
So basically, out of the 4500 (kilo)calories of energy you have in a kilogram of glucose, only about 25 kilocalories are going to be needed to heat the vessel to operating temperature.
You're confusing calories with hydrogen. How much hydrogen are you going to generate from one kilogram of glucose? How long would it take and how long would you have to be heating it to do it?
You're numbers don't even matter in that scenario.
Try again... there is no such thing as a perpetual machine.
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Except that the system aquashrimp describes is far from perpetual machine as it's fed with fuel constantly. Many systems generate the heat they need to function by themselves, one example being your car engine.
The claim of 'electric engines geared to produce more electricity than they consume' would be perpetual machine. And it ain't gonna happen, Bubba.
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MiniD, let me explain it in simpler terms. This is not a perceptual motion or magic machine.
Gasoline we put in our car has the chemical composition of C6 H14. Thats six carbons and fourteen hydrogens.
Glucose has the composition of C6 H12 O6. Six carbons, twelve hydrogens, six oxygens.
All the energy is in the glucose, just a little bit goes to heating the vessel. But if you dont believe me, just wait a few years, this is where our hydrogen is going to come from!
It would be good too, our farmers might actually make a profit if we have huge demands for sugar.
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I don't think you're doing the math right. It's about how many calories release x amounts of hydrogen and how much hydrogen is able to release x amounts of calories.
Your math is not relevant to the problem.
I'm saying that more energy is required to produce the hydrogen than the hydrogen itself is capable of producing. And, it's not by an insignificant amount. Efficent hydrogen production is still a ways away... and getting it anywhere near the efficiency of fossil fuel production is near impossible.
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Fossil fuel levels, that brings up a good point. For renewable energy sources, we are going to be limited to either the Suns direct solar energy (solar panels), or the % of the suns energy that plants are able to use.
So basically, were going to be on an energy budget with renewable energy sources. But that will spur more energy effecient devices.
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"I'm saying that more energy is required to produce the hydrogen than the hydrogen itself is capable of producing. "
I was under the impression the same applies if you substitute 'hydrogen' for 'gasoline'
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I'm saying that more energy is required to produce the hydrogen than the hydrogen itself is capable of producing. And, it's not by an insignificant amount. Efficent hydrogen production is still a ways away... and getting it anywhere near the efficiency of fossil fuel production is near impossible.
Thats just for producing hydrogen from water.
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Originally posted by Tac
"I'm saying that more energy is required to produce the hydrogen than the hydrogen itself is capable of producing. "
I was under the impression the same applies if you substitute 'hydrogen' for 'gasoline'
No, it's not true of gasoline. It is simply a refining process. If you don't believe me, light an oil field on fire.
Breaking the hydrogen bond free requires a reaction. It requires more energy than the hydrogen can produce. Hydrogen as a fuel source is cleaner and theoretically ideal except for that one small detail.
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Originally posted by AquaShrimp
MiniD, let me explain it in simpler terms. This is not a perceptual motion or magic machine.
Gasoline we put in our car has the chemical composition of C6 H14. Thats six carbons and fourteen hydrogens.
Glucose has the composition of C6 H12 O6. Six carbons, twelve hydrogens, six oxygens.
All the energy is in the glucose, just a little bit goes to heating the vessel. But if you dont believe me, just wait a few years, this is where our hydrogen is going to come from!
It would be good too, our farmers might actually make a profit if we have huge demands for sugar.
Not necessarily sugar, but any plantmass.
Energy can be grown, and it's already far more effective than solar panels for instance, but a lot of land is needed.
Now if you can not only extract the C for fuel, but the H as well, things are becoming very interesting ;)
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http://newton.nap.edu/catalog/10922.html?referrer=Google#description
The Hydrogen Economy:
Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs
it's long and full of technospeak, but the title is selfexplanitory.
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Those microbes won't even need to warm themselves, just bury them 6 feet deep in _any_ landfill you find. The decomposing process of our waste produces lots of heat and tons of methane constantly.
In fact I'm surprised that this free source of energy hasn't been utilized more to date.
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Originally posted by MrRiplEy[H]
Those microbes won't even need to warm themselves, just bury them 6 feet deep in _any_ landfill you find. The decomposing process of our waste produces lots of heat and tons of methane constantly.
In fact I'm surprised that this free source of energy hasn't been utilized more to date.
You would have to collect the methane somehow, or heat. I believe gaseous (at 1 bar, 25c) energy sources are very poor candidates for future oil substitutes. And talking about oil substitutes is kinda misleading, because IMO there is no substitute for crude oil..Of course scientists have all kinds of nifty tricks in their sleeves, they can manufacture diamonds in their labs nowdays..But it takes more than that, currently the consumption is so overwhelming that it requires a miracle to keep it undisturbed. Nuclear power can keep our computers powered for long time to come, maybe few cars even, but not all of the billion vehicles roaming around the earth right now. Somethings gotta give....
Besides, its kind of uninteresting detail, what kind of material do we pump into vehicles in year 2050..Maybe its still gasoline, maybe its cow pee..What really matters is, how expensive it will be and what will happen in the 2nd class countries like China or India..
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Tuomio, we have a few experimental facilities already in Finland which collect methane and heat through embedded piping. A landfill of a small/medium finnish town can heat thousands of homes with the energy it creates.
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Originally posted by MrRiplEy[H]
Those microbes won't even need to warm themselves, just bury them 6 feet deep in _any_ landfill you find. The decomposing process of our waste produces lots of heat and tons of methane constantly.
In fact I'm surprised that this free source of energy hasn't been utilized more to date.
There are approximately 395 operational LFG (Landfill Gas) energy projects in the United States. In addition, about 140 projects are currently under construction or are exploring development options and opportunities.http://www.epa.gov/lmop/accomplish.htm (http://www.epa.gov/lmop/accomplish.htm)
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Cities have two huge sources of energy- Landfills, and wastewater treatment plants.
Both are slowly but surely being converted to energy producers. One town in Indiana is powered by wastewater.
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While doing studies, I spent some time on a school in Sweden.
The whole habitat was warmed (AFAIK) with wastewood.
Energy concervance and utilization linked with agriculture was one of the main themes, which, I guess, explains my enthusiasm about it.