Turning Fresh Air and Water into Petrol. I knew it was possible!

[Anna Glypta]

Why would it be? You use power to turn the wheels, you get power back when you stop them or slow them down (not as much power as you needed to put in to get them moving). Dynamos & electric motors are the same thing, it just depends whether you want to speed them up or slow them down whether you put energy in or take energy out.

 

I can see that these puns are just way over your head. Do you use terms like "regenerative breaking," on the websites you build for folk?

[Anna Glypta]

I can see that these puns are just way over your head. Do you use terms like "regenerative breaking," on the websites you build for folk?

 

There is quite a difference between braking a car and breaking a car.

[maxmaximus]

It's rather difficult to solve a way past some of the fundamental laws of thermodynamics though....

 

I'm happy to leave that to the boffins that are working on it, I'm confident they know more than you.

[Obelix]

I'm happy to leave that to the boffins that are working on it, I'm confident they know more than you.

 

I'm confident that they know exactly the same as me and know that it's impossible to do.

[Obelix]

Ok, have it your way, I've got a chip on my shoulder according to you. Could I ask where I've been offensive, and abusive?

 

I have told you repeatedly. Please refer back through the threads, I'm not going back and detailing it all over again.

 

 

I don't have a problem with the science, I have a problem with how YOU treat me in explaing the theory. No social grace whatsoever!

 

Well since you understand the science then I guess we are both happy.

 

You said from the outset it was pointless, then you change the goalposts and say otherwise (albeit reluctantly), but nevertheless you change.

 

Then again, I guess you don't understand the science. IF you could indicate the area that is giving you issues...?

[Conrod]

I love these threads.

 

People whose scientific understanding of the world never went beyond kindergarten cookery get all excited about some scheme that's either unproven theory or a well-understood concept that's 'interesting' but economiclly unviable (like this one), then argue themselves senseless against people who actually do have some education in chemistry/ physics/ engineering.

 

Here's another. You CAN run a car/ plane/ ship/ house on water. Nooo problem. Separate the water into oxygen and hydrogen and you then have a beautifully clean combustible fuel and oxidizer combination. Burn them and they create water - no pollutants. So perfect it seems too good to be true - why's that I wonder? Because of the energy you have to put into the process of separating the water into its constituent elements of oxygen and hydrogen is more than you get when you burn them as fuel.

 

The same applies to madcap schemes like this one - they're bananas, but the world is full of gullible people so they get an audience.

 

Provide a free source of electricity, and you can even use steel as a fuel if you want to.

[T 42]

I love these threads.

 

People whose scientific understanding of the world never went beyond kindergarten cookery get all excited about some scheme that's either unproven theory or a well-understood concept that's 'interesting' but economiclly unviable (like this one), then argue themselves senseless against people who actually do have some education in chemistry/ physics/ engineering.

 

Here's another. You CAN run a car/ plane/ ship/ house on water. Nooo problem. Separate the water into oxygen and hydrogen and you then have a beautifully clean combustible fuel and oxidizer combination. Burn them and they create water - no pollutants. So perfect it seems too good to be true - why's that I wonder? Because of the energy you have to put into the process of separating the water into its constituent elements of oxygen and hydrogen is more than you get when you burn them as fuel.

 

The same applies to madcap schemes like this one - they're bananas, but the world is full of gullible people so they get an audience.

 

Provide a free source of electricity, and you can even use steel as a fuel if you want to.

 

But surely you can turn turds into filet steak by simply reversing the process that made them. :hihi:

[maxmaximus]

I'm confident that they know exactly the same as me and know that it's impossible to do.

 

Then why are they doing it?

 

Tim Fox, head of energy and the environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, said: "It sounds too good to be true, but it is true. They are doing it and I've been up there myself and seen it. The innovation is that they have made it happen as a process. It's a small pilot plant capturing air and extracting CO2 from it based on well known principles. It uses well-known and well-established components but what is exciting is that they have put the whole thing together and shown that it can work."

(Phys.org)—Petrol from air at first glance from this week's headlines, claiming scientists have turned fresh air into petrol, looked as if this was yet another over the top claim about a killer solution to solve the environmental crisis and specter of global warming. Still, engineers in the UK believe a small UK company may be on to something real, a synthetic replacement for fossil fuel.

[Cavegirl]

Then why are they doing it?

 

It's very simple.

 

We're moving from a world where we've had an enormous supply of free energy stored in the ground to a world where we have to produce our energy in small pockets, on an annual basis, wherever we can. There won't be enough energy produced in this way to replace anything like the fossilised energy we had available and so there will, in the short term at least, be massive profits to be made from selling what little energy you can produce, particularly storable energy fuels. In economics scarcity causes a rise in prices.

 

However, as has been pointed out multiple times in this thread you'll need to use an existing means of energy production to create this stored form of energy and so really you're just making the problem worse. In the longer term the world's population will simply have to adjust to a world that has just a fraction of the energy available that we have today. You can't produce on an annual basis the equivalence of hundreds of thousands of years worth of accumulated fuel production, nevermind adding the additional amount required by population growth and renewed infrastructure each year.

[Cyclone]

It depends how the electricity is generated. It's not easy to shut down a nuclear plant at night. Even some of the larger gas & coal power stations are slow to start up & shut down, can't easily vary the amount of power they produce. Can't control when the wind blows, or the waves for renewable energy either.

 

The power stations that can be quickly started & stopped to cope with varying demand are the least efficient ones.

 

So, if the fuel would be going in anyway & the power wasted at night, it's near free. They can even vary the voltage on the grid to let users know when there is excess power to use.

 

If we're moving to more nuclear & renewable electricity generation in future, then there will be less control over how much power goes into the grid.

 

France generates much more electricity than they can use at night, because they have a lot of nuclear. The Swiss & Austrians then buy this cheap French electricity at night, use it to pump water up mountains, then the water drives turbines to generate electricity during the day. That process isn't very efficient at all, but it works & it's one of the best ways to store electricity, because every other way is just as bad.

 

Nuclear is quite easily varied, using the famous inanimate carbon rod to damp the fission process (or withdrawing the fuel rods) and thus producing less heat and slowing the turbines.

 

Gas is the easiest though, with it making up the majority of the variable load we need to supply, and coal is rubbish at ramping up and down and really only suitable to provide base load.