[extropy-chat] Nuke 'em

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sun, Oct 23, 2005 at 12:53:54PM -0700, spike wrote:

> Convert to hydrogen?  I must keep reminding even
> my engineer friends that hydrogen is a form of
> energy transmission, not a source.  It doesn't 

Fossil energy is only a transmission form of 
a natural source of energy: stellar fusion. Ditto nuclear
energy: there were no fissibles but for supernova
nucleosynthesis. 

Given low storage efficiency of fossil light captured
a comparison with with available flux onto even this small
ball of dirt fossil doesn't look too well (do the math).
What makes solar energy expensive is the antennas.
Make them cheap enough, and solar energy becomes literally too
cheap to meter.

> explain where the energy comes from.  Solar?  If 
> so, why do we need hydrogen in the loop?

Because the sun doesn't shine at night, so you 
need a buffer. Electricity doesn't travel very
well, so a hydrogen pipeline is a low-loss way
of transporting energy. Electrosynthesis is an option
http://electrochem.cwru.edu/ed/encycl/art-o01-org-ind.htm ,
but hydrogen is also a very large scale industrial chemical.

It doesn't have to be hydrogen, CO2 can be electrochemically
reduced to methanol with 40% efficiency (80 C, 68 bar CO2 pressure):

http://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/2001/pdf/7308x1305.pdf

but water is ubiquitous, and hydrogen/oxygen can be readily
stored in pressurized form for nonmobile applications. 

See lots more under
http://www.google.com/search?q=hydrogen+economy&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.leitl.org
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