Water Discovery Is "Remarkable"

[salguodgrubmab]

Hydrogen is indeed our only hope for a sustainable, non-polluting energy source. However, it is impractical and almost as unattainable as nuclear fusion. Developing fuel cell technology is absurd. I understood just how stupid that politicians thought we were when the great leader, in his state of the union address, gave us this fuel-cell rap as the direction we would take for energy independence. The underlying fact of this so called plan is that oil and power companies will remain highly profitable for decades to come. Let's consider this article. Using a radio-frequency generator to break up the two elements that are water and burning the hydrogen. The waste by-products released would be oxygen and it was stated that the hydrogen would burn indefinitely if kept exposed to the radio-frequencies. This is so simple that it makes me dizzy. I had to read this brief a couple of times. The findings were confirmed and the only question is how much energy will be released by burning hydrogen in this manner.

[joepole]

>Hydrogen is indeed our only hope for a sustainable, non-polluting energy source.

No way, there are lots of alternatives, including fusion, which you mention below.

>Developing fuel cell technology is absurd.

No more absurd than hydrogen. Especially hydrogen fuel cells.

>The underlying fact of this so called plan is that oil and power companies will remain highly profitable for decades to come.

I should hope so. Why would you want them to not be?

>Let's consider this article. Using a radio-frequency generator to break up the two elements that are water and burning the hydrogen. The waste by-products released would be oxygen and it was stated that the hydrogen would burn indefinitely if kept exposed to the radio-frequencies. This is so simple that it makes me dizzy. I had to read this brief a couple of times. The findings were confirmed and the only question is how much energy will be released by burning hydrogen in this manner.

No, the questions is how much energy it takes to break up the water molecules, we already know exactly how much energy will be released by burning the hydrogen. The laws of physics as we know it say this won't work and I see no reason to suspect this isn't a hoax/mistake.

If burning hydrogen in the presence of oxygen makes water in an exothermic reaction, then (if the reaction was perfectly reversible, which it isn't) the minimum amount of energy required to break the bond is exactly the same amount of energy released in its creation. Remember that water is a covalent bond, it doesn't come apart easily or via a catalytic reaction.

Any one of us can do this experiment at home. Just drop a 9V battery into a glass of water. Hydrogen will bubble off the cathode and oxygen (at about half the rate) will bubble off the anode. Burn that hydrogen for electricity and you will end up with less power than was in that battery.

You have to remember that you can't beat thermodynamics. Burning oil for electricity isn't efficient, either, but we have hundreds of millions of years of energy from the sun stored in that oil. We will NEVER find an efficient non-nuclear method for extracting energy from water, it's physically impossible.

[salguodgrubmab]

correct but radio-frequencies burning the hydrogen

[joepole]

Energy is energy, it doesn't matter if it's heat, radio-frequencies, magnetic fields, or electric current. A covalent H-O-H bond takes X joules of energy (of whatever flavor) to break, and 2H2 + O2 => 2HOH releases exactly the same amount.

[joepole]

This is kind of like saying "we can power turbines by harnessing the power of boulders rolling down mountains." Certainly true, but it neglects to take into account the energy required to get the boulders up the mountain in the first place. In the case of oil the sun and the dinosaurs* already did the work for us.



*technically not true, but oil=old dinosaurs is a popular idea

[LateNight]

Energy and You
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[AnimeSpirit]

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