Simon Michaux has talked about burning iron powder.

My father talked about using powdered iron to power a car fifty years ago.  He knew powdered iron has high energy potential by volume.  My father made it clear to me there is a difference between an energy source and a transport mechanism.  At least nine of ten people do not know there is a difference.  I am being kind.

Using hydrogen in airplanes is just plain nuts.  The tanks to hold the hydrogen take up most of the interior space.  Every hydrogen powered airplane would be equal to a mini nuke, and they would explode.  How are you going to get people to fly on flying bombs?  There is an advantage here regarding car accidents at intersections.  The explosion from a crash will be strong enough to clear the intersection.

If the crater is not too deep cars will be able to use the intersection right away.  They will not need police and tow trucks to clear wreckage.  The wreckage clears from the intersection immediately from the blast, and visibility is improved since everything next to the intersection is taken out as well.  Buildings people plants dogs, everything.  But the explosion is clean.  No toxic residue except from what gets destroyed.   I have to admit hydrogen has potential positive benefits.

But regardless of positive benefits, hydrogen is only a transport mechanism.  Hydrogen is not a source of energy.  You can't mine hydrogen.  If you could mine hydrogen it would be a source of energy.  One way or another all hydrogen must be produced, and that always takes more energy than you get from using the hydrogen.

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 27, 2024, 12:49 PMBut regardless of positive benefits, hydrogen is only a transport mechanism.  Hydrogen is not a source of energy.  You can't mine hydrogen.  If you could mine hydrogen it would be a source of energy.  One way or another all hydrogen must be produced, and that always takes more energy than you get from using the hydrogen.

Iron powder is also just a transport mechanism.  You can't mine it, it's not found in ore in reduced form. It's already been oxidized.  You have to put energy in by smelting the iron to get it as an element, then gring it to a powder.  When you oxidize the powder, you get the energy back from the smelting process.  There is some loss of course.

The oxidized form Hydrogen is found in nature is Water, the chemical name for it is Hydrogen Hydroxide.  When you reduce it, yu get Hydrogen and Oxygen in their elemental form.  Burn the hydrogen in the presence of oxygen, you get the energy back you put in to reduce it, just like with using iron.

Fossil Fuels are also a transport mechanism, using Carbon as the element that goes through the oxidation-reduction process.  The difference is with FFs the reduction was done over millions of years under high pressure and heat underground after the life process which left it in a partially reduced state.  You oxidize it when you burn it to get CO².  It's not a source of energy either, that came from the Sun and the geological processes.

Iron isn't good as a transport fuel because both as an element and combined with oxygen it's a solid.  You need your fuel to be a gas after the combustion in order to do work in a combustion engine.  The gas expands and pushes he pistons.  Or in the case of a Jet engine, the expanding gas directly powers the vehicle.

All planes are flying bombs, jet fuel is highly volatile and if a fuel line ruptures it goes BOOM.  If hydrogen escapes its pressurized containment system, it goes boom also.  Same with natural gas.  Cars run on NG or H that get in accidents will probably go boom too.  Clearly the engineers building these devices believe they can make them safe and reliable enough not to go boom too often.  On a society level, we're willing to accept a certain percentage of death from high speed travel, car accidents kill more people every year than heart disease or cancer.  Air travel is pretty safe overall by comparison.

According to the articles I have read thus far, they seem to suggest enough hydrogen fuel can be carried aboard a plane to fly it the necessary distances.  Running a prop engine plane they definitely could.  Range might not be quite as much as FFs, but I think the NY-London route would be feasible.  Non-stop NY-Beijing or London-Sydney is probably out.

Anyhow, it's way cleaner overall than batteries and electricity, and for propulsion works better too.  So I still consider it plausible.

RE

QuoteClearly the engineers building these devices believe they can make them safe and reliable enough not to go boom too often.

Believe it yes, but engineers are only told what to do.  Some engineers are paid to make the biggest boom possible.  Generally engineers have a personality that will consider destroying a village in order to save it.  It is not a matter of moral deficiency.  It comes from considering too many things.  If one of the many things considered is socially sanctioned nonsense an engineer can be bewitched by technology to the exclusion of all other considerations.

Techno-narcissism says the problems of hydrogen flight can be solved.  I am not a techno-narcissist.  Cryogenic tanks to hold liquid hydrogen that size are not light.  To make them light enough to fly safety has to be traded away.  A compromise will not be safe.

On a mass basis, hydrogen has quite a high energy density, almost 3 times that of gasoline. However, on a volume basis, although liquid hydrogen has a higher energy content than compressed hydrogen, it is still much lower than most of traditional fossil fuels.  It works out to be three to one in the other direction.



History will rhyme.


Don't try this at home.  You have heard this before.  Seriously.


The Dog Mini Nuke:

(to understand this you should watch the second video)

A pipe with a shutter at the end connects to an extension of pipe which is capped with a parabolic mirror.  A button of fusible material is suspended at the focus of this parabolic mirror.  A lithium micro-sphere held by spider web.  The other end of the pipe has a transparent window made of highly transparent quartz which is kept cool by a jet of chilled dry air.  You will know why in a minute. 

The front of the pipe is filled with the optimal three to one ratio of hydrogen to oxygen.  the shutter is closed.  the other end of the pipe with the polished mirror is filled with argon.

Three two one fire. 

The shutter is rapidly withdrawn.  The argon has no time to mix with the hydrogen oxygen mixture which is ignited by multiple sparks around the periphery of the transparent window when the shutter is ninety percent open.  This starts a shock wave which travels through the explosive mixture at supersonic speed.  The argon gas is at 20 atmospheres like the explosive mixture is, but there is no compression of the argon by the explosion because the shock wave is supersonic.

The shock wave hits the argon and propagates through the tube producing intense light.  The entire tube is reflective and light streams out the transparent window, while it streams into the parabolic mirror.  The fusible material heats to fusion temperatures.  The nuclear fusion pulse is short.  The target blows itself up, but an order of magnitude of energy is released and a second shock wave moves through the argon gas in the opposite direction.  Now the light coming through the quartz window is so intense that channels of chilled air have to streamed against it to keep it cool.  However everything is designed to survive.

Vacuum valves are opened as the shutter is closed.  A new target swings to the focus point while the tube is pressurized with gas for another cycle.  The tube is three feet wide and the length is chosen to give enough power to drive fusion, but not enough to destroy the equipment.  Spider web silk and lithium micro-spheres are the primary disposable.  The tube is built to recover residual energy of the hydrogen oxygen explosion.  I have another invention for this.  It uses a principle that is used on railroad tracks to slow trains down if they go too fast.  The end of the tube can lengthen to transfer energy from the chemical side of the explosion.  The fusion reaction is over before the end of the tube with the mirror moves to recover the hydrogen oxygen energy.  It is a two step process.  This is like harnessing the recoil of a gun after it fires a bullet.

Tubes are fired a hundred times an hour but the fusion energy released makes for a total energy release which equals tubes fired at an audible rate if only a hydrogen oxygen reaction is considered as the energy source.

The light leaving the window hits a target where the light energy turns to heat.  The heat is passed into aluminum tubes which boil water to drive steam turbines.  Light to heat is not hard.  Part of the produced electricity is used to split water in to hydrogen and oxygen to keep the power plant running on all cylinders.


But I am not a techno narcissist.  No I am not.

Hydrogen in the Hindenberg wasn't compressed and wasn't used for fuel.  It was just there to provide lift.  It was an unfortunate accident resulting from very poor attention to the design and construction of that dirigible.  They should have never been abandoned.  They would have saved a shit load of energy and could be built as safe as airplanes. Much less pollution than container ships running on bunker fuel.

Far as the H on planes goes, unlike cars I think they would probably liquify it for use in jets.  Airports are big enough to have the liquification equipment and staff trained to do the fueling.  As a liquid, H would actually take up less room than FF tanks do.

Much like the Hindenberg, if one of the first planes they fly using H as a fuel blows up, the technology will die right away.  If they fly for a few years before one explodes, people will just accept the risk as they do now with planes.  Does it really matter if you die from the plane exploding instead of crashing into the ground?

RE

QuoteAs a liquid, H would actually take up less room than FF tanks do.

You did not look at the fuel tanks in the jet schematic.


Another diagram in another publication that is embedded in a pdf show JP-8 Jet fuel volumetric power density is intermediate between gasoline and Diesel with it being slightly closer to diesel.  The same graph shows liquid hydrogen to be at a four to one volume ratio.

You know how light hydrogen is.  It is the lightest element.  'As a liquid, H would actually take up less room than FF tanks do.' is something that makes no sense.  The lighter weight means more room needed for the same energy.  A cubic meter of liquid hydrogen only weighs 70.85 kilograms.  A cubic meter of water weighs 1000 kilograms.

Pointing out that the Hindenburg only used a gas and not liquid hydrogen does not help your case.  Pointing out that they only used it for lift also does not help your case. At atmospheric pressure the hydrogen burn was as mild as it could be with heat and burning gas mostly going up and away.

The Hindenburg displaced a volume of approximately 200,000 cubic meters.  Air weighs 1.225 kg per cubic meter so the lift is 245,000 Kg.  The actual figure was 238,000 kilograms  Hydrogen gas weighs 0.090 Kg. per cubic meter, which is about 1/11th the weight of air.  Using the 245000 Kg figure and dividing it by ll gives 22,272 Kg of hydrogen.  Converted to a liquid that is 314 cubic meters of liquid hydrogen.

A Boeing 747 could fly 14,000 kilometers on that much power.  It turns out the Hindenberg had the explosive power of a intercontinental hydrogen powered jet with a full tank.  Exploded in the most gentle way possible.

Liquid spills are not as bad as I thought, but hydrogen is strange stuff.  Under the right conditions unpredictable things will make news.  The Hindenberg turns out to be a reasonable approximation of a Hydrogen powered jet aircraft accident.  I can say that because of the large quantities of liquid that would be spilled.  The 6000 gallon test in the guvmint film seems big, but a real spill would be larger.

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 27, 2024, 11:14 PM

Well, by weight you get almost triple the KWh per kg of H (34) than for gas (12).  Weight is much more important than volume for flying.

By volume, for every liter of hydrogen (2.5 kWh) you get slightly less than quadruple the kWh in a liter of gas (9kWh).

A liter of gas weighs .74 kg. 4.5X more, 1L H weighs .16 kg abou

So you probably need about 2X as much room for your fuel tanks, but they'll weigh about half as much for equivalent energy.  That's not exact, I'm ballparking it.  You can work out the exact numbers if you like.

According to Google, most jets have their fuel tanks in the wings, but the tanks don't take up the whole wing.  I suspect you could get similar range with tanks added in the luggage compartment, and you would need less fuel because the total weight of the aircraft would be less.

RE

Hydrogen has to be kept in a dewar flask.  Nasa knows about them.  They can explode.  The complexity of the tank will cancel out your fuel weight savings.

When NASA launched the first astronauts to the Moon.  Propellants for the Saturn V's second and third stages were liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. They were stored in 850,000 gallon spherical containers about 1,500 feet from the pad and I presume not next to each other.

Once every airport had a setup like that, an accident would only be a matter of time.

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 28, 2024, 01:05 AMOnce every airport had a setup like that, an accident would only be a matter of time.

You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. 



Since you're not going into space, you don't need the liquid oxygen, just the H.  Also, according to that graph, compressed H at 700 bar pressure has similar volume/mass to energy ratio as the liquid version, so you probably can get away with using that and stay away from the liquid.

Now granted one of these thing going boom at JFK would be a pretty big disaster, but not as big as an LNG carrier going boom as it's being filled in Maryland or offloaded in Belgium.  They are pumping millions of gallons of this supercooled liquid fuel every month these days and so far we haven't had a major boom yet.  Liquid H is closer to Absolute Zero, but the cooling, pumping and storage equipment is all the same.

As disasters go also, I'll take a planeload of stockbrokers being incinerated over a nuke meltdown at 3 Mile Island.  I mean really, mainly the dead people would be the passengers, only a few ground crew would likely be inside the blast radius.  If you're worried about being vaporized on takeoff, stick to sailboats. 

RE

Since deaths from exploding tanks will only double or triple what we have now, hydrogen is a viable TRANSPORT  MECHANISM.  All you need is an unlimited supply of cheap energy to make the hydrogen with.

That should be a lot easier to find than places on the planet to sequester CO2.

 

Quantum ta-da!

Time to retire the Diner for a few centuries.  All our problems are solved.

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 28, 2024, 10:10 AMTime to retire the Diner for a few centuries.  All our problems are solved.

Sadly, even under the unlikely event enough cheap, clean energy sources could be built AND all the infrastructure for producing, storing and delivering the H put into place AND carz and planes running on ICE and Jet engines could be produced at affordable prices, transportation is only ONE of the multitude of problems faced by Industrial Civilization.  Population Overshoot, Aquifer and Topsoil depletion, Desertification and Sea Level rise are still going to cause huge problems, and our economic system has reached the end of the duck tape and crazy glue to keep it patched together.  So no rest for the weary Doomers of the Diner, we'll still have plenty of Doom to Discuss before we can put the Diner out to pasture.

Collapse is the Gift that keeps on Giving.  No end in sight.

RE

Now, back to our regularly scheduled delusions.

Hydrogen now comes in a variety of Colors, Green, Blue, Gray and the latest entry, TURQUOISE!    These colors meant to signify their source and whether the H gets produced with or without producing CO₂ emissions in the process.

The feedstock for turquoise H is methane (CH₄), aka Natural Gas (NG), and you get the H from a process called Pyrolysis, where you cook the methane at 700F to split it into its constituent elements Carbon & Hydrogen.  This supposedly is great because you can now sequester the carbon and take it out of the whole RedOx cycle and build stuff with it.  you could use it to make Diamonds!  Diamonds will be so cheap we can make them the size of bricks and build affordable housing with them!  The hardest substance known to man, we can build Diamond Skyscrapers that will stand until the Sun goes Red Giant!  OK, the Diamond stuff is my own hype, but you get the picture I hope.

OK, now why as opposed to Blue Hydrogen you get through Hydrolysis of Water which I consider a good and worthwhile means of making H for use as a transportation fuel (despite perhaps vaporizing the occasional planeload of vacationers bound for Hawaii) do I think pyrolysis of methane is a stupid idea?

First of all, while there is plenty of water available at sea level over 75% of the earth surface in the oceans, to get the much more limited supply of methane you have to drill for it.  Next, while water is completely oxidized and so useless as a fuel,  Methane has tons of energy and pyrolysis actually reduces the amount of energy usable once converted to H & C, besides the fact that like Hydrolysis you need to INPUT a lot of energy from renewable, carbon free sources to do Pyrolysis.  Nobody will do this at scale when they can simply sell the NG right out of the ground.  Third, we already have a chemical process to turn Methane into something useful, the Haber process uses Nitrogen to convert it to ammonia for use in Fertilizers which we need to keep feeding 8B Useless Eaters.  That process has CO₂ as a byproduct which is a downside, but at least until we have a substantial dieoff, we need the fertilizer.

Even the idea that we can build enough renewable energy sources to produce the Gigatons of Hydrogen we'll need every day for all the carz, trucks, planes, container ships and tankers is a pretty big stretch into the world of Hopium addiction, adding still MOAR renewable energy to pyrolyze all the methane is a leap of faith I am unable to make without a half dozen hits of Sandoz Acid. lol.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/turquoise-hydrogen-fuel/1286/

This turquoise fuel is the end of hydrogen: it is obtained from clouds and metal

RE

Are you suffering from Technosolution Burnout yet?  Today's offering, Liquid Nitrogen, which you don't burn at all, just allow it to expand into a gas as it warms up, drawing heat from the surrounding environment.

I give this one very low chances of getting off the drawing board.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/liquid-nitrogen-engine/1382/

The first liquid nitrogen engine: was science fiction, and something could go wrong

RE

OK, not quite yet.  It still takes a Homo Sap to push the button and start WWIII.  So you can feel safe. 

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a60606512/claude-3-self-aware/

A Stunning New AI Has Supposedly Achieved Sentience

RE

Actual price on Green H claimed to be far higher than prior pro-H articles I have read recently, which is not at all surprising.  Also the timeline for building enough Green H production capacity to provide fuel for the transportation market is a lot longer than the proponents claim.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between these claims, but I think you can safely say there will not be anything more than a few prototype H ICE cars running on the roads by 2035.  This is probably pretty close to the limit of keeping the FF fleet of carz & trucks rolling at full scale, without rationing and a much larger share of EV cars on the road.

Bottom line, rumours of the Collapse being cancelled by being saved by the Hydrogen Cavalry riding to the rescue in the nick of time have been greatly exaggerated.  We can return now to our regularly scheduled Doom Programs.

https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/production/eu-hydrogen-targets-are-impossible-as-green-h2-costs-eight-times-as-much-as-grey-h2-today-total-ceo/2-1-1634747

EU hydrogen targets are 'impossible' as green H2 costs eight times as much as grey H2 today: Total CEO

RE

Spoiler alert!  It DOES run on electricity.  Just uses an H fuel cell instead of a battery to provide the juice.

The first motorcycle engine without gasoline or electricity: it runs on something better

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/first-motorcycle-engine/1549/

RE