Re: Solar breakthrough - when?
From: Tkalbfus1 (tkalbfus1_at_aol.com)
Date: 08/18/04
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Date: 18 Aug 2004 17:18:56 GMT
>Would you quantify 'much less'. And why would you want to take a loss of
>50% on a perfectly good fuel, methane?
>
How much does it cost to make methane vs hydrogen? The process for making
methane goes like this:
2H2O + energy --> 2H2 + O2
3CO2 + 6H2 --> CH4 + 2CO + 4H2O
and
2CO + O2 --> 2CO2 takes care of the carbon monoxide.
As you can see, you still have to split water molecules to make methane. The is
plenty of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to run this methane producing
reaction.
The trouble is, most people prefer to drill for methane than to produce it,
this process simply adds more and more carbon to the atmosphere from a stored
source. The situation is similar to someone inheriting a giant warehouse full
of batteries that were produced by someone else. Such a person doesn't need to
generate his own electricity, he just pulls out batteries to power his electric
appliances and then dumps them in his back yard when he finishes them.
The Earth contains alot of stored chemical energy that have been produced over
many hundreds of millions of years by plant life and then sequestered
underground. If we oxidized all the combustible material on Earth, we whould no
longer have a breathable atmosphere as all the oxygen would be used up, it
seems wise to me to gather energy from a primary source such as the Sun, or
through nuclear reactions such a Fusion, than simply to oxydize stored chemical
energy for power.
Tom
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