Re: MIT researchers split water to store solar energy - catalyst--made of a cobalt phosphate

.... snip ...

Harry,
I would not disagree with almost all that you wrote, above. Save for one
possibility. If we ever develop (it need not be more nuclear fission
plants) a stationary power system that is considerably cheaper than what
we have at present it just might be possible to to allow for an
inefficient process using hydrogen to be the replacement for petroleum
fuel for automotive vehicles. I doubt it but we just might be able to
produce electricity so cheaply that natural gas, oil, and coal would no
longer be used for generating electricity. And so it might be cheap
enough to waste a lot of energy and generate hydrogen for the mobile
fuel. However that might jut be because the materials for batteries
became too expensive to produce electric vehicles which would otherwise
be the better use of cheap electricity.
FK- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Fred, allow me to venture into turf that you are more familiar with
than am I, and I am not about to desist in the American energy future,
for the most part, resides with the future of nuclear energy. That
said, and this is where your expertise is invaluable.

That said, while we can generate a great deal of electricity generated
from nuclear power sources, the available supply to power
transportation vehicles is totally dependent on the increasing
availability of electrical energy storage mechanisms, which increasing
focus on the development of better electrical energy storage
technology, Years back it was the Nickel Cadmium cell, and today it
is the NiMH. Ten years from today, who know? Again, this is not the
realm of physics research, but that of physical chemistry.

Shifting gears....

Chemistry has greatly and usefully applied the chemistry implicit in
coal tar to the manufacture of plastics and sundry other useful
products. These include plastics, dyes, and various organic compounds
in drugs and other useful industrial applications.

Now Fred, here is the deal. With respect to petrolium, coal contains
all of the key building blocks for any hydrocarbon. (Feel perfectly
free to tell me if I am wrong on this. realizing that I a a
physicist.) For me, it's a bit problematic to understand how to
convert a hyrdrcarbon into a benzene ring, but then that may be
possible. (I sort of like benzene as an automotive fuel, becuase it
is what runs my Zippo lighter.)

So Fred, what exactly are the greatest minds in chemical engineering
doing to convert coal into a useful liquid fuel that can be sold at
the pump to fuel cars, tankers, and jet aircraft?

I sort of suspect that it can be done, but until then I'll place my
bets on more nuclear generation facilities (that works), and future
improvements in storage batteries (which could work). Fred, the
simply expanation is that until efficient storate battery systems do
exist, our transportation will be propelled by liquid fuels.

Harry C.

Harry,

In the short term (long considering the number of years I may have left) I agree that nuclear energy is the best solution one can see at present. This is only because we have no other attractive alternative. Even if batteries become much more efficient the cost for a repacement (even with a sizable trade-in is likely to be very high. I suggest those people who are driving a hybrid at this time are in for a rude shock a few years down the road when they need to replace their battery.

Liquid fuels have the advantage of being meterable. Gas fuels, with the greater problem of low density and so need to carry around heavy storage tank are also meterable. However how do you meter a solid fuel to adjust the amount that is fed to the engine and so vary the speed of the engine? This is not like a solid fueled rocket where you are planning to burn all the solid fuel and so ignite it once and design the storage volume so it burns in a way convenient to the one shot burn. You would really then have to have packets of solid fuel to burn as needed. But this is an engineering problem and guys like you have been what made this country great in applied science. Lots of people who were engineers before they even went to school to become engineers.

I suspect that what you are burning in your lighter is NOT "benzene" [which is C6H6] but a petroleum fraction commonly called benzine (note the difference in the spelling.) Benzene (once a very common solvent for all sorts of organic chemistry reactions) is a well known carcinogen. It wasn't known as such when I went to college and even though I wasn't an organic chemist I was exposed to lots of it. Benzine is a mixture of several different low molecular weight distillation fractions from petroleum and most of those are alkanes (roughly linear - actually crooked chains - carbon hydrogen compounds that are several carbons in length) and are named based on the range of boiling points of the mixture. It is a common mixture for things such as lighter fluid.

There are a couple of methods that will take solid carbonaceous materials (such as coal) and convert them into a liquid fuel. Germany in WWII was desparately short of petroleum which is why they gambled all on reaching the Caucuses of southern USSR and spent their strength against a poorly planned campaign (by A. Hitler) as they slugged it out toe-to-toe in Stalingrad and lost the war as a result. They could not commit the reserves since they had to defend western Europe against an invasion. But I digress.

It is expensive to produce a liquid fuel from methods such as the Fischer-Tropsch conversion. If you have no other source of liquid fuel you use your abundant solid fuel to make liquid fuel. But as long as liquid fuel is plentiful it will probably be cheap enough (even expensive by today's standards) that the last ditch is to use the abundant coal we have (we are the Saudi Arabia of the world of coal) to make liquid fuel because we have a monster infrastructure built around use of liquid fuels. What will be a problem is the waste left from conversion of coal to liquid fuel. I guess we will just have to bury it and do so in regions where the ground water is no longer being used for potable purposes.

If batteries are a rational choice then we need many more nuclear plants. This may make all electric plants much more efficient as they will run fairly near top load all the time rather than the juggling of load and the inter-selling from one area to another. But I am not sanguine about the future of some kind of super electric cell for auto batteries. Although some very unexpected things have come out of nano-particle science recently. The chemistry we know is basically bulk matter and single molecule chemistry. Aggregations of small amounts of matter leads to some very interesting differences in what can occur in chemical change. Ah, to be granted another several decades while playing with a full deck! But that is expecting too much. Besides the lonliness associated with the loss of my wonderful mate nine years ago has diminished somewhat my zest for life. If it were not for the fact that our only child has lived with me now for several years has kept me going. The two grandsons also leads to some aspects of joy. But once again I digress - digression seems to be a fault of senescence.

You are still young enough that you may be able to contribute some to the revolution of technology needed to allay our problems of too fast technological advances.

Take care, Harry.

FK
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