It's amazing how much energy is produced that we that we don't consider utilizing, or more generally, vast inefficiencies in energy utilization. There ought to be a review by congress of all beneficial pattents that use energy efficiently. And then pass a law for the patent holder to either activate the patent or sell it. I think it'd be very revealing to see a list of all the different, simple, processes/technologies that have been "burried" by greedy energy companies for the sake of the almighty $, rather than the good of society. kt
You could make a website listing/linking all the patents as a start. That could spark debate and eventually the ideas that actually had some value would be separated from the 99% not so useful ideas. There are ways around patents, somebody can file an improvement on another idea and have their own patent for example.
There was a very short article about a drag racer in his 80s that is developing the 6 cycle engine...the two extra cycles are used to squirt atomized water (via a diesel rail) into the cylinders. The steam created produces a free downstroke. Genius! Produces about a 40% increase in fuel economy. see www.autoweek.com and search the archives for "six stroke". Some other free benefits of the engine...cleaner running, cooler running, no cooling needed, smaller high compression engine block, less weight, etc. Possible downfalls? Need two fuel tanks, need alcohol for the water (freezing), may not work in VERY cold climes, need to trap steam out tailpipe (pollutants), etc. -------------------------------- Also, no one ever talks about how much ROOM all these solar cells need. Yea, some can be placed vertically or in the middle of nowhere, but the sun that naturally falls on my property is MINE. If you say the rooftop, then explain highrises. AND people are already complaining that harnessing wind power is altering the earth's weather patterns...I wonder what happens if we cover all the world's deserts with solar cells...maybe it will counter-act the so called "global warming"
The interest in Hydrogen as a storable fuel for transportation application is a good problem to address. Getting the H2 stored as a result of creating H2 from electrolysis is a logical enterprise. Generating the electricity from natural sources is a good means of using low quality energy that is available all the time. the major and sufficient sources of low quality energy are: 1. Winds that come from the weather cycle. Wind farms are fairly efficient and can be done as private sector efforts with or without gov't subsidies. They can attach hydrogen production on site. 2. Water power from the hydrological cycle. Low head hydro (China and Sweeden). An 8 foot head is sufficient Most large farms with running water can generate enough fuel for farm operations. 3. Tidal dams are working in a lot of places and they can generate as energy is available. The closer you are the the equator the less productive but the hydrology of the tidal flow is more impotant (Bay of Fundy and Plum Gut LI Sound) type situations and fiords). 4. Ocean currents. This is the same as the low head hydro. Obviously, the main clue and theme of this stuff is decentalized sourcing of energy which runs counter to the centralization theme of the government and the utilities industry. So a financial solution is required. The wind farm model is a workable solution for all of the above. Strangely once a standard set of generators is available the rest of the picture fills right in. To get the generator model selection is like making toasters or automobile engines. Yankee know how will be right on the mark. While H2 is a high quality concern why not begin to take a look at other places H congregates. If it is with C that is another plus. If it is with othe elements that do not pose byproducts that are threats that is good too. NH4 is a universal simple one that is found everywhere. India under their DOE director did community NH4 generators that supplied families with cooking fuel. They used their human sewage as the source. The by products were sanitary and used for biomass production. No sewage treatment plants in the US are generating methane. 50,000 communities in India caught the wave the first time around. So the DOE director of India came to work for the US Ag department. We sailed together in Maine and he loved he use of wind powere...lol... He worked on animal waste methane generation in the US it was not too successful since fuel was abundant in the US. I did a few sites and they were large collections of contained animals (annaphase (chickens DelMar) and beef and dairy ops). Alcohol is a nice collection of C, H and O and because of complexity is a liquid. The by products are food and CO2 which can be combined with NH4 (see animal waste) to make urea which is an animal feed protein. So what makes alcohol. Just about anything organic if you try hard enough. See Bush reference to wild grasses. The world literally has it made if it changes its ways. What is he common denominator of these levels of H production? They are all decentralized as well. It may be that you can see that users of energy are decentralized as well. How come something intervened to make the consumers and potential producers get separated? The consumers and producers could be the same people, in fact. As the ramp up person for EOP on"gasahol" I got to see it happen in a decentralized way well be fore ADM came into the pic. The second book on small sscale alcohol sold 400,000 copies in four months. It represented permament economic stability for producers of coarse and fine grains. In the last four years alcohol production has doubled. you may be able to see how the beginnings in 1970 are now translating into an institutionalized effort that is here after 30 years or so. So are wind farms. NH4 happened in India using human waste. NCAT yielded a lot of things. E. F. Schumacker's "Small is Beautiful" did make it into the main stream for a while. he came to the US to see NCAT (Mike Mansfield got NCAT through Congress) As CHM of the board I got to, with other board members to introduce Schmacker to Carter. He gave SIB to his cabinet to read before he met Schumacker. Rambak Syng did work for the Ag Dep under Carter. Gasahol wasn't done under DOE it was an EOP project. when DOE first took interest it was through the "community Affairs operation of DOE. You get the picture. NTIS distributued one version of "Fuel from farms" Why? DOE did not participate until the second round. Why? People like the Congressman fron Iowa kept pressuring for stuff. I left EOP to go to a meeting in the basement of the Iowa fair grounds. I committed to just listen because my job was US energy self sufficiency not farmers in Iowa. the 30 people turned out to be 3,000 and state police were directing traffic. I was obliged to speak for the President. And then I headed to Colby Kansas to straighten out a mess. Farmers were going to be trained to do small scale alcohol in another week or so. They had not gotten the book written over the prior year. the team of instructors had not agreed to do the week long do it yourself instruction. We printed 12 hours before classes and rewrote the second edition by Friday with a full compliment of 17 instructors who edited at nite what was prepared for them. Classes had waiting lists. People stayed in motels and talked to participants all night long. By the fourth week of classes a 3 edition was written and repro'ed. then in a few month SERI took over alcohol. Fuel From Farms was written in Colorado in 6 days. A GSA contractor supervised the work. The pick up crew that "wrote" it id a lift of the Colby text and the EG (my 501 c 3) did the financial planning new section. So what does this mean. It means plain people from all over are what gets the job done. I got to EOP as an axe man and a troubleshooter and a problem solver based upon the environmental movement efforts I had made writtinga lot of stuff based upon field work and solving environmental problems with plain people who were pissed at the system. All 31 of my books are on the same subject. How poeple fix what is busted as they see it. Too late on the global warming it turns out. Too bad for everyone. It just didn't get handled in time. So now the consequences begin. The best fix as I see it is to and enable people to attain wealth and then use surpluses to deal with local problems. Fortunately for me, I have expreience from a lifetime of enabling problems to be solved. Walking the walk is what will get H2 in your H2 tank. My editor on our trading stuff is using propane in his tank. How about that?
To keep it in simple terms, the disassociation energy required to create O- and 2 H+ is equal or greater (once you account for the total system losses) to the recombination energy. Conversion efficiencies add to the equation. Thermal to mechanical to electric. The above assumes conventional thinking and laws as we are widely taught, but they may be not necessarily true. There are other ways. Re: stoichiometric recombination of O- H-- , some interesting work done, search Brown's Gas some of the properties of this yet "unexplainable but possibly very useful phenomenon" Flame propagation has been measured at ~8500 feet/second ref Melts Titanium (3034 °F; 1668 °C ref) rapidly; glowing red immediately upon exposure to flame; while aluminum (1221 °F; 660.4 °C ref) is barely effected in comparison. Melts pure carbon Indications of mono-atomic hydrogen and oxygen ("impossible"). Steel, after treatment with the flame, is much more impervious to rust and before treatment. [ref] Does not boil water; but seems to work by electrical rather than heat energy Welds steel to brick http://www.amasci.com/weird/bgf1.html CU research team makes fundamental discovery about hydrogen combustion http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/00/11.9.00/hydrogen_combustion.html There are technologies available, some over 100 years old If your knowledge/education background permits and/or you are open to learning as it seem you are, few references The Rory Johnson Gallium-Deuterium Fusion Magnetic Motor Presented at the 3rd International Symposium on New Energy, April 25-28, `96 at Denver, CO http://users.rcn.com/zap.dnai/zeropoint/advanced/rory.htm Read appendix 2 to understand some of the huge obstacles, and they are not of technical nature. These obstacles seem to appear when the very few valid inventions get too close... Understanding Zero Point Energy http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/zeropointenergy-11.24.00.htm http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/research/warp/possible.html A note, do not confuse perpetual motion machines, with overunity devices. The first violates at least one or more laws of thermodynamic, the second doesn't...... If the human race is to advance past the dark ages of oil chains, we must think outside the box. All new inventions, breakthroughs, revolutionary technologies came to fruition because of visionaries willing to forgo the status quo, willing to face the real problems and seek the true solutions. Can we imagine how far back we would be if we didn't developed the telescope. and still taught and believed the earth is flat? There is huge amount of info on the net. Good luck. enjoyable thread
I love those words. I try to live by them. Thanks to those that recently commented, your posts are very illuminating. I'm gonna post a reply/comments later. kt
Apparently there is a way to produce hydrogen simply by exposing thin strands of catalytic metals such as platinum to sunlight. The hydrogen is produced directly without electrolysis. Also scientists are now developing algae that release hydrogen through a biochemical process. The technologies are there. They just need investment. Runningbear
Patent # 2,796,345 June 18, 1957 About 60 years old. I got a full copy from the library few years back. "Chemalloy powderized to about 1,000,000 particles per pound exhibits the same elecrical properties (Fig. 2) as the solid rod. Here it generates slightly more than .5 volt, and in addition decomposes the water, liberating hydrogen" Technologies have been popping here and there, but there seems to be little follow through, at least not until recently.
This might be of interest, Burning 25% gasoline 75% water, even sugar, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6849353333190625456&q=geet&pl=true Scooter doubled mileage. http://www.geet-pantone.com/currentvideo/geely-1.wmv Some other very unique phenomena: âSo far the inventor has accomplished a 2% increase in oxygen coming out of an internal combustion using crude oil as fuel and a 3.5% increase using Battery acid mixed with 80% saltwater. At the higher than ambient oxygen levels you normally find ice forming on the exhaust pipes as a normal function of this phenomenon.â http://www.geet-pantone.com/self.htm
this is another one of interest fyi - they are producing hydrogen engines: http://www.hydrogenenginecenter.com/why.htm#top