Hydrogen Thread:8-6-05 MIT Chemist attempts splitting water

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Until UCLA invites me to see the results I call shens on the lousy power output.

There would be no use for it at all if that was truly the case and we would be dead because there would be no Sun.

*shakes his head*

I'm hardly a physicist, but it's pretty clear to me why such a small system doesn't have sufficient power output to produce a net gain in energy. It likely has to do with the large activation energy inherent to a fusion reaction, which requires temperatures of >50,000,000°F to become spontaneous. If you try to create a temperature this high on a bench scale, UCLA would be a crater. This is why fusion bombs require fission bombs to work (link). The fission reaction kicks the temperature up to the point where the fusion can sustain itself and produce a net output of energy. I'm sure cquark or someone who has actually studied nuclear reactions can explaint his a lot better, but the governing principles are thermodynamically based, so I can speak with some authority.

OK, should put this in my No Sh1t Sherlock thread.

That is why a containment system capable of handling massive Temp & Reaction is needed first. Do we even have that?

They couldn't even contain Chernobyl (It's leaking pretty bad), how would they contain a real Fussion reaction???

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
OK, should put this in my No Sh1t Sherlock thread.

That is why a containment system capable of handling massive Temp & Reaction is needed first. Do we even have that?

They couldn't even contain Chernobyl (It's leaking pretty bad), how would they contain a real Fussion reaction???

Well, I guess you've just been living in a Red State too long. You no longer accept science.

 

[K1052]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Until UCLA invites me to see the results I call shens on the lousy power output.

There would be no use for it at all if that was truly the case and we would be dead because there would be no Sun.

*shakes his head*

I'm hardly a physicist, but it's pretty clear to me why such a small system doesn't have sufficient power output to produce a net gain in energy. It likely has to do with the large activation energy inherent to a fusion reaction, which requires temperatures of >50,000,000°F to become spontaneous. If you try to create a temperature this high on a bench scale, UCLA would be a crater. This is why fusion bombs require fission bombs to work (link). The fission reaction kicks the temperature up to the point where the fusion can sustain itself and produce a net output of energy. I'm sure cquark or someone who has actually studied nuclear reactions can explaint his a lot better, but the governing principles are thermodynamically based, so I can speak with some authority.

OK, should put this in my No Sh1t Sherlock thread.

That is why a containment system capable of handling massive Temp & Reaction is needed first. Do we even have that?

They couldn't even contain Chernobyl (It's leaking pretty bad), how would they contain a real Fussion reaction???

Magnetic confinement.
IIRC, the main byproducts of a fusion reaction are Neutrons and Helium. The idea has been proposed to line the reactor with lithium-6 which would absorb the neutrons produce Tritium for use in the fuel cycle.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Until UCLA invites me to see the results I call shens on the lousy power output.

There would be no use for it at all if that was truly the case and we would be dead because there would be no Sun.

*shakes his head*

I'm hardly a physicist, but it's pretty clear to me why such a small system doesn't have sufficient power output to produce a net gain in energy. It likely has to do with the large activation energy inherent to a fusion reaction, which requires temperatures of >50,000,000°F to become spontaneous. If you try to create a temperature this high on a bench scale, UCLA would be a crater. This is why fusion bombs require fission bombs to work (link). The fission reaction kicks the temperature up to the point where the fusion can sustain itself and produce a net output of energy. I'm sure cquark or someone who has actually studied nuclear reactions can explaint his a lot better, but the governing principles are thermodynamically based, so I can speak with some authority.

OK, should put this in my No Sh1t Sherlock thread.

That is why a containment system capable of handling massive Temp & Reaction is needed first. Do we even have that?

They couldn't even contain Chernobyl (It's leaking pretty bad), how would they contain a real Fussion reaction???

Magnetic confinement.
IIRC, the main byproducts of a fusion reaction are Neutrons and Helium. The idea has been proposed to line the reactor with lithium-6 which would absorb the neutrons produce Tritium for use in the fuel cycle.

Now you're talking unlike some other that put Wizard in their name but are far from it. :thumbsup:

Basically if we ever do get large scale reactors going they should be limited in size to prevent blowing the Planet to pieces should one lose containment.

 

[K1052]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Until UCLA invites me to see the results I call shens on the lousy power output.

There would be no use for it at all if that was truly the case and we would be dead because there would be no Sun.

*shakes his head*

I'm hardly a physicist, but it's pretty clear to me why such a small system doesn't have sufficient power output to produce a net gain in energy. It likely has to do with the large activation energy inherent to a fusion reaction, which requires temperatures of >50,000,000°F to become spontaneous. If you try to create a temperature this high on a bench scale, UCLA would be a crater. This is why fusion bombs require fission bombs to work (link). The fission reaction kicks the temperature up to the point where the fusion can sustain itself and produce a net output of energy. I'm sure cquark or someone who has actually studied nuclear reactions can explaint his a lot better, but the governing principles are thermodynamically based, so I can speak with some authority.

OK, should put this in my No Sh1t Sherlock thread.

That is why a containment system capable of handling massive Temp & Reaction is needed first. Do we even have that?

They couldn't even contain Chernobyl (It's leaking pretty bad), how would they contain a real Fussion reaction???

Magnetic confinement.
IIRC, the main byproducts of a fusion reaction are Neutrons and Helium. The idea has been proposed to line the reactor with lithium-6 which would absorb the neutrons produce Tritium for use in the fuel cycle.

Now you're talking unlike some other that put Wizard in their name but are far from it. :thumbsup:

Basically if we ever do get large scale reactors going they should be limited in size to prevent blowing the Planet to pieces should one lose containment.

A loss of containment should not result in an explosion. The plasma should just cool off and likely do some damage to the interior lining of the reactor.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Until UCLA invites me to see the results I call shens on the lousy power output.

There would be no use for it at all if that was truly the case and we would be dead because there would be no Sun.

*shakes his head*

I'm hardly a physicist, but it's pretty clear to me why such a small system doesn't have sufficient power output to produce a net gain in energy. It likely has to do with the large activation energy inherent to a fusion reaction, which requires temperatures of >50,000,000°F to become spontaneous. If you try to create a temperature this high on a bench scale, UCLA would be a crater. This is why fusion bombs require fission bombs to work (link). The fission reaction kicks the temperature up to the point where the fusion can sustain itself and produce a net output of energy. I'm sure cquark or someone who has actually studied nuclear reactions can explaint his a lot better, but the governing principles are thermodynamically based, so I can speak with some authority.

OK, should put this in my No Sh1t Sherlock thread.

That is why a containment system capable of handling massive Temp & Reaction is needed first. Do we even have that?

They couldn't even contain Chernobyl (It's leaking pretty bad), how would they contain a real Fussion reaction???

Magnetic confinement.
IIRC, the main byproducts of a fusion reaction are Neutrons and Helium. The idea has been proposed to line the reactor with lithium-6 which would absorb the neutrons produce Tritium for use in the fuel cycle.

Now you're talking unlike some other that put Wizard in their name but are far from it. :thumbsup:

Basically if we ever do get large scale reactors going they should be limited in size to prevent blowing the Planet to pieces should one lose containment.

A loss of containment should not result in an explosion. The plasma should just cool off and likely do some damage to the interior lining of the reactor.

Interesting

Here is more on "Tabletop" Astrophysics

Tabletop Astrophysics

 

[StageLeft]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
water which contains a Hdrogen atom for every two Oxygen atoms.

Go back to school.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Skoorb

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
water which contains two Hydrogen atoms for every Oxygen atom.

Go back to school.

Oh big deal, I was typing fast. Don't see you contributing to Science or anything.

 

[feralkid]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex
The current enormous demand for Hybrids, and the ongoing work by companies like Toyota to bring Hydrogen vehicles to the masses would seem to contradict that idea. We've got 13 hydrogen fueling stations in California last time I read (been about 2 months), and people are increasingly irritated with high fuel prices.

We'll get there, I am confident of that. How rapidly is anyone's guess.

Jason

I wouldn't get your science from Dave. Hydrogen production on the scale you're talking about requires drawing power from the electrical grid, which means burning coal/oil. So, instead of just burning the oil in your car, you're heaping another layer of inefficiency on top of the whole mess, as electrolysis will only return about 90% of the power you put into it. In this manner, you're actually going to consume MORE oil than you would if it had been distilled as gasoline and used conventionally. We can produce as much hydrogen as we want in this manner, but this is why we don't currently.

How's this economically different than petroleum?

e.g. It takes energy to locate, extract, refine and transport petroleum before it can be used to produce energy.

 

[Deptacon]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
I started a thread specifically for Hydrogen since the P&N experts say that there is no such thing as renewable Hdrogen resources despite the fact that the planet is made up of 75% water which contains a Hdrogen atom for every two Oxygen atoms.

4-25-2005 Pennsylvania State University create microbial cells that treat water and give off hydrogen

The new process is not limited to using only carbohydrate-based biomass.

Theoretically, it yields hydrogen from any biodegradable, dissolved, organic matter and cleans wastewater.

In the procedure, when the bacteria eat the biomass, they transfer electrons to an anode. The bacteria also release protons - hydrogen atoms stripped of their electrons - which go into solution.

Anode's electrons migrate via a wire to the cathode, the other electrode in the fuel cell, where they are electrochemically assisted to combine with protons to produce hydrogen gas.

The new process demonstrates, for the first time, the real potential in capturing hydrogen from renewable sources.

fusion was successfully obtained yrs ago, at both the princton and LA centers....the problem isnt if we can do it, its generateing more power from the reaction than the power it takes to create the reaction....

 

[Deptacon]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Until UCLA invites me to see the results I call shens on the lousy power output.

There would be no use for it at all if that was truly the case and we would be dead because there would be no Sun.

*shakes his head*

I'm hardly a physicist, but it's pretty clear to me why such a small system doesn't have sufficient power output to produce a net gain in energy. It likely has to do with the large activation energy inherent to a fusion reaction, which requires temperatures of >50,000,000°F to become spontaneous. If you try to create a temperature this high on a bench scale, UCLA would be a crater. This is why fusion bombs require fission bombs to work (link). The fission reaction kicks the temperature up to the point where the fusion can sustain itself and produce a net output of energy. I'm sure cquark or someone who has actually studied nuclear reactions can explaint his a lot better, but the governing principles are thermodynamically based, so I can speak with some authority.

OK, should put this in my No Sh1t Sherlock thread.

That is why a containment system capable of handling massive Temp & Reaction is needed first. Do we even have that?

They couldn't even contain Chernobyl (It's leaking pretty bad), how would they contain a real Fussion reaction???

cause that was fission....not fusion.....but yeah your right, fusion is hotter than fission....

 

[StageLeft]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Skoorb

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
water which contains a Hdrogen atom for every two Oxygen atoms.

Go back to school.

Oh big deal, I was typing fast. Don't see you contributing to Science or anything.

Name one submission you've had accepted in a peer-reviewed journal.

Also fixed your corrected quote, to represent the original error which, though you changed it in my quote, you still have not changed in your original post as of this writing.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: feralkid
How's this economically different than petroleum?

e.g. It takes energy to locate, extract, refine and transport petroleum before it can be used to produce energy.

Because now you're burning x+y amount of petroleum to get the equivalent of x amount of petroleum's energy. If it takes 100 J to do something, you could do it by consuming the amount of petroleum to generate 100 J, OR you can consume enough petroleum to generate 100 J/0.9=111 J, assuming the fuel cell has about 90% efficiency.

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Now you're talking unlike some other that put Wizard in their name but are far from it. :thumbsup:

Yes, Dave, you caught me. You know MUCH more about science than I do. Here's your prize:

 

[zephyrprime]

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex
Whoa, Deuterium, that's like, *straight* out of Star Trek

Jason

Star Trek has dilithium not deuterium.

 

[MovingTarget]

well, even if this experiment had come close to producing the same amount of energy required to start the fusion process, it seems a matter of scalability. In order to generate it in a useable form on the power grid, you need a bigger fusion reactor. Currently, the way of doing this involves a large scale magnetic containment device. You can't have a physical container for a plasma, because it would easily destroy the container, so containing the plasma with a magnet seems the only viable option. However, the power required to run one of these still exceeds the output of the reaction. Also, none of the containment devices perfectly contain the plasma that undergoes fusion. Som plasma inevitably escapes, thereby cooling the reaction. I'm not saying it can't be done, far from it, just that we haven't perfected how to do so just yet.
Here is one example... Spherical Tokamak

Should we perfect a fusion reactor that does have a net output of energy, then I see hydrogen becoming a major energy source. The electricity produced by the fusion plant could be used to extract hydrogen from water through electroysis. With a simple device to collect the gas (you can even build one in your kitchen sink with basic materials), all you need to do is run a current through water and the hydrogen and oxygen seperate out of water at the anode and cathode of the submerged circuit. This hydrogen can be used to power the reactor or be shipped off to use as a storage medium for energy to power vehicles. Its still pretty far off, but a definite possibility.

 

[dannybin1742]

i just checked pubmed, and it didn't find anything

 

[Mark R]

I think people misunderstand the relevance of the UCLA fusion experiment - it was never intended to produce more energy that it used, nor does it seem likely that their device could ever me improved enough to do so.

That does not make their device useless - fusion reactions are useful not just for energy: their byproduct - neutron radiation - is extremely difficult to produce by other means, usually requiring a particle accelerator. Neutrons are very useful for engineering and other fields - they can be used for advanced radiography of structures, are the only way to easily and quickly check for the presence of nuclear materials such as plutonium, and may potentially have medical uses.

Having said that, building a fusion reactor that can fit on a table top is nothing new - it was done in the 1950s - and the equipment is sufficiently simple that a 13 year old kid can build a working model for a HS science fair (they only got 2nd prize though).

 

[dannybin1742]

Aren't there some fundamental laws of thermodynamics that make that bolded sentence impossible? I mean, I may be a "Red Stater," but I swear I done read that in one of them thar scientifical doohickies..

yes but you also realise that we are dealing with bacteria, a living system, so what they are simply doing i think is drawing off the oxygen which shift equilibrium in favor of producing more products, mainly hydorgen and oxygen, but the oxygen is sapped off, so you get more hydrogen. i'm sure the laws of thermodynamics are being followed

 

[K1052]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex
Whoa, Deuterium, that's like, *straight* out of Star Trek

Jason

Star Trek has dilithium not deuterium.

In Star Trek a frozen slush deuterium is used to power fusion reactors onboard and the ship's impulse engines.

 

[f95toli]

Originally posted by: Mark R
Having said that, building a fusion reactor that can fit on a table top is nothing new - it was done in the 1950s - and the equipment is sufficiently simple that a 13 year old kid can build a working model for a HS science fair (they only got 2nd prize though).

Eh? How do you do that? Unless you use some "trick" like sonoluminescense (which we still don't know if it works or not) you need to heat a plasma to something like a million K in order for deuterium to form helium.

How do you do that in a simple table-top experiment?

Besides, where do 13 year olds find deuterim (or tritium)?

 

[Mark R]

Eh? How do you do that? Unless you use some "trick" like sonoluminescense (which we still don't know if it works or not) you need to heat a plasma to something like a million K in order for deuterium to form helium.

How do you do that in a simple table-top experiment?

The trick is getting enough kinetic energy in a pair of deuterium nuclei. The device I'm thinking of is the Farnsworth Fusor. Essentially, its a vacuum tube charged with a trace of deuterium, which has perforated spherical high voltage anode and cathode. Ions are accelerated towards the centre of the device where, very occasionally, a collision can occur with sufficient energy to cause fusion.

No idea where you get deuterium from. I can't find the original article about the project at the moment, but I'm pretty sure I found out about it on ATOT - maybe some has more l33t advanced search skills than me.

Tritium is probably easier to get hold of - I've got a whole clutch of tritium filled keyrings - in fact I've got too many, as I sometimes have to put them in a drawer as they keep me awake at night.

Edit - found the article - turns out that the 'high school' bit was in error (google suggests I wasn't the only victim of inaccurate reporting) - it was actually a Freshman at college. I was right about the 2nd prize though. http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,510054502,00.html

 

[f95toli]

OK.

That is a very cool project.

I must admitt I had never heard about the Farnsworth Fusor before, I know a thing or two about ordinary fusion reactors (like JET and ITER) but this was new to me.

 

[ntdz]

Hydrogen is NOT a source of energy. It's basically a storage of energy. The only real way to get hydrogen by itself is through water, and getting the hydrogen unsplit from O2 takes energy. And as we all know, some energy is wasted in the form of heat, friction, etc... So hydrogen really isn't a source of energy that makes sense in the long term. What the point of hydrogen cars when you still have to burn coal/oil to get the power needed to turn water into a usable energy source?

However, their idea is pretty interesting. It seems it would work, hopefully they can develop it and get it working soon.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Mark R

Eh? How do you do that? Unless you use some "trick" like sonoluminescense (which we still don't know if it works or not) you need to heat a plasma to something like a million K in order for deuterium to form helium.

How do you do that in a simple table-top experiment?

The trick is getting enough kinetic energy in a pair of deuterium nuclei. The device I'm thinking of is the Farnsworth Fusor. Essentially, its a vacuum tube charged with a trace of deuterium, which has perforated spherical high voltage anode and cathode. Ions are accelerated towards the centre of the device where, very occasionally, a collision can occur with sufficient energy to cause fusion.

No idea where you get deuterium from. I can't find the original article about the project at the moment, but I'm pretty sure I found out about it on ATOT - maybe some has more l33t advanced search skills than me.

Tritium is probably easier to get hold of - I've got a whole clutch of tritium filled keyrings - in fact I've got too many, as I sometimes have to put them in a drawer as they keep me awake at night.

Edit - found the article - turns out that the 'high school' bit was in error (google suggests I wasn't the only victim of inaccurate reporting) - it was actually a Freshman at college. I was right about the 2nd prize though. http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,510054502,00.html

Deuterium Compounds

 

[zephyrprime]

Originally posted by: ntdz
Hydrogen is NOT a source of energy. It's basically a storage of energy. The only real way to get hydrogen by itself is through water, and getting the hydrogen unsplit from O2 takes energy. And as we all know, some energy is wasted in the form of heat, friction, etc... So hydrogen really isn't a source of energy that makes sense in the long term. What the point of hydrogen cars when you still have to burn coal/oil to get the power needed to turn water into a usable energy source?

However, their idea is pretty interesting. It seems it would work, hopefully they can develop it and get it working soon.

Hydrogen isn't a source of energy if you use it for burning or in a fuel cell but when you're considering fusion, hydrogen is indeed a source of energy.