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To: Wonder Warthog; boris
Your original post did *not* describe the mechanism except in the most general, hand-waving sort of way. Most statements of this nature end up in violations of the 1st and 2nd Law. If that is not the case, I apologize, but as of right now, vague assertions of "more than 100% electrically efficient" due to "high temp electrolyzers" don't mean much to me, and I suspect others as well. And I'll hang with you on as much thermodynamics/heat transfer/fluid mechanics/energy system analysis (technical and economic) as you care to discuss....

Show me a system diagram and appropriate 1st Law analysis of that system, and a testbed that has done something useful, with the the slightest remote possibility of commercial scaling. And oh, yeah, it would be nice if some independant peer review were involved, and not a bunch of greenie wishing.

And BTW, you're still side-stepping the energy density issues of hydrogen for automotive use.

When folks start typing primarily all-caps when challenged about one of their statements, I find that discussion tends to head immediately far downhill. Here's hoping that's not the case here.

71 posted on 03/25/2002 3:47:06 AM PST by FreedomPoster
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To: FreedomPoster
"If that is not the case, I apologize, but as of right now, vague assertions of "more than 100% electrically efficient" due to "high temp electrolyzers" don't mean much to me, and I suspect others as well. And I'll hang with you on as much thermodynamics/heat transfer/fluid mechanics/energy system analysis (technical and economic) as you care to discuss...."

Simple--the extra energy needed (over and above electric current) comes from thermal energy. Think of it as a combined catalytic cracker/electrolysis cell without the side reactions of a full catalytic cracking process. This example was intended to point out that Boris's assertion that "...electrolysis cells are 70% efficient, tops.." was baloney. In fact, even current technology electrolysis cells AT LOW LOADS are in the mid-90% efficency region, but that drops off as the load is increased--and probably DOES drop to Boris's 70% efficiency at full production rates.

I spent years working for a chemical company that produced megatons of chlorine per year by electrolysis, so I am "somewhat" familiar with industrial-scale electrolysis. It gets REAL interesting working around a 10 kiloamp DC electric field.

76 posted on 03/26/2002 3:45:19 PM PST by Wonder Warthog
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