Posted on 05/03/2010 10:50:42 PM PDT by neverdem
You’re pretty much right from what I can remember about chemistry. Except there is no extra electron in Na+ to strip out... you’re short an electron!
The amount of energy needed to seperate a sizeable chunk of Sodium from all its valence-shell electrons would be staggering. But you could do this on a molecular level. That’s sorta what a catalyst is.
Oh yeah that’s right. If the Na+ is positive—that means it lacks an electron. So you’d have to add an electron. That looks harder than stripping out the extra electron.
lOL.
If this technology works, it will be a great thing. I was making fun of global warming nuts, whose goal is destruction of modern society, and control of our lives, not protection of the environment. You watch, if all our cars run on hydrogen and only water is the byproduct, you will see them come up with a theory that makes that a bad thing. Cars give people freedom; that threatens socialists.
You would spend more energy obtaining sodium ions than you would recover in the reaction. Most of the good primary chemical energy sources on the earth have already reacted with something and expended their reaction energy. The nuclear furnace 93 million miles away bombards us with electromagnetic energy which enterprising plants convert to chemical energy. We exploit the resulting plant energy as firewood, peat, coal and petroleum.
It is only because of plants that there is any free oxygen in the atmosphere, it would quickly have bonded with some other element otherwise.
You would spend more energy obtaining sodium ions than you would recover in the reaction.
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the sodium ions Na+ are already present in solution in saltwater.
the question is —thanks to the previous poster— where do you get the extra free electron from to attach to the sodium ion Na+ and how do you attach it in situ in solution so that suddenly a sodium metal Na is in the exothermic presence of water H2O
Way back then sodium was easily obtained and we didn't have much of a problem when we used it. I imagine now we would be classified as terrorists by having any on hand.
Correct, Na+ is the reaction product. If you dissolve a cup of salt in a quart of water, there will considerable heating, just from the salt going into solution. To recover metallic sodium from that solution requires more energy than recovering it from salt alone.
Significantly, Long's catalyst is also stable in the presence of impurities that can be found in the ocean, meaning that sea water can be used without pre-treatment. The team used a sample of California sea water in the system and found the results to be similar to the results obtained for water at neutral pH.The luddites will be out in force to get a seawater electrolysis ban. Thanks neverdem.
To recover metallic sodium from that solution requires more energy than recovering it from salt alone.
‘’’’’’’
But the point here is not to recover the the Na but rather to change Na+ to Na while its in solution with H20 —or rather as its settling out of solution with H20 which would cause an exothermic reaction.
I agree with you on both counts.
The sodium in salt water is matched with chloride atoms. It takes energy to separate them, more energy then you would get by reacting the sodium. Just remember the Second Law of Thermodynamics: “There ain’t no free lunch”, or something like that.
Whilst I have hitherto not seen the adverb “whilst” used in a modern document, I shall henceforth endeavor to make use of said term.
Prevalent, yes. Powerful, no.
Technically speaking molecule for molecule you are correct. My point is that water vapour overall is the most ‘powerful’ GHG in the atmosphere.
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