Posted on 04/07/2024 12:09:19 PM PDT by Eleutheria5
For decades, scientists and inventors have flirted with the concept of a water engine, but their attempts often hit insurmountable roadblocks. However, Elon Musk, known for pushing the boundaries of technology, has provided a fascinating insight. His revelation might just revolutionize the transportation industry at all levels. But people are asking exciting questions. Is water a viable source of fuel? What other innovative solutions are available for transportation problems? Join us as we unravel how Elon Musk went public with the new engine that changes everything. Transcript Follow along using the transcript.
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A cure-all all the way up and down. For desalination of sea water, a giant still using the heat from a nuclear reactor, which has the primary purpose of generating electricity, uses two stones to kill one bird. Instead of the old design of light-water uranium reactors, the new designs of the Small Modular Nuclear reactors use molten salt as the coolant and the carrier of the fissionable material, with a steady output of heat energy for as long as the fuel charge lasts. This energy is being generated 24/7/365 for several years before requiring refueling, there is no chance of a “China Syndrome” catastrophic fail, and no chance of a radioactivity release. The excess heat not used for production of electricity (which would be so cheap as to make hydrogen generation by electrolysis economically feasible) would be used to make potable water out of stagnant water from almost any source, and leaving the mineral deposits behind. the minerals could then be refined into the various elements (including lithium, if you HAVE to have it anyway), but also concentrated brine which has an extraordinary number of metals, and not just sodium in solution. These various salts could be separated by differential crystallization, as the salts of various minerals precipitate at a very specific point of supersaturation in the remaining brine. Gold could even be extracted from sea water using this process.
A whole new industrial base could be built up from this method of extracting chemical elements from sea water. All it takes is imagination and determination. We probably already have access to most of the technology, it s a matter of applying it.
If the process of using hydrogen reactions with oxygen produces water vapor, you’re not “mucking” with water, but creating it.
Dihydrogen Monoxide!
Thousands die every year from inhalation! Usually called drowning. Remember when this was used to mock environmentalists.
Dihydrogen monoxide parody
The dihydrogen monoxide parody is a parody that involves calling water by an unfamiliar chemical name, usually “dihydrogen monoxide”, and listing some of water’s properties in a particularly alarming manner, such as accelerating corrosion and causing suffocation. Wikipedia
The engine was a scam. The inventor claimed that the car ran on a tank of water, but it almost certainly ran on acetylene generated by calcium carbide reacting with water. After a brief demonstration, the inventor’s terms were the delivery of a large sum in cash in return for revealing the secret, with no recourse if the government was disappointed. When he was told that was not acceptable, he disappeared.
If you hurry, you can get $40,000 off a 2023 Toyota Mirai Limited, a fuel-cell vehicle that retails for $66,000. When you factor in the $15,000 in free hydrogen over six years and the available 0% interest loan, the new car would run you just $11,000. That’s how much it costs Toyota to make the vehicle’s fuel cell stack alone, according to the most recent estimate. You buy the fuel cell, Toyota pays for the rest of the car.
It would be a great deal, if you can find the hydrogen to power it.
Toyota’s discount comes on the heels of Shell’s announcement three weeks ago that it’s closing its hydrogen filling stations in California. Granted, the oil company only had seven to begin with (five of which had been out of order), but that still represents more than 10% of the Golden State’s stations, nearly all of which are clustered around Los Angeles and San Francisco. Of those that remain, about a quarter are offline, according to the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Partnership.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/28/hydrogens-real-markets/
https://h2fcp.org/stationmap
https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen-locations#/find/nearest?fuel=HY
https://www.toyota.com/mirai/
https://www.fastechus.com/blog/vehicle-manufacturers-working-on-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicles
Excellent post.
I had a cousin who watched that happen. He was five years old at the time. His parents took the kids to Lakehurst to watch the Hindenburg land. They wound up watching history.
But we also have been hearing about this for decades. I'm just a skeptic until I see the idea become a reality. I have seen many do so in my lifetime, and I hope this is another, and that all the hype is matches with reality. But until then I throw caution to the wind. Because I have too often seen exuberance turn into issues. As the saying always goes, everything looks better on paper then it does after delivery & expansion have their input. 🙂👍
Zackly. Working from your cubicell, in your 15-minute city, owning nothing, eating ze bugs—and liking it.
As for living in the large buildings, check out the movie Dredd with Karl Urban and Lena Headey.
I believe they switched to helium after that.
I designed several electric water vapor engines a long time ago but I was never able to get the math to work out in my favor.
probably the wankel variant I considered would be mostly possible?
no I don’t think so offhand, but maths is fun
Wonder if it will get to market before the E-Cat cold fusion generator thing with free unlimited energy?
You’re talking about engines run by water? Like steam engines? Despite the misleading headline, that’s not what Musk is having a boner over, but hydrogen injection power which results in water vapor. Is that what you designed back then?
They can set up a large complex all across Death Valley to do solar and wind and nuclear to turn water into hydrogen.
Although, I don’t know what size plant would be needed to meet America’s needs.
But let's go with the notion that we are indeed creating excess water. Then the negative unforeseen complication just might be an over abundance of water. We see from weather systems what an overload of water can do to an area that receives too much too fast. As a result, it may start seeing landmass reductions, for all this new water must go somewhere. Will this creation of excess water causes these kinds of problems?
I'm just saying we never understand the consequences until we take that leap. But history has shown us that all innovations have both positive & negatives. We see the positives, which is what brought about the innovation to begin with, but we rarely if ever see the negatives in the development stage. We only see the negatives after implementation & expansion in usage of the innovation take place.
I engage in what's often referred to as playing the devil's advocate, probably do so because I am not an innovator. But I think it's something that we should examine fully, because there will be unknown consequences, because there always are with innovations. I hope that's really why I engage in it, to spark stimulating conversation. Perhaps I'm all wet as usual. I know it drives my wife crazy. 😋
Take the cell phone, a marvelous remarkable innovation that has allowed us to communicate to people around the world. The negative side that no one envisioned, is just how much it tends to isolate us from those in our immediate surroundings.
Hydrogen is energy intensive to make, expensive, easily escapes most containers, and is highly compustable
The Hindenburg was supposed to use helium, but the United States refused to sell any to Germany because of economic sanctions. So the Germans used the much more volatile hydrogen.
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