Posted on 08/02/2002 7:43:06 AM PDT by Paradox
'Fraid not. The reason why we buy oil from the Middle East is because it is cheaper there than anywhere else in the world. Coming up with yet another way to manufacture artificial oil won't change that. We can't change the laws of economics or thermodynamics; all we can change are the governments of the Middle East.
Capt. Planet finally has a purpose!
Both HCl and chlorine are used industrially everyday throughout the world. Lots of materials that are potentially dangerous are used under safe conditions (f'rinstance, jewelers use cyanide as a cleaning agent, from what I understand of their craft). Don't know how much it costs, but my old high school stockpiled plenty of HCl tablets for use in lab.
The worries are marginal. Let's get some verification on this and tell the towel-heads to go pound sand up their %*$@&!!!! :-)
Or you could just harness the CO2 from his mouth and pump it back into his nose and definitely solve one problem.
Only sufficient for a Master's degree from M.I.T.
And you?
Nice renewable-resources find!
Yup. And what is the energy cost and/or dollar cost to make Hcl?...
I was recently asked to review a German patent(0055134A1). The engine was built and tested by BMW and it worked.
Basically the idea is you carry a big tank of water and feed aluminum wire into the tank, where it is reacted using a spark and the reaction Al + 3H2O --> Al2O3 + 3H2 allows free hydrogen to be burned in a modified engine with incoming air.
This is a “redox” reaction. Aluminum is being oxidized by the water, and the water is being “reduced” by the aluminum to make hydrogen.
In this reaction we have two moles of aluminum (54 grams) reacting with three moles of water (54 grams) to produce one mole of aluminum oxide (102 grams) plus 3 moles of hydrogen (six grams). So to make one pound of hydrogen, you will need to scale this by a factor of 75.6: 4.08 kilograms of aluminum (9 lb), 4.08 kilograms of water (again 9 lb), producing 7.71 kilograms of Al2O3 (17 lb) and one pound of hydrogen.
Aluminum costs about 70 cents per pound, so the aluminum cost will be $6.30 for each pound of hydrogen created.
The ‘heating value’ of gasoline is 114,000 BTU/gallon or +9,475 calories per gram. This is 4,297,765 calories per pound, or 17,055 BTU/lb.
Each pound of hydrogen is “worth” 60,190 BTU. So hydrogen liberates about 3.5 times as much energy per pound as gasoline. The problem is that gasoline costs about $1.60 per gallon at present, which is the same as $11.40 per cubic foot, or $0.239 per pound.
Since hydrogen gives 3.5 times as much energy per pound as gasoline, we need 1/3.5 times as many pounds of hydrogen to do the same job. This is 0.29 times. But the cost of making hydrogen from aluminum is $6.30 per pound of hydrogen. So 0.29 times $6.30 says hydrogen made from aluminum costs $1.80 per pound of gasoline equivalent. This is $1.80/$0.239=7.54 times as much on a per pound basis. Gas would have to rise to $12.06/gal before you “break even” using this system. In other words, the economics get you.
Part of the problem is that refined aluminum requires enormous amounts of electricity to make. From the raw ore to the high-purity aluminum takes huge amounts of energy. In fact, the price of aluminum and the price of electricity track one another and affect one another in a complex way. One can look at this patent as follows: the inventor has invented a very expensive battery which is “charged up” at the aluminum smelter plant. The “charging” is the energy cost of making pure aluminum out of rocks.
(Water has a “heat of formation” of –68,320 calories/mole. This is equivalent to –3795 calories per gram. Aluminum Oxide has a heat of formation of –1675.7 kJ/mole, or –3925.4 calories per gram. The total energy available from this reaction is thus (-3795)-(-3925.4) = +130.4 calories/gram. This energy is not used in the actual engine and all it does is make the water get hot.)
(Water weighs 62.4 lb/ft3. Nine pounds of water liberate one pound of hydrogen and 8 pounds of oxygen. In this system the oxygen is thrown away! It is sequestered in Al2O3. Then more oxygen from the air is used to burn the hydrogen.)
No.
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