| Thursday,
May 22, 2008 This
was not my intended opening piece, but apparently a number of readers
believe there is a way to run your car on water, and for some reason it's
not happening. My mention of Zubrin's proposal to require that in
future automobiles sold in the US must have FFV (Flexible Fuel Vehicle)
conversions so that they can run on alcohol, gasoline, or a mixture of the
two generated a good bit of mail that needs commenting.
The first is long, and says in essence that Zubrin
is an idiot because he doesn't embrace running our cars on water. The way to
do that, according to my correspondent, is to use aluminum/gallium which
will disassociate the hydrogen from the water, and that will allow the cars
to run on hydrogen. I'll comment on that below.
First the letters:
Subject: Zubrin -- in over his head --
Jerry,
I was listening to that [George Noory on Coast to
Coast] show too -- at first, he sounded like he was making sense, talking
about how the Saudis are systematically breaking our back, which is what
I've been saying for some time now -- we *are* at war, and our adversaries
are about the *business* of defeating us, and they're dead serious.
But then, he took a call, and he stepped *way* beyond
his knowledge -- but, he kept on talking. Not only that, but he *had* to
"sound authoritative*, argh!
The question pertained to the truly disruptive
gallium/aluminum technology that I mentioned to you a few months ago -- a
technology which *does* make hydrogen *usable*! It creates it on demand, by
cracking water *without* any exotic *or* snake-oil stuff. Storage and
transportation are NOT issues. This technology can break the *Saudi's*
backs, and it's doable *today*.
Anyway, Zubrin had never heard of it! So, instead of
*saying* he'd never heard of it, he decided to maintain the "World's
Foremost Authority" facade, and proceeded to lecture the caller on how it
was *impossible*, it could NOT be real, it was NOT going to happen, and then
launched into a meaningless and irrelevant lecture on the storage and
transporation issues of elemental hydrogen.
Below is the content from two emails I sent to a
friend in real time last night. Please read it, and see if *you* don't find
it to be every bit the disruptive technolgy!
If you'd like, I can re-write it into something more
suitable for general consumption (I don't mind if you print the whole thing
as-is, but I didn't write it with that in mind, and it shows :) Or, feel
free to just summarize it on your own. There is plenty of information on
this, I'm surprised he hadn't heard of it. Oh, well. (The three links and
snips in the second email pretty much tell the tale.)
Ron
First email:
Sheesh. He was doing so well, and then someone asked
him a question that was beyond his knowledge -- so, he did what "experts"
will invariably do -- he answered it anyway, and is making a fool of
himself.
The problem is, the host is a bit of a dunce, so *he*
can't call the guy on his idiocy.
The topic was a question from a caller, about the
gallium/aluminum "magic" hydrogen generation system.
It really does let a car "burn water" -- what happens,
is that when the water contacts the gallium/aluminum, there is a chemical
reaction. It's nothing very mysterious, definitely *not* woo-woo stuff.
Aluminum is a *very* reactive metal. If not for its
habit of forming an oxide layer *instantly* upon exposure to air (or
anything with oxygen in it), it would be like sodium. Aluminum, when it does
get hot enough to burn, will burn like a sumbitch. Thermit is nothing more
than aluminum powder and *rust*! Good ol' iron oxide.
When *it's* heated up enough to "catch", the burning
aluminum reduces the rust back to iron (which also burns), and, in the
process, liberates the oxygen (rust minus oxygen equals iron), which makes
it burn even in the absence of air.
It burns *intensely* hot, courtesy of aluminum being
*such* a reactive metal.
OK, the gallium -- gallium is a "room temperature
liquid metal" without all the baggage carried by mercury. (You *could* do
the same thing with aluminum and mercury, but then you'd have people run
screaming into the night in terror, calling for the space-suit guys to
"clean up the eeeevul *mercury*!" and then you'd be sued into oblivion.
Gallium is a "nice" liquid metal.
It alloys with aluminum, i.e., sort of like soldering
-- it "wets" the surface (like rubbing a penny in mercury and having it
"turn silver").
Now, once the aluminum is wetted with the gallium, the
oxide layer is no longer an issue! So, get it *wet* (with *water*), and we
suddenly see exactly *how* reactive a metal aluminum really is, once it's no
longer shielded from water.
What happens is that the aluminum *does* oxidize --
but *without* forming an oxide *coating* on its surface (due to the
gallium).
OK, you put aluminum into water, and the aluminum
oxidizes -- so what's left? Well, what's left is what you have when you've
removed the "O" from "H2O" -- namely, *hydrogen*!
There are NO storage issues (hydrogen, because it is
the smallest atom possible, is just about *impossible* to store. It will
leak through pretty much *everything*!)
The reason there are no storage issues, is because
it's not being stored! It's produced upon demand -- by cracking water -- and
thus is *very* safe.
After all the aluminum has been oxidized, what do you
have? You have a pile of aluminum oxide, and, the gallium (which is not used
-- it's only there to prevent the aluminum from forming the oxide layer).
You then trade in your used-up aluminum/gallium, and
it goes back to the factory, where it's reduced back to metallic aluminum
(probably by nothing much more complex than heating it until the oxygen is
driven off).
The aluminum and gallium are *not* consumed. They are
NOT "fuel"! The fuel is *water*, period!
So, there's the subject of the question. Mr. Authority
had never heard of it -- so therefore, it *must* be shot down! So, he
launches into a condescending, pedantic, *idiotic* explanation as to how it
*can't* be real, since hydrogen can't be stored or transported.
Well, duh... that's the whole bloody POINT of the
technology!
Sheesh.
Crap like this really annoys me. Millions of people
are now convinced that "aluminum/gallium/water 'fuel' is snake oil."
And it's NOT!
Why can't these people just say, "No, I haven't heard
about that, but I'll look into it," instead of *pretending* that they know
what they're talking about? Is it *that* necessary to "sound like he knows
*everything*"???
Argh.
Feh.
I'll stop ranting now. <g>
ARGH!!!!
*Just* as I typed that "stop ranting now" the *idiot*
pops out, "but a car that runs on water, no, blah blah blah..."
Second email:
He lapsed into shameless touting of his book -- over
and over (which I now question, because of his arrogance, his ignorance, and
his harping on corn alcohol as The Solution -- and his insistence that there
are NOT food problems, which is utter BS).
Anyway, here we go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium
Snip:
Aluminium is reactive enough to reduce water to
hydrogen, being oxidized to aluminium oxide. However, the aluminium oxide
forms a protective coat which prevents further reaction. When gallium is
alloyed with aluminium, the coat does not form, thus the alloy can
potentially provide a solid hydrogen source for transportation purposes,
which would be more convenient than a pressurized hydrogen tank. Resmelting
the resultant aluminium oxide and gallium mixture to metallic aluminium and
gallium and reforming these into electrodes would constitute most of the
energy input into the system, while electricity produced by a hydrogen fuel
cell could constitute an energy output.
...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen
Snip:
In 2007, it was discovered that an alloy of aluminium
and gallium in pellet form added to water could be used to generate
hydrogen. The process also creates alumina, but the expensive gallium, which
prevents the formation of an oxide skin on the pellets, can be re-used. This
has important potential implications for a hydrogen economy, since hydrogen
can be produced on-site and does not need to be transported.
...
Engineers perfecting hydrogen-generating technology
================= http://www.physorg.com/news107446364.html
Snip [my comments at end]:
Purdue researchers demonstrate their method for
producing hydrogen by adding water to an alloy of aluminum and gallium. The
hydrogen could then be used to run an internal combustion engine or a fuel
cell. The reaction was discovered by Jerry Woodall, center, a distinguished
professor of electrical and computer engineering.
...
The technology produces hydrogen by adding water to an
alloy of aluminum and gallium. When water is added to the alloy, the
aluminum splits water by attracting oxygen, liberating hydrogen in the
process.
...
The gallium is a critical component because it hinders
the formation of an aluminum oxide skin normally created on aluminum's
surface after bonding with oxygen, a process called oxidation. This skin
usually acts as a barrier and prevents oxygen from reacting with aluminum.
Reducing the skin's protective properties allows the reaction to continue
until all of the aluminum is used to generate hydrogen, said Jerry Woodall,
a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue
who invented the process.
...
Because the technology could be used to generate
hydrogen on demand, the method makes it unnecessary to store or transport
hydrogen - two major obstacles in creating a hydrogen economy, Woodall said.
The gallium component is inert, which means it can be
recovered and reused.
...
As the alloy reacts with water, the aluminum turns
into aluminum oxide, also called alumina, which can be recycled back into
aluminum. The recycled aluminum would be less expensive than mining the
metal, making the technology more competitive with other forms of energy
production, Woodall said.
...
"Particles made with this 80-20 alloy have good
stability in dry air and react rapidly with water to form hydrogen," Woodall
said. "This alloy is under intense investigation, and, in our opinion, it
can be developed into a commercially viable material for splitting water."
The technology has numerous potential applications.
Because the method makes it possible to use hydrogen instead of gasoline to
run internal combustion engines, it could be used for cars and trucks.
Combusting hydrogen in an engine or using hydrogen to drive a fuel cell
produces only water as waste.
"It's a simple matter to convert ordinary internal
combustion engines to run on hydrogen. All you have to do is replace the
gasoline fuel injector with a hydrogen injector," Woodall said.
= = = =
There is MUCH more info in that article -- this is
really amazing stuff, truly incredible, a classic "disruptive technology"
that can give the Arabs a good swift kick to the robes.
But, Mister Expert never heard of it -- so, instead of
*admitting* his ignorance, he had to launch into a LONG diatribe, insulting
the caller (who *did* know about it), and insisting that it's impossible.
The thing is, this invention has received a *lot* of
publicity -- it's no secret, and anyone who claims to be THE Authority on
fuels and "fuel alternatives" (or "alternative fuels") who does NOT know
about this, is really... well, he's not doing very well in his field.
[end of second email]
The key sentence in all
that above is
"Particles made with this 80-20 alloy [of
aluminum and gallium] have good stability in dry air and react rapidly
with water to form hydrogen," Woodall said. "This alloy is under intense
investigation, and, in our opinion, it can be developed into a
commercially viable material for splitting water."
What is described is a fuel cell; a storage device.
What is overlooked is the details of how the science -- technology -- can be
reduced to something commercially viable. That would require among other
things conversion chambers, in which aluminum would be oxidized and hydrogen
generated; a way to collect that hydrogen; a way to burn that hydrogen in a
mobile system; a way to collect the oxidized aluminum; and a way to convert
that oxidized aluminum back to aluminum "fuel catalyst" again.
None of those are trivial steps. Unlike the FFV
system Zubrin and his friends advocate -- note I have neither endorsed nor
condemned the notion, but I have said it is interesting and seems worth
study -- there do not seem to be common demonstrations of the aluminum
technology. I can well believe that.
In the 1970's I wrote rather enthusiastically of
"the hydrogen economy". I understood there were no hydrogen wells, and that
hydrogen was a distribution system, not a primary energy source. My
enthusiasm for hydrogen took several body blows when we had to use it for a
practical system, the DC/X. Hydrogen is very hard to contain, escapes
undetectably, and while it has a high ISP (with LOX) for rockets, has enough
other problems that I am now convinced that methane or propane will be the
proper fuel for reusable rocket ships. Not hydrogen.
That could change with newer technologies but I
have yet to see a good practical system for using hydrogen as a distribution
medium. Now add having to do it in a car or truck: that is, the "fuel" is
water and aluminum/gallium, which are to be mixed with water, the resulting
energy of combustion dissipated, the hydrogen collected and then burned.
This is certainly possible, but I would suppose -- and a quick survey of the
Internet doesn't reveal anything to undermine my supposition -- that we are
a long way from a practical device, much less a commercially viable system.
I have had my disagreements with Zubrin, some of
them fairly tempestuous (given our personalities I presume that would be
inevitable), over space and rockets. I think Dr. Zubrin is quick to overlook
problems when he seizes on an approach to a solution to a favorite problem.
I don't think he is an idiot, and I don't think he deserves the comments
made about him. He is not a well to be poisoned.
I still find the FFV requirement an interesting
approach to lowering our dependence on imported energy. I have already
pointed out that I haven't done any extensive analysis of it.
Meanwhile, I find on the Internet a number of sites
that will sell you the secret of running your car on water. Google will find
you many, including
http://www.water-fuel-car-exposed.com/ which will lead you to
http://www.drivewithwaterfuel.com/?hop=muscleblog . My personal advice
is that you not be the first person on your block to try this. Note I didn't
say it will never work; but I really would like to see someone else use it
for a couple of months before I converted my car to run on water.
Zubrin and his colleagues have a number of other
proposals including defending subsidies that I don't find terribly
interesting. I will agree that I'd rather a subsidy went to Nebraska (or to
an American owned oil company drilling in the Gulf of Mexico) than to the
Middle East, but that's a principle, not approving a particular practice.
It is pretty clear to me that if things go as they
have the Kuwaiti and Saudi royal families will own America in fee simple
within your lifetime if not mine. We can't continue to transfer a trillion a
year out of the US into Sovereign Investment Funds without consequences. I
am not sure that condemning people like Zubrin as idiots is the best way to
cope with that all too real problem. I am also fairly sure that whatever we
do will not repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The US is in real trouble, and the situation does
not get better. The one certain thing is that we need more domestic sources
of energy. The second certain thing is that we are politically unable to do
the obvious things we must do.
The FFV action seems doable, and my cursory look
says it would do more good than harm. I welcome arguments against it, but I
am not certain that Zubrin's lack of enthusiasm for converting your car to
run on water and aluminum/gallium pellets is entirely compelling as a reason
to reject FFV.
===============
An Observation on Education:
well worth your time
One Hour in High School
My 13-year old daughter (who is homeschooled) and I
went to high school today. While we were there to listen to a presentation
on plants, given by a senior we know well, we walked away with an
eye-opening education about one high school.
The school is in an area with a mix of students, but
judging by the Beemers, jeeps and other upscale cars in the student lot,
many of the kids are well off. The high school is actually much like the one
I attended in what now seems like the dark ages.
We waited in the office before attending the
presentation. Since privacy is a concept of the past, we were privy to a
lament from a student waiting to see the principal. She had a car and had
gone out to lunch. Apparently she had taken someone to an unauthorized lunch
this day. It was unclear what had precipitated her trip to the office, but
she was in fear of losing her “privileges” for next year.
While trying to ignore the drama (which ended with
another student telling the first: If you need me, just text me!) in walked
a man who would have been more at home in a side show on a New Jersey
boardwalk. One arm was completely tattooed. The other arm had one large
tattoo (maybe this arm was in progress?). He had an earring in his right
ear. He wore blue sweatpants which were rolled at the waist and a t-shirt. A
student? No. A teacher. And, I later found out, an English teacher!
The student’s presentation was like a mini-masters
degree oral. The student had worked on a year-long science project and was
to present his findings. The student had created a book of 27 plants which
he had collected, pressed and researched. Along with the pressed plant and
information, he had a topographical map showing where the plant had been
found. He also identified the kind of habitat the plant would thrive in.
There wasn’t one positive comment made on this
student’s project and the questions from the teachers were asinine. One
asked: Did you learn anything new doing this project? The other said: Could
you describe the learning curve you attained after the project? Good grief!
The final comment from one of the teachers was: I just
looked over your diary and it doesn’t document that you spent 150 hours on
this project. In order to justify to the state that we could grant you
credit, you need to document that you spent 150 hours on this. It took all
my will power not to burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all.
The student had just spent 30 minutes talking about
how he had made his own press. How he had failed in pressing the first two
specimens, but eventually found a method which worked. (The one teacher
said: Well, didn’t you research how to press flowers by using alum, sand and
newspaper?)
The student relayed how he had consulted a woman his
mom knew who had done a lot of flower pressing. (The question from the
teacher: Did she do this flower pressing for a publication, or a commercial
venture?)
The student talked about how it took him two hours to
glue down one of the ferns because painting the glue on the fern had to be
done just right so as not to bleed through the leaves. (The teacher
question: Is the glue of archival quality? How about the paper, did you get
archival paper? Did you cut your own paper in 12x12 sheets or did you buy
it? Why aren’t the specimens sealed into the plastic cover?)
At the end of the presentation, the student thanked us
for coming. We had enjoyed the talk and had been anxious to see the results
of his work. This young man had spent many hours during our bird banding
sessions hunting for plants and telling those of us at the banding table
about what he had found.
My daughter wanted to give her friend a hug. However,
on the way out of the presentation, she heard someone who looked like an
adult tell two students that no hugging was allowed in school! So, she
decided to withhold her hug so as not to embarrass her friend, and so as not
to get both of them in trouble.
We got in the car and my daughter said: Well, there
seemed to be two kinds of teachers. The first she identified as teachers who
wanted to be like the kids. The second set of teachers were identified as
older and mean. And, I have to say, the one teacher who was present and was
called “Doc” really was a sourpuss. What an unpleasant individual! But hey,
he had an advanced degree!
Needless to say, my daughter is in no hurry to attend
any kind of high school and would prefer to continue to homeschool. I have
to say, it was hard enough for me, as an adult, not to laugh at these
self-absorbed teachers. It’s no wonder students find school such a joke.
Ironically, the student who gave the presentation has
managed to (as he says) stay below everyone’s radar screen and keep his
priorities straight. His last comments to us: I could care less if I get any
credit on this project. I set out to learn about plants and to make a book
and that’s what I did.
I have promised to help him put his “hours” together
on paper which seems to be the biggest worry for his teachers.
Sue
I can't think of anything to add to this.
Stappers
Get you:
Chuck Rothman tells me,
It's from "Barrier," by Anthony Boucher.
Thanks!
==========
Another "Ether Propeller"
DR, Pournelle
This is an article from 2006 and discusses
Mach-Lorentz thrusters, which create thrust with no propellant. This seems
to be a more realistic proposition than the space propeller linked to on
your site on Monday.
http://news.cnet.com/Smokeless-
rockets-launching-soon/2100-11397_3-6073392.html
More here:
http://www.cphonx.net/weffect/alt.php
I am a biology major and as such am unqualified to
comment on the likelihood of this having any merit. OTOH I'm an east Asian
studies minor, which, being a liberal art, gives me license to confidently
spout off ill-informed, half cocked pronouncements about anything! :)
To wit...If this is not just Dean Drive 7.0, then the
thrust is unlikely to be great. However, if constant it might be a good
cruise engine in conjunction with a high thrust system like a Nuclear
Thermal Rocket....like an ion drive but without the associated propellant
tanks.
Any thoughts?
I sincerely hope your recovery continues and is swift.
Best Wishes,
Ken Talton
If you could get any thrust at all from a
reactionless drive, it would be incredibly useful.
Mach's principle implies some connection between
all matter; there are those who infer that this can be used as a theoretical
basis for a reactionless drive. I suspect that sentence makes no sense to a
real physicist, and it expresses the limits of my knowledge in any event.
It's true enough that I once tried to buy the Dean Drive for Boeing, but I
never got sufficient demonstration that it worked. It is my understanding
that 3M also tried to buy it at about the same time and with the same
result. At the time I understood that most physicists were certain it could
not possibly work -- but no one would say it was impossible, only that they
didn't believe it.
As I have repeatedly said -- quoting what Bob
Forward said at a meeting I chaired that included the late G. Harry Stine
who actually saw the Dean Device, and several theoreticians who thought they
saw a way to make a reactionless drive work using what is usually called
"Davis Mechanics" -- "What is needed is not theory, but data. A working data
point is worth pages of theory."
I would love to see a working reactionless drive
demonstration. It need not have much thrust. Certainly it need not lift
itself. The test would be to put it in a swing, turn it on, and if the
result now hangs off vertical when the power is on, and reverts to vertical
when the power is off, we have something. It would need some proof of
isolation -- a model airplane with propeller would do that -- but it would
get serious attention.
Until there is a working model or some repeatable
data point, I will leave reactionless drives to theoreticians; and I am not
qualified to comment on the theory.
Sure would like to see a practical device, but I
doubt I will live to see that. Alas.
===========
A LA DWP engineer comments:
We no longer pump local ground water?
"I also wonder about why they no longer pump
ground water from the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys, they are
both getting near to being active lakes again, I think the water level
in the gravel pits is at about 40 feet from ground level now. Great for
liquefaction in case of an earthquake
-- James Early, Long Beach, CA"
"I had not realized that we no longer pump local
ground water."
Neither had I. In fact, for as long as I've been with
the Department, the Water Quality section has been sampling water as it
comes out of wells in the San Fernando Valley, and before it enters the
system. I guess I've been the victim of an elaborate hoax.....
...........Karl Lembke
Which is what I would have said but I wasn't
certain.
=============
Running your car on water
I'm not an engineer, so I won't comment on the
practical difficulties of implementing mobile hydrogen generators for
vehicles. However, one aspect of hydrogen generation that your correspondent
casually brushes aside is in fact critical:
> You then trade in your used-up aluminum/gallium, and
it goes back to the > factory, where it's reduced back to metallic aluminum
(probably by nothing > much more complex than heating it until the oxygen is
driven off).
Alas, it's not quite that simple. If it were, metallic
aluminum would have been commonplace in antiquity. Aluminum is, after all,
one of the most common elements in the earth's crust, and is present in
large amounts in many common minerals. But, if you recall, Napoleon III
famously served meals to his guests on golden plates while reserving the
much more expensive aluminum plates for himself, and when the Washington
Monument was completed in the late 19th century, it was capped with
incredibly rare and expensive pure aluminum.
There's a reason for that. Like all very reactive
metals, aluminum is very difficult to pry out of its compounds. You can't do
it by smelting the compounds with heat. That works for copper and similarly
unreactive metals, but obtaining reactive metals in metallic form requires
the application of electricity (and lots of it) to a molten salt. Hall
discovered that process in about 1885, and it made him a millionaire many
times over.
So, far from simply applying gentle heat to the
aluminum oxide, as your correspondent implies, you actually have to melt the
stuff, which given that aluminum oxide is a refractory compound obviously
requires a lot of energy, and then you have to use electrolysis to separate
the metal, which requires lots of electricity.
The fact that gallium addresses the oxide-forming
behavior of aluminum is an interesting scientific curiosity, but I don't see
how it has any real benefit for storing energy. If we want to produce
hydrogen from water, we could just as well use a truly reactive metal such
as sodium. Sodium is also a very common element in the earth's crust, and in
fact makes up half of every molecule in the sodium chloride that makes the
sea salty. And you don't need gallium if you want to use sodium to produce
hydrogen. Just letting sodium and water come into contact produces hydrogen,
and lots of it.
But if sodium is so common, why is sodium metal so
expensive? Once again, it's because of the large amounts of energy needed to
pry sodium out of its compounds.
If I want to produce hydrogen, and as it happens I
often do need hydrogen in my home chemistry lab, I simply drop pieces of
aluminum into hydrochloric acid to produce as much hydrogen as I need. And,
although hydrochloric acid is relatively cheap, as is metallic aluminum,
that's still a very expensive way to store and release energy.
-- Robert Bruce Thompson
thompson@homechemlab.com
Bob Thompson's
book on constructing your own home chemistry lab will be a book of the
month this month. Thompson is one of the Chaos Manor Advisors.
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