csx6000 yse it is more expense to get hdyggen from water, but we can get hydgroen from the wates we humans producse. In the viedeo trains of the futuer, they talked about it more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b60jD17Cps this well talk more about it.
yse it is more expense to get hdyggen from water, but we can get hydgroen from the wates we humans producse. In the viedeo trains of the futuer, they talked about it more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b60jD17Cps this well talk more about it.
csx6000 Yes it is more expensive to get hydrogen from water, but we can get hydrogen from the wastes we humans produce. In the video 'Trains of the future', they talked about it more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b60jD17Cps
Yes it is more expensive to get hydrogen from water, but we can get hydrogen from the wastes we humans produce. In the video 'Trains of the future', they talked about it more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b60jD17Cps
Quote edited for coherence going forward.
The real 'key' here is the magic method for generating the hydrogen, at abut 6:20, where you need just the right combination of materials, prepared just the right way, in strict anaerobic reactors, and you have 'protons and electrons that with just a jolt of electricity combine into hydrogen gas'. I was also amused at the attempt to slip the word 'fuse' in there, so the unwary might think they were discussing something more advanced.
Now, let me get this straight: we expect this to be done at the required scale for practical railroad traction, in distributed facilities near railroad refueling points, without a discussion of how it's to be provided? Without taking up some of the less happy aspects of hydrogen fuel, such as its energy density and wide explosive limits?
I think there have been many threads and discussions on hydrogen as a carrier fuel (which is what it is in this context) vs. using it in liquid fuel synthesis (e.g. Fischer-Tropsch) - note that if 'sustainable' is a goal, why not proceed directly to carbon remediation via synthesis of hydrocarbons from recovered CO2? But there is no high-energy-with-nothing-in-the-exhaust-but-water aspect there.
I don't remember what became of Miller's fuel-cell prototype, which presumably used some kind of hydride storage to get the effective energy density used in the thing, and which I believe was designed for switching rather than as a road locomotive. But I'd expect there to be a problem with using all those membranes, all that circulation, all those busses and conductors, all that directed ventilation, to do the work that a relatively simple and costed-down combustion engine now does. In a sense, establishing this type of hydrogen infrastructure involves a very substantial capital and maintenance cost, and neither of those aspects is addressed in any tangible way in the video. For more fun, scale the PEM stacks or whatever up to regular locomotive size, and then scale that to the size of the 'replacement market' that will have to be built out before the advantages of the new fuel can replace much of the existing fuel procurement and distribution systems...
I am still trying to figure out why we keep seeing foreign trains, too, especially those that use catenary -- a better way to use the 'magic electricity' that the fairy provides many HHO proponents right in their walls.
Overmod Gets worse when going from Gy to Sv as there's some intermediate weighting coefficient (between 1 for gamma EM and around 20 for some neutrons and heavy ions) which jiggers the power-of-ten again by a decimal place worth of magnitude. Quick now -- which way does the number go if you have something in rad and you're converting to mSv on the fly?... this is the stuff with which the road to Hell is paved, or perhaps more apropos, with which craters on Mars are made, and we didn't even have to go out of the 'metric system' to arrive at the confusion.
Gets worse when going from Gy to Sv as there's some intermediate weighting coefficient (between 1 for gamma EM and around 20 for some neutrons and heavy ions) which jiggers the power-of-ten again by a decimal place worth of magnitude. Quick now -- which way does the number go if you have something in rad and you're converting to mSv on the fly?... this is the stuff with which the road to Hell is paved, or perhaps more apropos, with which craters on Mars are made, and we didn't even have to go out of the 'metric system' to arrive at the confusion.
Tell me about it... My education was back in the 70's when the units where roentgens, RADs and REM and one of my projects at work is designing shielding for an X-ray system at work using a Linatron source- where the source strength is given in R/min and the customer wants external dose rates in nSv/hr.
- Erik
Real point I was making is the 1/100 difference, when SI deprecates increments that aren't by 1000s (e.g., mm - m - km, or the actual use of millisieverts, microsieverts, etc.
I know perfectly well how the problem arises: a Gray is helpfully calculated to be 1 joule/kg (a MKS number) whereas a rad is 100 ergs/gm (a CGS number) -- with an erg being 10^-7 joule. It doesn't take an expert in either semantics or UI to recognize that a powers-of-ten issue is being introduced with the units basis change. The problem for the old hands is that when you have milli or micro Gy or Sv, you have to do a correction by a non-three-figure number to get the translation out of the old numbers... and which way you shift the decimal place is neither instinctive nor particularly clear. The 'right' solution would be to use centi-somethings -- but the SI bigots say no.
I confess that when I was a student, I got into an argument with somebody about the speed of light; he claimed it was about 3x10^6 when I knew perfectly well it was about 3x10^9. The interesting part was that neither of us recognized we were implicitly figuring in different systems: he in mks, I in cgs -- it was a defined number, not something to be converted, and We All Knew That The Metric System Was About Eliminating Numerical Ambiguity. I at least learned to recognize the trap, but I still maintain it's stupid to denominate long engineering measurements in mm if you can't get them in m... even when you then need one or two significant decimal places to get into your precision range. (Don't let's get started on metric tolerancing, as it doesn't make any practical sense and never will, although it is certainly a lot of information structured according to perfectly defined rules -- you recognize it quickly as being German, and indeed it is... ;-})
Overmod Pretty clear that Eratosthenes figured out how to calculate the circumference quite well... the trouble being lack of an unambiguous distance standard, and unnecessarily difficult mathematical notation systems. (There is a lesson here for people in the SI world who think it's clever to name units only with terms like peoples' names... particularly when, as with gray vs. sievert, they ignore their own rule-of-three convention... but I digress.)
Pretty clear that Eratosthenes figured out how to calculate the circumference quite well... the trouble being lack of an unambiguous distance standard, and unnecessarily difficult mathematical notation systems. (There is a lesson here for people in the SI world who think it's clever to name units only with terms like peoples' names... particularly when, as with gray vs. sievert, they ignore their own rule-of-three convention... but I digress.)
Hmmm, the pre-SI unit for Gray was the RAD, while the pre-SI unt of Sievert was the REM (Roentgen Equivalent Man). The conversion ratios are the same, i.e. 1 Gray = 100 RAD and 1 Sievert = 100 REM. Tere was some comment about using PC terminology for updating the term man-REM (exposure to multiple people) to person-Sievert, especially when shortened to per-vert...
Eratosthenes did get the circumference of the earth to within a few percent, surveying goes back a long ways...
The link flaw was my cut-and-paste error, Paul. If you will go back to the App State U. site (hydrail.org) you'll see how to e-mail me. There's something about which I'd appreciate your private analytical insight.
Overmod Stan T. Paul, you and Boorstin are both right: http://www.plu.edu/~dornerbc/teaching/math203/eratosthenes.pdf http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/physics/astronomy/astr101/specials/eratosthenes.html The Columbus 'myth' is also covered rather indignantly in Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me. Pretty clear that Eratosthenes figured out how to calculate the circumference quite well... the trouble being lack of an unambiguous distance standard, and unnecessarily difficult mathematical notation systems. (There is a lesson here for people in the SI world who think it's clever to name units only with terms like peoples' names... particularly when, as with gray vs. sievert, they ignore their own rule-of-three convention... but I digress.) Now, if we can only get the Flat Earth lobby to quit insisting that hydrogen is an automotive-specific technology, we can get on with deploying carbon-less and largely copper-less rail technology! http://www.netnewsledger.com/2013/01/17/international-hydrail-conference-will-be-held-in-toronto/ I could not get this link to work, but it is 'live' when found through Google, with what appears to be exactly the same nominal URL -- does using bold-face in part of the URL somehow make it different to some search engines? A link to some of the presentations from the previous conference (2012): http://hydrail.org/conferences/49 (Someone please tell me in words of one syllable or less how to make the links clickable in this touch-your-ear-with-your-elbow user interface... ;-})
Stan T. Paul, you and Boorstin are both right: http://www.plu.edu/~dornerbc/teaching/math203/eratosthenes.pdf http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/physics/astronomy/astr101/specials/eratosthenes.html
Paul, you and Boorstin are both right:
http://www.plu.edu/~dornerbc/teaching/math203/eratosthenes.pdf
http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/physics/astronomy/astr101/specials/eratosthenes.html
The Columbus 'myth' is also covered rather indignantly in Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me.
Now, if we can only get the Flat Earth lobby to quit insisting that hydrogen is an automotive-specific technology, we can get on with deploying carbon-less and largely copper-less rail technology! http://www.netnewsledger.com/2013/01/17/international-hydrail-conference-will-be-held-in-toronto/
http://www.netnewsledger.com/2013/01/17/international-hydrail-conference-will-be-held-in-toronto/
I could not get this link to work, but it is 'live' when found through Google, with what appears to be exactly the same nominal URL -- does using bold-face in part of the URL somehow make it different to some search engines?
A link to some of the presentations from the previous conference (2012):
http://hydrail.org/conferences/49
(Someone please tell me in words of one syllable or less how to make the links clickable in this touch-your-ear-with-your-elbow user interface... ;-})
I am not claiming to be "right" for having read Boorstin's book. What I am claiming is I can be as wrong as a whole lot of other people for believing in Columbus According to Bugs Bunny that Columbus was going against a flat-earth consensus. Contrary to what has been asserted about my stick-in-the-mud beliefs, I am persuadable when presented with persuasive evidence, and I had come to the Columbus-was-wrong understanding rather late in my adult life.
With respect to carbon neutrality and hydrogen fuels, human history is one of exponential growth in utilization of power, notably power from the combustion of carbon fuels. At some point, we will exhaust the usable carbon fuels or we will overload the atmosphere with CO2 to serious environmental effects or we will switch to something else. At some point, that is.
I have looked at the question of energy sources for our human civilization going forward for much of my adult life. I remember when Dr. Steve Chu appeared before the United States Senate for confirmation as Energy Secretary and he had some difficulty answering questions about how much oil the U.S. imports and from where, perhaps because as a scholar and researcher in Physics, such low-level details hadn't come to his attention. Just like the attention-seeking kid-I-was-in-class, I was (metaphorically) pumping my hand in the air, "Pick me, pick me! I have not conducted work to merit a Nobel Prize, but I can tell you that world oil production is 87 million barrels per day, about 20 MPD alone are used in the U.S., roughly 40 percent of which powers our automobiles. Pick me!"
It may also be difficult to express opinions "without getting the thread locked", and yes, like Columbus critics, I have looked long and hard at many of the questions, and no, I don't have a solid no-fail answer just as there was much uncertainty about geography in Columbus time, but I believe that my engineering intuitions are as good as anyone else.
The case for an immediate and crash-program abandonment of fossil energy, in my opinion, is related to an overdramatization of the temperature and weather data. No one is saying that the world is flat; no one is saying that the increase in CO2 in the air is without effect. No one is saying that you can't sail from Lisbon west to Sri Lanka, only Columbus had it wrong, there is an entire continent and huge beyond imagining ocean (the Pacific) in between that we didn't know about. There is a lot that is unknown about temperature and weather and climate, but just as Columbus overstated his case to get his grant, my engineering and social/political intuition that such overstating is going on in many advocacy circles, whether for trains, passenger trains, or a crash program for renewable energy sources.
I see carbon gas, liquid, and solid fuels as remaining the backbone of our energy civilization, certainly over the span of my remaining lifetime. I see conservation and especially efficiency as a more cost-effective way of stretching our carbon fuel supplies, certainly more cost effective than public investment in non-carbon and new energy sources, and certainly a necessity, given the hoped for continued increase in prosperity for much of the world that lives on very little.
Once oil and gas is depleted and once energy efficiency has met the challenge of the dwindling supplies, I see synthetic liquid and gaseous fuels as meeting the needs of mobility, with energy efficiency rising to the level that the use of these expensive fuels does not pose a financial burden.
For instance, the gasoline in our cars is a synthetic fuel. The supply of the natural gasoline fraction in petroleum would certainly not meet the demand, and much of our motor fuel is the result of various chemical treatment of constituents of oil and other carbon and hydrogen sources.
I see a role for coal-fired power plants in this as a coal-fired plant is really a solid-fuel plant that can combust solid carbon fuels from coal, petroleum, and yes, biological sources. Look up Karrick Process on Wikipedia -- it is essentially a coke-making process that is "tuned" to optimize the amount of gas and liquid fuel production, and it can extract a barrel of oil equivalent per ton of coal without increasing net CO2 emissions. Why are we burning coal with its gas and liquid volatiles in power boilers when we could burn coke and use the oil for our cars, planes, ships, and trains? The oil extracted from the power-boiler coal won't power all of our needs, but it will be a useful supplement, especially as we advance in transportation fuel efficiency.
My "energy plan", (if Dr. Chu retires, pick me, pick me!) is that liquid and gas fuels needed for transportation and for home and office heating and backup power, these fuels are limited by hydrogen. You can get the hydrogen one of two ways, but "upconverting" long-chain hydrocarbons in coal, tar sands, oil shale, heavy and conventional oil into short chain ones by getting the needed hydrogen (expensively, financially and energetically) from water, or you can down-convert long chain hydrocarbons into short-chain hydrocarbons and char or coke.
Upconversion requires breaking the strong chemical bond to get H2 from H2O, either by emitting large amounts of CO2 in the water-gas reaction with coal or reforming natural gas, by the resource intensive (in the steel for the infrastructure) electrolysis from windmills proposed here, by diverting cropland from food production for bio-ethanol or bio-diesel where the H2 is reduced from water by plant photsynthesis, or by some future nuclear pebble-bed reactor heat-disassociation method.
Downconversion takes the already reduced form of H2 in solid or heavy liquid or even conventional oil carbon fuels, or even biowastes, and converts it into heating fuel (gas), transportation fuel (liquid), and finally coke as an endproduct (such as the "petcoke" as a biproduct of making a higher gasoline and Diesel fraction from oil or heavy oil, which is a desired power boiler solid fuel and possibly useful in steelmaking).
Hydrogen is fine if you are the Space Shuttle and you have the entire NASA budget funding the one-of-a-kind LH2 power systems (cryo tanks, fuel cells). Given the technical challenges of liquid H2, is low density, its ultra-cold temperature, embrittlement of metals, invisible yet scorching when leaks catch fire, its ability to leak out of anything and everything, I see just about every other alternative being considered before we "go to that."
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Now, if we can only get the Flat Earth lobby to quit insisting that hydrogen is an automotive-specific technology, we can get on with deploying carbon-less and largely copper-less rail technology!
oltmannd John WR They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round.... It was well known that the world was round and about 25,000 miles in circumference. Somehow Columbus thought it was only 8,000 miles and he conned some folk out of their money to find out.
John WR They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round....
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round....
I guess I am getting pedantic, here, but my source on this is Daniel Boorstin "The Discoverers."
A Ptolemaic Greek (I would say "ancient Greek", but Greek civilization prior to the Common Era spanned many centuries) scientist came up with an estimate of 25,000 miles for the circumference of the Earth (the long-way around, following a great circle path) -- that was that Eratosthenes fellow who measured shadows at cities at different lattitude to figure this out.
Scholars in the day of Columbus may have known about Eratosthenes, they certaining knew the Earth to be a sphere from observations and deductions going back to the pre Common Era Greeks, and they had a range of estimates for the geographic extent of the Earth, with the 25,000 mile figure close to their "scientific consensus."
There is a point to this story, people, relevant to what is discussed on this thread and on this site. Columbus was a transportation-mode "advocate", who demanded (what else?) a subsidy to implement his transportation mode of sailing westward to reach the spice lands of the Indies. He had a rosy scenario regarding the size of the earth -- don't think his estimate was the 8000 mile circumference figure you quote, Don, but whatever it was, it was a lot smaller than the about 25,000 mile figure bandied about by the version of the Micah Committee and other "anti's" who "believed what they wanted and would not listen to persuasive reasoning" back in the day.
The other thing about Columbus is that this optimistic numbers in support of an Atlantic-Indies trade route were partly wishful thinking, partly disbelief that there could be such a big expanse between Spain and the Indies in the westward direction, only partly covered by the yet-to-be-discovered (by modern Europeans, that is) Americas, but mostly covered by the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, that was a tragic surprise to Mr. Magellan later on.
So Columbus got his subsidy, from the King and Queen of Spain, over "Portugal envy" (we call ourselves a world power here in Spain, but we are descending into barbarian status, I say, what with tiny Portugal having a sea-borne mode of transportation to the Indies and all of our nay-sayers and the Camel Caravan Lobby preventing us from having our own sea route).
The naysayers were right, and all of the reasons that the West sea-route advocacy community were advancing proved to be totally and completely wrong, but the sea route allowed Spain to pillage the Americas of gold and silver, bringing temporary prosperity to Spain but having the unanticipated environmental consequence of spreading infectious diseases to the peoples of the Americas that killed multiples of those who lost their lives in military actions, and so on as you now know The Rest of the Story.
I just have one question for "John WR"? Is "they all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round" something you didn't know about until now, or did you just use this as a figure of speech to represent the skepticism of the anti's to the goodness of passenger trains?
I always believed the "Columbus discredited the Flat Earther" narrative until I read differently in Boorstin, and given that the man was Librarian of Congress and had scholarly citations to back him up, I accepted his word as a historian based on "argument by authority", and late in my adult life at that. From childhood I had always accepted the Flat Earth before Columbus story, which we all know was confirmed by no less an authority than Chuck Jones, and we all watched the Warner Bros. cartoon where Columbus scolds Bugs Bunny, "The Earth! She is not flat!" and accepted the cartoon version as the common cultural understanding of Columbus.
Maybe reading Boorstin was my awakening, not to blindly follow the accepted wisdom (cough, NARP, cough) on a lot of other things . . .
The possible is exponentially greater than the practical.
erikem Overmod On the other hand, helium is a wretched fuel... <VBG> Helium-3 and deuterium have promise of making a good fuel for fusion reactors - producing a high energy proton and an alpha particle instead of a high energy neutron (which is a real bear to shield against) and an alpha particle... - Erik
Overmod On the other hand, helium is a wretched fuel... <VBG>
On the other hand, helium is a wretched fuel... <VBG>
Helium-3 and deuterium have promise of making a good fuel for fusion reactors - producing a high energy proton and an alpha particle instead of a high energy neutron (which is a real bear to shield against) and an alpha particle...
I was thinking primarily of combustion reactions, not nuclear, but yes, I was thinking of ordinary helium, not helium-3. I have been a strong believer in the He3-U233 reaction (the real work done in the oft-miscomprehended 'thorium' breeding cycle) for lo! these many years. (Of course, the principal fun is in getting the U233, not the helium isotope... for THAT you want neutrons, and plenty of 'em...)
In case you are wondering: in the He3-U233 reaction the chief issue is not neutron emissions, it's gamma emissions: EM requires much, much more extensive shielding than charged particles... which makes things like D-T fusion considerably less practical for spacecraft, among other things...
I don't think much of the potential economics of He3/He3 fusion as a direct power source... heck, we worked out long ago that the economics of D-T fusion power reactors won't reach break-even, even at 100% power and 0.000% downtime over the entire 30-yer capitalized life of the reactor, neutron embrittlement/activation representing only a relatively minor component of the costing and decommissioning...
Brings me back to thinking about the mirror-machine device with multiple tuned antennae: 94% theoretical efficiency nuclear-to-electricity, with the right reactions... but I digress...
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
So much toungue-in-cheek commentary, I emphathize for all the lacerated lenguas.
In the same vein, let's think about using the heat from material encapsulated after powering electricity power plants, navy surface- and submersible- ships/boats, to process water in which a lot of nuclear waste is stored and convert the water to hydrogen.
'Cept for the cost of the processor, seems like a cheap way to get hydrogen separated.
And the cost of hydrogen negates the fuel-cell, but it is an elegant answer to so many ?'s.
Erik,
This might be a reference to the "HOH" claim (engine-turns-generator-electolyzes water-H2 is burned in engine along with gasoline-turns generator-electrolyzes water...etc. ad infinitum), repealing the Second Law.
Plenty of Helium-3 on the moon, and we are already using heavy water (water with the deuterium) in neuclear reactors, so we already have plenty of that. Just a matter of creating the technology for mining the Helium-3 from the moon, and creating technology that would make neuclear fusion possible here on Earth.
The Lehigh Valley Railroad, the Route of the Black Diamond Express, John Wilkes and Maple Leaf.
-Jake, modeling the Barclay, Towanda & Susquehanna.
Thomas 9011 I remember reading a article long ago about a man who was running his car off of water (hydrogen). He claims that it would run good for about 30 miles and then would stall out. He said the hydrogen was producing heavy carbon deposits all over the valves and electrodes ( spark plugs were replaced with electrodes) and plugging them up. He said all the engine parts had to be made out of stainless steel as the carbon deposits plugged up very fast on your standard cast iron block.
I remember reading a article long ago about a man who was running his car off of water (hydrogen). He claims that it would run good for about 30 miles and then would stall out. He said the hydrogen was producing heavy carbon deposits all over the valves and electrodes ( spark plugs were replaced with electrodes) and plugging them up. He said all the engine parts had to be made out of stainless steel as the carbon deposits plugged up very fast on your standard cast iron block.
Huh?
If he was getting carbon deposits, he most certainly was not running hydrogen as a fuel. Sounds more like he was putting calcium carbide in water and burning acetylene.
I remember reading a article long ago about a man who was running his car off of water (hydrogen). He claims that it would run good for about 30 miles and then would stall out. He said the hydrogen was producing heavy carbon deposits all over the valves and electrodes ( spark plugs were replaced with electrodes) and plugging them up. He said all the engine parts had to be made out of stainless steel as the carbon deposits plugged up very fast on your standard cast iron block. He eventually gave it up because the electrodes had to be removed and cleaned every 30 miles.
There is also a big problem when using compressed gases as a fuel source. They take up a lot of space and don't last that long. There is cars and forklifts running off of propane that work just fine. But what you don't see is them filling up the propane tanks every night. You are lucky if you can go a day and a half before the tank is empty. Filling up just a small propane tank can cost you 25 bucks. Imagine doing that every day.
Hydrogen locomotives? I don't see it happening except for one or two locomotives that are funded by the Government with eye popping annual costs.
On the other hand, helium is a wretched fuel...like asbestos.
oltmannd OvermodOn the other hand, helium is a wretched fuel... <VBG> But, very safe! Safety first, you know....
OvermodOn the other hand, helium is a wretched fuel... <VBG>
But, very safe! Safety first, you know....
Its so safe because it is one of the six noble gases, so I don't now how one would get it to burn or react.
I can understand Xenon to a small degree since it is a heavy noble gas, but not helium.
Liquid hydrogen is diatomic, another reason why there is no superfluidicity observed under normal conditions.
Erik, consider my king tipped-over. I'm hopelessly out-quantumed!
Paul Milenkovic Stan T. Not only does hydrogen (gas or liquid) not need to be heated to flow, it may be the most fluid substance in the universe. Anyone one know of a more fluid substance? Ultracold helium.
Stan T. Not only does hydrogen (gas or liquid) not need to be heated to flow, it may be the most fluid substance in the universe. Anyone one know of a more fluid substance?
Not only does hydrogen (gas or liquid) not need to be heated to flow, it may be the most fluid substance in the universe. Anyone one know of a more fluid substance?
Ultracold helium.
Also known as superfluid helium. As far as I know, liquid hydrogen does not have a superfluid phase as the required temperature is well below the freezing point of hydrogen. Helium-4 has a higher superfluid transition temperature (~2K) than Helium-3 due to the pairing up (hence cancellation) of the electron, proton and neutron spins, so many atoms can share the same quantum state.
Re liquid helium, superfluid liquid hydrogen is equally fluid ... but not less. (Can't have less than no viscosity!)
http://library.thinkquest.org/08aug/02316/index_files/Page1111.htm
Other than hydrocarbons and ammonia, are any liquified gases commonly hauled by rail?
That explains those latex balloons tied to my mailbox.... It was almost freezing last week.
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