Ways to generate clean electricity?

[jacquesl]

Ways to generate clean electricity?
I’ve been working long on this one, I’m working on a project to generate electricity from every but fossil fuels, don’t want to pollute our world any more with Carbon dioxide //CO2

What about using water to convert to hydrogen and oxygen and then use that to fuel my combustion engine.
Will that work or will it only make things run in loops and get no where

I’ve tried a test with water it takes up 10 sec @28v //0.30A to generate hydrogen and oxygen and then one spark to pop of the lid from the small container, will that be possible to generate electricity from that.

[Geek]

Hi,

Your best bet for practical alternatives with an IC engine is biodiesel. Fuel cells are of course better, but the technology hasn't AFAIK been released for commercial use outside of R&D contracts with cities/government and associated geeks, like aerospace.

Cheers!

[Grumpy_Git]

How exactly are you generating the electricity to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen?

Nick.

[Nordic]

Hey Jacques, enjoying the power outages.... ? Koeberg has some kind of problem again. allready lost 2 hours this morning to power cuts (or as they call it "load shedding" )

I think the problem is double or even maybe tripple....

One, appliances tend to be very uneconomical in power use
Two wich leads to three... clean energy sources tend to be dynamic... ie. wind, sunlight, even rivers don't tend to run the same year in and out...
So, three, you need enough battery/thermal storage to drive all your appliances again...

I would like to combine a solar furnace with a tesla turbine, this could be used to produce fresh water by steaming sea water, and of course electricity as a by-product, it all stops of course when the night comes... at which time you will need stored power/alternate sources...

[jacquesl]

Grumpy_Git, You can do it with electrolysis, first use the battery to make the hydrogen and oxygen and then feed it to the combust chamber and then you probably can get something to happened and turn a alternator to feed the battery, will it be possible to work effectively?

Yea man, Nordic that that power outages sucks, I had to play GTA Vice city this morning on 2 car battery’s UPS machine I have made 1 year ago, just to lower my befokgiet and then I wanted to check some emails with my cell, nothing happened, it was unable to connect, so that seemed weird. But now I understand, Koeberg had too much black label beer.
You see then the power finally came back, I was busy to check out my UPS to see my batteries condition, 12.60V
And then I heard this weird noise from my relays I’ve never heard before it’s like a grrrrrrrtikrrrtik, does not sound so good man. It’s like a distortion crossed with a surge.

[jrevillug]

Grumpy_Git, You can do it with electrolysis, first use the battery to make the hydrogen and oxygen and then feed it to the combust chamber and then you probably can get something to happened and turn a alternator to feed the battery, will it be possible to work effectively?

All of the energy that you get from burning the hydrogen has been put into it, from the battery, by the electrolysis process. Therefore, you will need more electricity to make the Hydrogen than you can get by putting it into a generator (since the generator is, at best, about 20% efficient, and electrolysis is about 50%, you will need to put 10x as much in as you get out). TANSTAAFL.

Hydrogen is best looked at as a way of storing electricity, rather than an energy source in it's own right.

Solar, wind, and biofuels (biodeisel, vegetable oil, wood gas etc.) are your best bets.

James

[SY]

Biofuels will generate just as much CO2 as any other carbon burning. TANSTAAFL indeed.

Think of CO2 as plant food.

[jacquesl]

I’ve seen some plans on how to convert your car to run on water, I’ve previously had a seriously bad experience with hydrogen and oxygen combined in a 15 Liter bucket and a burning match, no damage where done but I had a seriously loud bang and a garage splashed with water, and almost had to drink some sugar water but have decided not to.

But if you think of it like this the draw of 13.8V @8Amp for 40sec probably explains it all

But still it must work

You right about the CO2 plant food but it’s abit out of balance, and illegibly illegibly the CO2 messes up the ozone layer. And petrol and diesel cost too much man, and vegetable oil smells like crap if you burn it and it’s all messy, but it will work alternative fuels

[zigzagflux]

In general, you will find no practical and efficient energy source other than those currently in a natural usable form (coal, oil, natural gas, methane recovery, etc).

You are faced with a tradeoff between efficiency and environmental concerns (FWIW, I consider the CO2 cconcerns to be highly blown out of proportion). Greatest efficiency is found with high BTU/kg fuels, which also create the supposed greenhouse gasses. They are also affordable, transportable, relatively safe, and easily converted to energy, which are key to usability.

Your alternative fuels typically fail in one or more of these. Hydrogen fuel requires very expensive extraction methods, which consume a great deal of energy in the process. It is quite dangerous to transport. The most practical fuel cells carry heavy metals, and are still expensive. The refining of ethanol is actually more expensive than oil, and consumes a lot of energy in the process. BTU/kg is low.

Have tried to stay out of politics in the discussion, but a little soap box is in order. I am opposed to fuel sources that consume water or food products. As a result, I don't like ethanol, as it currently uses corn or other as its source. We are strapped enough for farmland, not to mention the environmental concerns with all the fertilizers. Watch the price of all agricultural products skyrocket when we drop oil and adopt ethanol as our primary source for motorized vehicles.

Also do not like electrolysis of water. We can be so concerned about the ozone layer, but forget that fresh water is a little more important, and we are running out of that (just ask New Berlin, WI).

While fossil fuels produce CO2, in the grand scheme of things you may find that is the least of all evils in the energy debate. All sources of energy have their drawback.

EDIT: obviously not for the individual user, but nuclear is the way to go. Bad rap, yes, but for sustainability, it's the best chance we got.

[Nordic]

As far as feuls for transport I have to aggree.... very hard to carry enough energy with you without burning some feul... I have a problem with non organic burning of feul... and water although if my suspicions are right we could have a limitless (well as big as the ocean) supply of fresh water just using the sun, but looking at other planets who long lost their liquids to evaporation into space, I think hydrogen is not a good source of feul/storage - reagrdless of efficiency / cost... almost like oil and coal...