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munky99999
Provisional moralist.
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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 Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 9:09 pm Post subject: |
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im sorry but i dont see where the major discovery is.... this is so old there's dinosaur shit fossilized on top.
It'd be like; OMG the lightbulb was invented... wat a major discovery... only it has been 130 years too late... nobody is interested. This catalyst just so happens to be really old news... The first catalysts ever discovered were for peroxide and water + electrolysis.
The problem is that even with catalysts... which are rather expensive... especially so with say platinum and the sheer amount of platinum that would be necessary to do this job... even then... you still arent getting good return on your energy.
Now really what you could do is literally build high energy capacity energy reserves. For example a Dam area which literally takes excess energy and uses that energy to pump water into the dam. Then when energy is needed... they release the water. The efficiency is around 80% if I recall correctly. There is 1 other tech that is fairly new that could be made into giant scale. Essentially storing energy as potential energy in pressure or spring power. So literally you some gas or even a liquid and use excess energy to compress it. Using space age tech and know how. You can essentially store energy quite effectively using ground power and the weight of the ground. Not to mention the residual increase of heat which also helps things out. Obviously nobody has done this so efficiency isnt really calculatable... but with the geothermal factor added it... you already are guarenteed better then 80%.
Or you could be like The Matrix and have loads of capacitors everywhere which are 99.7% efficient.
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not_a_theist
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Joined: 06 Jun 2004
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| Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 9:46 pm Post subject: |
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WTF are you talking about. This is news because its a new cheap catalyst, cobalt not platinum, that produces oxygen. Did you even read the article? Its not old news because the discovery just fucking came out a week ago. Its even still on the front page of MIT's chemistry webpage:
http://web.mit.edu/chemistry/www/index.html
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MockingGods
Joined: 13 Nov 2002
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| Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:06 am Post subject: |
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| jkorath wrote: | | gnosis wrote: | I can see one problem with this method: You need water.
Fresh water is actually in somewhat short supply, unless you can perform this method on seawater.
Filtering seawater into fresh water requires a large amount of energy, difficult to offset. |
I've been saying for the past 10 years that one of the biggest breakthroughs in human history would be to develop an easy, efficient way to desalinize water. With fresh water quickly becoming scarcer and scarcer, I'm hoping some big money gets behind developing such technology. |
I saw something on the science channel about a new desalinization technique that was super efficient. Maybe I can goggle it.
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MockingGods
Joined: 13 Nov 2002
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| Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:08 am Post subject: |
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This might be the new technique
edit: This one doesn't look right. Seems to me the new technique was much more efficient then reverse osmosis.
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jaycorath
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| Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:38 am Post subject: |
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awesome. Thanks for looking that up for me 
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MockingGods
Joined: 13 Nov 2002
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| Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 3:29 am Post subject: |
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| munky99999 wrote: | | The problem is that even with catalysts... which are rather expensive... especially so with say platinum and the sheer amount of platinum that would be necessary to do this job... even then... you still arent getting good return on your energy. |
Either way, when our only viable fuel (oil) becomes to rare to be tenable, we'll be stuck with using batteries, hydrogen or perhaps something we haven't thought of yet. Some recent work with batteries does look very promising and I certainly wouldn't mind an all electric society.
| Quote: | | For example a Dam area which literally takes excess energy and uses that energy to pump water into the dam. Then when energy is needed... they release the water. The efficiency is around 80% if I recall correctly. There is 1 other tech that is fairly new that could be made into giant scale. Essentially storing energy as potential energy in pressure or spring power. So literally you some gas or even a liquid and use excess energy to compress it. Using space age tech and know how. You can essentially store energy quite effectively using ground power and the weight of the ground. Not to mention the residual increase of heat which also helps things out. Obviously nobody has done this so efficiency isnt really calculatable... but with the geothermal factor added it... you already are guarenteed better then 80%. |
All good ideas, which still don't solve the fuel dilemma for transportation. Also, any electric transmission is subject to loss via the transmission lines. Depending on the distance, the loss can be very substantial (more then 20 percent). What we really need is more localized power production, instead of large scale production that needs to be transported long distances.
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Shiranu
WTF IS ME?!?!!!111!!
Joined: 21 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 4:30 am Post subject: |
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That video was really cool  , whole process is just awsome.
Evolution seems to strive for excelence, perhaps we should follow its lead more.
Oh wait, God made the plants, PRAIZE TEH LORDZ 4 CLENR ENRGY
O.o
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SvZurich
Loki's Little Valkyrie
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| Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 5:34 am Post subject: |
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| jkorath wrote: | | gnosis wrote: | I can see one problem with this method: You need water.
Fresh water is actually in somewhat short supply, unless you can perform this method on seawater.
Filtering seawater into fresh water requires a large amount of energy, difficult to offset. |
I've been saying for the past 10 years that one of the biggest breakthroughs in human history would be to develop an easy, efficient way to desalinize water. With fresh water quickly becoming scarcer and scarcer, I'm hoping some big money gets behind developing such technology. |
We have this. Go nuclear. Seriously. At sea, US Navy nuclear powered vessels draw in sea water, run it through evaporators, flash it with steam from the reactor's secondary steam loop, and pump the brine out. Instant fresh water. And it can be purified as well into distilled water.
Just build reactors near the sea, consider trucking off the brine to a processing plant to extract metals and minerals, and have the reactor provide both power for the grid AND freshwater.
I really wish we would just suck it up and do this. Just find an area where the sea hasn't changed drastically in level in centuries that is tectonically stable, and build.
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munky99999
Provisional moralist.
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
Posts: 4671
Local time: 11:35 PM
Location: Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 7:39 am Post subject: |
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| MockingGods wrote: | | munky99999 wrote: | | The problem is that even with catalysts... which are rather expensive... especially so with say platinum and the sheer amount of platinum that would be necessary to do this job... even then... you still arent getting good return on your energy. |
Either way, when our only viable fuel (oil) becomes to rare to be tenable, we'll be stuck with using batteries, hydrogen or perhaps something we haven't thought of yet. Some recent work with batteries does look very promising and I certainly wouldn't mind an all electric society.
| Quote: | | For example a Dam area which literally takes excess energy and uses that energy to pump water into the dam. Then when energy is needed... they release the water. The efficiency is around 80% if I recall correctly. There is 1 other tech that is fairly new that could be made into giant scale. Essentially storing energy as potential energy in pressure or spring power. So literally you some gas or even a liquid and use excess energy to compress it. Using space age tech and know how. You can essentially store energy quite effectively using ground power and the weight of the ground. Not to mention the residual increase of heat which also helps things out. Obviously nobody has done this so efficiency isnt really calculatable... but with the geothermal factor added it... you already are guarenteed better then 80%. |
All good ideas, which still don't solve the fuel dilemma for transportation. Also, any electric transmission is subject to loss via the transmission lines. Depending on the distance, the loss can be very substantial (more then 20 percent). What we really need is more localized power production, instead of large scale production that needs to be transported long distances. |
Ya the technology being used for batteries right now is over a decade old tech. The smart car and Imiev coming out in a year or more will both be using Lithium-Ion. They arent using lithium-polymer because they tend to go boom.
Though ironically I have 3 of the exact same batteries a metre from me that caused that fire.
So obviously putting those in a car arent ideal. Now Lithium-ion vs lithium-poly is like night and day... poly wins hands down. now brand new tech such as altairnano's would be night and day to li-po.
_________________
A cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his fleshand drink his blood; while telepathically tell him you accept him as your master so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.
You cant outsmart me; you can only outnumber me. |
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jaycorath
Inoffendable
Joined: 05 Sep 2004
Posts: 3489
Local time: 8:35 PM
Location: Los Angeles
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| Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:26 pm Post subject: |
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| SvZurich wrote: |
We have this. Go nuclear. Seriously. At sea, US Navy nuclear powered vessels draw in sea water, run it through evaporators, flash it with steam from the reactor's secondary steam loop, and pump the brine out. Instant fresh water. And it can be purified as well into distilled water.
Just build reactors near the sea, consider trucking off the brine to a processing plant to extract metals and minerals, and have the reactor provide both power for the grid AND freshwater.
I really wish we would just suck it up and do this. Just find an area where the sea hasn't changed drastically in level in centuries that is tectonically stable, and build. |
Cool! Thanks for the info.
That reminds me, apparently all the super rich people in LA are starting to install salt water pools and jacuzzis. (A few of my sister's rich friends got them installed). Even a few high-fallootin health spas and gyms now have salt water pools. Apparently its a lot easier to keep the water clean from bacteria and such and then you end up wasting a lot less fresh water (and chlorine) for leisure and health activities.
Or something. I haven't actually researched this issue but that's what I've heard.
_________________
"I love and treasure individuals as I meet them; I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to" -George Carlin
Celebrant: Forgive us, Lord, for this, our dreadful toadying.
Congregation: And bare-faced flattery.
--Monty Python's The Meaning of Life |
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