EVs and chargers

Same hydrogen, different (but equivalent amount) Oxygen

If you crack water you aren’t going to get the same amount water back, as molecular hydrogen is a slippery little bugger, and significant quantities will escape from whatever storage vessel you use, that which doesn’t find anything to react with will rapidly head off up in to space to join the solar wind.

A good way of combating sea level rise – split seawater and eject the hydrogen into space (tongue in cheek emoji)

Same hydrogen, different (but equivalent amount) Oxygen

Maybe I should express myself differently.

You take water, split it, use part of it to drive some sort of machine, which as a side effect creates the water again as a byproduct.

Haven’t you essentially just created a kind of perpetual energy system?

If water out equals water in, then where is the source of the energy released during the combustion? Hydrogen is burnt, some of the energy within ends up as the reaction that recreates water, some is liberated as heat, and some as the automotive force that we’re looking for.

Additionally, hydrogen engines don’t output water vapour as their only exhaust. A fuel cell, maybe, but not an engine. Some weird stuff happens during combustion, so while you’re saved the carbon dioxide of fossil fuels, there’s a lot of nitrogen oxide liberated in the exhaust. A lot.

hydrogen is a slippery little bugger

At least there’s a plentiful source. Helium, not so much.

split seawater and eject the hydrogen into space

Just burn it. If we burn enough at the right time, we can push the planet slightly in order to be a mite further from the sun, thus cooler.
(tongue also melding into cheek)

Haven’t you essentially just created a kind of perpetual energy system?

No, because it takes more energy to split the water into 2 x H₂ plus 1 x O₂ than is released when you burn the H₂ with O₂
Take it round a few cycles and you lose energy along the way. The sun is available daily to top up the losses.

WRT Drucks bit about H₂ floating off into space, I’d say it’s more likely to encounter ionized O₂ on the way up.
One of my lecturers at Uni could go on for hours¹ on the free radicle chain reactions in the upper atmosphere.

If water out equals water in, then where is the source of the energy released during the combustion?

How does any chemical reaction work and put out heat? Bear in mind, you utilised an endothermic process to get the two apart. (Look up exothermic vs. endothermic)

¹ He was one of the world’s foremost “experts” on the subject apparently, and a simple question would have him fill blackboards across the lecture theatre, wipe and refill, so an hours’ divergence onto his pet subject was a minor item.

At the molecular level, the energy required to split water into hydrogen and oxygen is identical to the energy released (either as electricity or as heat) when they recombine.

At the practical level, neither process is 100% efficient.

Note big fires when Airships burnt.

Did you notice the colour of the flames in those old newsreels? The radiant heat that did the majority of the damage was from the combustion of the doped fabric – a high carbon content. Hydrogen flames are almost colourless and give off much less radiant heat. And rise very rapidly.

Don’t let this give you the idea that I support using hydrogen – I don’t.

Are electric vehicles batteries going to last longer that Laptops?

On the basis of expected normal use: yes.

Is 5 years the length of time a USA vehicle lasts :-)

The expectation, apparently, is 13 or 14 years average. By that time the batteries can be expected to still have something like 80% of their original capacity.

Which means that Americans cannot use a calculator, because the capacity will not be enough for meaningful storage capacity.

This, in turn, means you don’t know what is happening in grids around the world. I think you perhaps need to read up on what is already there, and what is on the way.

No-one expects that batteries will provide all the storage that a grid needs. But battery storage is one part of the whole; it’s the source of power that can be most rapidly dispatched. Hydroelectric (natural or pumped) stores enormously more energy, but takes a few tens of seconds at best to be dispatched.

Don’t let this give you the idea that I support using hydrogen – I don’t.

I support using Helium. It has two electrons per atom, so it’ll be twice as powerful.

I support using Helium. It has two electrons per atom, so it’ll be twice as powerful.

Unfortunately, it’s carrying “deadwood”¹ in the form of neutrons (x2)

¹ Sort of like middle managers, no discernable use, but they are there. :) or :(

Salty water we have in abundance. Fresh water is already suffering from the effects of industry.

My back-of-the-envelope calculation says that you only need to capture 2% of the yearly rainfall over Germany to store the whole primary energy consumption of one year for the whole world as H2.

So I am very sorry Rick – there is no problem to see here.

This, in turn, means you don’t know what is happening in grids around the world.

I am following this quite closely. Don’t know why you think otherwise – perhaps you have ignored the part of my post that you didn’t quote?

I think you perhaps need to read up on what is already there, and what is on the way.

What is already there: next to nothing. What is on the way: not much more. The reason: it is very expensive to build and operate. Ever looked at the price of the Tesla Megapack?

No-one expects that batteries will provide all the storage that a grid needs.

Some politicians at least in Germany pretend that they will. There are also some “think tanks” out there that promote that option. And nobody likes to quantify that “not all the storage needed” – is that 1%? 10%? 50%? Then we could calculate the cost that this madness will produce.

But battery storage is one part of the whole; it’s the source of power that can be most rapidly dispatched.

That is correct, but whether it is the most cost-effective means to stabilize a grid powered mostly by “unreliables” – at least at the “Sekundenreserve” level (not sure of the correct english technical term here) – remains to be seen.

Hydroelectric (natural or pumped) stores enormously more energy, but takes a few tens of seconds at best to be dispatched.

That is als correct, but compared to what amount of storage we (we as in “as planned in German Energiewende scenario”) really need, even this “enormously more energy” is a miniscule quantity.

There is a good practical example based on pumped hydro: if you want to power Germany for two weeks (e.g. when there is very little wind and very little sun, which is a period of time often encountered during winter), you just need to pump the whole of Lake Constance to the height of the Zugspitze (3000m). Easy!

My back-of-the-envelope calculation says that you only need to capture 2% of the yearly rainfall over Germany to store the whole primary energy consumption of one year for the whole world as H2.

…and a H₂ powered generator with a start-up delay of “a few tens of seconds at best” (let’s allow a few minutes) can charge the batteries of cars that use them.
Happily (??) the USA seems to have discovered a deposit of Lithium that rivals the Chinese – there you go two stable¹ sources

¹ Should I do stand up comedy too?

I suppose all our energy needs comes from our Sun – now or from millions of years ago.

Plants or animals from millions years ago – scientists (on the payroll) have decided that its bad to use.

One scientist put forward – what should the temp be – now or what was 10 or 20thou years ago.

I suppose all our energy needs comes from our Sun – now or from millions of years ago.

Strictly speaking, no, there is a ton of radiations that still come from Earth’s core and prevent the solidification of anything below Earth’s crust. Without it, I bet we would be freezing out here.

From memory (also Wiki!), the geothermal heat flux is negligible, about 0.03% of that received from the Sun.

BTW Pretty much everything below Earth’s crust is solid, right until you get down to the liquid metal outer core. Even mantle plumes – often depicted like lava lamps – are just solid masses that are warmer and thence more buoyant than the surrounding mantle.

What keeps us from freezing out here are those awful greenhouse gases, without which the global surface temperature would be about minus 20C (BGS).

Pretty much everything below Earth’s crust is solid,

Define “solid” and particularly the pressure and temperature of the environment in which your example material is “solid”
e.g. at normal atmospheric pressure ranges combined with temperatures that are not harmful to humans, is glass liquid or solid?

I suppose all our energy needs comes from our Sun – now or from millions of years ago.

All except for nuclear fission. The heavy elements in the earth’s crust like Uranium were created…well, we don’t know for sure, there are theories like “produced in one or more supernovae over 6 billion years ago” or “some uranium is formed in the merger of neutron stars”.

I am sure a politican could create a compellinmg argument for nuclear fission out of that – “the only form of energy that will keep us supplied when the Sun stops to shine!”

I am sure a politican could create a compellinmg argument for nuclear fission out of that – “the only form of energy that will keep us supplied when the Sun stops to shine!”

Convincing only to those who have no clue at all about numbers and the relative magnitude of the energy sources. Or the life expectancy of mammalian species or stars.

Well, yes.
My first thought was that when the sun stops shining is a time so far down the line that if we haven’t figured out how to be somewhere else with a star that does shine, then piddling around with a few tons of fissionable material isn’t really going to help us a great deal.
“Us” being somewhat different to the current “us” of course.

Someone from some other planet far, far away – of a species whose individuals have a life expectancy in the tens of thousands of years, so that travel between planetary systems is within their reach… https://clive.semmens.org.uk/Fiction/TempleZ/Anomalous.html

what should the temp be – now or what was 10 or 20thou years ago.

Who cares what it was way back when? We weren’t around then (and the “we” that were were quite different to us).

We’ve had snowball earth a few times, and the opposite. So the climate does indeed change and can change quite dramatically (we’re back to those extinction events again). However, none of this matters. We need “sort of this climate” and if when we manage to bugger that up, things will need to change equally dramatically.

Without it, I bet we would be freezing out here.

If there wasn’t a molten inner core, the planet wouldn’t have a dynamo creating massive magnetic fields that protect us from most of the sunfarts. Which means if the core was solid, you might find the planetary temperature to be the least of the problems.

What keeps us from freezing out here

If the earth was to spin out of orbit, oceanic life would continue for quite some time. The crust would freeze over, and that would act as an isolating layer between the cold outside and the heat from within, keeping the oceans cold, but survivable.
The crust, however? Barren frigid wasteland.

This is a scenario not unlike that moon of Jupiter that they think has water under the crust, though I’m not sure being that close to Jupiter that the thing didn’t get irradiated to hell and back.

when the Sun stops to shine!

You joke, but given the crap that I’ve heard from Republicans in recent years… it’s almost as if the party is trying to find the actual crazies and give them jobs in government.
(what could possibly go wrong?)

of a species whose individuals have a life expectancy in the tens of thousands of years

Hmm, extrapolating from life on this planet… whales, turtles, and clams.

Somehow I don’t imagine aquatic creatures would be particularly interested in space travel.

I’m pretty sure that no species on Earth has individual life expectancies more than a few hundred years at most. Maybe that’s a general rule, or maybe it’s something about the way life happens to have evolved here, or maybe it’s something about the particular conditions here. Perhaps a species like the one in my story exists somewhere in some distant star’s system, or maybe not. I don’t expect ever to find out. I doubt any human being ever will.

There was a interesting prog on the TV.

Locking large telescopes together with computers around the world – to look at a Black Hole

I wonder if we will ever see a planet – from another star.

Why, yes! Just needs one telescope – JWST delivers…

https://astrophysics.uchicago.edu/news/article/the-webb-space-telescope-snaps-its-first-photo-of-an-exoplanet-by-jonathan-ocallaghan-wired.com/