In article , nrs wrote: #2) if it is obtained by separating from oxygen in water, then it takes #more energy to seperate than you get back by burning. Yes. That means you need a super-cheap source of electricity. While solar panels are expensive, they are cheap to run (mostly free--some soap and water to keep it clean and a regular going over by the owner).
All I remember was we put two electrical probes into a glass of ad watched the bubbles come off them, trapping that gas (I thought I remembered it was Hydrogen) with a piece of paper across the top of the glass. then we transferred that gas to a glass without water, and with a knife shaved a splinter of this metal, I remember it was Magnesium as that was what the rims on my dragster were made of, not aluminum. Anyway we lifted that piece of paper covering the glass and threw in the shaving, where upon it exploded in fire. I could probably look the high school experiment up on the internet, but not today. God Bless America, Bill O|||||||O mailto: snipped-for-privacy@aol.com
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"Lon" wrote in message news:1JGdnZeUgbfQ8NvbnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com...
LOL As Princes Di used complain about, wanting to be a traitor and buy a Krout car. My one English car experience was as '55 Austin Healey, aluminum body, wire knock offs, lay down windshield but if it was fogging it shorted out, and just stopped. God Bless America, Bill O|||||||O mailto: snipped-for-privacy@aol.com
Your experiment probably was the standard electrolysis, which generates hydrogen and oxygen. If you put a small enough magnesium splinter in the oxygen, particularly it it is at all wet, it would be expected to react rather nicely. You should get a whitish smoke, magnesium oxide. Trying it with hydrogen, not much will happen, as magnesium hydride is a method for storing hydrogen... pretty easy to get the hydrogen loose from the magnesium as opposed to trying to get the oxygen away from the magnesium. The relative difficulty in splitting either one from the magnesium compound is directly related to how readily they combine...combine easy, split hard. Not that many schools would have the equipment to make hydrogen combine with magnesium, plus it is a multi step reaction and not overly spectacular.
I don't know either but this is the sort of thing that one hears about the batteries and electronics in hybrid cars. In Albuquerque you can park for free in city parking if you have one. That would almost make it worth driving one.
Don't know, here they get to use the HOV lanes and that's worth something.
The secret of having a hybrid is to sell it BEFORE the batteries go, the batteries are often non-replaceable in that the cost of replacement may exceeds the resale value of the car.
I'd probably do a lease for something like a hybrid.
Actually, if gas prices go up much more I'm probably going to get a small used econobox. Something that's already been thrashed, won't need comprehensive, and just needs basic maintenance.
Silly thing is if I lived twice as far away and used the highway it would take less gas to get to work. :/ What I need is two tanks so I can run low octane when not under boost.
What kind of energy do you think made the solar energy panels? And like the panels we see powering the cell emergency phone along our free ways, "just pencils out" building poles to each one. God Bless America, Bill O|||||||O mailto: snipped-for-privacy@aol.com
Starting next year the will pay for themselves over their life time:
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pay-back time, i.e. the time required to produce an amount of energyas great as what was consumed during production.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaics God Bless America, Bill O|||||||Omailto: snipped-for-privacy@aol.com
Thanks, but neither address the issue which isn't the monetary cost of generating electricity, comparing conventional vs. solar panels but the
*ENERGY* cost of manufacturing the solar panels. Dollars don't enter into the equation at all.
IE, if a solar panel can generate 1 MegaWatt during it's lifetime but requires 1.2 MegaWatt to manufacture, it's a losing proposition, and that's what I've heard (although the numbers I just made up for reference.)
The information came from an engineer working for Motorola on similar projects at the time. I'm sure there are improvements in manufacturing techniques since but who knows?
Well, the end-user price of any device is a fairly decent measure of the energy used to produce it - they don't get that energy free and they sure as heck aren't going to lose money on the sale if they can help it. Fast way to get a WAG is to divide the continuous output into the price (assumes the whole cost of producing it is energy) and see how long you would have to use the device to recover the cost. To be realistic, divide the cost of the device by 3 (since you are probably talking retail price) and repeat the calculation. Even my little 500 ma jobs reach 100% payback in a reasonable time and there is certainly no economy of scale there!
Well, like any 'product', the cost-to-benefit curve is flexible. An affluent person spending far too much money on bleeding-edge computer equipment is what brings the prices down on those same products for Joe User. Same here. I /think/ we're at a revenue-neutral stage right now, cost and benefits being roughly equal. Benefits will outstrip cost at some point unless the entire idea is abandoned for some reason.
And I doubt if you'll find much on the Web. It's mostly a pro vs. con issue with very high monetary and political rewards at stake. Consequently, truly unbiased and highly technical info is hard to find.
And 'alternative energy' topics cause instantaneous internal thermodynamic gastrointestinal issues with many people. As a contentious topic, remember, there are still tens of thousands (if not many more) folks who completely believe in the legendary 'gasoline pill'....
Since an easy answer doesn't exist, I think you really need to read a full book on the topic -- and there are many. I have one around here somewhere, a 2006 edition, so it's current and it's a compilation of essays and engineering reports and so on on the fabrication costs and collateral costs and benefits.
Try alt.binaries.e-books.technical; if there's nothing there at the moment, give it a week or two -- or post a request.
They frequently have jeep manuals and tech reports, too, both old and new.
I have two PV cells that are 45 years old (bought from Edmund Scientific's) and still producing power. the cost of those two cells were $10. 45 years ago. they are still producing power. the cost per cell has dropped and those same cells now sell for about $1.75
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