Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Another Step Toward Hydrogen

Using building blocks that make up ordinary plastics, but putting them together in a whole new way, University of Michigan researchers have created a class of lightweight, rigid polymers they predict will be useful for storing hydrogen fuel.

Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/11/051119103053.htm

The problem with taking positions based on 'what is' ... is that science doesn't respect those positions.

is polonium really comercially sold? if yes where?

The densest containment of hydrogen, atoms/volume, known to science is an open bucket of diesel fuel.

That'll shoot milk out your nose. Will it also cure cancer or AIDS?

I'd be inclined to suggest Lithium Hydride but your point is well made. The problem is that your "densest containment of hydrogen" also is a damned dense containment of carbon too.

We are likely going to a hydrogen economy at some point in the future. We are also likely heading toward a lot more walking and bicycling too.

LiH has density 0.917 g/cm^3
115.4 mM H/cm^3

C14H28, petro-diesel density = 0.84 g/cm^3
119.8 mM H/cm^3

Don't speculate, calculate. The most politically blackmailed bushwa imaginable for future hydrogen storage is exceeded by an open bucket of diesel fuel right now - and you get to burn the carbon, too.

The "hydrogen economy" is crap. It is a lie. It is propaganda, disinformation, a way into your wallet.

http://www.mazepath.com./uncleal/crap.htm

Additional petroleum supply in the next decade will not be obtained by exploratory drilling. It will be seized by military force. Pull yer thumbs out and start trainingg a real army (and real civilian leaders to wield it).

There is more to hydrogen as a fuel than storage density.

You think petroleum is going to be seized by military force? Who do you think is going to attack Russia? Nuclear armed US? Nuclear armed China? or Nuclear armed India?

Lyndon Johnson tried in Vietnam and failed.
George Bush tried in Iraq and failed.

We will be buying fusion technology from the French and Japanese and using it for hydrolysis: Efficiency be damned.

Controlled hot fusion is also political crap. Most of the energy in fission is embodied in thermal motion of fission fragments. A couple or three of MeV neutrons rapidly thermalize within a foot of propagation through the moderator.

50% of fusion's energy comes out as ~14 MeV neutrons. Do you have a clever way to recover that energy or contain the radiation? The rest of the exotherm (multiple MeV protons) is trapped in the 100 million degree plasma, the whole of it pressed hard against superconducting coils immersed in liquid helium at 4 kelvins or below. Only an idiot or government funding puts the two in proximity. How do you plan to harvest the heat to make steam to drive a turbine?

Handling a megacurie of tritium at high temps is insanity. Aside from being unable to manufacture tritium (need nukes to continuously neutron-irradiate tonnes of Li-Al alloy), what clever ploy do you propose to contain it in situ? Hot hydrogen diffuses through EVERYTHING.

Nukes are run by guys in polo shirts, typically ex-Navy pukes. If you need even one PhD on your production line, you don't have a production line.

Uncle Al asks:
"Do you have a clever way to recover that energy or contain the radiation?"

Last time I looked the fusion of hydrogen into helium produced a lot of free energy: Enough to vaporize a city.

While I don't personally know how to capture it ... others do ... and will.

Given a semi-dwarf star self-contained thermonuclear furnace 499 light-seconds away... ask Space Station FUBAR asstronaughts about their radiation cataracts post-tour. Note that a commercial terrestrial thermonuclear reactor won't have the advantages of

1) Average 92,955,888 million mile spacing with 1/r^2 for radiation intensity attentuation;

2) Radiation self-shielding thickness 108 times the Earth's radius;

3) Equilibrium operation.

BTW, Sol isn't a happy camper. Sunspots give some hint as to the magnetic field nastiness associated with incommensurate rotation rate of plasma vs. latitude. How many flares will you tolerate from a commercial fusion powerplant?

And yet, likely within your lifetime, we will have profitable fusion reactors: Go figure.

Jesus H. Christ is coming back. He promised. Controlled hot fusion is the energy source of the future. It always has been and always will be. The physically impossible will not occur no matter how politically convenient its presence. Here's a little timeline for you:

2015: Financial collapse of Social Security, Medicare, and Welfare with Baby Boomer retirement. GIMME times 100 million. America goes down hard with only semi-literate Hispanic slaves remaining to stoke the furnaces. Europe goes down harder - no productive class created to have its wallets raped.

2030: The Singularity - either all remaining technology is instantly invented, manufactured, and distributed or... technological collapse. Corporate America cannot sustain 10%/year profits growth. The exponential exceeds physical reality. The myth of price/earnings ratio meets the fact of real world value when the curve goes vertical.

2050: No more economically recoverable petroleum. "Alternative energy sources" consume more energy than they produce and won't make polyethylene no matter what. Four billion charity-sucking parasites wake up to permanently empty bindlestaffs.

There are no SETI-detectable non-natural radio emissions within at least a 50 light-year radius of Earth. There is nothing comparable to at least 1950s America within local 524,000 cubic light years. Occam's Razor is that there exists no physics to outthink the END and no physical escape to avoid the END. Nothing can sustain a high order civilization after it exhausts its planetary resources.

Terra is in especially deep kimchi for having embezzled 1/3 of everything of value and shoved it down the gasping throats of reproductive warriors, cripples, idiots, and corruption for the past 45 years - by the $trillions. Instead of a vast class of the most powerful mentalities sweating to derail Ragnarok, we bought a vast class of pond scum actively pursuing it.

If there is an elegant answer it is well beyond our grasp. Rather than foster brilliance, we allocated for its suppression. Now the future is arrived and everything we have purchased is straining at its ribbons, bursting to get loose - war, famine, pestilence, and death. Kansas demands Genesis in its science classes. God had no problem with the Dark Ages, the Black Plague, the 1918 influenza pandemic, Hitler's camps... and one presumes adding 4 billion human deaths to the tally followed by perpetual night will be an SOP test of faith.

There is no way to make controlled hot fusion work as a power source. There is no science to do it, no technology, no engineering, no possibility whatsoever. Have social advocates and diversity hires do it.

That is the most pessimistic description of the end of the human race that I have ever read.
Its made all the worse being written by a Scientist, in a deep state of depression.
People expect their scientists to be optimistic.
Optimism is what science is all about. Its the new religion. Wake up and have a re-think.
Just how would this world be running were it devoid of Petroleum? Where would our energy sources be coming from?
They would be small and many. Tidal generators. Hydro-electric dams-Deep boreholes bringing up superheated steam to generators. Huge diameter undersea water pipes utilising sea currents. Wind generators. In fact every conceivable way to utilise the heat of the Earth and the Moons gravity would have been used, and still could be.
It wouldnt be quite the headlong rush of civilization as we know it today. We would have tightened our belts, used far less energy, prehaps many of us would have migrated nearer the tropics. Plus the world population would have been a lot less, which would have helped.
Its no wonder the Great Powers are looking to develop Moon and Mars.etc. Scientists that have vision and optimism, and are intent upon helping our World, utilising our resources while they still exist. Politics might have a lesser influence as resources deplete?
Tell us about the energy sources we might be able to tap in the future, Uncle Al... Solar Mirrors? Copper cables extruded from satellites? By adapting and improving we got at least 500 years of plenty?.