[AR] Re: Fw: Hydrogen / oxygen news
- From: Derek Clarke <derek_c@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 16:30:31 +0000
Yes, but it seems somehow wrong that the best way to get the most
abundant element in the universe is to use more fossil fuel.
On 1 November 2013 14:13, Henry Vanderbilt <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> It's significantly cheaper to crack natural gas directly to obtain your
> hydrogen. (Consider the alternative of burning that same natural gas in an
> electric generator then electrolyzing your hydrogen: You have losses in the
> generation, in the transmission, and in the electrolyzing.)
>
> What could change this would be a source of electricity several times
> cheaper per kwh than natural gas. Not likely anytime soon, between
> fracking making gas cheaper and the immaturity of all the cheap bulk power
> alternatives.
>
> Oxygen production costs meanwhile are trivial by comparison; distilling it
> out of the atmosphere is hugely cheaper than getting it by splitting water.
>
> Henry
>
>
> On 11/1/2013 2:41 AM, Derek Clarke wrote:
>
>> Obviously on-demand electrolysis is inappropriate, but there's nothing
>> to stop you using a smaller reactor to produce the fuel and oxidiser you
>> need over time. After all it's going to be burnt in a few minutes, so
>> while the GW rating may be high, it's not so many GWh.
>>
>>
>> On 31 October 2013 00:54, David Weinshenker <daze39@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> <mailto:daze39@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>>
>> Henry Spencer wrote:
>> > At the upper extreme, big
>> > rocket engines typically are multi-gigawatt machines.
>>
>> Clark calculates the kinetic power of the Saturn V first stage
>> exhaust as about 41 gigawatts... this is on the same scale as
>> the outage of the Eastern Interconnection of the North American
>> power grid in August 2003. (Approximately 60 GW of generation
>> capacity was initially tripped off line - IIRC, roughly 40 GW
>> was still out of service a day later.)
>>
>> -dave w
>>
>>
>>
>
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