[AR] Re: Fw: Hydrogen / oxygen news
- From: Derek Clarke <derek_c@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 16:42:29 +0000
Which just makes it easier to handle until you want it!
On 1 November 2013 16:35, Rand Simberg <simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> It may be abundant in the universe, as is helium, but on earth it's
> pretty rare in its elemental form. All that damned oxygen.
>
>
> On 11/01/2013 09:30 AM, Derek Clarke wrote:
>
> 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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