Can Nuclear Power Save Our Cars? High Temperature Syn Gas Via Electrolysis.

[NNadir]

First let me answer the question first.

The answer is "no." Nothing can save our cars, no matter how many times anti-nukes on this website like to pretend that each one of them is driving around in a $150,000 Tesla electric car (with $50,000 subsidized by the government) powered with a $50,000 solar PV system (with $50,000 subsidized by the government.)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table1.html">Reality Is A Bitch.

Nor should we save our cars. Cars are distributed energy, and as distributed energy, they are inevitably point source polluters, no matter what the fuel is.

Nevertheless, in spite of wholesale destruction of much of earth's eco-sphere, and the loss of hundreds of millions of lives in the last century in service to the car CULTure, much attention has been devoted to saving it.

Actually, some of these schemes - sort of like the space program, which provided technologies that had nothing to do with space - have value. For instance, my personal opinion is that we are past the point of worrying about whether or not we should stop dumping dangerous fossil fuel waste into the favorite dump of the anti-nukes, Earth's atmosphere, but we are now at the point at which we urgently need to find ways to remove it.

I have no respect at all for the dopey temporary waste dump mentality hyped by the renewables/dangerous fossil fuel alliance, CSS, carbon capture and storage, although some capture strategies are obviously important. That said the waste dumps, sequestration, will not work, and they are merely another scheme to dump responsibility for our actions on future generations.

A recent publication by O'Brien and coworkers, out of the Idaho National Laboratory in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy reports one such nuclear powered scheme for doing this, and it is a scheme to make syn gas, a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen that can be used to make synthetic petroleum products like gasoline, diesel, and much cleaner fuels than either gasoline or diesel, like DME.

(This scheme, by the way, is in competition with another method on which I am personally working, but that I can't discuss that here. Mine, I think, is better than theirs, but I am a very conceited person. Their ideas are developed to a very high level, including process flow sheets.)

Here is the abstract: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V3F-4VF0XRN-9&_user=10&_coverDate=05%2F31%2F2009&_alid=1024996099&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=5729&_sort=r&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=1&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=05b94e873d160a90c9102cffaea9d321">International Journal of Hydrogen Energy Volume 34, Issue 9, May 2009, Pages 4216-4226

Note that they are not talking about the hydrogen car, including the hydrogen HYPErcar that Amory Lovins was sure would be in showrooms by 2005, despite the name of the journal, but are claiming to use hydrogen as a captive chemical intermediate, which is the only justifiable use for it.

The nuclear scientists are required, of course, to lay flowers on the altar of so called "renewable" energy, much as both Newton and Galileo were forced to lay flowers and the altar of Jesus, the latter under threat of torture and death.

Large-scale production of synthetic liquid fuels represents one possible path toward greater energy independence. The primary advantages of synthetic liquid fuels, as compared to hydrogen, are that the infrastructure for liquid fuel distribution is already in place and on-board-vehicle storage is not an issue. However, these fuels will release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere when burned. Therefore, climate-neutral methods of synfuel production are most desirable. If the energy input to the synfuel production process is based on nuclear, and if the carbon source is based on biomass, a large-scale climate neutral synthetic fuel production strategy could be achieved. For co-electrolysis, the carbon source could, for example, be the carbon dioxide effluent from a large-scale ethanol distillation process...

Last I looked, the ethanol industry wasn't doing all that well either in the economic or environmental sphere, but that's just my opinion.

Note that the paragraph contains that favorite word of anti-nuke reality denial, "could," famous in statements like "wind power could power all of the energy needs of the Milky Way Galaxy" that one sees here from time to time.

This is an electrolysis method, based on SOFC (solid oxide fuel cell) technology, which is a pretty interesting technology, even though SOFC tech has been sort of like the solar hype, all talk and little action, although I think SOFC is a very useful area of research.

High-temperature electrolysis is based on solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology and materials. The zirconia electrolytes used for SOFCs conduct oxygen ions, so they can be used to electrolyze steam (H₂O) to hydrogen (H₂), and/or carbon dioxide (CO2) to carbon monoxide (CO). When both steam and carbon dioxide are present simultaneously in the feed stream, the total amounts of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that are produced depend on the electrolysis current. The relative amount of hydrogen produced versus carbon monoxide is determined by the relative amounts of steam, hydrogen (included in the feed stream as a reducing agent) and carbon dioxide included in the feed stream and by the effect of the reverse water-gas shift reaction: CO2 + H₂, <-> H₂O + CO

The water-gas shift reaction is an equilibrium process, like all chemical (and in fact, nuclear) reactions, and can be manipulated and driven by selection of process mass flows, temperature, and pressure.

One may wonder what the purported thermodynamic efficiency of this process is. Because of the laws of thermodynamics, this is driven by the temperature gradient.

At an outlet temperature (from the nuclear reactor) of about 1000 C, a 54% overall efficiency is claimed. This is probably exclusive of the Gibbs Free Energy of Mixing, energy that is required to concentrate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

[HamdenRice]

1. Unrec due to massive FAIL

Word salad, unscientific, counter-factual gobbledeegook.

[NNadir]

4. Um, Hammy, you wouldn't know the contents of a scientific discussion if it

bit you in the ass.

You have the technical level of a lemon, not that I wish to insult lemons.

[HamdenRice]

5. Is this an axiom?

"Cars are distributed energy, and as distributed energy, they are inevitably point source polluters, no matter what the fuel is."

This is true for all time, no matter what the technology?

Or is it word salad?

Kind of like other famous nnadir word salad axioms: no one who opposes nuclear energy has ever cared about carbon based pollution; no one who opposes nuclear energy has ever opened a science book; etc.

[Javaman]

7. You rock!

:)

I got a post deleted from one of nnadirs threads when I called him, "the crazy uncle of the environmental/ energy forum".

LOL

[HamdenRice]

8. I responded to that post!

"crazy uncle" is perfect.

I was going to post in response to one of his rants, something like, "OK, who unlocked the attic and let Uncle Nnadir OUT AGAIN???"

:rofl:

[jpak]

6. +1

:rofl:

[excess_3]

2. the electric car, will save our cars

the real benefit of the electric car,
is that it will be a lot more
difficult to single out motorists
for bad treatment.

motorists will be in the same boat
with people who use electricity,
which is essentially everyone.

[joshcryer]

3. See my sig.

The calculation for human energy consumption includes fossil fuels for vehicles (about half if I recall correctly). We are by no means without energy sources.

[Nederland]

9. Disagree

Although I agree with you in general on nuclear power, I don't get your objection to electric cars. Seems to me that electric cars have a very reasonable chance of success. Tesla was successful in producing a very expensive sports car starting in 2008, but 2010 may well be the make it or break it year. Tesla plans on producing a 50k sedan, GM plans on making a 40k Volt, and BMW plans on making a 30k Mini. Yes, there are a lot of ifs, and I'm well aware of what you think about ifs. The question is, if three or four years from now we have 5 or 6 mass produced electric vehicles for sale, will you admit you were wrong?

That is, of course, the scientific thing to do when one proposes a theory, and then sees those predictions fail to materialize.

[PVnRT]

10. An electric car is not point-source pollution

In fact, there is no pollution, except where the power is generated in the first place, the power plant.

Your brief mention of some "project" you're working on reveals exactly what your motives are here.

[NNadir]

11. Bull.

Electric cars have a metal toxicity problem and it is well reported widely in the literature that metal leachates from cars are a huge problem.

Add batteries to this existing nightmare which will still include lubricants, and the inevitable mass density problem connected not only with use but with manufacturing, and you're looking at an extension of hell.

There was a paper in Total Sci of the Environ not long ago that discussed the point of heavy metals pollution of Ballona Creek from the electrical systems of existing cars, but I'm not going to dig it out in response to lazy thinking.

I assure you that the project(s) I am working on have nothing to do with the feeble and stupid attempt to save the car CULTure or other oblivious consumer fantasies mouthed so frequently by bourgeois brats.