When one of our largest clients brought us the following news, we HAD to have our staff take a look at it:
https://www.foxnews.com/auto/porsche-replacing-gasoline-air-waterIn fact, it was such big news that Managing Principal Diatomaceous Jablome had to contact one of our original founders–engineer turned fighter pilot J. J. ‘Slasher’ Isherwood– to get HIS ‘common sense’ take on it (while we retain many engineers and scientific consultants on staff ‘Slasher’ has a candid take on the English language and puts things on the line). An excerpt from HIS take is as follows:
“Well, now I’ve seen everything. Looks like the marxist greens are finally getting around to marketing a perpetual motion machine. They must be getting desperate in this ‘decarbonization’ bullshit.
We saw a similar scam a few years back in the so-called “HHO” addition to cars. Like just about EVERY ‘hyper mileage’ doo-dad marketed to give people zillions of MPG it was a hoax. The fundamental problem with any heat engine is most all of them have to throw away over half the energy put into them turning heat into motion and there’s no way around it. It’s physics bounded by the second law of thermodynamics.
In the HHO scam, electricity (provided by the car’s alternator) is used to split water into oxygen and hydrogen through simple electrolysis and the hydrogen is fed back into the combustion chamber. Problem is that splitting the water to begin with takes exactly the same amount of energy — energy which is produced from the engine in driving the alternator–than the potential gain of energy from burning the hydrogen in the engine–recombining the hydrogen into water through combustion. In practice, you LOSE a little bit of MPG in that the alternator doesn’t operate at 100% efficiency, nor does the real-world hydrolysis process.
This is a simple variation of the scam by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen and then re-combining the hydrogen with carbon. Making it into a hydrocarbon to be burned later. They are synthesizing methane; theoretically there’s no limit to the complex hydrocarbons that could be made, and they could include everything up through Octane and higher (octane being one of the huge mix of hydrocarbons comprising gas). For every one increase in carbon molecule, there’s two hydrogen atoms required to be made.
I’ve got nothing against synthesizing hydrocarbons; in fact, given that someday in a couple hundred of years they’re gonna run out it’s not a bad idea to consider. The MAIN problem is the lie of climate change and so-called decarbonization. THERE HAS TO BE A PRIMARY SOURCE OF ENERGY TO DO THIS. It’s not ‘free’ energy; water just doesn’t split into hydrogen and oxygen on its own (and we should be thankful it doesn’t). It needs energy to accomplish this–LOTS of energy.
So, where does that energy come from ? Well, primarily from NATGAS fueled power plants (and some coal, oil, and nuclear). Let’s take NATGAS for example. The most efficient NATGAS power plants we have are optimistically 50% efficient at turning the gas put into them into electricity coming out the other end (once again being bounded by the second law of thermodynamics). There are distribution and line losses–assuming the distribution process is 95% efficient and the hydrolysis/carbon combination process is 95% efficient (which might again be way optimistic) that means that you get roughly 45% of the energy burned at the power plant though NATGAS out as the same NATGAS you’re synthesizing at the other end.
Put another way, by jumping on this scam you are effectively DOUBLING the amount of NATGAS required to propel the car compared to just burning it in the car’s engine to begin with. For the wacko-carbon crowd, you’re DOUBLING carbon emissions which is almost comical.
Now the radical ‘greens’ are going to claim all of this energy is being produced from windmills and solar. Bullshit again. We’ve seen how unsuccessful the windmills are; typically they operate at around 20-25% nameplate capacity and there just isn’t enough area in the US to make this in any way feasible. You’d literally have to have ugly wind turbines covering every square foot of the US. And these wind turbines cause significant environmental damage themselves; not only to wild life but also they disrupt the movement of air masses across terrain which alters the environment commensurate with the energy extracted (which has inefficiencies of its own). In fact, I can show that the per-unit climate change CAUSED by this airmass disruption exceeds that of the dirtiest coal plant on the planet. Not to mention solar which increases the greenhouse footprint where installed (by about 75%) contributing to global warming. I think you guys did a study on that also !” [Yes we did…..inserted by editor:]
What about Electric Vehicles ?
“Economically, wind turbines have substantial environmental and direct cost in installation, as well as recurring costs in maintenance. It’s not ‘free’ energy; not by a long shot. In fact, most of the wind-farms I know of have operated at a net LOSS when the huge capital installation and maintenance costs are considered. So you have something that’s not only bad for the environment but also dramatically exceeds the cost of fuels available through other more traditional means. AND ya gotta add the costs of a synthesis plant to this along with all the distribution costs to create the exotics; perhaps they’ll be another hearty laugh in that the plants aren’t capable of direct CO2 extraction and must concentrate the carbon as well as have a synthesis process–taking even that much MORE energy.
While hydrocarbon synthesis may well become feasible, it will do so ONLY if high temperature efficient nuclear reactors come online; any of these are only in the planning stages now. This might well at some point be useful; but then one questions how much more useful it might be compared to advanced batteries and OTHER storage media–since you’re having to make the electricity anyway.
I can think of no other group than the environmarxists who could double energy use and somehow call this a ‘gain.’
To me, it’s disconcerting how people might buy into this propaganda. A cynic might fall back on PT Barnum — “there’s a sucker born every minute” — but I personally hope (and do believe) that Americans are way too smart to fall for this crap.”
We think Slasher’s spot on. And the article most certainly did give us a chuckle.
Diatomaceous-Johnson 