Are Corporations the problem with the Energy Industry?

so, there's been one thing I've been curious about:

I've heard that Nikola Tesla invented a way to get energy via induction from the magnetic field of the earth.

First off, this energy is almost perpetual, based on billions of tonnes of metal and magma rotating and shifting, and there's no way to stop it. Its free energy, restricted only by the size of the receiver. there is little to no way to make money off of it, except to make parts for it, so its not very profitable.

Second, there is a way to make hydrogen gas which involves using energy to separate the oxygen from the hydrogen in water. It involves an input of energy to get it, but it results in fuel that can be used to make hydrogen fuel that can be used in vehicles, making obsolete gas-cars and a vast majority of oil tankers, meaning clean, renewable energy and transport. The vehicles which run on the fuel already exists.

Is this at all feasible, or am I talking bullcrap?

Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry

Don't know about Tesla, but they're already working on hydrogen cars. The problem isn't the fuel, it's the fact that we have infrastructure for gasoline cars, and to convert it all to something else, if that's even possible, would be a nightmare. So they're trying to preserve as much of the infrastructure, in terms of future use, as possible... which is... problematic, to say the least...

edited 5th Jul '11 6:25:44 PM by USAF713

I am now known as Flyboy.

The biggest problem with hydrogen is that having a tank full of it could be problematic.

Also, while hydrogen has an impressively high value for energy per weight, its ridiculously low density means that storing it in any reasonable fashion is difficult. I think the current best method is either high-surface-area powders (similar to zeolites) or metal hydrides so that you can get it into solid form in a reversible fashion.

Fusion fuel: The different fusion reactions have different values for how hot you have to get them/how long you have to keep them hot for them to produce net energy. This is known as the Lawson Criterion. This is basically the "difficulty level" for the fusion reaction. If you can keep the atoms bouncing around for longer, it doesn't have to be so hot (magnetic confinement fusion). If you can get them really hot, really fast, a decent amount of fusion will occur before everything flies away from each other even without any other method of confinement (inertial confinement fusion).

The easiest one is deuterium/tritium. Deuterium can be obtained from water (a certain small percentage of all water has deuterium atoms instead of standard hydrogen) through electrolysis. The concentration is low, but we have lots and lots of seawater. Conveniently, the electrolysis also gets you hydrogen fuel and/or possibly drinking water, and the few trace metals present in seawater. Tritium, on the other hand, is radioactive with a fairly short half-life and must be made fresh to be effective. It's fairly easy to make - just bombard lithium with neutrons and you get tritium. D/T fusion produces neutrons, so if you have a reactor already running you can just toss in some lithium. We do have a decent amount of lithium, but we might want that for batteries and such, which could be a problem, particularly since you can't recycle lithium that was fissioned into tritium - it's just gone. D/T fusion produces neutrons, which have an unhelpful tendency to weaken the structural components of the reactor and transmute them into radioactive elements, producing radioactive waste.

Deuterium/deuterium fusion is next easiest, which is good if we want to save lithium. It also produces both tritium and helium-3 as products, which can be used immediately for D/T and D/He3 fusion (deuterium/helium-3 fusion is the third easiest fusion reaction). However, this is significantly more difficult than D/T fusion, and D/T fusion was already obnoxiously difficult.

Pure deuterium/helium-3 fusion has the advantage of not producing neutrons, which is quite nice, but it requires that you get helium-3 somehow (you could mine and process 100 million tons of lunar regolith to get a ton of He-3, or make a trip to Saturn or Uranus, but it's a long drive).

The ultimate is proton-proton fusion (what the Sun uses, fusing four protons into helium), but the Lawson criterion for this one is so absurd that trying to accomplish it with anything other than an actual star is probably a stupid idea.

. . . and just now I realize while typing out this long informative post that I have most likely gone significantly off topic. Hopefully this can be forgiven.

Thread Hop

I'm one who thinks that public corporations are a big problem with pretty much everything.

Not that I'm particularly anti-free market or anti-business or anything like that. (I like to think I like balance)

But it's the nature of corporations in particular that have serious drawbacks. First of all, we really don't have a handle on punishing bad behavior of corporations. Secondly, as they're publicly traded, as it stands right now perceived future growth rate is more important than future stability. This right here is the problem.

I actually feel much more secure about private businesses, to be honest. Mainly because usually there's a more direct connection between decision making and direct consequences, often being the same person. Also because of this, they're often more secured about building something that lasts rather than building a stock price then dumping it.

Of course you can have a crappy private business as well. But generally speaking I'm very distrustful of the organization surrounding public corporations.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

> Mainly because usually there's a more direct connection between decision making and direct consequences, often being the same person.

i dont think this is true :

1 > The CEO could already move to another company

2 > Not all CEO are Stockholder, even if they are They might still make profit.

3 > in the event of disaster, the company did not shoulder all burder. BP executive still got bonus after Gulf Mexico disaster.

4 > Most disaster are Black Swan event, they have very very small chance of happening. so business will assume it never happen.

5 > the company could avoid responsibility, owner of Superfund sites can sell his stock before the value go down, thus escape responsibility.

EDIT : can you explain more why you distrust public corporation ? i would think since they didn't have profit motive, they actually "safer" than private corp.

EDIT : Ooh, Thanks, that clear my confusion.

edited 6th Jul '11 8:01:26 PM by PhilippeO

I was always of the opinion that the economy had to be balanced like the US Government. The Government on one point, Big Business on another, and Big Labor on the third, to form a triangle situation that lends itself to balance. In practice, this never seems to happen, with the sides instead pulling for more dominance, but I wonder whether it would actually work...

I am now known as Flyboy.

Nuclear is such a godawful investment that I'm pretty sure nobody has ever built a commercial nuclear generator without basically all of the money either coming from the government or being insured by the government. Thus, in all honesty, it already is nationalized.

The simplest solution is to switch to some type of electricity that can't flip out and kill people.

Well, actually it can be done with any element, though it won't necessarily release any energy. Not that energetically (I.E.: Tokamak) confined fusion could actually generate energy, since you're spending all of it to keep the pressure high enough. If I were to say somebody's going to make a fusion generator (which I doubt they will,) inertial confinement would be the only technology I can think of that might actually work.

I admit the current nonsense with ITER is especially hilarious, most notably the fact that they aren't doing anything regarding how they'll breed tritium without sopping up all their energy.

It didn't pan out, the earth's magnetic field is far too weak at the surface, as is the solar RF radiation that makes it through the upper atmosphere◊. After Tesla gave up on that, he instead decided he'd BOOST the earth's magnetic field so it's strong enough to receive anywhere on earth using man-made power, I believe the US Navy is still experimenting with that up around Alaska.

Most hydrogen schemes use electric generation, and like many types of electric vehicle (that's functionally what hydrogen is) personal fueling stations and in-vehicle generation is common. The big stumbling block is quite simply that nobody's selling vehicles or electrolyzers to consumers.

Like other fuels gaseous at room temperature, the most efficient way to store it cheaply is by cooling it to a liquid. This has already been a common practice with natural gas cars for decades.

Eric,

edited 6th Jul '11 5:55:14 AM by EricDVH

Citation Needed. Like it or not, nuclear energy (fission and fusion) is the future of Humanity.

Right back at you. While I was going to look for a source later, I notice you failed to counter my claim with facts of your own indicating privately funded nukes.

Eric,

@Phillepe:What I actually mean by a "Public" corporation is a corporation that is owned via publicly traded stocks. Not like a crown corporation or something like that.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

33

You're talking technique, without getting into the practical details. There's actually a fair number of problems with using hydrogen compared to LNG. Hydrogen requires a fair bit colder temperature, and it still leaks more, it also has a good bit lower density. Not to mention it is far more prone to ignition, so it'll be that much more dangerous.

Liquid hydrogen must be cooled to a temperature of about -250 °C, has a mass energy density of about 143 MJ/kg (very high) and volumetric energy density of about 10 MJ/l (not nearly as high).

Liquified natural gas (basically methane) must be cooled to a temperature of about -160 °C, has a mass energy density of 53.6 MJ/kg and volumetric energy density of about 22.2 MJ/l (twice that of liquid hydrogen).

Gasoline is stored at room temperature, has a mass energy density of 46.4 MJ/kg and volumetric energy density of 34.2 MJ/l.

The current best practical rechargeable batteries get something on the order of 1 MJ/kg, although this can vary significantly.

edited 6th Jul '11 4:33:13 PM by Shinziril

About Tesla. He invented a way of using radio-waves to carry electricity. It was almost 100% efficient, compared with about 98% efficient for AC powercables (as in Europe).

The thing was, it was easy to get free power with a good radio tower.

What, something like a Rectenna? Either the power source radiates spherically, which isn't likely since that wastes most of the energy, or it radiates directionally line-of-sight, which basically makes it a "wireless wire". It would work reasonably well for power transmission to stationary targets (buildings and such), but it would be more difficult for moving targets since the source would have to track the target.

There is also the problem that if you wish to keep the emissions below a safe level (ie birds and humans can move into the beam without getting scorched) you'll need a large receiving rectenna if you want to transmit any significant amount of power.

edited 6th Jul '11 5:39:34 PM by Shinziril

Ah, here we go, Gambling on nuclear power: How public money fuels the industry.

Regarding the energy content of hydrogen, natural gas, and gasoline, you're forgetting a rather important factor: Efficiency. Most gasoline drivetrains are barely above single-digit efficiency, with the absolute best hybrid pseudo-golf-carts barely scraping 30%. In contrast, natural gas and hydrogen burn so much better that efficiency easily hover around 40-50%, and electric storage (including fuel cells) run into the high 80s & 90s. For this reason, even burning hydrogen in an ICE, 1 kilogram of hydrogen is about equal to a gallon of gasoline

The practical differences between LNG and LH₂ aren't particularly great, when you're dealing with a cryogenic fuel, the equipment is largely identical, and “tri-fuel” vehicles are common in current projects.

Eric,

They are very different. Hydrogen is a lot tougher to store than LNG. Hydrogen seeps out a lot easier, and is much more dangerous in liquid form. Heck, you can lose enough hydrogen through storage that any energy efficiency increase over gasoline is lost.

^ The biggest concern over storage is its reactivity. Hydrogen is one of the most (violently at times) reactive chemicals in the universe. It doesn't need a catalyst or an electric charge, it can react with a great many things at the drop of a hat.

Which would cause marvels during car crashes. Suddenly every car IS a Pinto.

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

Hydrogen is actually far safer than gasoline, since it floats away very quickly, while gasoline vapor is about as dangerous as hydrogen gas, plus both the vapors and fuel have an unpleasant tendancy to pool and stick to things. Hydrogen's chemical reactivity is also often wildly overstated, since the chromium on common stainless steel is entirely sufficient to contain it without embrittlement or noticable other decay. Boiloff isn't that much of a problem either, BMW's liquid hydrogen prototype can sit for 16 hours before boiloff begins, at which point it takes two weeks for the tank to empty. If that's not convenient enough, pressurized tanks holding gas at about the density of liquid hydrogen also exist and are quite safe.

Eric,

Hydrogen spills are one thing, hydrogen explosions are another.

^ Only if you hit at relativistic velocities that spark superprompt-critical fusion reactions. Otherwise, it behaves little differently explosive-wise than plain gasoline or alcohol. (If I remember my college chemistry right, pure hydrogen while more reactive is actually less explosive than gasoline even though in gasoline the hydrogen in the molecular make-up is the primary energy mover.)

edited 7th Jul '11 3:55:23 PM by MajorTom

You should probably read some safety sheets instead.

I'd link to some, but all the ones I can find charge for access, so you couldn't read them anyway.

edited 7th Jul '11 4:03:02 PM by blueharp

Eric, nuclear energy is (probably) the future of humanity, baring any Applied Phlebotinum suddenly existing. Unless your definition of nuclear is excluding fusion and just calling fission "nuclear?" Because otherwise there isn't much else that's relatively clean and outputs enough power, especially for space exploration...

I am now known as Flyboy.

On privatized energy vs non-privatized. Our city owns our power companies we have some of the lowest power rates in the nation.

Who watches the watchmen?