Water + Sunlight + Catalyst = Hydrogen - Are We Ready For It?
Recently, I sent out an e-mail message to some people interested in the energy dilemma, linking an article that describes a potentially very significant discovery on how to manufacture hydrogen without input of electricity. The article says:
Australian scientists predict that a revolutionary new way to harness the power of the sun to extract clean and almost unlimited energy supplies from water will be a reality within seven years. Using special titanium oxide ceramics that harvest sunlight and split water to produce hydrogen fuel, the researchers say it will then be a simple engineering exercise to make an energy-harvesting device with no moving parts and emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants.While this would be an alluring prospect, we seem not to be ready to use it. The system - like many others on the drawing boards - would require us to re-think our economic basics.
Our current energy policy is all about monopolistic control of energy sources, and oil is the classic source that has fueled our economies for decades. We go to war to gain control of the black stuff in the ground or to make sure it can be transported from where it is to where we need it. And an abundant energy source that depends only on water and sunlight, such as the one envisaged in the referenced article would go directly against our "need" to control.
An interesting discussion - with a friend in Montana called Wayne - developed out of the e-mail, which I would like to share with you:
Here is the original e-mail and the subsequent discussion with Wayne:
From: "Sepp (Josef) Hasslberger"
Subject: Water + sunlight + catalyst = hydrogen
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004Unlimited energy supplies abundant in water; scientists can extract without emitting greenhouse gases
Overview:Australian scientists predict that a revolutionary new way to harness the power of the sun to extract clean and almost unlimited energy supplies from water will be a reality within seven years.
From: "Wayne"
To: sepp@...
Subject: RE: Water + sunlight + catalyst = hydrogen
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004Hi Sepp; Yes. I read something like that in the paper the other day, using photosynthesis in a layer generates a current which is then used to split H2O. Or is this something different? It all comes down to the cost per generated KW. Recently here in Montana a new coal plant is being proposed in Great Falls (city of my birth actually, 250 mi east) that will cost (total) $1880/KW. I'm working on a slightly different idea: a flat plane of linear, mirrored strips that rotate at 7 1/2 degrees per hour (oriented north-south), in a sort of fresnel lens concept, that focusses the sunlight on a pipe above.
The bottom 1/2 of the pipe is covered with these new power chips that supposedly get 70% efficiency from any heat source. The remaining 30% of the solar heat goes into the fluid in the pipe and thence thru some type of heat engine like the stirling engine. The objective is CHEAP, CHEAP, CHEAP ... to cover VAST areas for solar collection. In the US it's about 10,000 sq miles (100x100) to produce the necessary electricity for our needs, as of about a decade ago. Sure, there are a LOT of ingenious solar designs out there but the PAYBACK period (outgo vs INcome) is the most critical number. So these japanese and australians may THINK they've got the best idea since sliced bread but read the book "The Solar Fraud", if you can't honestly address those issues ... look elsewhere for new energy answers. 30+years ago I moved to AZ and bought 10 acres of flat desert near Yuma, all hot to get in on the ground floor of solar energy. What a joke on me. At $10/sf for the collectors and whole system if would take $10 x 43,560sf/acre x 10 acres = $4,356,000 ... and 35 years+ just to pay it back (at retail KW rates no less). Now, what IDIOT banker is going to lend me $4.356M and wait THIRTY FIVE YEARS to see a dime of profit???!!! See the problem?
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004
To: "Wayne"
From: "Sepp (Josef) Hasslberger"
Subject: RE: Water + sunlight + catalyst = hydrogen
Well Wayne,this concept is slightly different from photoelectric, which has a low percentage capture of the energy.
If the chemical conversion, which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, was efficient in terms of cost (I admit I have no data on that as yet) it would supply an immediately usable energy source, hydrogen, which is easily applied to all kinds of transport as well as stationary electricity producing applications. Imagine firing the coal plant they are building with hydrogen instead. It might work...
From: "Wayne"
To: sepp@...
Subject: RE: Water + sunlight + catalyst = hydrogen
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004
Hi Sepp; Actually all this solar/wind/tidal/geothermal energy-talk is a tempest in a tea pot. The PROBLEM is that MEG (vacuum energy) (Tom Bearden's work) and hydrinos (shrunken hydrogen atoms) (Dr Mills' discovery) would solve all of the world's energy problems practically overnight, BUT we can't afford to give them to the world. Why? Look around. If we give vast new energies to DUMB herd animals like the human race all you'll get is a much faster trashing of the biosphere. Would you leave a loaded gun in a nursery for children to play with? Sure, EVERYONE wants to be "empowered" and guess what? A free KW means a free MW means a free GW ... where does all that WASTE HEAT go when 7 billion people are each dumping that much WASTE HEAT into the biosphere? Then there's sandy's discovery of a true anti-gravity concept. What happens when everyone in the world has his own magic flying carpet? Unbounded JOY? WRONG! You would get the vast herds of poor people in the third world descending on rich areas (like the USA) as a plague of human LOCUSTS. To wit, 20:1 for every american. Could we feed/house/clothe all of them in our own homes? Imagine them taking over YOUR home, sleeping in YOUR bed, watching some strange foreign language TV broadcast on YOUR TV with YOUR remote ... and standing in line for an hour to use YOUR toilet ... Get the picture? Give them flying carpets ... and then watch them landing on YOUR lawn ... Thus we are between a rock and a hard place and thus the middle ground is "retro" s/w/t/g "green-clean" energy sources. Oil has just shot above $50/bbl on its way up to $100/bbl, as the world's oil supplies are fragile (iraq and terrorist bombings, hurricane Ivan in the Gulf of Mexico, labor strike in Nigeria, political problems in Venezuela, etc, etc) thus an ENORMOUS incentive to develop alternate sources. The PROBLEM there is the new energy field is like the keystone kops, everyone racing off in different directions and stumbling over each other ... and getting nowhere with getting all these ingenious concepts/devices on the shelf, everyone's fighting for the same, limited investment dollars. I've spent an ENORMOUS amount of effort in developing my 2 solar piano demo-devices, but for what? Some days I just say the hell with it all, get back into construction, a field I already know....
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004
To: "Waynel"
From: "Sepp (Josef) Hasslberger"
Subject: RE: Water + sunlight + catalyst = hydrogen
Wayne,yes, I know what technologies would function properly.
The problem with the poor countries could be solved easily but no one seems interested in making them economically self sufficient or even strong. We don't want their competition, but we're quite ready to take their resources and use their cheap (slave) labor, while keeping them in economic dependency. Changes in energy will go hand in hand with world wide changes in our economic system. As you so well point out, these changes are not practical at the moment.
What we're up against is the impossibility to allow diffused energy production (and diffused individual air transport) as long as we're trying to keep our countries closed to each other, as long as we are not allowing free movement of people. And we can't allow free movement of people unless we have a situation where everyone enjoys a comparable level of economic freedom and economic well being.
Got to widen our horizons to that - otherwise no free energy.
From: "Wayne"
To: sepp@...
Subject: RE: Water + sunlight + catalyst = hydrogen
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004
Hi again Sepp; We've both been interested in the energy picture and yet it really isn't energy that's the problem. It's the ancient reproductive "K" strategy: have as many progeny as possible so that SOME of them will survive the viscitudes of life (short, brutish and nasty). But in the last century or so, medicine has SAVED more of those "destined-to-die" and thus the average age has moved far above the historical levels; or as my brother-in-law puts it : after you've reproduced yourself, nature has no real use for you. Medicine has certainly saved me on more than one occasion. Thus a malthusian situation : when any species overruns its basic resource base one of 3 things happens : war, disease or famine; to reduce the population #s back to sustainable levels. The 4th option, for intelligent animals like us, is family planning; but there, again, you run into the religion-based "K" strategy(make more of "us" than "them"). So, it's going to take a world wide catastrophe to EDUCATE the human race into MATURITY, otherwise it's going to be the fruit-fly analogy. Probably you've read it somewhere : a certain fruit fly reproduces itself(in lush conditions)every 1/2 hour. If the earth was made of cheese and only 2(m&f)flies are there, in ONE WEEK with doubling of .5hr the entire earth would be FRUIT FLIES. The "cheese" in the case of homo-sap is digging for coal, minerals, damming rivers for hydroelectric dams, agriculture, aquaculture(fishing the oceans "dry"), nuclear waste, CO2 from HxCx burning....on and on. Even with this simple hydrocarbon energy source we're already creating a world wide garbage dump, give them MEG/hydrinos etc and it will just get WORSE...FASTER. So, the message is clear : you only get "grown-up" energy IF and WHEN you are GROWN UP. Or, again, you don't leave a loaded gun in a nursery for children to play with. Thus you'll hear all kinds of bitching and moaning about the desperate need for pure water, abundant electricity....as a "shepherd" archetype you would like to respond as best you can, on the one hand(bose bonding); and yet, on the other hand, as a "hunter" archetype you don't want to have still more of your same kind of predator in your (fermi) turf(more lions on your patch of the african serengetti). Consider the current islamic invasion of europe(fast breeding algerians in france for example). Will church bells from gothic cathedrals or muslim prayers from minarets be tomorrow's european sounds? Think about it...Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2004
To: "Wayne"
From: "Sepp (Josef) Hasslberger"
Subject: RE: Water + sunlight + catalyst = hydrogen
Hi Wayne,well argued, but there are some things that still don't make sense.
Yes reproduction, especially if unrestrained, will put the whole earth system in danger, but not in the immediate way you seem to think it does.
Earth does, contrary to popular belief, have the capacity to sustain its present population and more. We are routinely WASTING food, actually DESTROYING it in order to protect prices. We are also not making any effort to make developing countries self-sufficient in their own food production, because it is more profitable to sell them some of the food the West produces and at the same time to not have to compete against their exports in the food area. Our economic system is geared for that. Look only at agricultural subsidies to our own farmers that make this possible and that effectively cut off developing countries from the food export markets.
Overpopulation occurs when economic conditions are grave. People make more children in an effort to survive. They need them to have a chance in an economically hostile environment. As a matter of fact, once you have people living a comfortable life (like we have in the West), overpopulation is not an issue. Industrialized countries as a matter of fact have the opposite problem - not enough children.
Also the religious dichotomy between Christianity and Islam is a false problem. It's always the "us" against "them" mentality, that grows out of our basic economic mentality. We have the goods (the food, the industry, the war machine) and we are willing to use every one of these factors to keep controlling "them".
As long as we aren't willing to live in peace and more importantly, to let go of our fear of being "overrun" by a more numerous population from developing countries, we must "defend" our turf and in the process genocide whole populations like we are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is a vicious spiral without end. The solution lies in embracing, rather than excluding these populations from development and economic well being.
As for man ruining the environment, it is a direct consequence of our energy choices and our energy monopoly, where alternatives are not welcome and end up being suppressed. I do not agree that with different and more abundant energy sources being available to all, this environmental destruction would continue.
Our culture is not "superior" in some way to all the others, although, as you also mention, religion is keeping that notion alive.
I think we have to deeply revise our ECONOMIC approaches if we are to be successful in providing enough ENERGY to people to live comfortably in their own countries. Once we do so, all the other problems will sink into insignificance.
Related articles:
Goodbye to fossil fuels? Not quite yet - By Greg Lavine - The Salt Lake Tribune
This recent experiment at a national research laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho, may pave the way for an efficient means of extracting hydrogen from water. Hydrogen obtained through this method could one day replace fossil fuels in powering cars and trucks.
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Tuesday October 5 2004
updated on Friday June 26 2009URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/10/05/water_sunlight_catalyst_hydrogen_are_we_ready_for_it.htm
Related ArticlesDisclosure Project charges: Energy inventions suppressed
A pattern of deliberate suppression of energy related inventions has been found by investigators of the Disclosure Project, a group that promotes government transparency in technology related areas, such as energy technology and extraterrestrial technologies gleaned by governments from UFO finds. They are asking whistle-blowers to come forward to add hard evidence to substantiate the pattern.... [read more]
February 10, 2004 - Sepp HasslbergerThe Energy Racket
What does energy have to do with us? Are we not able to get electricity from "the grid" and fill our vehicles' tanks with various types of hydrocarbon combustibles - all for a reasonable price? Energy is one of the areas where a potentially desastrous monopoly is controlling what goes and what doesn't. Potentially desastrous because monopolies have the nasty habit of charging whatever the market will bear, and wiping... [read more]
August 24, 2003 - Sepp Hasslberger'Oil Shock' Looming - What are the Alternatives?
We like to think that our way of life is "normal", that nothing will happen to force a drastic change in how we live, produce, move around, warm ourselves in the winter and light our streets and houses. Yet, we are using a highly vulnerable energy technology (the burning of fossil fuels) and we have allowed a commercial cartel to monopolize that energy technology while sabotaging any valid alternatives. We... [read more]
June 24, 2004 - Sepp HasslbergerBritish researchers invent thermal energy cell
The Telegraph, UK, reported on 18-05-2003: - In results independently verified at Bristol University, a team from Gardner Watts - an environmental technology company based in Dedham, Essex - show a "thermal energy cell" which appears to produce hundreds of times more energy than that put into it. If the findings are correct and can be reproduced on a commercial scale, the thermal energy cell could become a feature of... [read more]
June 04, 2003 - Sepp HasslbergerRamifications of Free Energy-Tesla and Others
Empowering the individual is THE theme of my web site as free energy would eliminate the predatory energy industry, help heal the earth, increase humanity's standard of living by perhaps a few orders of magnitude. "...The potential of free energy is a lot bigger than just eliminating earth's most destructive industry. With free, renewable, non-polluting energy, especially when combined with machines, robotics and computers (going back to the basics of... [read more]
June 06, 2003 - Chris GuptaCool: Fridge Without Using Electricity!
This is incredible idea is an extension of the pottery water cooling vessels used though the millennia. Chris Gupta Cool: Fridge Without Using Electricity! This is Mohammed Bah Abba's Pot-in-pot invention. In northern Nigeria, where Mohammed is from, over 90% of the villages have no electricity. His invention, which he won a Rolex Award for (and $100,000), is a refrigerator than runs without electricity.... [read more]
April 14, 2004 - Chris Gupta
