World Peace

[Joel]

The propellant mixture in each SRB motor consists of an ammonium perchlorate (oxidizer,
69.6 percent by weight), aluminum (fuel, 16 percent), iron oxide (a catalyst, 0.4 percent), a
polymer (a binder that holds the mixture together, 12.04 percent), and an epoxy curing
agent (1.96 percent). The propellant is an 11-point star-shaped perforation in the forward
motor segment and a double-truncated-cone perforation in each of the aft segments and aft
closure. This configuration provides high thrust at ignition and then reduces the thrust by
approximately a third 50 seconds after lift-off to prevent overstressing the vehicle during
maximum dynamic pressure.

More can be found at http://www.shuttlepresskit.com/STS-113/SPK_sts-113.pdf

Joel

[Joel]

Here another link to help our 'little' friend out.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/srb/

Joel

[rugger]

Hydrogen is a battery.

Liquid memory,

Don't need a dictionary, I have you to correct my spelling mistakes. (since you feel so strongly about doing it

You didn't respond to my arguments though, you simply pretended to. You still need a lot of energy to produce useful quantities of hydrogen from water, much more than you can recover by buring the hydrogen.

As for using fossil fuels to produce hydrogen, well, you are still limited to the worldwide supply of oil.

Space shuttles are able to use hydrogen fuel because the high cost and low energy effeciency of hydrogen production isn't a concern when dealing with space flight. Fuel costs are simply overwhelmed by maintainance costs and here, practical requirements make hydrogen a perfect fuel.

[Liquid Memory]

Rugger, I did answer your question, if you go back to page 2 you will find several ways to convert water to hydrogen. Alot of them are cheap, of course if you were going to produce hydrogen on a grand scale, you would need alot of power to do that, but I am talking about converting hydrogen on the fly as you drive your car. There is a company in Korea that is already producing a fuel cell that will run in your home and be available around 2004.

[Sasq]

Link please

[Indiana]

Please, please, please. Everyone ignore him. Won't be any fun to post if noone ever responds and Liquid Moronity and HPrat_ (courtesy of RichL ) most likely will go away.

[agallag]

Yes, hydrogen is definitely a great fuel. It burns clean. It can be very safe, if the system is designed properly. It doesn't tend to be very explosive. Flammable, sure, but not explosive. If the storage tank ruptures and catches fire, the flames tend to go straight up and don't pour over everything while burning like gasoline does. It's easily as efficient in combustion as gasoline.

Big problem, though, as others have pointed out, is that it's not cost effective to produce hydrogen. It doesn't occur naturally in any usable volume.

Producing it from electrolysis uses gobs of electricity, that has to be generated somewhere. The only way to produce enough electricity to make the vast quantities of hydrogen we'd need would be to use commercial power plants. Currently the only power plant designs that can make enough electricity are coal, nuclear, and hydro electric. Each of these have had the environmentalists at their throats for various things.

Solar and wind power have their own problems, like needing to cover vast expanses of land, and being very unreliable sources. Solar only works when the sun is out, wind only works when it's windy. And then there's all the bird killing by the wind turbines.

The other way you mentioned was extraction from fossil fuels. All that does is move all the pollution from the vehicles to the hydrogen factories. Sure, it would be easier to regulate the central factories to make sure they keep their emissions controls in good tune. You wouldn't have 20+ year old junker cars on the road spewing untreated noxious gases straight into the air. However, the efficiency of these processes is not as good as directly burning the fuels in cars for power.

To sum up... until we get a vast supply of clean energy from some as yet undiscovered source (cold fusion would've been fabulous, too bad it was totally faked), there will not be any good way to get the quantities of hydrogen needed to convert everything over.

For now, making gasoline vehicles more efficient is very important. The most important things to work on are the things that cause the inefficiencies, like the following:

1. Improve aerodynamics
2. Reduce rolling resistance of tires, without reducing traction
3. Reclaim energy that is currently lost during braking - this is what hybrid vehicles do. Better batteries would make this process much better. Another popular method is using a high RPM flywheel. They were doing trials with buses, but they're very dangerous if they happen to fly apart. I believe the new york subway system is starting to use these in some of their subway stations, encased in large concrete vaults, so they're much safer than the buses. Very cool stuff.
4. Reclaim waste heat - i heard there was a new invention recently that can turn heat energy directly to electricity. Can't find any links right now, but if I remember correctly, it required pretty high heat, and wasn't very efficient. If that could be made more effective, it would be great. More than half of the energy contained in gasoline is wasted in internal combustion engines. It goes straight out the radiator, and exhaust pipe, as waste heat.

I'm sure there are more, but my fingers are getting tired. Food for thought anyway...

[Liquid Memory]

Link to Power Cell http://www.ceti-fuelcell.com/english/main.php

Link to letter about the Hannover Fair about Hydrogen and Fuel Cells.

http://www.ceti-fuelcell.com/english/bbs1.php?no=8

[Liquid Memory]

Thank You Agallag, finally a person to state something reasonable and intelligent. I was wondering though if you could use static electricity to do the job. Is the amperage the key factor in splitting the molecule, wattage, or voltage? Stun guns can produce like 200,000 volts, yeah its not for a very long time. But with a simple conversion using a transformer, you could keep that voltage up for a long time. I read on one web site that someone is using tesla technology to split water, and they are something like 700% more efficient. Could be we are closer to a cleaner form of transporation than we think.

|_iquid /\/\emory

F.E.A.R. IT
Free Enterprise About Reality

[VigilAnt]

Originally posted by Indiana
Please, please, please. Everyone ignore him. Won't be any fun to post if noone ever responds and Liquid Moronity and HPrat_ (courtesy of RichL ) most likely will go away.

They are the same person.

[Liquid Memory]

Ok, whatever, I guess we are brothers in the lord and the lord created us in his image so yeah I guess we are all one.

[VigilAnt]

You are posting from the same ip address. This is not hard to determine on my end.

You and hpar are the same person not only from your writing styles, and your similar grammar mistakes, but also from your choice of vocabulary. If I were to do an FBI profile on you two, there would be a 98 % probability that you and hpar are the same person, and this is not even taking into account your ips yet. That probability goes even higher when looking at the other evidence.

So why don't you and your multiple personalities find some other forum to troll?

VigilAnt

[Marshmallowman]

FECK

hydrogen is a nice fuel
BUT

1... it is to expensive to produce comercially...most power stations are lucky to get more than 40% efficiency....add to that the less than 40% efficiency of burning the hydrogen in(comustion inefficiencies)

2.storage it is very hard to store, hydrogen will leak out of most containers (straight through the metal), and will cause most metal conatainers to become brittle through the action of the hysdrogen itself...that is a real bummmer of you want to pipe it anywhere.. (there has been some work done and there may even be a solution by now,if a bit expensive)

3. normal combustion of any fuel, be it hydrogen or petrol will always produce NO and some other byproducts which in turn form nirtic acid and other nasty chemicals..

FUEL cells are very cool, they elliminate the combustion (inefficient) stage of energy conversion and produce very little waste products, and that whatever waste is produced is easily collected)

Solar power is quite efficient, (near 30%), but has an initial outlay that people bork at, but if you factor in a 15year life span(very conservative) for good quality cells you will find it is quite competetive.

liquid memory indeed..your brain is a protein slush of ill concieved ideas and mindless regurgitation of concepts you will never understand.



but that s just my opinion

[Marshmallowman]

PS methanol fuel cells would be my bet for the most convient and eviromentally friendly portable energy system(for cars..etc)