# THE marine ENGINE 2040???



## david freeman (Jan 26, 2006)

hEY HO! within the last 10 days of so we have had firstly VOLO the ford group say they are ceasing the production of petrol/diesel powered cars, and then Renualt do the same a few days later, saying they will concentrate on electrical powered cars only for 2040.
The mind boggles? What will air transport and marine transport do, For a convient fuel easily stored, go nuclear? or 100% natural gas, or back to coal and steam power.
As for the defence industry and armed forces, what would be the sensible fuel alternatives in a large scale operation, in a world wide conflict???
Will be see some form of battery energy store providing a hydrogen fuel cell from water or water vapour? Has or is the research under way? I just wonder, and dream of the ''Doxford, Sulzers, B&W's and Pielsticks of the world I may have known with Babcocks forster wheeler boilers and Pamatrada and Stal turbines.
It is all in the mind??


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## A.D.FROST (Sep 1, 2008)

Does this mean they will phase out 'Molotov Cocktails' (gas in a bottle is not quite the same) and some lawn mowers.


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## Robert Hilton (Feb 13, 2011)

Do we not have an efficient way of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen and using the gases for an ecological fuel? I have read a little about this from time to time, but the truth is hard to get at. Some say the splitting process isn't economical, others say those who have cracked the problem have been paid off to suppress it, or assassinated.

Can anyone enlighten me?


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## Lurch (Jul 29, 2011)

This semi links to the heavy water thread = Been talked about for years.


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## BobClay (Dec 14, 2007)

We probably all split water into hydrogen and oxygen in school chemistry labs. Easily done but you need a lot of electrical energy to do it. You can't burn the hydrogen you make to self-sustain the process because that would violate the 2nd Law.

That's why fossil fuels are so appealing, all the energy they contain was put there long ago over millions of years by the Sun. All we have to do is bring it up and burn it.

But electrolysis is feasible if you've got lots of spare energy from let's say, renewables, which hopefully aren't going to run out (not for 4 or 5 billion years anyway.) Then it would be useful for converting the energy into a more usable form or just storing it.

But it does all come down to economics in the end (since any number of proposed catastrophes don't figure on the bean counter's spreadsheets.)


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## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

I wonder whether we could arrange a heat engine powered by some abundant fuel (car tyres and other waste?) gaining oxygen by ripping it directly from the already abundant water as with a hydrogen fire then releasing hydrogen to store and burn more conventionally. The containment may be a bit tricky (same problem as tokomak with fusion) with the heat of the reaction required likely to consume that as well.

I fear all other decomposition reactions would take more energy then could be 'regained' in their recombination. Of course like nuclear power we can ignore efficiency and other vagaries of thermodynamics if the splitting reaction can be cheap enough (and remain so in the longer term).


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## BobClay (Dec 14, 2007)

But you can't ignore the cost of nuclear power, certainly fission reactors. As yet fusion hasn't quite got out of the 'pipedream' bracket.

Nuclear power is very expensive. It's only saving grace being it's 'carbon friendly' but for sure it is not 'clean.'


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## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

Agreed Bob however the engineers are still too proud to engineer for safety without striving for efficiency as well. Efficiency is not relevant if the fuel is cheap. Nuclear fuel is cheap. The 'ash' is the problem.


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## BobClay (Dec 14, 2007)

It was engineers who told us back in the fifties we were entering the world of 'cheap' in fact some said 'free' electricity with nuclear power. They couldn't have been more wrong. You can't just take the cost of the fuel into account, you have to take the cost of decommissioning and long term storage and processing in as well.

We're not talking about energy out for energy in efficiency here, that's irrelevant to the end user. That poor old end user who is going to have to pay through the nose for the likes of Hinkley Point and be lumbered with all the crud left over at the end of it.


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