Fwd: Re: Ethanol & hydrogen production

>Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 12:32:37 -0400
>To: David F Siemens <dfsiemensjr@juno.com>
>From: Joel Moore <joelmoore@psu.edu>
>Subject: Re: Ethanol & hydrogen production
>Cc:
>Bcc:
>X-Attachments:
>
>At 8:40 AM -0700 on 8/13/04, David F Siemens wrote:
>>On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 11:13:26 -0400 Joel Moore <joelmoore@psu.edu> writes:
>>> Washington Monthly has an interesting article about 1) an alternative
>>>
>>> way to produce ethanol that results in a net gain (rather than the
>>> current net loss) in energy and 2) a catalytic method to change
>>> ethanol to hydrogen that requires little energy. The catch with
>>> using
>>> hydrogen/ethanol in this way is that the fuel cell technology that's
>>>
>>> favored right now doesn't work well. However, another (solid-state)
>>>
>>> fuel cell technology does exist that may work with some tinkering.
>>>
>>> http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.jaffe
>>>
>>> Joel
>>> --
>>If you report this accurately, (1) indicates the necessary revision of
>>thermodynamics and the implementation of perpetual motion. As for (2),
>>the loss of the energy of the carbon in ethanol with the use of only the
>>hydrogen will be a major loss.
>>Dave
>
>Hi Dave,
>
>Don't know if you meant to send the above to the list or not. Sorry
>for my imprecision. On (1) I meant net gain with respect to fossil
>fuels (since currently 1.3 gallons of petroleum is required to
>produce 1 gallon of ethanol). On (2) just reporting what was
>written. Not clear myself why one wouldn't just burn the ethanol
>straight away and skip the hydrogen step.
>
>Joel
>

-- 
Joel Moore
315 Hosler Building
Department of Geosciences
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802
(814) 863-8055
http://www.geosc.psu.edu/~jmoore/