Det är fascinerande (om än bitvis obegripligt) att läsa diskussionerna om den japanska ”vattenbilen” (mer om den här och här, förresten). För som Jonas påpekar i en kommentar till mitt förra inlägg så har ju bilen förstås direkt ifrågasatts. Jonas hänvisar till Robert Rapier, som i sin blogg R-Squared Energy Blog förklarar att en bil som drevs av enbart vatten skulle strida mot termodynamikens lagar; d v s man kan inte få ut mer energi än den man för in (se också "kalles" kommentar, just lämnad, om att "man kan inte elda med aska"). Rapier gissar själv att Genepax använder sig av en metallhydrid, som producerar väte när den reagerar med vattnet (här befinner jag mig redan på djupt vatten, men simmar vidare).
Ännu mer kritisk är vetenskapsbloggen Good Math, Bad Math. Där skriver Mark Chu-Carroll: ”There's just one problem. This is completely impossible.” Han förtydligar:
”You can't do that. If you
could, you could just generate all the worlds energy by splitting
water and then recombining it. That would be great - free energy for
all! But it doesn't work. You can't get more out than you
put in.
The reason that oil works so well as an energy source is that
it's got large quantities of energy packed into its chemical form. It
took a lot of energy to produce the oil - all of the
sunlight that fed the plants that eventually turned into oil; all of
the geological pressures over millions of years; that's all packed up
in the chemical structure of the molecules that make up the oil. When
we burn oil, what we're doing is rapidly releasing energy that was
packed into those molecules over millions of years. We're not getting
free energy: we're just rapidly releasing energy collected over a
huge span of time in a brief burst.
But the Genepax cell doesn't try to do anything like that. It uses some novel process to split water into its components - which cannot be done without adding enough energy to break the molecular bonds that hold water together. Then it re-unites those bonds, releasing energy. But the only energy that's available is the same energy that was used to break the molecules: there's no other energy source. This can't work without some other energy source. So: either Genepax is lying, deluded, or there's some missing component in this story.”
Själv lutar han åt att Genepax ljuger. Men nu till de fascinerande diskussionerna. De finns i kommentarstrådarna till inläggen. Här får författarna medhåll av många, och det ojas högt om hur korkade journalister är som går på så´nt här. Men här finns också de som håller dörren lite på glänt för att det japanska företaget har kommit på något helt nytt. En anonym kommentator hos Rapier hakar t ex på det där om metallhydrider, och tycker att det låter ju ändå mycket bättre att fylla bilen med kranvatten och sedan köpa lite ”metallhydridtabletter” på affären. Vi slipper alla bensinmackar! Den stackarn får dels höra av Rapier att hydrider kostar ett par hundra dollar kilot, och sedan drämmer ”doggydogworld” till med:
”Pulling 132 lb of NaH (which can spontaneously ignite in air) off the grocery store shelf, lugging it to your car and somehow dumping it into a fuel tank sounds like a hassle. How is this an improvement over a gas pump? And what do you do with your tank full of leftover NaOH (lye)?”
”benny 'peak demand' cole” lägger till att: ”If you get behind a water car and push, you get a lot more mpg.”
Men ”stuck in shizuoka”, som själv bor i Japan, och som själv har arbetat med forskning inom den japanska bilindustrin, säger ändå (han hänvisar också till Uppsala-forskning, som jag googlande gissar vara det här):
”I find it very difficult to believe that a Japanese start-up company would take the trouble to produce a WORKING prototype of a car, claim to have working relationships with a major auto company here in Japan, and get resulting media attention IF the product in question is so obviously ineffecient in its energy usuage. Certainly, ANY of the engineers at Mitsubishi, etc., would simply ask a few questions, go on to do some testing and then either toss the project away or take further interest in it. Robert has pointed out some very valid points but I simply find it very suspect that a car such as this would have such obvious detriments, given the market and the current attention to R & D here.”
Fortsättning följer......
Seeing the blog should leave some comments, I think that is a polite to blog host, and thank you for sharing!
Posted by: Cheap Jordans | den 22 april 2010 at 10.22
Japanese companies tend to learn really easily the "tricks" when it comes to business. So I really believe they will take that car prototype and will make it work.
Posted by: Cheryl | den 30 november 2010 at 15.34