Super-efficient electrolysis is often talked about and seldom reduced to practice. This came up twice in recent weeks and the subject never fails to disappoint, when the final numbers come out. As of 2014, there is no known and replicated way to achieve over 90% conversion of electrical energy into water splitting without using another energy component, such as sunlight or waste heat. Many are misled by overly exuberant researchers who continually publish claims for hydrogen, to be competitive with natural gas, but none of these claims have "held water" so to speak.
However, the recent mention of C60 as a catalyst could be important - since, when mixed in water - buckyballs tends to naturally pick up one or two extra electrons and become an anion as a preferred stable species. The anion is lower density but there are limits to electrostatic manipulations due to Coulomb forces. This carbon ion is a true form of auto-ionization, and could be put to possible use to transfer electrons in a way that could produce net energy or alternatively - hydrogen gas. Additionally, any electrical output could actually be used to split water so that the H2 and O2 gases are then bubbled up and used to increase water flow in a hybrid arrangement. It would be hard to do this without a risk of explosion, however. On paper at least, auto-ionization provides a potential way for a slurry of hydrated C60 to transfer electrons at decent amperage from ground to a remote and elevated electrode. Eliminating all loss is what super-efficient electrolysis is all about, and there could be an even more basic way to use auto-ionization and buoyancy together, to actually go self-powered. Presumably this will not violate CoE since the water will cool. "The river-less dam"... this was my dream last night. It was probably influence by reading about the "free energy" proposal for what is in effect, a giant "drinking bird" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_bird No joke- someone thinks this would work. Supersizing that design to industrial proportions sounds too crazy to consider, but this is a similar wild dream, yet it can be a little more practical and does not depend on thermodynamics so much as electrodynamics. Either or both can be incorporated into the a "virtual dam." Imagine a very high water tower - supported by hundred-meter tall conduits. The conduits are paired, as up-down - and made of a non-conductive structural material (fiberglass or carbon-fiber). For instance two up-conduits and two down-conduits will provide balanced support for a bulbous reservoir filled with water (plus a high surface are of electrode material). You may be familiar with the water towers at Eindhoven, which are not paired. The bulbs can be painted black to absorb solar energy during the day, but this is not required. Between the up-and-down legs of the water-tower conduits, at the base or below ground, there water-turbines. Despite the high head of water, there is very low water pressure differential between the up-down pairs. The flow of water is maintained by having a few tons of C60 distributed as a colloid in the circulating water and a circulation rate of many tons of water per minute. It is negatively charge when rising and neutral when falling. When auto-ionized, the anions are lighter. The idea is that the lower electrode for charging electrons into the carbon will be coated with a cold cathode emitter, and the elevated electrodes, for removing electrons from the buckyballs, will be coated with doped PN diode semiconductor. Flow will be arranged so that the carbon picks up electrons at the base and then gives them up at the top. On paper, there is satisfactory bandgap which works for this, but who knows what the actual losses are - or how much water can be moved by electron charge alone or whether the emf is really free? Can tons per minute of water be circulated by auto-ionization? Would heat transfer in addition to auto-ionization be synergetic? Can water-splitting be added for buoyancy without the risk of explosion. If so... voila... the Riverless Dam. If not, another "drinking bird" type of proposal.
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