--- Keith Nagel wrote: > Interesting idea; I like the closed loop nature of the > system although carrying around the extra O2 would > be a problem, yes?
For the best use, you would not need or want to carry around any extra fuel, and particularly NOT either H2 nor O2 in principle... ... as the water content of the exhaust would be split (over and over again) 'in situ' using an 'external' source of energy which could be solar, (in the fixed implementation) but also for transportation use could be a "safe" radioactive material (beta or alpha emitter) or a combination of same with substantial current drawn from the alternator. IOW if you needed 40 kWh for transportation purposes, you might be able to design an 80 kWh diesel engine with recirculation gases - H2O + Argon and then need zero other fuel ... except you would have a radio-electrolysis cell, i.e. a water-splitter using half of the engine electrical output (40 kWh) together with a unknown amount of a fairly safe alpha or beta emitter. Radioelectrolysis is kind of an ugly step-child (thank-you, Sierra Club) - but can be incredibly efficient and safe enough for some uses. If this set-up were to require say 5 kg of thorium in order to split enough H2 (in combination with the recycled electricity) - then that substantial amount would of course not be acceptable for a van owned by a soccer mom, but could conceivably be used under tighter controls to power delivery vans, trucks, post office vehicles, trains, military vehicles, maybe even cabs etc. (IOW where strict controls can be implemented) but nevertheless this could save save the corresponding amount of hydrocarbon fuel. This institutionalized transportation could be as much as 30% of net petroleum use. > I don't see much connection in this to the ideas of > Papp et al, as the argon is being used as a working fluid. Well. That would be the standard explanation, BUT is it what is really happening? Can you really achieve 65% Carnot efficiency if the Argon is "just" a working fluid? I am not so sure that the Argon is not active - in its own right. JPL in the early seventies had lots of brainpower... but... No one here believes that even JPL cannot be fooled (for a while at least). Their earlier finding could possibly have led to Aurora and it could possibly be now using active-Argon for fuel. Not likely... but getting more credible by the moment. More later as I have some new reports to check out... (the Russians are a little more open with some of their info - of late) ... Jones
