The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind ... One of the better papers ever written on alternative energy came out 24 years ago in the Journal for Hydrogen Energy - written by John Bockris. I am going to try to cast part of it into a new light... or make that: cast it into the wind.
http://www.chemengr.ucsb.edu/~ceweb/mcfar/courses/uploads/246/Bockris_HydrogenbyPhotocat_Lecture_18.pdf It was a paper approximately 24 years ahead of its time. Bockris - in my opinion, is the one of the finest electrochemists of modern times, yet was so slandered by the Prince-of-Fools: Gary Taubes and the other assorted clowns who set back LENR by a decade, that he deserves a measure of sweet revenge. It may not come from LENR per se, but from putting together several pieces of a larger puzzle - to be explained below. Now - with a new administration continually taking about "renewables" and "wind energy" and "jobs" and "infrastructure" - and with a few far-sighted folks talking about a new version of an old program, a "TVA-for-wind" (refering to one of the political "crown jewels" coming out of the last depression) this old paper should be dusted-off by every planner and thinker on the alternative-energy scene. Why? Well it elegantly answers Zimmerman's question (the better-known one): "How many times must a man look up. Before he can see the sky? ..." Of course, for anyone to comprehend what I am referring to - they must also know where the best areas of untapped wind energy are located in the USA, and also must apprecuite the enormous logicstical problems which have kept those excellent sites from being used. These are pieces of a large puzzle, and the answer ... well... you know the rest. England and No. Europe have fabulous offshore wind sites, which are being exploited even with the obvious prolems of placing them in deep water; and we in the USA have sites that just as reliable but onshore! Kind-of. Only problem, Catch-22, our sites are so far from the grid, and located in states that give you the chills thinkng about thme (the Dakotas, brr) - or away from the markets for electrical power (populations centers) that connecting the sites with 500 miles of new high voltage power lines ruins all of the advantage of free wind energy on good land sites. BTW the cost advantage of putting up the same giant wind towers on land, vesus in 30 meters of sea water as the Brits must do, is on the order of 300% less expensive. Page 184 of the paper above, or really many parts of the same paper, may provide part of that sweet revenge for Bockris - eventually via an overlooked technology. This neglected technology relates to a few pages on a subject that may just now, with the renewed interest on wind energy, and also on magnetics and ultraconductors - be coming into focus: "magnetolysis." In Bockris's use of the term, this is really just a form of electrolysis where the electrodes for splitting water are inherent and built-in to the rotating machinery itself and are parts of an integrated homoploar generator- where the water electroyte is part of the circuit. A stroke of genius, really since the homopolar generator produces almost exactly the correct potential difference for water-splitting. Bockris say this 24 years ago, but the price of oil was low then. On paper, this kind of system makes the most sense by far- for putting to use any source of intermittent but free torque. That would be wind or hydroelectric. There is no better way to use wind energy than to make a storable clean fuel- hydrogen, even if the water must be trucked to the site. All we have to do now is to put the "paper promise" of Bockris into action with the logistics and the redesigned wind converters. What this would involve is building giant wind farms out in the prairies of the mid-northern USA where there is presently zero infrastructure to use the wind energy - yet using the mechnical force of wind energy, which often is strongest at night-time there: not to make electricity but as Bockris suggests to make hydrogen cheaply. His Magnetolysis concept removes two levels of intervening complications into the big picture of splitting water - yet admittedly - it would not be "simple" to implement, but hey: to paraphrase Billie Holliday: the difficult is done at once, only the impossible takes a little while. Jones
