Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #13284
To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: Bruce Robinson Bruce_Robinson@telus.net
Date: Sun, 09 Apr 2000 22:00:21 -0700
Subject: Re: a water + light powered aqautic robot?
Meabadboy@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 4/9/2000 10:58:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> davidperry@geocities.com writes:
>
> << Imagine this mechanism, a chamber is filled up with water
> and solar power slowly takes out the hydrogen (by electrolysis)
> which builds up in the robot (epoxy chamber) where a spark
> ignites it, which sends water rushing out, projecting the robot
> a long long way, wherer the process begins again. Perhaps ahead
> of its time but quite possible.>>
>
> Not really ahead of its time ~ however, it would have be sorta
> like the storage of the strobe circuit of a flash ~ like that
> of a camera flash circuit
>
> What u could try is to store up a voltage level in a cap ~ then
> if you can get it to convert that stored voltage to a high voltage
> with low Amps (like a spark) ~ you could fire it into a chamber and
> bubble off hydrogen and oxygen ...
This idea is just a variation on "Use solar energy to make electrical
energy to separate water into it's component gases, then burn the gases
to produce mechanical energy to drive the robot." That's 6 energy
conversions: solar to electrical to stored electrical (capacitor) to
chemical to thermal to mechanical (engine) to mechanical (propellor).
Each conversion loses energy due to inefficiencies.
David's idea is fundamentally different. Instead of storing electrical
energy in a capacitor, he's storing it in chemical form (even small
currents at low voltages will electrolyze water). There's only 3 energy
conversions here: solar to electrical to stored chemical to
thermo-mechanical (combustions acts like a rocket engine).
You can't store hydrogen forever, it will leak through anything
including several inches of solid steel. However, I suspect you can
store it a lot longer than you can store electrical energy in a
capacitor.
David's idea might not work too well for underwater designs, because
your robot would tend to float when a lot of gas was stored, and sink
when the gas was exhausted ... just when you want it floating to get the
maximum benefit of the sun. For surface robots ... why not?
Bruce
13285 Mon, 10 Apr 2000 00:49:35 EDT Re: sumop beam@sgiblab.sgi.com SkavenArmy@cs.com Yeah , but oyud hafta get them punctured first and tahts very dangerous.they
might even blow up. if you can get it punctured , itd werk , but that stuff
gets really cold , and youd hafta secure it nice n tight.....
j z
13286 Sun, 9 Apr 2000 22:19:47 -0700 Fission and fusion Ben Hitchcock
> Just to set the record straight here, atomic (H - bombs) work with both
> fission and fusion.
> The physics behind it gets a bit complicated but basically every element
> has a specific energy associated with it.
-big snip here-
> Ben
>
Hi Ben, You'll probably be interested in the article (Wired Mag, , May
issue, page 254) about the new Heavy Ion Collider.
Seems there is a extreemly slight chance that it couls trigger a "Strangelet
aprticle which eats all matter!!! It's not likely this will destroy the
universe, they think..
Joe Pledger
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