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"Don W." <dNOSPAMwiddersAThotmail.com> wrote in message
news:rr2dnV9s2PRBHEHfRVn-gg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> "charliew2" <charliew2@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:11do553ed9lfobb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>> "Don Lancaster" <don@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:3jq52pFqg3jrU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> > Peter Lowrie wrote:
>> >> Dear Mike
>> >>
>> >> ...Is this to say that sugar contains Hydrogen, how would one go about
>> >> extracting Hydrogen from sugar?
>> >>
>> >
>> > The energy required to extact the hydrogen would vastly exceed that of
> the
>> > recovered hydrogen.
>> >
>>
>> Not so, Don. You would burn the synthetic fuel to release its energy.
> If
>> you used atmospheric CO2 in this process (i.e., there is a strong
> inference
>> above that the new process would duplicate the way that plants sequester
>> atmospheric CO2), there would be no net fossil carbon emissions to the
>> environment.
>>
>
> You're a smart fellow -- where the heck are you coming from here? The
> energy contained in sugar comes both from hydrogen and carbon. Converting
> energy from one form to another results in some heat losses. So how can
> you end up with anything close to the energy you started with if you
> extract hydrogen from sugar? What do you mean by "burn the synthetic fuel
> to release its energy"?
>
> Don W.
You would design a process which does the same thing as what is currently
done with hydrocarbons. For a hydrocarbon fuel, no one currently extracts
the hydrogen (and throws away the carbon) on a commercial basis (at least
not yet). Burning a fuel in air breaks both carbon-carbon chemical bonds
and carbon-hydrogen chemical bonds. You want to take advantage of this bond
breaking, especially the carbon-carbon bond breaking, because of the energy
release.
OK, Don ... I'll "shift gears" a bit for you to make the point more clearly.
Biological systems burn sugar (specifically glucose) to release heat and
obtain the energy necessary to run life processes. This process takes place
slowly and at low temperatures because of all of the catalysts (e.g.,
enzymes) involved, and because of the multiple steps that living organisms
go through to oxidise sugars to CO2 and water. However, there is nothing
preventing such a chemical reaction from proceeding from sugar to carbon
dioxide and water in a single step, given the right equipment.
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