I want to use sea water as fuel to an engine to generate electricity. What are the possible ways to do it?
107751
The easiset way use sea water as a fuel is simply to extract the Uranium from it and feed it into a standard reactor. It's perfectly feasible and possible with the technology we have today.\n\nThe only reason we don't do it is because we have cheaper supplies of Uranium elsewhere.
700454
One way to do that for relatively small volumes of water is to force the sea water through a special membrane filter under high pressure. The filter membrane must be constructed so that its holes are large enough to just pass a water molecule, but not large enough to pass metal\nmolecules, salt molecules, algae, etc. The result would be fresh clean water with a lot of brine solution left in the pressurized tank that needs to be dumped.\n\nAnother process which is more poractical for large volumes of fresh water production is electrolisis. In that process, electrical current is passed through the water to break it down into its basic elements such as hydrogen and oxygen (and all the other junk that is left over).\n\nOnce the hydrogen and oxygen are collected and recombined, the result is pure fresh water. Again, the vat or tank holding the original sea water now has a heavy brine solution which must be disposed of somehow. Most any use of sea water to produce fresh water will generate a lot of salty brine by-product that could poison sweet earth in the vicinity if it is merely dumped.
230939
probably you mean ELECTRICITY.\noil and petroleum could be used to produce electricity. There is such a thing as electrical energy.
186874
If you ferment the biomass it will make methane. The remove the hydrogen from the methane? If you meant seawater, electrolysis will give you hydrogen and oxygen. A lot was manufactored in Norway since they had hydroelectricity to use.
248810
It's a matter of thermodynamics.  The end product of burning hydrogen with oxygen in an engine, or recombining it in a fuel cell, is water.  So, if you're going from water to hydrogen and oxygen, and then back to water when you burn it, the heat given off by the chemical reaction you're using to power the engine is the same as the amount of energy it took to split the hydrogen from the water in the first place.  Add to this the limitations of efficiency on engines, or any other device, and it ends up being impossible to have an engine that runs on water.  If you have some other power source, you can use this to split the hydrogen, and then burn it in your engine, but then the energy really isn't coming from the water being used as a fuel, you're just using the hydrogen to carry the energy from your power source to your engine.  \n\nNow, if you had a pure fluorine atmosphere, you could burn water in an engine, but I'm not sure what you could make an engine out of such that it wouldn't be destroyed by the fluorine!
1019039
Rotating turbines attached to electrical generators produce most commercially available electricity. Turbines may be driven by using steam, water, wind or other fluids as an intermediate energy carrier. The most common usage is by steam in fossil fuel power plants or nuclear power plants, and by water in hydroelectric dams. Alternately, turbines can be driven directly by the combustion of natural gas or oil. Combined cycle gas turbine plants offer efficiencies of up to 60%. They generate power by burning natural gas in a gas turbine and use residual heat to generate additional electricity from steam. Wind turbines generate electricity by using the wind. Solar chimneys use wind that is artificially produced inside the chimney by heating it with sunlight. Solar parabolic troughs and solar power towers concentrate sunlight to heat a heat transfer fluid that is used to produce steam to turn a turbine. Small electricity generators are often powered by reciprocating engines burning diesel, biogas or natural gas. Diesel engines are often used for back up generation, usually at low voltages. Biogas is often combusted where it is produced, such as a landfill or wastewater treatment plant, with a reciprocating engine or a microturbine, which is a small gas turbine.
10808
I would suggest that you consider installing two different solar devises; one for heating and one for electricity.  Water can be heated by collecting solar energy in a panel that allows sunlight to pass through a treated glass or plastic pane and shine on a black convoluted surface that avoids reflection.  The heat produced can not escapes as easily as sunlight enters.  This is the greenhouse effect that heats your car on a rather cool day.  Inside the solar panel there are tubes or pipes that circulate cooling water to carry off the heat to an insulated storage tank.  In cold regions the cooling water must contain antifreeze.  The panel shoud be placed on a roof nearly perpendicular to a line from the sun at noon durning the cold season.  In the upper USA that would be a southern exposure.  The solar panel can be used to pre-heat water that is further heated by an electric or gas waterheater.  The number of panels you will need will depend on the number of people using hot water and whether you use it as the sole source of warm water or as preheat.  Expect panels to cost hundreds of dollars, depending on whether you install them yourself. \n\nFor electrical loads, you should consider installing photovoltaic solar panels which produce direct current (DC).  This can be used for heating water or running electrical equipment and lights but heating may use up the entire capacity of the panel(s).  You may need a battery to store energy and a converter to provide the correct voltage (and AC?) as desired.  Expect voltaic solar panels to cost less as new technologies come to market.  DayStar is building a factory now to produce cheaper continuous film cells (that could cover a roof?).  \n\nThe wattage for various items you wish to power is usually included on the manufacturer's identification plate and depends on the size and model you have or wish to buy.  Good luck.
751378
Hey Bob,\n\nApparently, Yes, it can be done.  it can be a lot easier than you might think as well.  If you hold a flow of hydrogen to the carburettor, the hydrogen will be drawn into the chambers and combust, powering the engine.  There are a couple of major problems with this though.  First, you need a source of hydrogen, which means driving around in an H bomb effectively.  If you were to use water, and make hydrogen that way, the vehicle would have to be very very big to produce enough hydrogen to allow the combustion to work, so even though it can be done in theory, it's not safe or is not feasible just yet.\nAs soon as someone works out how to get the hydrogen from water more efficiently, they will probably be the new Einstein (or shot by oil tyrants)
51965
Hmm...  If I remember the physics right, it goes like this: Take two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen and mix them in a chamber with a catalyst and a proton exchange membrane and you get water and electricity.
801098
You'll have to explain what you mean by solar hydrogen panels. \n\nThe most common is through steam reforming which must be done on an industrial scale. Steam reforming uses separates hydrogen from the carbon components in methane and methanol on catalytic surfaces. Something that would be impossible outside a very advanced lab or factory.\n\nThe second most common method of extracting hydrogen from water is through electrolysis where voltage is applied to water.  You can make some at home quite easily and safely. You just need a 9V battery, some wire, and the cleanest water you can find.\n\nYou simply place the two wires in the water while connected to the battery and hydrogen bubbles start forming. Use salt to make it more efficient.\n\nSee this site for more info.\nhttp://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Stories/001.1/
244521
there is an engine i saw that has no moving parts. just magnets that attract water in one end and out the other, but it only works in salt water.
687068
...And by "Hydro" you mean water? or Hydrogen?\n\nWhat type of power output do you need/want?\nHow much are you willing to spend?
328055
One current method, is called PEM, or proton exchange membrane fuel cells.  How it works:\n\nHydrogen (H2) molecules are split by way of an anode, into protons and electrons.  The membrane allows protons to pass through and blocks electrons.  This creates an electric potential,  as well as a direct current (DC) as collected electrons move around the membrane to the other side, to recombine with the H+ ions (protons) as well as O2 molecules, creating byproducts of water and heat.  This DC could ideally power anything from a light bulb to propelling an automobile if the electricity were converted to mechanical energy (like in the electric motor portion of a hybrid automobile).\n\nThe difficulty comes in getting the hydrogen.  While the byproduct of a hydrogen powered car is water and heat, which do not hurt the atmosphere, the creation of purified hydrogen, does require energy as well as gives off large amounts of CO2, a greenhouse gas.  Some work is being done into looking into renewable energy sources to power the purification process (wind power, solar power, nuclear power, etc) as well as methods of "burying" the produced CO2 underground, so that it is not released into the atmosphere.
247794
Tidal power is a means of electricity generation achieved by capturing the energy contained in moving water mass due to tides. Two types of tidal energy can be extracted: kinetic energy of currents between ebbing and surging tides and potential energy from the difference in height (or head) between high and low tides. The former method - generating energy from tidal currents - is considered much more feasible today than building ocean-based dams or barrages, and many coastal sites worldwide are being examined for their suitability to produce tidal (current) energy.\n\nThe extraction of potential energy involves building a barrage and creating a tidal lagoon. The barrage traps a water level inside a basin. Head is created when the water level outside of the basin or lagoon changes relative to the water level inside. The head is used to drive turbines. In any design this leads to a decrease of tidal range inside the basin or lagoon, implying a reduced transfer of water between the basin and the sea. This reduced transfer of water accounts for the energy produced by the scheme.
941013
Hi. The most efficient way would be to bypass the power to the pump used to raise the water in the first place and use it directly. This would eliminate friction losses and generator losses.
987641
One of the best ideas is a device that uses the motion of the ocean waves to produce energy.  Also, it would be more efficient to simply burn hydrogen as a fuel source as opposed to trying extract the energy created when it bonds with oxygen to create water.  Another is simply burning garbage, I believe a major metropolitan city in Minnesota created a site to do this in the middle of downtown to show that it could be done with minimal side effects on the people living/working there.
140675
Cars powered by ordinary water...Time will come (most likely in the very near future) where water can be separated into its components economically. Water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is a very good fuel (sun's energy comes from hydrogen) and oxygen is needed for efficient combustion...The problem is, the bond between hydrogen and oxygen is so strong that it is still expensive to separate them as of now...Car makers though have started experimenting with cars powered by hydrogen but using fuel cells...Still an expensive proposition.