CA wants cars to go all electric and then tells people not to charge them!

There are some nuclear power plants on grids that can’t take all the nuclear power plant’s output during certain periods. So the excess nuclear electrical generation is used to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen gas. It is particularly desirable to steel plants.

Energy is needed to break the hydrogen bonds in water, methane, or whatever other source someone starts with. Sometimes a catalyst can be used to reduce the energy required to decompose the chemical. You mentioned electrolysis as a way to crack water. Add electrical energy, collect the hydrogen and release or collect the oxygen. Heating water can reduce the amount of electricity to break the bonds and catalysts line nickel and iron can do that as well. Here’s a place to start reading about it.

We made hydrogen at home for fun. Easy but I don’t recall the steps, not sure what we did with it after we made it. We did Co2, vinager and baking soda I think and an aluminum foil trough to put out a candle. Other fun stuff I cannot remember, probably would not have done it if we had video games and cellphones!

Yes but look at all the fun you would have missed. :laughing: :smiley:

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I know what I did! I exploded it! 8th grade science class. We electrolytically disassociated the hydrogen and oxygen into glass bottles, then we lit the hydrogen and watched it explode out of the bottle. Wide mouth bottle, BTW. Great fun for a 13 year old, AND my science teacher was a Pirate. Pittsburg Pirate, that is. My aunt Dorothy loved them and called them her Bucs. Stream of consciousness? Yes!

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A prof created H2 by putting a piece of sodium in an open dish containing soapy water. The bubbles contained the H2. He then lit the bubbles - BANG! Broke the dish!

This is a real issue with hydrogen fueled car. H2 is explosive at almost all concentrations, unlike gasoline fumes. And H2 is harder to contain.

It’s the electrons in the hydrogen atom that’s the source of the energy. Electrons spin, and they are more stable if there’s two of them that spin in opposite directions. (Helicopter blades are often paired, opposite spins, for the same reason.) This effect makes the electrons have more energy when H is either connected (chemically bonded) to another H (H2), or via a neutral intermediate C (CH2). In Water (H2O), the H’s electrons prefer to pair up to the electrons in the O. H2O is more stable than H2, which is the same thing as saying H2O has less energy in its electrons.

Gasoline is chemically modeled as CH2, and the electrons in the two H’s like to pair up, so its fairly easy to separate them from the C. CH2 => C + H2. How exactly that’s done, hmmm … I think one way to do it is with platinum acting as a catalyst. This is the reason gasoline companies prefer Hydrogen fueled cars.

George, you wandering a bit far afield…helicopters??

It’s a fun experiment to fly toy helicopters. If you have an chance, compare flying one with a single blade, vs two blades which spin in opposite directions. The latter will considerably be easier to fly.

Nothing in those articles says that you can extract h.\hydrogen for less energy than you can get by burning it.

Such a system would violate the laws of physics.

Remember cold fusion? Don’t listen to chemists talking about physics.

Car charging is set to default to not charge from 3pm-9pm in cali. So you are not using power at high demand time. You can override it though.

I visited Notre Dame University one time. That’s in South Bend isn’t it? If so, SB seemed to be a fairly small city. Costco? Haven’t been there since Covid began. Too crowded.

I visited South Bend a few years ago, to visit the Studebaker National Museum.
That experience was really enjoyable, and the city itself–while being very… unexciting… was not an area that I perceived as being any more dangerous than any other rust-belt city in the Mid-West.

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Yeah I been to both several times and even sampled their accommodations. It was not a place known for great innovations. Happy to leave.

I visited our local library today to take back some Hemmings and was surprised to see two free charging stations. Then I saw that they are for village employees only.

I don’t think they are very fast though because they allow 24 hour parking at them.