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This sounds really dumb. “Let’s just burn an essential structural metal for fuel! What could go wrong?”
by hungryforcodes 6y ago
This sounds really dumb. “Let’s just burn an essential structural metal for fuel! What could go wrong?”
- craftkiller 6y ago> So what happens to all that rust? This is where things get clever, because the iron isn’t just a fuel that’s consumed— it’s energy storage that can be recharged. And to recharge it, you take all that Fe2O3, strip out the oxygen, and turn it back into Fe, ready to be burned again. It’s not easy to do this, but much of the energy and work that it takes to pry those Os away from the Fes get returned to you when you burn the Fe the next time. The idea is that you can use the same iron over and over again, discharging it and recharging it just like you would a battery.
- theandrewbailey 6y agoHow so? Iron is the second-most abundant metal on Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
- hobby-coder-guy 6y agoWhat are you smoking?
- dang 6y ago"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- pluto9 6y agoOil is used in lots of plastics, which are pretty essential structural materials these days. But we still burn it for fuel. And iron is far more abundant. Also, I'm no chemist but I imagine it's a lot easier to strip an oxygen atom or two off of an iron oxide molecule than to string together a bunch of water and atmospheric CO2 molecules into a complex hydrocarbon. So we can convert the combustion byproducts back into fuel much more easily with iron.
- hungryforcodes 6y agoFair enough, these are all good points.