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> Sodium is a likely candidate, and it's as cheap and available as salt. If you split salt into sodium and chlorine, and use the sodium for batteries, what do
by leereeves 4y ago
> Sodium is a likely candidate, and it's as cheap and available as salt.
If you split salt into sodium and chlorine, and use the sodium for batteries, what do you do with the chlorine?
- unionpivo 4y agoDump it into Californians tap water supply apparently :) On serious note, Chlorine is widely use chemical, used in cleaning products, bleaching paper and cloth, pesticides , rubber, and some solvents.
- eloff 4y agoChlorine has lots of industrial uses, so I imagine you sell it. If you produce enough as a by product the cost will go insanely low. If you had to dump it, you'd probably react it with something cheap to make it inert. This would generate energy, it's akin to combustion with oxygen. You could use that energy to decrease the energy requirements of splitting the NaCl in the first step.
- namibj 4y agoFor example, you could use it to turn calcium carbonate AKA limestone into calcium chloride, which is rather harmless. You would get carbon dioxide out of this.
- leereeves 4y agoThen what do you do with the CO2, which we already have too much of? Something that might work on a small scale could become an ecological threat on the scale of a billion electric cars.
- samatman 4y agoUse carbonate, which doesn't have this problem. This would be preferred anyway: HCl is nasty, and carbon dioxide is not.
- xhkkffbf 4y agoBleach. Clorox sells lots of it.