Cold plasma in shipping boats?

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Arugela said:

Hmm, I don't know. maybe that all things start at a 1:1 efficiency. You act as if there is no variance to the existing equipment and that the laws of thermodynamics are constantly simply in play.

No, he doesn't make that assumption. He assumes that all things start at less than 1:1 efficiency. That's why your idea has no merit. There's no 1:1 efficiency in reality, and efficiencies beyond 1:1 are impossible. Laws of thermodynamics provide the best case scenario. Reality is even worse.

[Arugela]

I'm referring to 1:1 between the things added to the ships systems. You are not understanding what is being said [snip]. The propulsion system is not perfectly efficient. It may be very inefficient in a real world application. Any new thing could easily be more efficient or adjust that efficiency. Real world things are often kept because what it takes to make a generic efficient device is not the same as what is realistically efficient in a circumstance. Hence the fuel choice. I'm referring to any added system being 1:1 to alternatives. His premise acts as if the laws of thermal dynamics mean anything to a specific choice because he's acting as if everything starts at the same efficiency inherently in practice. His argument was irrelevant to the conversation.

My questions are from a very simple real world application. It's not that complicated.

Like I said. Try looking into specifics. None of you are even familiar with the potentials of cold plasma by your own admittance. There is nothing absurd about adding it to a boat for a very large amount of reasons. I'm not the one being unreasonable here.

Edited August 7, 2020 by Vanamonde

[HebaruSan]

24 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

There's no 1:1 efficiency in reality, and efficiencies beyond 1:1 are impossible. Laws of thermodynamics provide the best case scenario. Reality is even worse.

Interpreting with the maximum possible generosity, this isn't quite the case. If some natural process has built up a reservoir of potential energy, it could be feasible to draw from it for a lesser energy cost than you ultimately gain. Example, using the O₂ atmosphere of a biologically active planet to source oxidizer in-flight, as is commonly done by jet aircraft on Earth.

But as yet we have nothing like sufficient justification to apply this argument to the OP's idea. We have, again, simply the buzz-word "cold plasma" and not much besides.

Edited August 7, 2020 by HebaruSan

[Guest]

Well, we have an article about water purifiers, which are a very reasonable thing to add to a boat indeed.  Freshwater is quite useful in the middle of the ocean. It still needs power, though.

It is certainly an interesting phenomenon, however, on ships in particular, any lingering SARS-CoV2 will be inactive anyway after three days out of port, and if someone caught it, it'll either show symptoms or peter out by the time the ship gets to its destination. This makes decontaminating ships a waste of time.

22 minutes ago, Arugela said:

The propulsion system is not perfectly efficient. It may be very inefficient in a real world application. Any new thing could easily be more efficient or adjust that efficiency. Real world things are often kept because what it takes to make a generic efficient device is not the same as what is realistically efficient in a circumstance. Hence the fuel choice. I'm referring to any added system being 1:1 to alternatives. His premise acts as if the laws of thermal dynamics mean anything to a specific choice because he's acting as if everything starts at the same efficiency inherently in practice.

You provide the numbers that your overengineered plasma propulsion is in any way better than a conventional diesel and screw arrangement. MHD ships have, so far, been proven not to be. Your proposition is convoluted and offers no practical advantages.

Laws of thermodynamics mean everything to a specific choice. Diesel engines, for instance, are governed by the Diesel cycle, which is a sequence of thermodynamic transitions that results in work being produced. Any thermal engine is governed by a thermodynamic cycle. Carnot cycle is the most efficient cycle possible. As for non-thermal engines, they generally run on electricity, which you need to generate, usually by a thermal generator, either on shore or onboard. It's already being done on some ships such as submarines, diesel-electric drives can eke out some extra efficiency, but it's not a miracle drive.

Edited August 7, 2020 by Guest

[DDE]

@Arugela, I believe you've been ensnared by the hydrogen energy racket.

Cold plasma is indeed a proposed method for water-splitting. One of hundreds of them. The problem is that the recombination of the resultant H-O mixture will still recover much less energy than what was invested into exciting the 'cold' plasma. Maybe it's a bit more efficient than ordinary electrolysis, but still, we're talking about transfering energy to a different storage medium - one that finds it difficult to compete with simple electric batteries.

The reason you're arousing so much hostility is that you're trying to hook that up with cold plasma-based decontamination... at which point you sound like every other peddler of panaceas.

4 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

MHD ships have, so far, been proven not to be.

If I understood the argument correctly, the MHD was for converting plasma (back) into electricity - note the question about whether cold plasma works with those. I had assumed the OP wasn't actually proposing a caterpillar drive.

Edited August 7, 2020 by DDE

[Arugela]

Why don't you actually read the things I've said more carefully. You have misread everything I've stated or asked. I'm not to blame for that. It doesn't even sound like you read the OP and just started blasting everything you skimmed over like the other participants. I proposed sticking them on nozzles to cover food in plasma or along any system designed to use them... I'm not responsible if you refuse to read anything before commenting.

I'm talking about all potential feasibility. It's a ship. You can stick anything anywhere. Thing in the real world don't work like a small science experiments. There are large interconnected systems that can be done anyway you want. A ship is a large metal structure with stuff attached inside. This is not complicated.

There was nothing about MHD being used as a primary source of anything. Although that would be a possibility. MHD could be used along any cold plasma system that directly flows gas or plasma to a location at minimum. This would reduce or amend energy costs. It's normally done. It can be used in millions of ways in millions of circumstances. This is how you design a real system.

From what I've seen there are a lot of ways to utilize pretty much anything involving plasma production. You can invert many methods to make or amend a system. If you have such a system and it gets any amount of fuel. why not us it to at minimum make a fuel additive. That is a simple proposal. I'm sure there are much more specific and varied uses.

Ok, yes it was to produce electricity...(I'm tired atm.) It was simple example.

Yes, if it's not as efficient change it out for something else. But functionality could be added. There is a lot of stuff it could be used for. Cold plasma is not a buzzword. The temperature difference is extremely applicable. The easy examples are hand washers compared to other systems. If you can use it for enough thing it may out way other systems. Assuming a lot. If it can use resources it might be useful for more interesting things on ships. Ships are a potentially interesting testbed...

You don't have to completely replace fuel etc. I'm not saying you have too. It's a discussion on feasibility. I thought it would be interesting...

Edited August 7, 2020 by Arugela

[HebaruSan]

Just now, Arugela said:

Why don't you actually read the things I've said more carefully. You have misread everything I've stated or asked. I'm not to blame for that.

Answer follow-up questions, then. Where does the cold plasma come from????

[Arugela]

52 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

Answer follow-up questions, then. Where does the cold plasma come from????

Once again, I already answered your question. Wherever you want it too. it's not that specific of a proposal. [snip] . I'm just starting a simple conversation of the feasibility for new applications. Everything I mentioned were examples to get the conversation rolling. That shouldn't be hard to infer. I directly stated so.

Here is another link. Read up at your leisure: https://www.science.lu/fr/my-research-90-seconds/cold-plasma-what-it-and-how-can-it-be-used

Edited August 7, 2020 by James Kerman
redacted by a moderator

[DDE]

41 minutes ago, Arugela said:

Wherever you want it too. it's not that specific of a proposal. [snip]

No.

It's the same as the old NASA joke about electric rocketry being an awesome concept for a Mars mission if one were able to find a power cable long enough. Logistic matter. Usually more so than engineering.

[snip]

Edited August 7, 2020 by James Kerman
redacted by a moderator

[HebaruSan]

1 minute ago, Arugela said:

Once again, I already answered your question.

Where and when did you answer it? I've read everything you've said on this thread, and I have not yet seen an answer to this question. It's important if you hope to use this substance to generate energy to be used for propulsion and other purposes on board the ship.

"Wherever you want it too" is not any kind of answer to anything.

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, DDE said:

If I understood the argument correctly, the MHD was for converting plasma (back) into electricity - note the question about whether cold plasma works with those. I had assumed the OP wasn't actually proposing a caterpillar drive.

I was referring to Red October caterpillar drive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_drive

MHD propulsion for ships was tried, but just didn't work very well.

[Gargamel]

Thread is locked for moderator review.

[Vanamonde]

Okay, thread re-opened after people have had some time to cool their tempers. Please keep it polite this time. 

[mikegarrison]

On 8/6/2020 at 5:07 PM, Arugela said:

Look up how much energy is produced by a ship hull going through the water. There is massive potential for electricity.

I will try one last time, because I think this may be the fundamental misunderstanding.

A ship moving through the water *costs* energy. It doesn't produce it.

[Arugela]

No it cost energy in one location(the engines/props). It produced it in another(hull or other natural generators.). You have to unsimplified the formula and look at it in real world terms. Lots of other things like solar are at play in the hull that are very powerful and potentially dangerous normally. You are not understanding how thing work in real life. think of the hull like a giant generator. It has nothing to do with the motion unless it adds to the equation. It minimally has to do with the atmosphere and other factors including the hull shape etc. Again using a formula simply has nothing to do with real world application. Look it up. the ship is simultaneously producing energy already but it's not being utilized most likely. Unless they started diverting this to internal systems normally. It was traditionally grounded. Look up the history of metal boats.

In this case something normally grounded could be diverted to power a subsystem or do various things.

If you want to argue look it up and go over the numbers. I'm not going to change my argument because you said so. If you want to argue prove me wrong and go over it.

They could also design ships to maximize these sorts of factors. I think the normally avoid it because of crew safety.

One of the methods for food decontamination was to package it in a gas then pass current over it. If you controlled any thing from the hull you could periodically do this to the entire cargo at once with the press of a button in essence for free from the hull's generation of power. Install a capacitor(or general battery packs.) or something and let it fill and give a controlled blast of current. You could similarly use a storm with a lightning rod. Obviously there are a lot of other factors in play. But there are a very large amount of very applicable methods. And relatively mature ones as this is just cold plasma and plasma application isn't a new thing.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4016545/

 

Quote

 

Dielectric barrier discharge

Radio frequency plasma jets

Pulsed direct current-driven plasma jets

 

What if we had dentistry boats floating around the planet fixing teeth? It might help with the decay of the british empire! (I wonder if it does whitening or cleaning for more sensitive teeth.) Maybe it could be used to replace teeth brushes in some ways. Aren't there traditionally heavy problems potentially with dental issues at sea. If a ship gets stranded it could be useful if you can still produce power. If the ships hull or other passive means are used it still may be useful(or batteries and solar.). It might be good for on board dental care on ships. Especially more periodic cleaning.

Quote

Mahasneh et al. used Low Temperature Atmospheric plasma to kill Porphyromonas gingivalis, which is a periodontal pathogen associated with periodontal disease [57]. The plasma pencil created by Laroussi et al. was used for the experiment. They observed a significant increase in a dose dependent manner in the inactivation of P. gingivalis in the treatment group compared with control. Kang et al. used RF atmospheric plasma to inactivate Streptococcus mutans[100]. The gas used was a mix of Argon and Hydrogen Peroxide. They observed that the inactivation efficacy was highly dependent on the Hydroxyl radical concentration. Moreover, by adding hydrogen peroxide to the gas, they decreased the ozone formation that is naturally formed in CAP. Ozone has bactericidal properties, but is toxic which is a disadvantage for the use in the clinic.

I wonder if it could be used for hull cleaning. Might be useful for various odd things in maintenance. Who knows. Could it be used to clean pipes or internal in a ship to any extent that normally require replacement or removal or diving? Water is already a conductor and easily turned into a gas. cold plasma still might be useful as hot plasma might be too hot and deteriorate surfaces. Especially on old boats. Unless rust is also taken off easily with cold plasma. Maybe it can be used for delicate cleaning in various circumstances?! might be odd situation where a substance spills. It could amend or replace current safety measures if it's useful. Particularly for people.

It also generally replaces UV things in many areas to get rid of cancer concerns. Although I don't know if it has it's own problems. They are looking into that for water and air filtration.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Arugela

[mikegarrison]

Sigh. As I said, "one last time". I'm out.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Arugela said:

No it cost energy in one location(the engines/props). It produced it in another(hull or other natural generators.). You have to unsimplified the formula and look at it in real world terms. Lots of other things like solar are at play in the hull that are very powerful and potentially dangerous normally. You are not understanding how thing work in real life. think of the hull like a giant generator. It has nothing to do with the motion unless it adds to the equation. It minimally has to do with the atmosphere and other factors including the hull shape etc. Again using a formula simply has nothing to do with real world application. Look it up. the ship is simultaneously producing energy already but it's not being utilized most likely. Unless they started diverting this to internal systems normally. It was traditionally grounded. Look up the history of metal boats.

You look up basic physics first. Hull does not generate energy. It gets energy from somewhere else, and dissipates it. Before you start talking about your "unsimplified real world formulas", do everyone a favor and run the numbers through your "unsimplified" equations. You'll get exactly the same result as the people using a "simplified" formula, minus a small correction factor. The truth is, the formulas that you decry as "simplified" do, in fact, reflect real world really closely. That's why they're used. You can't get magic increase in power by incorporating a more complex equation. End of the story. The only thing producing energy in the ship is the powerplant. It may receive some energy from the sun, which can be collected using solar panels, but it's good for lighting the lightbulbs on the bridge and maybe, on bigger ships, running the kitchen stove. 

Your "dentist ships" and "cleaning ships" are bad ideas for a simple reason: the problems you describe do not exist. There are no problems with teeth at sea, not anymore. Nobody disinfects ships with UV, nobody disinfects cargo holds enroute, because guess what, nobody needs to do it. There is no reason to put cold plasma apparatus on a ship, except to clean water for the crew to drink. 

Edited August 8, 2020 by Guest

[Gargamel]

Alright, Arugela, I looked at the sources you quoted.

First off, Researchgate has been listed as non-reliable.  While this only means the reader needs to find more sources to back up a paper posted there, one of the things they were dinged for was supporting "magical impacts".   Secondly, one of the links you provided was merely a question with some random answers, not a paper backing your hypothesis.  These don't invalidate the hypothesis, but they do bring it under heavy scrutiny. 

The method listed in your one paper is for creating fertilizer from sulfuric acid, which required a source of pure water.   This involves using N₂ gas to form the cold plasma, interacting with a sulfuric acid solution , resulting in the 2N binding with the freed 6H from the reaction to form 2NH₃, ammonia.   The ammonia would then be used to make fertilizer.  Extra O₂ from this reaction appeared to be a byproduct and was off gassed. 

So yes, if the paper can be trusted and the system fleshed out, this method is a more efficient method of electrolysis for separating Hydrogen and Oxygen from water, for the creation of ammonia used in fertilizer production. 

But....

The method requires a sulfuric acid solution.   This means any ship trying to employ this method would require the mechanisms to create sulfuric acid, since we are using sea water in our hypothesis.   This means more machinery, more energy, and a source of the sulfur, all of which takes up valuable cargo space.   Then you need pure water.  Sea water is dirty.  Ships already have a method of desalinating water, but only for human consumption and the various machinery that requires it.  The electrolysis you are trying to achieve would require a desalination plant on an industrial scale, again taking up more energy and valuable cargo space.  

Then we have the resulting Ammonia to deal with.  Since the method requires using N₂ to form the plasma, we are forced to deal with the resulting ammonia.  So now we need a method to again break up the NH₃ into N and 3H.  Again, more energy and valuable storage space.  Dealing with the waste N₂ is easy, we can recycle it back into the system.  But we need a source to start with, and assuming it's not 100% efficient, a way to produce more.  Drawing N2 from the atmosphere would require more machinery, which takes up more energy and valuable cargo space. 

The electrolysis system itself requires platinum electrodes.   Having worked in the platinum electrode business for a while, I can tell you first hand that those electrodes are expensive.  Just a rough guess at the cost of the electrodes, based on a guess of the volume of gas produced, would run ~$100,000 a year.   Most electrolysis cells like this are setup to be run in batches, where you might have 20 cells in a system, but 2 of them are not in use as the electrodes are getting replaced at any given time.  This would require more staff and provisions, taking up valuable cargo space.

So, even assuming we are energy neutral, which is not possible given all the extra machinery required to make this system function, but even assuming we are energy neutral, the loss of cargo space on a cargo ship and increased operating costs would not even come close to being offsett in fuel savings.    

There is no way any shipping company would consider this a smart investment.   They would be far better off installing hard sails, roto-sails, and solar panels on their ships. 

The bottom line is though, this electrolysis method requires a third gas to form the plasma, which will inevitably bind with either the Oxygen or Hydrogen, which then requires another system to separate that, making the whole thing not energy efficient. 

Edited August 8, 2020 by Gargamel

[Arugela]

I wasn't posting the source to state it was to be used. I was posting it to give ideas of the range of use and potential sources for things like electricity used. I wasn't trying to be specific. Except the one with gas in the bags as it might be useful because of the general ability to simply apply electricity. I'm not trying to be that specific. If it works in one way it will have a range of potential other variations.

I'm assuming that is not the extent of the application. That is why I asked what is the extremity. How far can it be taken. There are probably other ways to do it. I'm assuming that method is either for testing or for a specific environment/application.

I'm also not stating a single thing to be applied. I'm talking about the range of potential applications in general. Different circumstances there will be different methods.

Why do you people keep thinking I'm proposing any hypothesis. That was not part of the post at all. You guys are the one insinuating things.

And yes hulls of metal ships do create massive amounts of energy. Empty ships can be very dangerous because of it. It was a big issue when we switched to all metal hulls. Part of it has to do with the shape of the hull naturally.

Why do you think the way to achieve that is with the exact methods used in the video? Or that you even need to use those exact parts?

Edited August 8, 2020 by Arugela

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, Arugela said:

Why do you think the way to achieve that is with the exact methods used in the video?

In the video you linked, that I watched, they ran small currents of electricity through a plastic wrapper to sterilize food.    Not sure how this applies to electrolysis or the creation of free energy on cargo ships. 

 

1 hour ago, Arugela said:

Why do you people keep thinking I'm proposing any hypothesis.

I quote, from your OP:

Quote

Could the cold plasma be used to actually propel the boat?

That would be a hypothesis, or a conjecture if you will.

 

I think the confusion we are having is we are unclear of what you are trying to say.   Are you proposing using cold plasma to create fuel for a boat underway?   If so, the answer is a simple no, not efficiently or cost effectively.

If your proposal is that we change sterilization techniques for food storage, then of course, there are a number of ways to sterilize food stuffs for transport, one of which seems to be cold plasma.   But that wouldn't deal with the shipping companies, but the packaging companies.  

I think we are having an issue with the number of arguments being presented here.  I think we should try to find one point of conversation and go with that, instead of taking an idea in multiple different directions at once. 

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, Gargamel said:

I think the confusion we are having is we are unclear of what you are trying to say.   Are you proposing using cold plasma to create fuel for a boat underway?   If so, the answer is a simple no, not efficiently or cost effectively.

It's worth elaborating on this. It is impossible to make a net gain in available fuel by using energy derived from that fuel. Period. Perpetual motion is impossible. There is no way to do this.

If you somehow harvest energy from other sources -- the sun, the natural wind (not the "wind" from the motion of the boat), the natural waves (not the waves from the motion of the boat) -- then you can either supplement or completely eliminate the need for fuel. Sailboats do this all the time. But there is no way to manipulate "efficiencies" to burn fuel and use that energy to make more fuel than you burned in a closed system. It can't be done.

An open system is different. For instance, you can pump oil out of the ground and end up with more oil than you used to run the pumps, but that's because you didn't actually make the oil. The oil was there all along -- it only needed to be pumped.

[Arugela]

9 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

It's worth elaborating on this. It is impossible to make a net gain in available fuel by using energy derived from that fuel. Period. Perpetual motion is impossible. There is no way to do this.

If you somehow harvest energy from other sources -- the sun, the natural wind (not the "wind" from the motion of the boat), the natural waves (not the waves from the motion of the boat) -- then you can either supplement or completely eliminate the need for fuel. Sailboats do this all the time. But there is no way to manipulate "efficiencies" to burn fuel and use that energy to make more fuel than you burned in a closed system. It can't be done.

An open system is different. For instance, you can pump oil out of the ground and end up with more oil than you used to run the pumps, but that's because you didn't actually make the oil. The oil was there all along -- it only needed to be pumped.

And if you understood anything being said that is irrelevant to anything in this conversation besides you and several people insinuating this has anything to do with any free energy concept(The resource is free itself.). This can replace other things or be gained for no money as in the cost of the resource. I has nothing to do with the cost or energy of obtaining it!!!! I don't see how a person with a real life engineering job could even jump to that conclusion. It's absurd!

This has nothing to do with net gaining more than you put out. It has to do with efficiency or changing methods. At it's extremity doing something for free within context has nothing to do with free energy. It's the same as solar. It's free to the extent the sun freely gives out energy. It's not complicated. If you can collect water it's free up to that point. There is no mention of free energy anywhere in this conversation!!

I'm just starting a light fun conversation about the potential applications. The natural extent of it also. Not just financially feasible under a set of circumstance. Especially as that can change in the real world.

I'm sorry, but yes you can manipulate efficiency. You collect something. Make a fuel additive and you add it to the fuel and burn it for longer travel time. I'm referring to real world end results. You know, how you think to actually design something in a normal circumstance.

And quit nitpicking over terms. Next you're going to say you don't get more travel time because it increase the explosion in the engine instead of the obvious that is means less fuel can be used and hence more fuel exists to travel longer.

[snip]

Too simplify this more for you. It's about the net efficiency of the system or whatever else can be done with the technology. It's not even a specific proposal or idea. [snip]

Edited August 8, 2020 by Vanamonde

[DDE]

22 minutes ago, Arugela said:

You collect something. Make a fuel additive

...which costs you energy. I.e. fuel.

[Guest]

Yes, you can collect water for free. Then what? You cannot get energy out of water in any way. Period. Water is bound together very tightly. Cold plasma or not, you will not gain any efficiency by adding splitting water into the process, because that step alone is not efficient. Increasing propulsion efficiency may be possible, but your method doesn't do that. 

You cannot make a fuel additive out of water, either. There is nothing to be found in the water that could make the engine be so much more efficient that it would justify the energy being spent.

[Arugela]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel_enhancement

And yes the energy can in essence be obtained for free if it exists in a system and is not being utilized..... It's not important if it's net use of energy is higher if in the correct circumstances. Especially if it gains some other function sufficiently. You can become what you consider inefficient in a simplified sense and still be useful or more useful in practice. And many other things. It's called broadening the scope of the design. I'm not talking about a system in an insular manner. I'm referring to potential system design.

And that was just a random off suggestion. It's a purposeful extremity just for the sake of exploration.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Arugela