Cold plasma in shipping boats?

[DDE]

11 hours ago, Arugela said:

And that brings up another idea

 

11 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

@Arugela, let me save you some time and aggravation: Presume that the answer to any new questions from you is, "No, that won't work."

 

[Codraroll]

I've read through the entire thread now and I still am not exactly sure what's going on. But it seems like the OP wants to use cold plasma for something, anything, and with that conclusion in mind tries to deduce a question for which it could be the answer. It's a little like me asking "could we make a useful machine out of LEGO and integrate it on the ship?" Any answers to that question is either a flat-out "no", or "Yes in theory, but it would be vastly more impractical than almost anything else".

Oh, and by the way, there's a method of extracting energy from a ship in water that doesn't involve the engine: chemical decomposition of the hull itself. A hull made out of pure sodium could yield quite a bit of energy that way, even when the ship is lying quietly at anchor. You'd possibly have time to, I don't know, fry a hamburger directly on the inside of the hull before the whole ship collapsed on itself in a mess of boiling water. Hey, I didn't say it was a good idea.

[mikegarrison]

25 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

it seems like the OP wants to use cold plasma for something, anything, and with that conclusion in mind tries to deduce a question for which it could be the answer

Yup.

It also seems like he heard somewhere that cold plasma might be used to increase the efficiency of separating hydrogen from water, and jumped to the idea (that so many other people have also jumped to with respect to making hydrogen from water) that this means "free fuel".

It never means "free fuel". Whether or not it's true that the efficiency could be improved over simple electrolysis, it can't be improved to be >1.

Edited August 9, 2020 by mikegarrison

[Gargamel]

6 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Presumably, it's more convenient than those little wind generators used on some sailing yachts (I heard some negative opinions about those)

They have their uses, but they also have their limitations.  No wind while at anchorage?  No wind power.   Running dead down wind, at almost the speed of the wind?  The apparent wind speed is almost zero, creating almost zero power.   But once the apparent wind, in any scenario, reaches the generators minimum threshold, they produce power.    Long distance cruising yachts are not designed nor rigged for speed usually, with lots of windage from dinghies and other items stowed on the deck.  This often creates good apparent wind speed when a cruiser is on long a sail, as it can rarely keep up with the wind.   Since the drag losses on boat speed from a small wind turbine are minimal compared to the rest of a cruiser's windage, the fuel savings from not having to run a generator (as much) do tend to add up over time.    These generators do usually pay for themselves fairly quickly. 

Most cruisers have a combination of small wind turbines and solar panels to offset the fuel costs of running a generator:

https://svdelos.com/sailing-videos/system-overview-for-solar-wind-and-lithium-batteries-electrical-boat-tech/

FWIW, the captain of the boat (the one writing the article and video) is an Electrical Engineer. 

Edited August 9, 2020 by Gargamel

[mikegarrison]

10 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

They have their uses, but they also have their limitations.  No wind while at anchorage?  No wind power.   Running dead down wind, at almost the speed of the wind?  The apparent wind speed is almost zero, creating almost zero power.   But once the apparent wind, in any scenario, reaches the generators minimum threshold, they produce power.    Long distance cruising yachts are not designed nor rigged for speed usually, with lots of windage from dinghies and other items stowed on the deck.  This often creates good apparent wind speed when a cruiser is on long a sail, as it can rarely keep up with the wind.   Since the drag losses on boat speed from a small wind turbine are minimal compared to the rest of a cruiser's windage, the fuel savings from not having to run a generator (as much) do tend to add up over time.    These generators do usually pay for themselves fairly quickly. 

Most cruisers have a combination of small wind turbines and solar panels to offset the fuel costs of running a generator:

https://svdelos.com/sailing-videos/system-overview-for-solar-wind-and-lithium-batteries-electrical-boat-tech/

FWIW, the captain of the boat (the one writing the article and video) is an Electrical Engineer. 

I'm pretty sure I've seen that boat.

[Gargamel]

1 minute ago, mikegarrison said:

I'm pretty sure I've seen that boat.

Might have, they're pretty high profile on Youtube, it's one of my guilty pleasures.   And when they come into a port, their patrons end up throwing a pretty big party. 

[mikegarrison]

Just now, Gargamel said:

Might have, they're pretty high profile on Youtube, it's one of my guilty pleasures.   And when they come into a port, their patrons end up throwing a pretty big party. 

No, I mean in person. Moored in Seattle. Might have been another sailboat with a similarly big solar panel, though.

[Gargamel]

Just now, mikegarrison said:

No, I mean in person. Moored in Seattle. Might have been another sailboat with a similarly big solar panel, though.

Most likely.   He bought Delos in '09 in Seattle after selling all his posessions, refit it, and then hasn't been back. They're currently "stuck" in the Bahamas during the pandemic.   But I used them as an example because the video and explanation is very well done, and they are a typical design for a small/medium cruising yacht.

[mikegarrison]

20 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Most likely.   He bought Delos in '09 in Seattle after selling all his posessions, refit it, and then hasn't been back. They're currently "stuck" in the Bahamas during the pandemic.   But I used them as an example because the video and explanation is very well done, and they are a typical design for a small/medium cruising yacht.

Ah. If it hasn't been in Seattle since 2009, I don't think it's the boat I'm thinking of. It's been a few years since I saw the sailboat with the big solar panels, but I don't think it's been 10 years. ... Although, it could have been 10 years.

A friend of mine was a big "Deadliest Catch" fan, and we went down to Ballard so she could take pictures of the fishing boats that feature on the show. When we were down there we saw a sailboat with a really big solar panel. But I think the sailboat may not have been a big two-mast job like that one. Anyway, Deadliest Catch started in 2005, so this could have been in 2009.

Guess it doesn't matter.

Edited August 9, 2020 by mikegarrison

[Guest]

On 8/8/2020 at 11:56 PM, Arugela said:

What if you only apply it when moving with the flow of water and it's doing part of the work?! You could even turn off the engines and sacrifice time with a large intake of the hulls energy potential and use existing energy. What about other oddities in the flow of water on a minute scale? Could they be utilized easily?

No, they couldn't, because they only cause losses of energy. You can never get gains from them. 

As for using ocean currents for powering the ship, that is not really possible, because the water carries the ship with it. When a ship is drifting with the currents, there is very little difference between its speed and speed of water it is in. It's not enough to generate any sort of useful power.

Quote

The point is the boat is moving in a large existing system that could be accounted for and utilized. The ship is not an isolated system. Why do you have to be moving for this. What if you use it while sitting in dock.

When sitting in dock, you can just pull an electrical cable from land.