Carbon, A Dirty Story
Carbon is everywhere, in combination. By itself, it is an inert, black solid. Coal, charcoal and the soot insider the glass on a coal oil lamp are all fairly pure carbon. Yes, diamonds will burn.
Mix carbon and oxygen, set fire and the result is carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide contributes to global warming. Un-burnt carbon does not.
A hydrocarbon fuel is a mixture of hydrogen and carbon.
Hydrogen is the good guy. Burn hydrogen and you get water.
The various hydrocarbon fuels are different in only one way that we care about. Natural gas is mostly methane, one carbon to four hydrogen. Burn it and the result is two water for each carbon dioxide
Propane is about the same as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and heavy fuel oil. The mixture there is about two hydrogen to one carbon. Burn these fuels and the water is one to one with carbon dioxide.
Move on to coal and, depending on the grade of coal, the amount of hydrogen is relatively small. The result is smoke that is mostly carbon dioxide.
All the other various things we burn result in mixtures of water and carbon dioxide.
Add energy to any of these fuels and you can separate out various parts, including separating the hydrogen from the carbon.
Your body does this inside your cells when you “ burn “ your “ carbohydrate “ food. The result is the same. You exhale water and carbon dioxide.
What we need is a machine that sits, plugged in, beside your furnace or hot water tank or hydrogen car, and removes the carbon from the fuel before you burn the resulting hydrogen.
We could refine hydrogen from water, like in science class, but starting with a hydrocarbon fuel requires much less energy
Once a week you would put your inert, harmless carbon out with the garbage, to be land-filled or sunk to the bottom of the sea. Professor Bob
November 27th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Y’know, is ancient times,carbon, in the form of coal oil lamp soot, was not wasted, but was used by football players to enhance their beautiful eyes, with a smear under said baby blues.
Now, if you look at football players, you’ll notice they have custom made stick on patches under their eyes, complete with logos!
For fuck’s sake! This is not only outrageous, it’s goddamned sissified!
btw, I didn’t know diamonds would burn. Can anyone out there loan me some of theirs to experiment with? Kids, go look in Mom’s jewelry box, and send me the bright, sparkly critters, c/o The Mayor, Mitchieville.
Thank you.
November 27th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Anthracite, dmorris, look up anthracite. It is coal, but very hard … really a messy, impure form of diamond. And it has great caloric value; great for making steel!
November 28th, 2008 at 4:20 am
Yes, dmorris, make sure those diamonds go through my hands before they get to yours. I’ll make sure you get them, you can always count on me.
November 28th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Perfesser, I see you are another one of those guys with a thing against carbon, why’s that because its black? Huh. And you want to drown it you meany, yes you!
I think we all know what that is, it’s it’s carbonism thats what it is, and the CHRC will be notified.
That’s why science has such a bad name in canadjun universities. We will not tolerate bigotry or elementry or funding of common disease charities.