Water - Here's my Dumb Question for the Day...

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So, I'm standing on my back deck smokin', which is where I do all of my good thinking, and I'm looking at the leaves already starting to turn... like two months early, which leads me to thinking about the drought and water restrictions we are on and then the water cycle we learned about in elementary school, which brings the thought that we probably have too much water bottled and sitting in warehouses which is messing up the whole recycle of water natural plan...

And, then I thought, hey! We know what water is made of, why hasn't someone figured out how to put some hydrogen and oxygen together to make new water?

Is it possible? Is anyone doing that yet?

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It's been done but the cost for the energy required to force the Hydrogen/Oxygen bond makes it very expensive to do. It's cheaper to find "bad water" and filter/purify it than to force the creation of water.

The problem isn't really one of there not being enough water. It's more of an absence of water in some places and an excess of it in others. (People in the midwest don't really want more water at the moment! They're still cleaning up after the recent floods.)

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Ah, so it has been done. Then no doubt one day we will figure out how to do it economically without the high energy.

If it is such a high energy requirement to get the molecules to bond, have scientists pondered what energy source was provided in the original bonding? To make all that water, musta been huge!

And, since water gets recycled, even through sweat, do we ever lose water? If we made water and that manmade water became part of the cycle, what would one guess the result to be? Would we mess up the balance of nature by doing so?

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The problem is finding enough free hydrogen. Plenty of hydrogen sitting around, but it's already in the form of water.

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Hadn't thought of that.

So, when we make hydrogen bombs, the hydrogen has been extracted from water?

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Yup. Moreover, it's heavy water that's been painfully distilled from regular water.

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squinney wrote:

If it is such a high energy requirement to get the molecules to bond, have scientists pondered what energy source was provided in the original bonding? To make all that water, musta been huge!

Quite huge. We call it "The Sun". Razz

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And, since water gets recycled, even through sweat, do we ever lose water? If we made water and that manmade water became part of the cycle, what would one guess the result to be? Would we mess up the balance of nature by doing so?

The sum total of all water on the planet remains fairly constant. Nature would take care of itself if man tried to manipulate that balance.

Water is basically in 3 places. The seas (saltwater), land (subsurface and surface fresh water) and the atomsphere. Most of the hydrogen on the planet is locked up as water (or water vapor) so if you create more fresh water there will be a reduction in either sea water or the water vapor in the atomsphere. But nature tries to keep things in balance so if you pull water from the water vapor in the atmosphere the air becomes drier and that means an increase in evaporation for a net gain of nothing.

But, I don't think anyone thinks there is a shortage of water on a global basis. That isn't trhe problem. The issues are more focused on potable (clean fresh water) water in specific areas. Some places have tried things like desalinatization plants to remove the salt from seawater and create freshwater to resolve their issues but that is expensive too. Right now the most cost efficent means is to pipe water from places where there is an excess to places where there is a shortage.

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The sun!

You're a funny guy. I guess what I meant was the initial force / event. If it were just the sun in it's present location and state, water would still be being made. (Or, is it?)

Once we contaminate the water to a point of it not being healthy to digest (nuclear, chemical, and other contamination where it can't be cleaned for consumption) or where the chemicals we use to clean it are found to be harmful (were we made to ingest these chemicals?) what are we going to do? I don't think we are that far from doing irreversable damage to the supply we have.

They are now reporting that most of the bottled water being sold is actually just tap water, and we are paying billions each year for it! If someone found a way to make completely pure new water we'd go crazy for it.

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Re: Water - Here's my Dumb Question for the Day...

squinney wrote:

And, then I thought, hey! We know what water is made of, why hasn't someone figured out how to put some hydrogen and oxygen together to make new water?

It was the most popular chemistry experiment in highschool -- mix two parts Hydrogen with one part Oxygen, then light with a very long match. The bang you get is enormous!

Alas, it wouldn't work for watering your trees. The reason is that most hydrogen is produced by electrolyzing water in the first place. So for your purpose, it's much more efficient to take water from wherever they produce the hydrogen, transport it directly to where you need it, and save the expensive detour of producing and burning hydrogen in between.

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fishin wrote:

It's been done but the cost for the energy required to force the Hydrogen/Oxygen bond makes it very expensive to do.

This is backwards. If you put O2 and H2 together, it takes very little energy to cause the reaction to proceed very aggressively. (See Hindenburg) There is little free H2 laying around because H2 is so reactive. The more common way we make water is by burning hydrocarbons. If you burn methane for example, you get CH4 + O2 -> CO2 + H2O. We do plenty of hydrocarbon burning already, but it is not an efficient way to "make" water.

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They are now reporting that most of the bottled water being sold is actually just tap water, and we are paying billions each year for it! If someone found a way to make completely pure new water we'd go crazy for it.

You can buy distilled water at just about any grocery store in big cities. You can't get any purer than distilled water. "New" water is just water like "old" water.

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squinney wrote:

So, when we make hydrogen bombs, the hydrogen has been extracted from water?

Yes.

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This reminds me of one of my little "hmmm..." moments. (I'd have 'em when I smoked if I smoked.)

Global warming = polar ice caps melting = more water in the ocean = rising water levels.

Would there be any kind of practical way to build a pipeline system and water filtration to pipe water from the oceans, to areas that need it? (I'm thinking Africa as an example). I'm sure it would be expensive, but "no way in hell" expensive or possible? Would the ingoing part of it (where water is sucked from the ocean) be too destructive, ecologically?

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You'd have to remove the salt, but extracting ocean water is used in parts of the world. Another old idea is hauling icebergs into a port and melting them. Icebergs are made of fresh water. Freezing and evaporation are nature's de-salination plants.

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sozobe wrote:

Would there be any kind of practical way to build a pipeline system and water filtration to pipe water from the oceans, to areas that need it? (I'm thinking Africa as an example). I'm sure it would be expensive, but "no way in hell" expensive or possible? Would the ingoing part of it (where water is sucked from the ocean) be too destructive, ecologically?

I researched the question a few years ago, in the course of fact-checking a favorite environmentalist scare story. ("The world is running out of fresh water. The future will bring terrible wars over water, and more and more nations will crumble under them. ") It turned out that the limiting expense is the desalination of seawater, which currently costs 50 cents to a dollar per cubic meter. (A cubic meter is 246 gallons.) This would be easily affordable for industrial nations; Saudia-Arabia, Kuwait, and other oil-rich desert countries satisfy a large share of their water demand this way. But it isn't yet affordable enough for most of the third-world-nations who need it.

Ecologically, I don't think it would make much of a difference, because the water would flow back sooner or later, one way or another.

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squinney wrote:

The sun! You're a funny guy. I guess what I meant was the initial force / event. If it were just the sun in it's present location and state, water would still be being made. (Or, is it?)

Any element heavier than hydrogen was originally made in the heart of a star. So the oxygen we breathe, and that mixes with hydrogen to make water, was made in a star.

(Well, for all practical purposes. Man-made fusion has added a tiny fraction of heavier atoms, I suppose.)

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Someone invented a device for the military that condenses potable water out of the atmosphere. Fairly efficiently, using some salt as a catalyst. Don't know the $$/liter price, though....

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Interesting, thanks Thomas.

Yeah, I said "water filtration" but I really mean "water treatment plant," which would include desalination. That's the big expense, eh?

Some of it would flow back eventually but would certainly be useful for the places that currently don't have nearly enough water. And it seems like it could make a dent -- if currently arid areas were made into farmland, the water would be retained and more would be added. And maybe that extra flora would help with global warming a bit, itself...

I thought of the iceberg thing too, but seems like we don't want to contribute to their destruction in any significant way.

I was thinking of whether we could get the water soon after it melts, but that'd be a huge problem too. (No way would it be pure fresh water, so it would still need to be treated, and it would need to go a long way, and...)

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sozobe wrote:

Some of it would flow back eventually but would certainly be useful for the places that currently don't have nearly enough water. And it seems like it could make a dent -- if currently arid areas were made into farmland, the water would be retained and more would be added.

Oh yes, it definitely could. And I find it extremely frustrating that people in Africa cannot yet afford such a cheap technology.

sozobe wrote:

And maybe that extra flora would help with global warming a bit, itself...

Probably not. I'm sure could turn the Sahara into farmland. After all, there are neolithic cave drawings showing that it was farmland once. But this would add a lot of water vapor to the currently dry Sahara atmosphere -- and water vapor is a major greenhouse gas. On balance I think it would be worth it, but keep in mind that I'm an irresponsibly complacent oil industry pawn when it comes to global warming.

Sozobe wrote:

I thought of the iceberg thing too, but seems like we don't want to contribute to their destruction in any significant way.

You mean, put the whole icebergs on a ship, bring them to some African harbor and pipe their water to inner Africa? I think that would work, and would cost something between $1 and $5 per barrel. ($8-$40 per cubic meter -- I don't know exactly what the current shipping cost is.) So that would be more expensive than desalination, but far from crazy-expensive from our industrial country perspective. I would prefer that to sucking brackish water into the ship. And by the way, why wouldn't you want to destroy icebergs? The sea dissolves them within months anyway.

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I expect she meant "glaciers."

Why put an iceberg on a ship? It's already floating....

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DrewDad wrote:

Why put an iceberg on a ship? It's already floating....

I guess you could tow it to Africa, but wouldn't it melt by the time you got it there?

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Water - Here's my Dumb Question for the Day...

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