Spinoff (unlikely, perhaps) from a current thread on electromagnetic energy and binding energy “contained”/released from the same material under different assumptions.
Let’s start off, for my peabrain-level mind, boiling seltzer compared with boiling water. What does the differential comprise in the mix of surface tension at the bubble/liquid interface, the gaseous CO[sub]2[/sub] energy itself–what else am I missing?-- to heat to vaporizing the whole shebang?
And using seltzer–or H[sub]2[/sub]O–versus Deuterium as a fusion source?
Technically … boiling water absorbs energy … around 2.2 kJ/kg … CO[sub]2[/sub] absorbs around 1/2 kJ/kg (actually that’s the heat of sublimation) … all trivial compared to fusing a kg of hydrogen into helium … E = (1 kg) x (9 x 10[sup]16[/sup] m[sup]2[/sup]/s[sup]2[/sup]) = 9 x 10[sup]13[/sup] kJ …
It should be understood that in carbonated water, the carbon dioxide gas that gives the liquid its effervescent quality (‘fizziness’) is suspended in the water but does not react with the water. (This isn’t strictly true as small amount of carbonic acid will be formed giving carbonated beverages their acidic ‘bite’ but from a thermodynamic perspective the amount of energy consumed and released is negligible). Carbon dioxide is already a gas at atmospheric pressures and tends to evaporated out of solution spontaneously, hence why soda drinks become flat over a period of a few hours, and if you’ve noticed, they tend to become flat faster in warm temperatures. At temperatures approaching the boiling point of water, nearly all CO[SUB]2[/SUB] will be forced out of solution taking away very little energy which would be measurable in a calorimeter but would be noise in terms of the energy input to achieve gas phase of water.
As for the use of carbonated or plain water as a source of fuel for thermonuclear (‘fast’) fusion via some containment and heating method such as inertial or magnetic confinement, it is a complete non-starter. Nuclear fusion conditions require the fuel to be a highly ionized atomic plasma extremely high pressures and temperatures which would prevent any molecular bonds from forming. Carbon and oxygen, which are atomic numbers of 6 and 8, have low energetic yield and a high Coulomb potentials. In stars significantly more massive than our Sun, the CNO cycle (or more properly, cycles, because there are several), carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen may catalyze the fusion of four protons simultaneously, but the reaction is relatively slow while requiring higher temperatures than the normal proton-proton reaction which powers our Sun. Neither reaction is suitable for terrestrial fusion for power production, especially in comparison with D-D, D-T, and even D-[SUP]3[/SUP]He fusion in terms of fusion energy gain factor, Q. In short, we wouldn’t use water in any form as a nuclear fuel for any hot fusion reactions.
The use of heavy water in so-called low energy nuclear reactions (LENR), which is the modern term for electrochemical ‘cold fusion’ is predicated on the ability of platinum to catalyze the extraction of deuterium from water and cause it to electrostatically fuse by some mechanism that has not been adequately demonstrated or even adequately hypothesized. An alternate explanation for the apparent transmutation and low grade heat production phenomena seen in some experiments centers around low momentum neutrons being produced and absorbed (look up Widom-Larsen theory) involving many body quantum field effects. This is, according to some physicists, consistent with existing quantum field theories but very difficult to simulate or predict anything useful. The reaction rates in experiements to date appear to be too low for practical power production or heating but as the mechanism is poorly understood it may indicate new ways to manipulate directly at the nucleon level rather than electromagnetic or inertial confinement or bombardment to force neucleons together.
OP here…I’m running out the door, so don’t have time to digest the post, but I must note here that Stranger deserves a real thank you for the time and seriousness you put in when responding to queries, no matter how lightly or intellectually weakly put, when you recognize that the poster has a real scientific itch that needs scratching.
For many years you have been on what I now name the GQ Stranger-LSL plane of existence.
I have some gift of gab for explaining things at the high school level without driving off into the graduate degree level weeds. Mostly because my science education never went that far. So I know the weeds exist over there somewhere but I’m usually smart enough to quit talking before I drive past my limited expertise. Not always :o, but usually. Other times … :smack:.
Wow, that OP is science-word salad. Trying to simplify Stranger’s heroic feat of interpretation, boiling seltzer for all practical purposes *is *boiling water; the CO2 will all (to within practical measurement tolerances) have been released into the air long ago as the water warms.
Very little incremental energy is needed to boil seltzer versus the same volume of water since the CO2 bubbles are already at a gaseous temp. Once they get to the surface they readily join the atmosphere.
I’ve tried several times now to write an approachable description of the hierarchies of energy from mechanical strain and gaseous compression at the top level through crystalline bonds, complex chemical bonds, simple chemical bonds, atomic bonds, and finally nuclear binding energy. I kept driving off into the weeds so I deleted it. Maybe somebody else will see the value in this idea and its applicability to the OP and be able to pull it together cogently and concisely.
Regarding the fusion source bit : let’s suppose you had a compact fusion reactor, using technology optimized to the very limits, but all you had to fuel it was this can of soda pop.
Well, you could boil and filter the water, which would strip off everything but pure H20. (one method of filtering would be using a membrane similar to a cell membrane, where nanorobotic channels let only H20 through, but I digress)
Then you electrolyze the H20 or just heat it so hot using microwaves it becomes plasma. You run the plasma through what is basically a calutron, separating off either the hydrogen or the deuterium. Or there’s other ways to get to heavy water.
There’s a teensy amount of deuterium even in a can of soda pop. Might fuel your reactor for a little while. But the majority of the energy would be in the hydrogen. If you can get it to fuse, you’d release a lot of energy, but the temperatures and pressures required are so extreme to be impractical for a “compact” fusion reactor.
The third option, probably the best one, is to react the hydrogen with either boron or lithium in a “moderately” high end fusor. You would get your energy in the form of charged particles instead of neutrons, and I’ve heard persuasive arguments saying that this is the only way you’re going to even break even with a practical fusion reactor. Generating neutrons saps so much energy and then you lose so much collecting the heat and converting it to steam that you don’t even break even. The arguments are near the end of this video : MIT's Pathway to Fusion Energy (IAP 2017) - Zach Hartwig - YouTube
But see, the key ingredient here is the lithium or boron. Hydrogen is trivial to get, lithium or boron isn’t quite that common. For all practical purposes, lithium/boron is your reactor’s fuel.