This is why
@Patchwork_Chimera laughs at you. You talk like a subject matter expert and tried to explain something that you don't understand, without qualifying that it's just your understanding of the subject. Instead you tried to sound authoritative. And when corrected, you barely even know where you are wrong, and instead of admitting your knowledge is limited, you double down.
Couple of points
Well, I think it's poor form to drag Patch into this discussion as it is completely irrelevant to him.
I will just say that he hasn't responded to the followup where I outline where those SSNs should have a far larger tactical and strategic impact if employed at soft targets beyond the 2nd Island Chain and all the way to the Continental USA. This isn't a new line of thought either. We already had this sort of discussion in the SSN thread (IIRC some years ago) on how SSNs could operate.
And I'll add that when I notice Patch writing glaring errors or something which doesn't make sense to me, I don't use the laugh emoji as I don't think it's very mature or respectful in general.
Electrons don't "rotate" in "orbits" at "2200 km a second". This was the funniest part to me. Like a little ball spinning around the nucleus.
Well, as stated earlier, this is a secondary school level explanation. Do I really want to get into the next level of details about subatomic particles also being a wave function and superposition? Electrons orbiting a hydrogen atom at 2200km per second is good enough, as that is what the scientists estimate is the speed and people can understand this.
OK, let's say that this is just a conceptual misunderstanding. What do you think happens with these electrons when a chemical reaction happens? And you think no chemistry happens inside a battery?
What do you mean "chemical reactions happen at a scale where it's essentially mechanical"? You mean there's no chemical reactions in confined spaces? Orly? Heterogeneous catalysis anyone? How about all of biochemistry?
When I say mechanical, I do mean atoms having to move.
And whilst current batteries predominantly use a liquid lithium electrolyte, it does look like semi-solid state and fully solid-state batteries are viable as they are being used in high-end cars.
And because the technology is still in its infancy, we can expect rapid improvements in cost and performance.
Maybe by "mechanical" you mean "macroscopic energy scales". Yes combustion happens at a macroscopic energy scale. That's why we use it for grid energy and to move heavy vehicles like ships and cars lmao.
But why else? Because combustion fuels have high energy density. Why is that? Because the relevant energy scale (this is what you meant to say btw, not "mechanical") for an electrochemical reaction in battery is on the order of 100-200 kJ/mol.
Combustion reactions for hydrocarbons are on the order of ~1000 kJ/mol for methane and it only goes up from there.
This is why combustion is used. It has incredibly high molar energy.
I don't specifically say hydrogen is good either, where did I say hydrogen is good? I said your reasoning doesn't make sense, and it is absolutely true that it doesn't.
Not quite. I said this previously. It's the difference between:
1. In an electricity/battery energy pathway, you can have an entirely solid-state system where only the electrons move and I suspect this will be the norm in the future.
For example, a solar panel produces electrons, they flow through copper conductors almost instantly into the battery. That battery will likely be solid-state in the future, then the battery discharges to an electric motor at which point it is converted into motion to drive the wheels.
2. But in an Ammonia/Hydrogen energy pathway, you always have to move atoms around. You use electricity to split water molecules and then capture the hydrogen atoms. Then you have to mechanically compress the hydrogen, transport the hydrogen in tanker trucks and pump it into a hydrogen station storage tank. Then you have to pump it into yet another storage tank in the car. When the hydrogen is ready to be used, it then has significant losses in a combustion engine or fuel cell. A combustion engine wastes most of its energy, because the heat (moving atoms) can't be captured. All this creates significant losses at each stage and its difficult to create an alternative pathway because you are constrained by the requirement to work with hydrogen in chemical reactions.
I deliberately used the term ""mechanical"" in inverted commas as a gross simplification, because nobody really cares about technical jargon in the real world.
Yes, chemical reactions can and do have a far higher energy density than batteries.
But that by itself isn't directly relevant to the question, which is about energy pathways - hydrogen/ammonia versus electricity/battery energy.
So the underlying question is how much does it cost to propel a vehicle, because the lower-cost solution will be the winner. And I haven't even gone into how electricity is already available everywhere and the average socket is sufficient for the average car-owner. In comparison, a hydrogen energy pathway will require an entirely new and expensive infrastructure buildup.
I recall at least 3? discussions already on hydrogen versus electric vehicles in the NEV and other threads already. I see TPHuang has been helpful enough to post the energy pathway losses for hydrogen
And if you've read the works on future energy pathways (Third Industrial Revolution etc), you'll understand why electricity is going to be the predominant energy pathway in the future. Most cars and grids in the future will not be powered by hydrocarbons.
