Originally Posted by xyzdonna  ... "Water disassociates into oxygen and hydrogen at high temperatures, and the disassociation increases with increasing temperature"
Yep, my thought exactly,
It's looking doable again!
Donna |
No it is not. The high temperature dissociation of water into oxygen and hydrogen is old hat. You must have heard of coal gas? I do not know how extensively it was ever used in North America but it was widely used in the UK. You maybe also know that it was highly poisonous and this was due to the carbon monoxide content.
Coal gas is made by heating coking coal, not all coal is suitable, in an oxygen limited atmosphere. Some burns to provide the heat but there is a lot of coal unburnt and is incandescent. Water in the form of steam is injected into the hot bed of coal and is dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen by the heat. Reactions take place between the oxygen but because there is a great excess of carbon over oxygen the end product is not carbon dioxide but is carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide and hydrogen being gases can be separated from the coal residue and they are mostly what comprise coal gas although there are some gaseous carbon compounds such methane and ethane.
But it is energetically inefficient, far more inefficient than the eletrolysis of water to get hydrogen and oxygen. Any high temperature dissociation process is energetically inefficient.
Mariss said it; there is no free lunch.