Quote:
Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr
Would it also be suitable to operate on freshwater? What about other materials such as graphene for the electrodes, as it would be supposed to be less prone to oxidation?
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No fresh water is out as there's just not enough ions in it.
(On the other end of the spectrum are the undersea brine pools at 3X the salinity IIRC and The Dead Sea)
The gasses produced are hydrogen and chlorine so if all ships used this you'd end up slowly chlorinating the sea.
I NB that H is burnable and Chlorine is a powerful oxidant that one could use instead of oxygen in an ICE.
Ie:
One might have a 'floating' collector behind a MHD and burn the collected gasses in the ICE powered genset used on the Yamato.
But the exhaust gas ends up as Hydrogen Chloride and, in water, Hydrochloric Acid!
(Assuming said Hydrochloric Acid hasn't eaten your engine, what happens if you feed it back into the front of the MHD..??)
I remember some talk of a catalyst or electrode for electrolysing sea water where you get H2 and O2 like with fresh water + electrolyte.
Lets hope Susan Swithenbank is aware of that research.
But back to Piotrsko's point:
IF you do get this working; the huge magnetic field is NOT very 'stealth' at all, so the military wont be interested.
So Susan Swithenbank must have some clever idea for 'shielding' such.
Perhaps some sort of Halbach Array in a very ferrous 'shield' Piotrsko.