Toowoomba, water recycleing

[Greg Ward]

water is a natural cosequence of certain chemical reactions.

H2SO4 +PbO--> PbSO4 + H2O

(Sorry about the subscripts)

Or Sulphuric Acid, a common volcanic chemical, when reacting with a metallic ore or an oxide, will form a separate metallic compound and water.

I have used Lead above as this is the common reaction that takes place in automotive battery construction.

Several billions of years ago, there waere plenty of chemical reactions going on, lot of sulphuric acid, and lots of generation of Oxygen gas as well as all the water you see around today.

Regards
Greg

[silentC]

I think Bob is angling at whether or not you can just make more water. Is that right Bob?

I gather you can but it probably takes lots of energy and if you made enough of it, I suppose the sea level would rise a lot Maybe Dick Smith should just tow another iceberg into Sydney harbour

[Bob Willson]

Yes silent, that is what I was asking, as well as asking if the process is STILL occurring naturally.
Comets landing (read smashing into) on the earth would still have had to have an original way of making the water they consist of. Water is, as Greg has pointed out, a compound.
PS The sea level wouldn't rise if we used materials from the bottom of the sea to make the water, as it could then just fill in the gap that is left.

[silentC]

I have always understood (and believed) that there is a finite amount of water that is constantly recycled through the hydrologic cycle.

I'm aware of a few different theories on how the water was originally formed but of course no-one really knows. I've never heard the idea that new water could be created naturally. There are plenty of man-made processes that 'recover' water but they are only extracting it from the atmosphere, not creating it from base elements.

Waiting to be enlightened

[Clinton1]

It could be made (anything can happen ) and it can be obtained from seawater.
The reason it isn't is because it is expensive?
Much cheaper to get it from rain or recycling.

[craigb]

Well if you got 2 Hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom that hadn't known each other before and then got them to join, wouldn't that then be a new molecule of water? :confused:

[silentC]

Yeah but if it was that simple there wouldn't be any oxygen or hydrogen left and we'd all be swimming (and growing gills).

The question is, does it happen spontaneously in nature: I don't think so but could be wrong. The other question is, what benefit, if any, is there in working out some way of producing water from 'thin air' and would it solve the problem, or more importantly, create other ones?

[Zed]

water is H2O that is;

• 2 parts hydrogen (the type of hydrogen that only has one proton and electron - thus NOT heavy water)
• and one part oxygen.

Current scientific belief is tha matter cannot be created or destroyed. It can only change states. the 3 states of matter are Solid, liquid, gas.

The big bang spread all the initial matter about in a a big explosion (hence big bang). The gases then coalesed into clouds (eg Magellic clouds) mostly as hydrogen and a few of the smaller sized elements... and the attraction of gravity meant that as more matter attracted to itself its gravity drew more matter into itself. as it draws into itself it causes in effect more gravity thus more attraction thus more heat and pressure.

when this happens you get friction then eventually to ignite your thermonuclear pile and viola! a star ignites. as the matter ball coaleses it starts spinning (like a top) (and also like a spiral galaxy... ) other bits of bundles of matter start spinning about the central nucleaus and with thier own gravity attract more matter themselves. they obtain angular velocity and also orbit the host star. these become planets, comets & asteroids. Why all this guff ??? well....getting there... remember I said earlier hydrogen and smaller elements - Ie Helium, Nitrogen & Oxygen to name a but a few.... when the thermonuclear reaction consumes the raw feul of a star (Hydrogen) it causes as waste products helium which further down the track frees a whole bunch of protons and elections - leading to the heavier elements. as this happens bits of hydrogen coalese with oxygen and water is formed this water (as ice) is gravitated to the planets or more likely created on the planet. (this is a very simplistic model and you could probably shoot holes all thru it but I beleive the basics are correct..)

the earth is a closed system (except the odd meteorite or comet impact - these are generally miniscule impacts of bugger all mass)all the mass we have was WITH EARTH when it formed from the primordial gases as it gravitated in the creation of the solar system. all the water was "created" at various times by the fusing of H & O.

• we cant create more matter.
• we cant destroy it (Except in anti matter and black holes but thats a whole bunch of out there speculation at the moment)...
• we have been recycling water for billion years (remember the water cycle you studied at school ?)
• we can remove impurities from existing water
• its not feasible by man as a commercial enterprise to fuse hydrogen and oxygen to create new water
• the argument in QLD is more about drinking Aunt Bessie's wee rather than recycling in itself.
• if the water is cleaned properly at the recycling plant is probably better for you than drinking from a creek where a cow died upstream - except the additives liek flouride etc that we want and other naturally occuring trace elements.
• Water spends on average (These numbers in proportion) :
• 12 days as gas in the air
• 100,000 yrs in the ocean
• 300,000 (I think) as ground water
• 10'000's of years as ice

we should be pumping the DEEP resouvoirs and planting trees.

Here endeth the lesson.

Shoot me down like a dog - please - I want to be corrected if any of the abovce is wrong.

[craigb]

I don't know if it happens spontaneously. Maybe as a by product of some other process it might.

Isn't water one of the by products of burning Hydrogen in an IC engine?

Making it would probably be hugely expensive energywise and probably just shift the problem to being one of a lack of Hydrogen or Oxygen :eek:

[Bob Willson]

protons and elections -

So did they have a referendum then to decide who should be water etc?

Seriously though - thanks Zed.

[silentC]

There are some other theories about how water got here, one of which is that it was created during the formation of the solar system and it ended up here because the conditions are right. Or maybe Earth is here because of the water.

As a matter of fact, I don't recall ever hearing that water has EVER been discovered anywhere else. There are traces or evidence of what COULD be water elsewhere but I don't think anyone has proven it yet. I think our position in the solar system is conducive to the existence of water. They've just discovered what they think are methane lakes on Titan - imagine swimming in that?

So, as far as where it came from, we will probably never know. Maybe one day someone will discover a new form of energy that makes it feasible to create water molecules. Maybe they'll blow us all up in the process. It wont happen tomorrow though and in the meantime all those thirsty Sydney-siders want to wash their Beemers and water their driveways, so someone needs to do something!

[Zed]

the giant canyon on Mars was formed by water erosion.. they think. perhaps... http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060730.html

They reckon at least one of the moons of saturn has frozen water on it too. (Io or titan ??)

Some of the asteriods are just frozen water.


try www.badastronomy.com = great site....

[silentC]

the giant canyon on Mars was formed by water erosion.. they think.

They reckon at least one of the moons of saturn has frozen water on it too. (Io or titan ??)

Some comets are thought to have ice at their core too. Although it's unclear to me whether they mean frozen water or some other frozen stuff.

Titan is where they reckon they have found methane lakes.

Regarding Mars, there ain't no water there now, if there ever was. None that they have found anyway. All they have found is 'evidence' of water, which includes what looks like water erosion. How do they know it wasn't some other liquid that caused it though? Maybe it was Martian juice.

As for the asteroids, I plead ignorance on that one. I'll take your word for it though.

Anyway, my point is that water appears to be rare in the solar system and most of it, if not all, is here.

[Zed]

my point in previous post (you clot ) was that Hydrogen and oxygen are comparitively COMMON, ergo, water is too! was I too obtuse ?

[Rocker]

my point in previous post (you clot ) was that Hydrogen and oxygen are comparitively COMMON, ergo, water is too! was I too obtuse ?

Actually, elemental hydrogen is very rare on Earth. Hydrogen forms only 0.00005% of the air. It is common enough in compounds such as sulphuric acid and hydroxides, but it takes a lot of energy to produce water from these.

Rocker