White-hot energy
Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 1:15 am
Hours of fun for all the family, but magnesium as the metal doesn't occur in nature because it is so reactive.
To get the metal one needs to smelt it from its ores and then seperate it from whatever it happens to be combined with by electrolysis. Extraction from seawater would involve huge volumes of water.
In other words, the energy that could be liberated from burning it in whatever fashion would not be greater than the amount needed to mine, transport, purify and seperate the metal in the first place.
Thermodynamics is a bugger like that.
I can think of many better uses for solar energy.