Heidi Doe De Doe De Doe Here We Go Again!

Cocaine or methamphetamine?

To dismiss a fairly well researched idea so quickly out of hand is either dim-witted, or prejudiced in a way that could have a bad effect on the weight given to future comments, please try to keep somewhat of an open mind, even if you must view things with a jaundiced eye. However, the OP did not include reference articles that could have opened the discussion to some meaningful comments. This only came much later in the posts.

The existence of what we know as 'petroleum' is due to the growth, burial, and decay of (carbon-based) forests and other (carbon-based) living organisms over a period of millions of years. While it has been suggested that it is conceivable that life could develop with a silicon base rather than a carbon base, if I'm not mistaken, that development would have to occur in a location having a significantly higher temperature than that found near the surface of the Earth, and therefore based on some other fluid than water.

Where do you propose finding the buried ancient (silicon-based) forests, from which to extract the petroleum?

Silicon is second from the top of the tetravalent element column, but as someone else already pointed out, it is element #14, NOT #2.

If you propose to fabricate a 'petroleum' based on silicon, it would require more energy to fabricate it than could be extracted at 'burn' time. An engine capable of burning the resulting fuel would have to withstand temperatures significantly higher than current engines, and so would have to be fabricated of vastly more expensive materials, if such materials can be found.

In short, It ain't gonna happen in my lifetime...

You might add to that: Compounds of silicon and hydrogen (silanes) are well known. There would be 2 very serious disadvantages to using them for almost anything involving fuel:

1) The are spontaneously flammable in the presence of oxygen.

2) The products of combustion are silicon dioxide (a white sold, "sand" in another form) and water.

What a disastrous combination! Well at least you wouldn't a spark plug.

Hey Boss

I have a large piece of 99.996% pure silicon. It is the end of what are called ( I forgot what they are called ) but they are like a large candle. They kind of look like it.

They are round and long and tappered at the end. These are then sliced sidways like Salami in thin plates. The plates are then put through the process to make a bunch of

CPUs or controler Chips. In this case Rockwell 6502 Controler Chips.

Now.

The ends of these Ingets that was the word I could not recall earlyer. I have a at least one of them. They are brittle. Even Standard Glass is stronger. However I know the largest ship in the world is the Merske ( forgot the name of the ship) but the silicon on the bottom makes it slide through the water and saves a butt load of fule.

It would have to be mixed with something to make it strong as the bottm of a ship has to deal with sand and other crap hitting it at 35 knots in water where the sand and ice etc.. due to water being 832 times more dence than air so even small objecks

do more damage than in air at the same speed as they can not move out of the way as fast. So it has to be very hard. Also various barnacles etc.. that are hard as hell grow on the bottom and they have to be grouned off with a sander or sand blaster and a new solution is high pressure water with sand in it.

So I think you are on to something. And do not let the nay sayers stop you from thinking. It is good to think and try to come up with new ideas. It just takes one to make the world a better place.

Have a good day.

Jim Davison