Also, to call ZnO primarily ionic is neglecting that it is very close to 50/50 ionic/covalently bonded. Last, I was not aware that some classified metal-oxides as salts.

The article clearly states that it is Zn vapor reacted with water. Pardon me for starting from where the linked article left off. ...and yes, I did state "still hot, but cool it just below the decomposition temperature of ZnO".

Yes, I see where the confusion is. This is at high temperatures where Zn and H2O will form ZnO and H2. This not done at the temperatures where zinc hydroxide will form.

Okay, perhaps I should clarify here as well... this is being done at very high temperatures. This will form ZnO at those temperatures, not zinc hydroxide.

I'm not sure where you get Zn(OH)2. Zn vapor and water do not form zinc hydroxide. Also, ZnO is not a salt. It will not dissociate to form zinc ions when placed in water.

I believe this is all done in the gas phase, with the exception of the zinc oxide (ZnO) which decomposes directly from a solid to Zn vapor and oxygen gas at 1975 C (3550 F). It sounded like their proposal would use solar radiation to increase the temperature of the ZnO such that it decomposes directly into Zn and oxygen gas. The Zn vapor is somehow isolated and the oxygen is removed from the system. You then use the Zn vapor (still hot, but cool it just below the decomposition temperature of ZnO) and add water (which will also be a vapor/steam at these temperatures). This will return ZnO and hydrogen gas. Also, keep in mind, ZnO is not a salt. It will not dissociate in liquid water to form Zn ions. Also, Zn when added to water will not form zinc hydroxide.

The zinc oxide is just used in an intermediate step. It is not permanently depleted in the overall reaction. You start with zinc oxide and water. You end with zinc oxide, oxygen, and hydrogen.

You take zinc oxide, use sunlight to produce zinc vapor and oxygen. Somehow the zinc vapor and oxygen are separated so that they don't form zinc oxide again (the oxygen is no longer needed in the device and is discarded as far as the generator is concerned. The zinc is then reacted with water to produce zinc oxide and hydrogen. The real question is how does the device separate the zinc vapor and the oxygen gas after the zinc oxide is decomposed by the sunlight? You couldn't just condense the Zn as it would most likely react with the oxygen gas surrounding it.

2ZnO+Sunlight -> 2Zn(vapor) + O2
Zn(vapor)+H2O -> H2 + ZnO

I'm sure to you it was an investment in the future. Right now I'm seeing it as giving money to someone who was careless about what he said and actually for a moment gave support to those who want to dismantle the welfare and federal aid system that he took advantage of. Quite frankly, if you think ending welfare will fix more problems than it will cause, you aren't thinking clearly. Some of them might be able to find jobs, but not most of them. They will lose their homes, live on the street... then what? They won't be able to get a job while living in the tent city across the street from your house. Theft will skyrocket from them taking the food they need to survive. We've been here before... no welfare. It wasn't a pretty place.

Again... this is not what you said earlier. Just want to make that clear. I'm sure you don't consider this welfare, but the people who subsidized your loans probably do... or did you not receive any subsidies? At all? Are you paying the grant back with interest? I just want to hear you admit that it is federal aid... after all, you did claim that you didn't qualify for federal aid.

Wow... this is a far cry from the "no more welfare" that you said earlier. What do you think your Pell Grant was. It was a form of welfare. You were given money from the government that you didn't have to repay. Did you have subsidized student loans? There it is again. These are all forms of federal aid. Without them, would you have been able to pay for college?

I'm pretty sure the risk of nuclear explosion is zero. There just isn't enough uranium in the fuel for it to go supercritical in that way, especially without a moderator. If somehow all the fuel were to pile into a nice neat sphere in the bottom of the reactor, yes there would be some neutron-induced fission, but nothing near the power output of the reactor while it's in its normal configuration. The moderator in this case is water, which would not be present between uranium atoms if all the fuel somehow came together. Now, if we're going to talk about a Maxwellian Demon that is going to bring all the U-235 together (only about 5% of the mass in the fuel) then we may have a problem, but imagine what else we could use that demon for.

So, should we not pursue research unless there is a clear benefit from the technology it produces? Or perhaps we should only reach for the stars (okay, other planets for now) when war threatens us. If we followed those lines of thinking, we wouldn't have some amazing technology that we have today. The LASER would never have been reported on as there was no immediate benefit from it. Quite simply, you cannot say that research is practical or not until after it has been done. The results aren't known before you start. New technology comes from the most interesting places and it would be a mistake to not try to push ourselves beyond the limits of what people think possible.

I'm curious, though... what have we ever done that wasn't costly at first? Cost never comes down until something becomes readily available. It will never become readily available until we actually do it. No one will ever discover/make something better than a rocket until we actually do the research to make something better than a rocket. In this case we actually have a clear benefit of producing a better rocket... making it safe(er) to send someone to Mars (for example). Sending someone to Mars has a clear benefit... a probe can only do so much in its exploration. Probes are very slow and are not nearly as versatile as a person. As far as the knowledge gained from exploring Mars? No one knows for certain every tid-bit of knowledge that could be gained from it because the only thing that comes close to this was sending people to the moon. Why not try to send someone to Mars?

Though in your case, I think it's more than just one bit that's flipped. I've read some of your posts Mr. AC.

What he means is that if each section was hexagon in shape, you could still use the same type of watering system, but dramatically reduce the area in the corners that the watering system misses.

In an attempt to answer his question, there are a few possible reasons (of many more, I'm sure) that I can come up with. It might be inconvenient to lay out hexagonal access roads that form the borders of these sections. This also most likely stems from initial property plots being given out in square segments and now if you buy up neighboring plots, it's too expensive to sink new wells so that you can hexagonally segment your sections. It's also possible that those corners that the irrigation system appears to miss may not be as useless as they seem from high altitude photographs.