[randomguy13]

This is just a random idea I had in chemistry at the school the other day when we were learning about Ionization Energy and I was just wondering if anyone knows if it is at all possible.

If you were to remove all the electrons from an atom(which consumes energy) and store the nucleus containing the protons and neutrons in some sort of evacuated magnetic field to prevent it from coming into contact with other atoms, would it be possible to "add" the electrons back onto the nuclei by exposing them to a ready supply of electrons and use it as some sort of potential fuel?

By "adding" the electrons back onto the extremely unstable atom, I suppose a large amount of energy would be released because it took that much energy to remove the electrons in the first place? Just a guess, I could be wrong.

I suppose the idea is a little bit like electron affinity in which a neutral gaseous atom accepts an electron except in this case the atom has had all it's electrons removed.

There is probably a million reasons this wouldn't work but I don't know enough about chemistry and physics to know why it wouldn't.

If anyone could shed some light on why it might not work I would be very grateful because it has been stuck on my mind all day :)

[Capuchin]

Uhh, because you'd have to generate the energy to strip the atom of electrons first? You'd get back less energy than you put in,

[Perito]

There are many ways to store energy. Capuchin is absolutely correct that you can't get back more energy than you put into the system in the first place (laws of thermodynamics). Near Niagara falls, they pump water up into a lake during the night, and then drop it down again through generators to generate power during the peak daylight hours. This is thermodynamically inefficient (energy is wasted), but economically efficient.

There are many proposals for getting hydrogen from water. In general, this involves putting a large amount of energy into water to generate hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is captured and stored for later burning. The idea is to store energy for later use. Again, it's not thermodynamically efficient, but it works and it is useful and possibly will be more useful in the future.

It's technically possible to do what you're suggesting -- more or less. In particular, the storage part hasn't been totally worked out yet. Particle accelerators (linear accelerators, cyclotrons, synchrotrons, etc), strip electrons from any nuclei and keep the nuclei separate (usually in a ring -- but obviously at very low concentrations) as long as anyone wants them. It takes a lot of energy to contain them, but it can be done. It's fairly simple to add the electrons back in. Firing the nuclei at a charged plate would do the trick as these things are extremely reactive. The energy would be released as photons (radiation). The wavelengths of the radiation would vary. Quite a bit of it would be high-energy radiation in the x-ray or gamma-ray end of the spectrum.

The big problem would be getting the energy into a usable form -- electrical energy, mechanical, energy, etc. While it's possible to absorb photons and (for example) boil water to produce steam which would drive a turbine to generate electricity, these actions waste energy (laws of thermodynamics again).

So, the fundamental technical problems are 1) storage of a sufficient quantity to be useful (also remember that it would consume a lot of energy to contain the particles), and 2) recovery of the energy in a usable form later on.

Don't let the technical problems deter you from thinking about things like this. Although formidable, other technical advances may someday make this type of thing practical.

[randomguy13]

I know it would take more energy to remove the electrons than it would produce to put them back on but I was thinking more along the lines of using the nuclei to produce a large amount of energy in a very short amount of time using like in a bomb. That's what I meant by potential energy.

Would the energy released when one uranium nucleus gains all it's electrons back be anything close to the amount released by the fission on a uranium atom?

[Perito]

Would the energy released when one uranium nucleus gains all it's electrons back be anything close to the amount released by the fission on a uranium atom?

No. It's much, much less. The energy released in fission is many times greater than the energy of the orbitals.