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2026-09-23 19:49:23 UTC

clew on Nostr: This is a really dumb chemistry question, for which I would like joking, serious, and ...

This is a really dumb chemistry question, for which I would like joking, serious, and ELI5 answers but please tell me which is which:

Is there an upper bound on how much energy it takes to decompose a pile of stuff into... some basis set of chemically stable but usefully separated elements? Do we have to know what's in the pile to get any efficiency? Can we trade time for energy?