Car Tech: What's your favorite alternative fuel?
- 4/24/07 5:45 PM
Someone hasn't read the h2 fuel cycle
by answerman1949 - 5/3/07 6:32 PM In reply to: hydrogen is bunk by impalaSomeone hasn't read the h2 fuel cycle or heard about Norway's hydrogen highway. There are many sources for electrictiy for an H2 cycle, including hugely efficient solar cells, wind, even tidal currents.
Power could even be transmitted via microwave from satellites or huge solar arrays in the desert.
it doesn't matter where the electricity comes from
by impala - 5/4/07 12:45 AM In reply to: Someone hasn't read the h2 fuel cycle by answerman1949We need new clean energy sources, not a clean synthetic fuel that is a net energy drain.
Do you have a good link that describes the H2 cycle as you understand it?
Here's mine:
http://www.physorg.com/news85074285.html
Author estimates starting with electricity; using hydrogen is ~25% efficient. Using batteries is about 70% efficient.
the h2 fuel cycle always involves large energy inputs twice. Once to generate H2 and again to compress/cool it. Both are significantly less than 100% efficient. Then you account for leakage and transport. Then you have to convert it back to electricity, or combust it. Too many steps, the inefficiencies multiply. Better off using batteries.
favorable h2 fuel cycles involving hydrocarbons or biomass must not account for the byproducts, which are carbon rich energy sources and will also be used, not discarded. that's OK but not so carbon neutral.
Once you have created electricity, nomatter how you created it, you're better off storing it in a battery than producing H2 for transportation use.
There are many better uses of green electricity than producing hydrogen for transportation. I would start by putting coal-fired power plants offline.
Electricity and biodiesel and mass transit
by ekwhite - 5/3/07 5:44 AM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
I would like to see a plug-in hybrid with a biodiesel-powered generator to extend the range of the batteries.
One thing we haven't mentioned is an efficient, cheap mass transit system to handle longer trips and daily commutes, such as we see in LA.
What's your favorite alternative fuel
by BroJohn - 5/3/07 5:51 AM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
Like others, I don't think in terms of alternative fuels, but rather in terms of use. For automobiles, I see Hydrogen as our future, however, I would also like to see development of nuclear. We power our navy on nuclear why not our cars and economy. I see nuclear and solar along with wind as our electrical generation modes. Coal and other CO2 producers need to be phased out. I know that nuclear fission is scary but France has been using it for many years and quite successfully. Perhaps that is one thing we can learn from them. Fusion is a different kettle of fish, it is a long way off and will not be economically feasible for longer than many of us have years to live.
Fission is Bad!
by BigDaddy69_77 - 5/3/07 4:13 PM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel by BroJohnInstead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars building and maintaining nuclear power plants and mining and transporting radioactive fuel and wandering around scratching our heads wondering what to do with all those 55 gallon drums full of radioactive waste, why don't we spend that money perfecting green, renewable energy? How about Brown's Gas or cheap Hydrogen from Seawater?
http://www.spiritofmaat.com/archive/watercar/h20car2.htm
no such thing as cheap hydrogen
by impala - 5/3/07 6:46 PM In reply to: Fission is Bad! by BigDaddy69_77hydrogen costs a lot of energy to produce and package. Then it leaks like crazy. Batteries are a better deal than hydrogen. It's basic thermo.
Bad Science and BS
by albizzia - 5/8/07 12:07 AM In reply to: Fission is Bad! by BigDaddy69_77I read the link you provided with great dismay. The naive author Drunvalo really got taken in, and spouted a lot of nonsense. Examples:
"In a suburb of Toronto, Canada, a small company called Rothman Technologies, Inc., has in fact discovered not one but two viable methods for breaking down ordinary water into hydrogen and oxygen." Not their discovery, both methods have been known for over a century. Drunvalo wasn't paying attention in science class.
"The amount of energy in the water molecule is thus vast, and has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of energy it takes to break down that molecule. This is an extremely important point, as so many people — even scientists — are unclear on this concept."
It is Drunvalo that is unclear on this concept. It takes more energy to split 2 H2O into 2 H2 and O2 than you can recover by burning 2 H2 with O2 to get 2 H20.
"Hydrogen: This fuel is complete in itself. It does not need oxygen from the atmosphere to burn, which is an improvement over fossil fuels in saving the oxygen in our air supply. In fact, when hydrogen burns perfectly, nothing at all comes out of the tail pipe." Nonsense. You cannot burn H2 to get H20 without the O. Burning is and oxidizing process, Oxygen (or an oxidizer like it) is required.
"Brown's gas: This is the most perfect fuel of all for running our vehicles. Like pure hydrogen, it is made from water, i.e., hydrogen and oxygen, but it burns in the combustion engine so that, depending on the setup, it may actually release oxygen into the atmosphere." Browns gas is a mixture of H2 and O2, that, if burned completely, results in pure H2O. If any O2 is left over, then twice as much unburned H2 is also left over.
Drunvalo tells of a demonstration by Rothman Technologies where some "metal alloy" was dropped in salt water and produced enough H2 to run a small engine. No breakthrough here, there is a long list of metals that will react with water or steam to produce H2 and a metal oxide. Unfortunately, it takes more energy to produce that metal than the hydrogen will release when burned.
Rothman Technologies also claims a breakthrough electrolysis cell, but from the description I suspect they are using a metal in the "electrolysis cell" to produce H2. As they describe the resulting milky color, I'd suspect magnesium, resulting in magnesium oxide AKA 'milk of Magnesia'.
Electricity. ONLY Electricity.
by Flatworm - 5/3/07 5:55 AM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
There are many reasons to devote our research and development efforts toward batteries and toward increasing the efficiency of electrical automotive propulsion methods, and completely abandon any type of liquid or gaseous fuel for automobiles. My reasons for holding this rather radical position are as follows:
1. Electric automotive propulsion is inherently more efficient than any method that uses fuel to produce heat and converts that heat into motion. Indeed, electric motors are ideal to convert energy into any motion that is impelled by the spin of wheels. In an internal combustion engine, you have the inefficiency of overcoming the inertia and momentum of the constantly reversing pistons, and the friction required to mechanically convert their up-and-down motion to spin. You have the losses from heat dissipated through the exhaust and by the cooling system, a HUGE amount of energy that is simply lost. And you have the losses from all the compromises in tuning that are needed to accommodate the wide range of speed and load that a car engine has to deal with. Electric motors spin as their primary motion, and full torque is enjoyed throughout the RPM range. This will allow transmissions, and all the energy lost through their weight, friction and clutching mechanisms, to be completely eliminated from electric automotive design.
2. Pure electrical propulsion with battery storage allows automobiles ultimately to be powered by any fuel that can be used to generate electricity, including gas and oil, natural gas, biofuels, coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, geothermal, solar, hamsters on exercise wheels, whatever. This will significantly mitigate the effects of any shortage of any specific type of fuel, thereby greatly increasing energy security as it relates to transportation.
3. There are tremendous efficiencies enjoyed by generating electricity in bulk over smaller systems like fuel cells and liquid-fueled engines. Plug-in/battery electrics use these bulk generating systems and experience the efficiencies they afford.
4. Powerplants of whatever design, whether oil-, gas- or coal-fired, hydroelectric, nuclear or whatnot, are built to accommodate peak loads. The VAST majority of electric automobiles will be recharged at night when there is excess capacity that is currently utterly wasted. This is an additional efficiency that is truly significant when measured on a nationwide basis, and will result in the need for far less additional capacity to handle the additional load on the electrical grid that electric cars represent.
5. Electricity can be generated by a wide variety of systems, including systems that can be wholly owned and operated by individuals on property belonging to individuals. These "personal" systems can include solar panels, wind generators, and other systems as the property on which the individual lives may allow. Therefore, some percentage of the population will be able to produce at least some portion of the energy required to fuel their own automobiles without relying on commercial or community systems at all.
6. The political effects of our current system of fueling transportation has led to significant disruption to our lives, our freedoms, and world peace. Our foreign policy is beholden to those nations from whom we can obtain petroleum. Our domestic political landscape is dominated by the purveyors of automotive fuels whose self-interests conflicts in many ways from the wishes and needs of the vast majority of the American people. Whether we talk of fossil fuels, biofuels like ethanol, or hydrogen, these same forces will inevitably come to control the distribution of these fuels. Their control, however, can be broken by electrically-propelled automobiles where the sources of energy are so various and readily available to individuals. Electric cars can therefore help to restore a more responsive and representative democracy to America more in keeping with the bold and enlightened intentions of our Founding Fathers.
Research has to be conducted, both on batteries and charging mechanisms, to achieve rapid recharging of batteries, and cars need to be designed with standardized removable, replaceable battery packs that can be swapped out robotically at "re-energizing stations" more quickly than you could fill your tank at a filling station. Imagine being low on charge after three or four hundred miles of driving, pulling onto a conveyor like in a car wash, hearing a "clunk-clunk" as you're towed along, and just driving off with a fully charged battery, with a transponder in your car scanned so your credit card can be billed for the cost. You'd never need to so much as lower your window.
The Tesla, which overcomes almost every possible objection to electrical automotive propulsion, is still so very primitive and yet so acceptable despite its primitive design. It's based on the piston-engine Lotus Elise, and contains systems that carry forward the gross inefficiencies necessary to overcome the shortcomings of piston engines, A car designed as an electric from the ground up could be viable even with existing technology. It is only a very short research step away from production of an electric car that is better IN EVERY WAY, including range and ease of refueling, from the cars built today. All that is required is to have the will to do it, and to overcome the powerful forces that desire to maintain the status quo in service to their selfish interests.
Ah Flatworm is a bookworm and has been paying attention.
by FredMars - 5/30/07 9:00 PM In reply to: Electricity. ONLY Electricity. by FlatwormYou have written the most concise view on electric as the only way to go, than anyone in this forum. Yes, there are many ways to produce clean electric, and I too agree that individual power generation is a good start. It also decentralizes the power generation. That makes the grid a less viable target for the terrorists that are funded by oil.
Electric drive produces more torque and horsepower than diesel/gas engines and it is instant, no waiting for compression to build or engine revs to provide the punch. And with higher capacity storage (batteries/capacitors) thery can be made with range that today's drivers are used to with their ICE powered vehicles. Adding solar and sone innovative design to utilize wind turbulence, a self-contained long range vehicle is not far off.
Finally, you are right in that it is politics that get in the way. The oil lobby is only one part of the problem albeit the major one. The other is the current scientific paradigm that believes over unity gain is an anamoly, even though many experiements have produced this same anamolous energy. Moray and Tesla both did it and powered cars with electric but without batteries. I am working on some possibilities, but I am not sure they can be used in today's world. First and formost I would fear for my life, as there are many others who have tried and died, becaus ethey were "bucking the system" and had to be stopped.
Since you seem to have a good handle on this, I suggest you read about Royal R. Rife and Dr. Virginia Livingston Wheeler. ANd see why we have put men on th emoon, make space flight ubiquitous, have computers in everything, but cannot find a cure for cancer? Or for the common cold?
H2O
by sodabob - 5/3/07 5:56 AM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
Well, not H2O, but hydrogen is my favorite alternative fuel. Very dangerous (think Hindenburg), so still needs lots of research, but when you burn hydrogen, what do you get? That's right, H2O... or water! You could literally drink the exhaust.
"Soda" Bob.
that would be some very expensive water
by impala - 5/3/07 6:48 PM In reply to: H2O by sodabobHydrogen is a very inefficient fuel once you include the separation AND the packaging AND the transportation AND take account of the leakage. Batteries are better.
Solar power is best. biodiesel is solar power in a bottle.
When playing golf - try walking!
by Larry Launstein Jr - 5/3/07 6:03 AM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
When I play golf, unless it is absolutely necessary, I walk instead of riding a cart. It is far healthier, doesn't wear out the course so much, and allows you to play at a manageable pace. Also, I have seen that carts do not speed up play significantly, unless the golfers play quickly, too. On a day where there are a lot of golfers on the course, it doesn't matter how many carts are out on the course, play is going to be backed up anyway due to the sheer volume of players. Pull carts are nice if you cannot carry a light bag.
It has even gotten to the point where golf course architects are returning to the idea of course that are very challenging, but ones you can walk instead of being so expansive that the only way you can get around is to ride a cart.
Obvious
by conhopco - 5/3/07 6:11 AM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
My favorite alternative fuel is coffee. It is cheap, predictable, clean, efficient, and renewable. Emissions are high, but easily discharged with out damage to the environment.
compressed air
by lievenv - 5/3/07 6:14 AM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
I said it before and I'll say it again:
It's clean (Provided you charge your car with electricity coming from solar panels or windenergy)
It doesn't require any complex processes to create and store the fuel (hydrogen does)
and all the other things I'm not thinking of right now.
Anyway, take a look for yourselves on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmqpGZv0YT4
Or read about it on the companies website: http://www.theaircar.com/
Elegant, clean, acceptable speed and actionradius (for me that is).
They're also improving upon the current technology, so we'll see faster cars that can run for longer pop up soon.
This IS the fuel of the (nearby) future for me.
grts,
Vince
this is even crazier than hydrogen
by impala - 5/3/07 6:50 PM In reply to: compressed air by lievenvusing compressed air is EXTREMELY inefficient. There are much better things to use solar power to do than to compress air. such as charge a battery.
biodiesel is solar power in a bottle.
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