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More "Miles Per Acre" From Bioelectricity Than Ethanol
CarnegieScience writes "Scientist calculate that, compared to ethanol used for internal combustion engines, bioelectricity used for battery-powered vehicles would deliver an average of 80% more miles of transportation per acre of crops, while also providing double the greenhouse gas offsets to mitigate climate change."
Miles per acre? What's that in rods per hogsheads?
Ethanol -> lots of space to make fuel.
Biomass to electricity -> not nearly as much space.
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As a bunch of (electric) eels tied with electric cord??
how long until
Large powerplants more efficient than vehicle-sized engines. Video at 10.
Personally, I'd like to see someone address the fact that our growing methods are dependent on petroleum-based fertilizers. How can all those ethanol makers in Iowa produce their corn without Arabian-supplied nitrogen?
The problem with using biomass to generate electricity to run cars is that you've got to get the electricity into the car and store it there, usually in a lithium-ion battery. That whole process probably diminishes your efficiency by an order of magnitude. If this guy's taken all that into account, well, so far so good. But I think we're going to need literally quantum advances in energy storage technology (think molten salts and carbon nanotube supercapacitors) before we can get fossil fuels completely out of our transportation system.
The real advantage of producing ethanol right now is that you can just mix it into gasoline and sell the combination fuel (E85) for use in most post-2004 model year cars. It doesn't require a total revamp of the energy distribution network for vehicles.
America -> has lots of space
Electric cars -> expensive
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I can only hope so, because I refuse to RTFA since it's clearly a professor trying to get himself research grants.
...now all we need is a fuel that comes in the form of a long string, and we can finally express fuel efficiency as a dimensionless number.
BTW, 20 miles per gallon works out to 3.4409911e+10 inverse acres. Or, to look at it another way, one gallon per 20 miles is 2.9061395e-11 acres, or about 0.12 square millimeters. That's the diameter of the imaginary thread of gasoline that your vehicle is gobbling, Pac-Man-like, as you drive down the highway.
Comparing energy production density to Corn-based Ethanol is like stealing candy from a baby. Corn-fueled Ethanol has a tough time doing much better than just burning fossil fuels outright in systemic carbon footprint, and in some studies, is actually WORSE than strictly burning gasoline/oil.
Yes, the average is a net improvement of anywhere from 25% to 70% return on investment, but even then, you have to consider the value of the farmland itself! We'd probably do much better by simply growing wild grass on prime farmland, harvesting it, and burying it, when looking in terms of carbon footprint!
So saying that NNN technology is X% better than bioethanol is like saying that doing X is less painful than scraping off your penile foreskin with a cheese grater.
Truthful, but not very useful. Come back when you have something that actually works. For example, what's the benefit of bio-electricity over Photo-voltaics? Now that the latter technology is down to (or better than) $1/watt, this becomes a very, very tough technology to beat, and actually works better on craptastic, rocky soil off in the desert someplace with 3 inches of rainfall per year.
Meaning, we can get back to using farmland for growing food, and stop with this silly "let's raid the kitchen cupboard to feed our guzzling SUVs!" craze that's been on for the last few years.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Food crops as energy sources was never a good idea, we didn't breed them for their modern harvestable energy content, and even if we did we'd be offsetting fuel crops. Algal Oil is a MUCH better biofuel solution as it can be build anywhere you have the following things:
A) Land [cheaper the better] .. so cannot pull it straight from the air, have to filter it.. but pretty much everywhere]
B) Source of Water [doesn't neccesarily need to be fresh or particularly clean, in fact fertilizer polluted water might even be a good thing]
C) Source of Carbon Dioxide [clean CO2
D) Sunlight
And it already works, we have "pilot plants" already cranking it out.
Don't have to offset prime forest or prime agricultural - vast stretches of the semidesert southwest would be usuable.
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It's simple, we just have to ask Dr. Manhattan for the lithium. Problem solved.
http://www.ciw.edu/sites/www.ciw.edu/files/images/PRFieldCampbellBioenergyTransport-REVISEDGRAPHIC5-4-09.jpg
We can get fossil fuels out of our energy system right now with drop in non-fossil replacements like Algal Oil [ see my discussion of it in this thread http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1225951&cid=27864987 ]
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pollution equal to 50 million cars annually. Just 15 of these ships = the entire worlds auto output (SO2/SoX) There are 19,000 ocean going cargo ships, granted of various sizes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution.
While I'm not complaining about making car emissions cleaner lets start looking at making some of the current big offenders cleaner.
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okay, so i didn't read it yet, but i'll jump the gun and assume that they haven't considered making ethanol from hemp (cannabis). fuel per unit area of farm land goes way up from both corn and sugar cane and could really help put alternative fuels on the map.
but we can't do that cause of the children (or something)
It seems that every discussion I've seen on the environment is a 'pick one technology over the other' argument. There is no one 'silver bullet' technology to our environmental or efficiency problems.
Why can't we take a measured approach that includes both technologies?
In this case, the study completely ignored the possibility of using an acre of switchgrass as an ethanol feedstock and then using the resulting 'waste' as a fuel to produce electricity.
As another example, what about harvesting corn as a foodstock, then using the leftover stover as an ethanol feedstock and finally using whatever is left for electricity generation?
Am I the only one who sees the synergestic possibilities?
You mean acres of electric eels?
Seems like my hovercraft is indeed full of electric eels.
Mod up the parent. Saying something is better than corn based ethanol is like saying "driving an Expedition to the corner store to pick up 1 gallon of milk, is more efficient than pouring gasoline in your toilet." While technically true, it isn't very informative.
For non-Americans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Expedition --- Notice lack of MPG or other economy rating.
Think Deeply.
A quick google search seems to say yes. http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=us+size+in+acres&fp=0_TDBcSQxa0
Not that it would be simple. 350 million acres of farmland, 250 million vehicles, at least an acre per vehicle. So we either have to plant more, drive less, and/or eat less.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I'm driving a home-converted electric car right now. I didn't even choose my components for efficiency, and according to my kill-a-watt meter, I'm still running more than twice as efficient as an internal combustion engine.
There have been several studies comparing overall efficiency, including power transmission losses. The EV wins every time.
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Morpheus: "The human body generates more bio- electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 B.T.U.'s of body heat."
Now we just need some poor saps to lock into an energy-harvesting pod while we jack their mind into The Sims 24/7... actually that sounds like a special kind of hell. Perhaps we can give them their choice. Some might choose to live in WoW 24/7... actually some choose to live in WoW 24/7 -already-... perhaps they would be the first to volunteer! It's like getting corporate sponsorship AND never having to shower again, WIN WIN!
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
Wow, they say have have made a study into what mostly everybody knows:
The electrical motor is vastly more efficient than the internal combustion engine.
Electrical motors have an efficiency of about 80%+, while ICM has an efficiency of about 20-30%.
This is one of several reasons why the electric car is more environmentally friendly that the gasoline car. Whether you use ethanol or gas doesnt really affect this, but ethanol is seen as better because it is renewable and reduces co2 emissions.
This seems, from my reading, to be the gist of the story. What is not very clear is if using other forms of biomass can provide significantly more electricity per acre than corn+ that is used for ethanol. While this might be, the main advantace they talk about is just the fact that the electrical motor is more efficient than tha ICM.
The real blow-it-out-of-the-water numbers are when you eliminate "bio" from the equation, period. Corn yields 300-450 gallons of ethanol per acre. Sugarcane, about 550-850 gallons or so. Switchgrass can theoretically yield over 1000 gallons per acre and algae 5000, although those numbers are likely to get way smacked down by reality (especially the algae numbers). But let's just go with them. CAFE average is ~24mpg, and you get less mpg on ethanol, but hey, let's just say our cars get 40mpg. The average driver goes 12k miles per year, so corn can support 1.3 drivers/acre, sugarcane 2.3 drivers/acre, switchgrass 3.3 drivers/acre, and algae a way-over-optimistic 16.7 drivers/acre.
A compact linear fresnel reflector solar thermal generating station produces about 1MW nominal capacity for every 4 acres and has about a 20% capacity factor (in non-optimal sites). That's an actual MW per 20 acres, or 488,288,000Wh/acre-year. The Volt and Tesla Roadster both use about 200Wh/mi, so let's go with a more pessimistic 300Wh/mi after losses and with less efficient designs. That's 121.7 drivers per acre. I.e., it beats the pants off even the highly speculative numbers for algae. And it uses no water or fertilizer -- and we use *way* too much water as it is.
If you want land efficiency, converting the sun directly to electricity and using that electricity directly rather than having the intermediary stage of "plants" is the way to go. And we farm too darn much of this planet as it is already.
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Erm, not "no" water, but still "minimal" water. There's some initial water needed to fill the closed-loop system.
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Aglae can produce oil instead of ethanol. Oil that can be treated just like light sweet crude at the refinery, with a lot less impurities [so it's easier to refine].
So to not do something stupid like Algae Ethanol and do Algae Oil the biggest advantage is it's a potentially carbon neutral drop in replacement that can be used in existing gasoline and diesel engines.
If you can get efficient storage of electricity (like hopefully EEStor isn't full of it) a pure-eletric system will be better - but at the same time we can cut our greenhouse gas emissions massively by using Algal Oil as a drop in replacement for fossil oil.
Now as gas/diesel demand drops down in about 50 years we can do other things with that algae production infrastructure I'd imagine.
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+1 Insightful. Also +1 Informative.
I wish I had mod points today.
Can someone please describe to me the process of converting biomass to electricity? Do they simply mean burning it? Is there processing required? WHAT EXACTLY IS BIOELECTRICITY? There is no explanation in the article.
Electric vehicles suck, plain and simple. To get them to be "good" you have to make them too damn complex; and even then, you have hub motors with a computer-simulated differential that doesn't feel quite right (yes, I'm one of those people that drives the car like I'm wired into it front to back; I feel what's happening around me). Electric motors are also inefficient anyway, nevermind fuel-to-electricity is fuel-to-heat-to-motion-to-electricity, so you have fuel-to-heat-to-motion-to-electricity-to-motion and loss all over the place; the generators are probably (bio)diesel generators or some other combustion-based high-torque engine turning a dynamo, which means we could use a smaller combustion-based high-torque engine turning the wheels of my freaking car for fuel-to-heat-to-motion reaction (cut two big loss stages).
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Of course, the obvious NEXT questions are annoying things like:
1. What kind of numbers do you get with nuclear and/or fusion reactors, instead of biomass reactors or cornfields?
It is worth mentioning that the MIT Nuclear Engineering senior project recently was the engineering design of a fusion reactor to produce hydrogen for automotive fuel. One of the reasons given for producing hydrogen rather than electricity is that we don't have anything remotely resembling a power grid in the Northeast that could handle the output of a commercial-size fusion reactor.
And their design was apparently conservative: you could build it, starting TODAY.
2. How do you distribute the electricity from your biomass reactor or your solar field to the cars? See previous paragraph about power grid issues.
Actually, the 5,000 gallons figure is for biodiesel, not ethanol. But again, that's just one company's figure, and they haven't produced anything close to that, so take it with a massive grain of salt.
The biggest problem with algae is that it is, by its very nature, hydroponics. Hydroponics is expensive for even things where most of the costs are labor, like lettuce and tomatoes. You'll never see "hydroponic wheat" or "hydroponic corn", because it'd 10x the price. Yet that's exactly the sort of thing they're proposing to do here -- hydroponics on an unthinkable scale. And even worse than most conventional hydroponics, you have to have the algae completely enclosed or competing species will get introduced. So that's even *more* plastic involved.
I can't see how it could ever be cost competitive. How can you have an acre of plastic and metal, where the plastic has to be replaced at regular intervals, amortize its costs on sales of 5k (or, more likely, fewer) gallons of biodiesel per year? I just can't see that happening.
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Did joe academic add in the cost of buying an unobtanium brand electric vehicle, or plug in hybrid? Oh wait, you can get one for a hundred grand and sit on a waiting list, and the fifty grand models are "coming soon" for the past buncha years, and even fifty grand is sorta steep for most folks nowadays.
I'm all for electric vehicles, but lets get real, it will take decades of them being on the market at affordable prices before we get rid of all the internal combustion vehicles out there, decades and multiple trillions of dollars in cost to the consumers. Right now, liquid biofuels are the only credible option to OPEC and friends cartel price manipulations. And forget switchgrass, why not push for legalization of industrial hemp instead, because it can be grown on marginal and hilly ground not suitable for food production and has tremendous yield at not much production cost.
Hydroponic Algae is several orders of Magnitude less complex than Hydroponic food crops.
Algae is a free floating aquatic plant so a lot of the labor intensities go away in the blink of an eye, and it has a higher plant density than hydroponic corn.
Hydroponic Wheat/Corn/etc is more expensive because it's wasteful and increases the energy costs associated.
Need to separate your Algae from the water? Sieve.. isn't so simply for corn, etc as they have to sit in racks and only their roots are being bathed and all kinds of other complexities.
All you need to grow hydroponic algae is water circulation, sunlight, carbon dioxide and some nutrients in the water [clean up fertilizer polluted water anyone?]
and the "wear and tear" on transparent plastic tubes that simply have algae-bearing water running through them isn't going to be nearly as bad as other hydroponics.
In short: bad comparison.
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And their design was apparently conservative: you could build it, starting TODAY.
Yeah. *Fusion*? Better tell ITER that they're barking up the wrong tree.
And do we really want to get into the whole hydrogen boondoggle?
How do you distribute the electricity from your biomass reactor or your solar field to the cars?
Trivially. The US power grid is 92.8% efficient, and EVs stabilize the grid rather than destabilizing it (they're steady, predictable loads, and there's an increasing push to make them smart loads, too -- esp. with V2G).
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And "charge packs" that stay permanently attached then "flood charge" EV packs also stabilize the grid [more reliably than EVs] because they're permanent fixtures. They can soak up excess production and compensate for excess load.
Yes the grid needs some improvements for Green energy [especially solar and wind] but it's not that hard. Hydrogen engines are an interesting idea, but if we can get better energy storage technology like EEStor not being full of crap then Hydrogen engines will be obsolete before seeing mass production.
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Algae is a free floating aquatic plant so a lot of the labor intensities go away
Hydroponics isn't expensive because of labor. The labor on a hydroponic farm is, if anything, lower than on a conventional farm. It's expensive because of the massive amount of plastic and steel that you need. You're talking endless *acres* of plastic. And all plastics suffer UV degradation to some degree.
Hydroponic Wheat/Corn/etc is more expensive because it's wasteful and increases the energy costs associated.
Hydroponic *everything* is expensive because of capital costs. Staples are simply not grown in hydroponics because nobody wants to pay a fortune for them. The only things that are generally economically justifiable to grow in hydroponics are things that are *already* expensive due to labor costs.
Sieve.. isn't so simply for corn,
I take it you've never heard of a combine.
Again, it's not the harvesting that's the issue. It's not marginal costs at all. It's capital costs.
All you need to grow hydroponic algae is water circulation, sunlight, carbon dioxide and some nutrients in the water
You've made it obvious that you've never done hydroponics in your life.
and the "wear and tear" on transparent plastic tubes that simply have algae-bearing water running through them isn't going to be nearly as bad as other hydroponics.
Again, you make it quite obvious. UV creates free radicals in the plastic which causes crosslinking, making the plastics brittle. It happens in all plastics. Untreated thin film polyethylene (the cheap stuff) generally lasts for under a year before it becomes semi-opaque and so brittle even the stresses of a light breeze can break it. About the longest you'll get is thick, rigid, UV-treated polycarbonate, which is probably good for about 10 years in this kind of role, but I doubt they'd even dream of paying for that. They'd probably go with UV-treated PVC thin film tubing, good for 2-3 years. Or they might use some sort of fluorinated thin film. But that's still monstrously large capital costs for this kind of coverage, for such tiny revenue per acre (~$10k/year).
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Whether or not EEStor is real or not is becoming increasingly unimportant. When they first started pushing their (questionable) tech, conventional li-ion cells on the market were 160Wh/kg and most of of the stable ones were ~$1/Wh and under 100Wh/kg. Now conventional li-ion cells are 200Wh/kg with longer life, the stable ones are under $0.50/Wh and rapidly headed toward $0.35/Wh or so, and there have been literally dozens of lab breakthroughs that if any one of each anode and cathode tech were commercialized, would make li-ion cells have the claimed energy density of EEstor's EESU. So, honestly, I don't really care all that much about whether they're legit or not anymore.
Hydrogen is already obsolete. I mean, come on, 6 figures for a fuel cell stack strong enough to run a car? 1/3rd the efficiency of EVs, and that's *if* you use fuel cells rather than combustion? 5 year fuel cell lifespans, tops? Many more moving parts (including a compressor)? An explosive, ozone-depleting fuel that leaks through almost anything, pools under overhangs, has a ridiculously low ignition energy, burns in almost any mixture with air, rapidly undergoes deflagration to detonation transitions, etc? That has no better range than a modern li-ion EV? And takes 3 times as long to fill as the high end rapid-charging EVs and 1.5 to 2x as long as the low-end rapid charging EVs? Why exactly is this supposed to be appealing?
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like, say, hemp, which is a nitrogen fixer.
Or use land that isn't suitable for crops like marginal land.
i know the phtysics of UV degrading plastics, but then again most of the applications im seeing aren't using your normal plastics. They seem perfectly capable of turning a profit.
As for yuor "blah blah combine" combines don't exactly work on HYDROPONIC CROPS...
Yes you have some valid points about wear and tear, but apparently all analysts and people experimenting with it think that at $50/barrel that Algal Oil is perfectly economically viable.
BTW: bioplastics.
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You can make biofuel from algae using pond liners in the desert. You pump saltwater out there using thermal solar pumps, the algae comes from the air...
This has the obvious advantages that you're not competing for space with food, and that the fueling infrastructure for diesel (and theoretically, butanol can be made from the remnants of the algae feedstocks left over after you separate the oil as well) is already in place and functioning.
I want to see electric cars too, but until the batteries don't suck for a broad variety of reasons, perhaps we should focus on something that will work today, and on comparing it to something that isn't as lame as using ethanol.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Can someone explain why turning biomass into usable forms of energy is ever a good idea? After all, all biomass is really just a way to turn solar energy into fuel. It always seemed to me that it would be a heck of a lot more efficient to just set up a bunch of mirrors to heat water to power a steam turbine. Is growing corn, or switchgrass, or whatever that much cheaper?
I also never understood why people were so concerned about turning biomass into ethanol. I was recently reading about a power plant that was being designed to use ethanol from a nearby ethanol plant. Again, wouldn't it be a heck of a lot cheaper and more efficient to just design a power plant that burned plant matter directly for fuel?
These aren't rhetorical questions. I'm interested if anyone has real insight into what the total energy benefits are. Is it really just a case of "the corn lobby"?
Yes I know battery technology is progressing, but super capacitors are cleaner and longer lasting so it would be better to use capacitors.
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What about using glass instead of plastic for the tanks and such, and only using plastic for easily-replaceable hoses?
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AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
How do you distribute the electricity from your biomass reactor or your solar field to the cars? See previous paragraph about power grid issues.
Um, at night?
But that's not the point; the problem is that shipping H2 around is a colossal PITA. It doesn't compress well, it leaks like crazy, and it's corrosive to many metals. Even if we had magical free hydrogen, the sensible thing would probably be to convert it to hydrocarbons; the loss from that will be less than from shipping the hydrogen around.
Glass is more UV resistant, to be sure. But it also costs more. It also isn't quite as good at transmitting visible light.
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And their design was apparently conservative: you could build it, starting TODAY.
No one has demonstrated sustained useful greater than unity energy yields from fusion outside of bombs and stars. It is entirely possible that their design would work, but the track record of fusion attempts says its unlikely. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of fusion research, and I think it's worth spending money on. But, when the fundamental concept your engineering project relies upon has not been demonstrated in a manner that obviously scales to your project, calling it conservative is a stretch. In fact, calling it engineering is a stretch -- it's scientific research. Once they have a scale model and *strong* reason to believe it will scale properly, then you can call it a viable design -- but until it or something like it has been demonstrated at scale, you can't call it conservative.
A "fusion" reactor that can be built today?...yea right
2. How do you distribute the electricity
same way you distribute your hydrogen, by building the facilities....only far quicker and at far cheap cost.
TFA doesn't define the term or tell us exactly HOW to convert biomass to electricity. Ok, obviously you can burn the biomass and use the heat to generate electricity the traditional way, i.e. via steam and turbines... but how is that "bioelectricity"..? To me that's just a wood-fired power plant.
According to Wikipedia bioelectricity refers to the various electric fields and currents generated in living tissue. If we could somehow harvest that directly (Matrix-style) then we could talk about "using bioelectricity", but TTBOMK no techniques for doing that in a way that generates useful currents and/or voltages has been discovered "in the real world".
I don't have access to the on-line edition of "Science" which is apparently the source for this article... do they really talk about bioelectricity or is this just a case of some brainless science journalist being too clever?
As for yuor "blah blah combine" combines don't exactly work on HYDROPONIC CROPS...
Combines work on whatever you design them to work on.
but apparently all analysts and people experimenting with it think that at $50/barrel that Algal Oil is perfectly economically viable.
If "all analysts and people" think it's so viable, why have all these companies been having so much trouble trying to raise capital for the past several years, even in this incredibly pro-green environment?
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But ethanol delivers far more votes per acre.
captcha: compare
You were very generous with 40mpg. The highest mileage a 2009 car gets on E85 is only a paltry 16 city 23 hwy, much lower than the 22 city 32 hwy on gasoline. Most new vehicles that burn E85 are trucks so the cafe average is probably closer to 13mpg, which would be worse if running on E100.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/byfueltype.htm
plants are only about 6% efficient(max) at converting sunlight into sugars & cellulose. Modern solar panels are around 20% efficient(very expensive space panels are at 40%).
ethonol must be distributed by truck or rail(there is no pipeline yet).
electricity transmission loss is around 3%.
How you use the energy matters also. Internal combustion engines waste most of the energy as heat(75-80%) and use only 20-25% of the energy to move the car. Electric batteries and motors are around 85% efficient.
Electricity wins.
Now if we can just get some affordable batteries and solar panels...
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...fixed power plant more efficient than motor vehicle power plant.
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I kinda think we need to start mining operations off planet as I don't think we have enough raw resources to replace the existing global car fleet with new funky electric cars.
because they havent had a problem?
there are several well funded startups and several actively running test sites,[snark] but apparently their operating with out funding [/snark] :P
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Last time I saw a bioelectricit setup was 5 months ago in a lab. The yield was low. Lets not go for one approach, but for many, the most practical first.
I believe that is part of their plans for many of the large scale facilities. also what plastics they use can be cheap bioplastics
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Name one that's been able to raise the money for a commercial production venture (I.e., not just a little tiny pilot project). After all, they've been operating for years.
Name one that's cashflow positive.
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Wait. Corn? Switchgrass? I thought bio-electricity was about breeding electric eels.
Too bad "Put an eel in your tank" has a completely different connotation from "Put a tiger in your tank."
We are the 198 proof..
. Switchgrass can theoretically yield over 1000 gallons per acre and algae 5000, although those numbers are likely to get way smacked down by reality (especially the algae numbers).
Algae should be able to do a whole lot better than that if it was grown in vats that allowed light in from the sides and had a modicum of active circulation. Or, if you really wanted to get elaborate about it, a system like this one might make a real difference.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Well duh. It has nothing to do with what fuel source you are using.
An electricity generating fuel cell is about twice as efficient as an ICE.
It doesn't matter if you feed it ethanol or petroleum.
Using ethanol for fuel is still a stupid idea.
Where does this notion come from? No, seriously. Current electric cars are about the same weight on average as current gasoline cars (they tend to be heavier than other cars in their class, but the lighter classes are overrepresented currently, so it's about a wash). Same amount of material, and therefore.... they're somehow incredibly resource hungry? Where does this come from?
Or is the notion that batteries somehow consume incredibly rare resources? You're thinking of fuel cells, which take platinum (trivia: so do catalytic converters). For example, one of the most popular chemistries for EVs today is lithium phosphate. It's made of lithium salts (which are so abundant that their prices generally range from $4 to $8 per *kilogram*, and which are available at essentially limitless quantities in the oceans for $20-35/kg), phosphoric acid (one of the world's most common industrial chemicals, and found in soft drinks), sugar, iron powder, a porous polyethylene membrane (polyethylene being one of the cheapest and simplest plastics), graphite or amorphous carbon, and bulk electrolytes (formulations vary), plus casing, wiring, etc. What exactly in this mix are you seeing as incredibly rare? The cost of lithium phosphate batteries (and spinel cells as well) are predominantly capital costs, not materials costs.
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Replacing all our internal combustion engines with electric is a tail-pipe dream. We will not all be driving Volts and Teslas in the future, to produce millions of vehicles each with a couple hundred kilograms of Lithium batteries, or even NiMH batteries would be as unsustainable as our use of fossil fuels. http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Projects/Lithium_Microscope.pdf
Oh come on, not this lithium scarcity nonsense again....
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Okay, hydrogen is expensive, is 1/3 efficient, needs equipment with a 5-year lifespan and moving parts, depletes ozone, leaks through anything, pools under overhangs, ignites, burns, detonates, has no better range, and takes longer to fill than fast recharging electrics.
But other than that, what's wrong with it?
I must say, I enjoy reading anything you write about batteries, solar cells, etc. Not only do you seem to know what you are talking about, but you write clear and interesting prose. If you don't mind, would you tell us something about how you know all this stuff? Are you an industrial chemist, a physics professor, or what?
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
You're forgetting Cannabis/Hemp that would produce 400% more ethanol than corn on the same acre.
Bio-electricity can't compete.
All the substantial problems with electric cars and energy density have been solved. No, I'm not kidding.
Google the name: Shai Agassi, and push your local senators and representatives to PAY ATTENTION to this man!
Once again: Shai Agassi. This is for real.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Well, the cause and effect are actually opposite of how it may appear, but... I am the president of a company developing software for alt-fuel vehicles, so it's kind of my business to keep up on these sort of things. :) However, I ended up starting that company because of an interest in (and lot of study of) EVs rather than the other way around.
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With the world population at 6,706,993,152 the numbers just don't add up too well.
Est peak times... Ignoring the fact the a lot of the population doesnt use much at the moment.
Sr 10yr
Ag 10yr
Sb 15yr
Au 15yr
Zn 15yr
As 18yr
Sn 18yr
In 18yr
Zr 20yr
Pb 20yr
Cd 20yr
Cd 20yr
Ba 20yr
Hg 23yr
W 24yr
Cu 23yr
(http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5239)
corn can support 1.3 drivers/acre, sugarcane 2.3 drivers/acre, switchgrass 3.3 drivers/acre, and algae a way-over-optimistic 16.7 drivers/acre.
A compact linear fresnel reflector solar thermal generating station produces about 1MW nominal capacity for every 4 acres ... That's 121.7 drivers per acre.
That's all well and good, but I'm tired of people forgetting about *scaling* in these arguments.
According to Wikipedia, there are 136 million cars in the US, so you need 1.12 million acres of solar thermal. That's 1,734 square miles - about the size of Rhode Island. In comparison, SEGS ("the largest solar energy generating facility in the world") totals a mere 1,600 acres (2.5 square miles).
In contrast, even with the puny 3.3 drivers/acre you get with switchgrass, you "only" need 41.2 million acres (64,400 square miles) of cultivation. This compares to 86 million acres of corn, 75 million of soybeans, 64 million acres of wheat, and 9.4 million acres of cotton planted in the US for 2008.
Yes, it's more land usage - but tell me: what do you think it is easier to do, plant ~40 million acres of switchgrass, or cover ~1 million acres with a complex "compact linear fresnel reflector solar thermal generating station"? Planting and harvesting crops is old hat. Large scale solar power, not so much.
about 122 drivers/acre?
200,000,000 drivers in the US alone.
We would need at least 1,600,000 acres to support that many drivers.
The US only has 2,400,000 acres.
I'm rounding, but that's about 70% of the landmass. Were you hoping to put these panels on the moon?
First off, you're ignoring the fact that we're a net agricultural exporter in your comparison to existing plantings. Secondly, where do you expect us to come up another Florida's area's worth of cultivable land? We're already farming so much that the Colorado no longer reaches the ocean for most of the year, the west and south are getting drier, and the Ogallala is being drained at a rate faster than the (historical) flow of the Colorado river (at this current rate, it'd be empty in 25 years). Third, that 1000 gallon per acre figure for switchgrass is based on speculative numbers.
Lastly, you write:
with a complex "compact linear fresnel reflector solar thermal generating station"
The name may sound fancy, but the CLFR is one of the simplest solar thermal designs. The reflectors are big, long, flat mirrors rotated as a single unit -- no complex curved shapes, no millions of individual multi-axis actuators, etc. The receivers are just elevated black steel pipes -- not glass vacuum sealed tubes like in many designs. And the power from it is nearly cost-competitive with coal *without* cap and trade.
But hey, you just saw it fit to judge it based on the fancy-sounding name.
You're not made of Tuesday!
Whoops, 2,400,000,000 acres in the US.
Carry on. Nothing to see here.
this is all the energy we'll ever need!
I'd like to know more about the project, I thought fusion designs start with hydrogen and produce something heavier. Hence the "fusing" part of fusion.
Sorry if this seems obvious.
Think Deeply.
PetroSun in 2 seconds off the top of my head.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Hydrogen is already obsolete. I mean, come on, [...bunch of very true things snipped...]
Hydrogen was obsolete from the start. Or rather, it was never physically possible to make a hydrogen fuel cell car, fuelled by renewable hydrogen, that could compete with battery-electric cars. The entire 'hydrogen economy' goal was pure fabrication, a colossal red herring designed by car manufacturers to protect their central product base. It was then taken up by the U.S. Government because hydrogen sound cool while "battery powered car" makes you think of the Super Hornet r/c car you had when you were a kid that you could never play with because it needed 8 AA batteries and they were always flat. All the government blahblah about the "hydrogen economy" neatly forgot to mention where we would GET this hydrogen, or if it was mentioned, there was handwaving about nuclear power plants and subsequent quiet mumbles about "aw fuckit we can just crack fossil fuels into hydrogen for now".
Consider the disadvantages of electric vehicles compared to traditional petrol vehicles, from the point of view of a company like GM or Ford:
The last three are all real deal-killers. For one, around half the cost of an EV is in the battery. Short of buying a nano-lithium-battery manufacturing plant, there's no way for them to make a profit on the batteries. Car manufacturers also derive a substantial portion of their income from spare parts sales, and the only replacement parts EVs are likely to need (barring collisions) in their first 5-10 years are tyres and brake pads. Lastly, new vehicles are generally dealer-serviced to keep the warranty, and again, EVs don't need regular servicing the way normal cars do. So financially, there's a strong incentive for car manufacturers to try and maintain the status quo.
Personally, if I were running a big car company I'd sink my liquid assets into buying a solid share of A123 Systems, bite the bullet, and switch from building 350 cu in. behemoths to building moderate sized sedans with a 200km pure-electric range and optional (removable for more luggage space) range-extender genset.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
"She'll go 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene."
PetroSun? That's your example? A penny stock with questionable business practices leaking money like a sieve and teetering on the verge of bankruptcy?
Come on now.
You're not made of Tuesday!
1 mile per gallon (imp) = 59.95 furlongs per firkin (US)
should be:
1 mile per gallon (imp) = 52.46 furlongs per firkin (US)
if it actually matters to anyone, that is...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I always see Hydroponic weed around here... too bad it costs $60/eighth ounce versus $30/eighth for the cheap mexican stuff... so good though
It's expensive because of the massive amount of plastic and steel that you need. You're talking endless *acres* of plastic.
WTF is a compact linear fresnel reflector solar thermal generating station made from?
"The internal combustion engine just isn't very efficient, especially when compared to electric vehicles," says Campbell. "Even the best ethanol-producing technologies with hybrid vehicles aren't enough to overcome this."
If this impacts bourbon production, there may be a political rethink.
Simple flat mirrors and steel pipe. But you need less than an order of magnitude less of it.
You're not made of Tuesday!
I see your point. But I require a 600-700 mile range. No electric can do that. I'll stick to my (bio)diesel.
And what's the cost of producing those solar cells, etc?
Why on Earth would you need that kind of range between stops? Are you an arctic explorer or something?
You're not made of Tuesday!
Not solar cells. Solar thermal. They're flat mirrors and steel pipes -- no more complex or expensive than building an equivalent-sized hydroponic system. Only this system powers an order of magnitude or two more vehicles.
You're not made of Tuesday!
I work for myself, and have a lot of clients in a lot of states. Plus the average miles driven is around 20k -- nearly double the "average 10k" where I live. Cars like these are really common. The question is why DON'T people expect these kinds of ranges out of a 15-gallon tank. Welcome to 1977... my dad's Golf does better than this car, 50 city and 60 highway... and our neighbors 84 Ford Escort was EPA rated at 68. We think that 28 is how acceptable. I think not. Electrics have to beat this for me to support them. They never will. Also most of Europe is driving diesels. If anything I'm more worldly in my expectations of consumer products.
But again, I don't get why you'd need that kind of *range* between stops. Do you honest-to-god drive 700 miles nonstop -- no stretch breaks, no bathroom breaks, no food breaks, etc? The standard safety recommendations are *at least* 10 minutes break for every 2 hours driving.
In general, long "range" for gasoline cars is simply to get around the inconvenience of having to go to gas stations in your day-to-day life. Which isn't an issue for most EVs in most people's lifestyles -- plug in when you get home, and whenever you get back to your car, you've got a full charge. You never even need to think about it.
If anything I'm more worldly in my expectations of consumer products.
It's not a question of what's capable of what, but why on Earth you'd need that sort of capability unless you're an arctic explorer or something. Do you not get out to stretch? Do you not go to the bathroom? Do you not eat? It's like boasting that your home printer can hold 50 pounds of paper in its tray.
You're not made of Tuesday!
I do. When we went to iowa we stopped every 2 hours, i hated it, but we made the stops and still got over 700 miles between fill ups. I don't need to stop. I don't drink a ton of water (8oz every hour), a single 24-pack of bottled water and 2 boxes of granola bars are all I need to drive to texas -- and back -- with making no more than 6 stops along the way (including fuel). Stops detract from your time on the road. If your in a hurry, as in you've got to be in St Louis by 5pm or else, stops are your enemy. I make the drive down I-40 from the heart of carolina to the mississippi river three times a year. In every gas car I've been in, including a Prius, keeping up with traffic, we stop for fuel at lease once if not three times (the prius stopped only once), and it takes about 20 minutes per stop before your back on the road. Result? 15 to 17 hour drive. I do it in less than 12 and a half with my diesel, every time. I'm just as ragged and tired without the stops and running a slower speed as I am making the stops, the difference is I save money and time (2 to 5 hours worth). My question to you is, why do you think this is weird? I'm far, far from the "weird" types out there who shift into neutral and shut off their engines while driving. As for the 50 pounds of paper mark, if you worked with the folks I did -- that would be something to talk about. They print up to 2000 sheets PER day, a ream of paper weighs 5 ponds, a 50-pound capable feeder would mean we'd only add paper to the unit twice a week... yes there are people out there that would utilize such a device. my point is, on a bad day i get 550 miles out of the car in the city. everyone else is fortunate to break 300, and 450 if you've got a hybrid. i'm blowing them all away on a car with 100-year old technology. I'm not the crazy one here.
When we went to iowa we stopped every 2 hours
Sooo... then why would you need 700 miles range? I mean, if you could fast charge or battery swap at those times, all the range you need would be ~140 miles range. And EVs are already up to 300 miles range.
My question to you is, why do you think this is weird?
I don't think it's "weird". I just think it's a really trivial thing to rule out electric over. That's like saying I wouldn't get a heart transplant if my hospital meals don't include jello. That sort of range is such an unimportant ability that's so seldom relevant, if ever.
Let me put it another way. A couple months back, I had to pick up a new furnace in Missouri. I don't have a vehicle that can haul a furnace, so I rented a cargo van. I have to rent a cargo van or pickup once or twice a year for things like that. Should I buy a cargo van? Make it my daily driver? Of course not; that'd be idiotic for something whose capabilities I need so rarely. Yet that's exactly what you're saying in relation to EVs. Only worse; you *never* have to go 700 miles without a single stop, it's not considered safe to do so, and it provides such a tiny benefit in terms of drive time it's virtually pointless. Yet you're willing to completely write off environmentally-friendly low-maintenance transportation that costs a third as much per mile over something it. I just can't comprehend that notion.
As for the 50 pounds of paper mark, if you worked with the folks I did -- that would be something to talk about.
I said at home. You're trying to alter my analogy ;)
You're not made of Tuesday!
Ah cool thanks
We bought a diesel jeep (SUV) to haul around our bird cage 3-4 times a year to various events and shows, it beat the gas CAR it replaced by 8MPG highway but the city was about the same (22-23mpg). We also live in a flood zone, and it has flooded, so the 4x4 is something of a comfort. Perhaps I'm not the right one to ask such a question, I've never rented a vehicle to move something in my life (grew up with more pickups than cars). Perhaps you should spend $400 on Craigslist and get a beat up old truck, something old enough to not need inspection and put cheap tags on it, and save yourself the $50 rental fee? Or, make friends with trucks?
Your analogy wasn't altered. I work with people who really would make use of a printer like that *at home* because these folks are workaholics who can't read 300pg PDFs on the computer screen and have to print them out.
I think my overall point is that people have rather low expectations for their equipment. It's not unreasonable to ask a vehicle to give you a 600 to 700 mile range, even if you never need to utilize it. You said it yourself the idea is to go to the fill up station less. If you drive 10,000mi/year and get 600mi out of 14 gallons you're looking at fueling up a total of 16 times for the year. With the EV you have to plug it in every 200mi or so, that works out to 50 charges. My number is lower, but the cost may favor the electric (hard to say, I don't think it would where I live but our rates are a little higher I think). The nice thing about either technology is that you can DIY the fuel source for them (biodiesel or solar, or if your really into it pedal power). Diesel, however, is more rapidly deployable in the short term with near immediate payoff in terms of reducing emissions *and* reducing the number of imported gallons of oil.
Everyone does not need a 4-door sedan, but most people want them (not me I wish I had a hatch, took what I could get out of necessity). The EVs are trying to appeal to those who don't want the standard, this car is suitable for the masses and manages the overall goal: reduces the amount of fossil fuel we use, while giving the option of using renewable.
EVs will face the issue of is it bad power or clean power, you just took oil out of the equation. I don't think coal fire-charged EVs are any cleaner (in any way) than my Diesel running NC-derrived biodiesel.
We bought a diesel jeep (SUV) to haul around our bird cage 3-4 times a year to various events and shows
Out of curiosity, what kind of bird?
Perhaps you should spend $400 on Craigslist and get a beat up old truck, something old enough to not need inspection and put cheap tags on it, and save yourself the $50 rental fee?
One, that'd have to be a really beat up old truck. Two, no, the costs of keeping and maintaining it wouldn't justify once or twice a year usage.
Your analogy wasn't altered. I work with people who really would make use of a printer like that *at home* because these folks are workaholics who can't read 300pg PDFs on the computer screen and have to print them out.
300 pages != 50 pounds
It's not unreasonable to ask a vehicle to give you a 600 to 700 mile range
It is unreasonable to turn down a vehicle because it doesn't have a 600-700 mile range when it gives you some massive cost savings and environment savings potential.
You said it yourself the idea is to go to the fill up station less.
*Around town*. Proportionally few people in this country do most of their driving on long trips. It's done around home. And with an EV, you *never* have to go to a station to fill up when doing your regular, around-town stuff. The point of those big gas tanks is to get around an inconvenience in day-to-day life that EVs don't have to deal with at all.
If you drive 10,000mi/year and get 600mi out of 14 gallons you're looking at fueling up a total of 16 times for the year. With the EV you have to plug it in every 200mi or so, that works out to 50 charges.
Do you really not see the difference between plugging in in your garage/disconnecting when you leave versus driving out of your way to a gas station, pulling up (perhaps waiting, if at a busy time), getting out (in whatever weather you're having to deal with -- nasty heat/humidity, blizzard, etc), unscrewing your gas cap, putting the pump in, selecting your fuel type, fuelling it, taking the pump back out, putting the gas cap on, messing with your wallet to get out a credit card, paying, leaving, and driving back to where you were going? EVs let you avoid that *inconvenience* (I've timed it before -- it generally takes 10-15 minutes out of my day every time. Plugging/unplugging an electronic device, including fetching the cord, etc, is generally under one minute). The point of putting a huge gas tank on a gas car is to try to reduce the frequency that you have to deal with that inconvenience which EVs never have to deal with around town (i.e., the lion's share of driving).
Diesel, however, is more rapidly deployable in the short term with near immediate payoff in terms of reducing emissions *and* reducing the number of imported gallons of oil.
Diesel *increases* most emissions (just not CO2). Yes, even modern diesels. Yes, there exist diesel vehicles that are cleaner than gasoline vehicles that exist, but *on average*, gasoline cars are still way cleaner than diesel cars. Also, part of the "number of gallons" aspect is illusory, as diesel is a 15% denser fuel than gasoline (so you're importing more oil per gallon)
EVs will face the issue of is it bad power or clean power
I think you already know very well that EVs are cleaner than gasoline cars by a good margin even on our current grid. If not, I have plenty of peer-reviewed papers for you to read. Including one from the DOE conducted at PNL. The general conclusion is that *on our current grid* for the same vehicle on each drivetrain, EVs increase PM, have the same SOx emissions, slightly reduce NOx, nearly eliminate VOCs, nearly eliminate CO, and cut CO2 by a third. However, even that's misleading, because what pollutants are emitted are emitted at altitude and more displaced from population centers, so the health consequences of those emissions are notably lower. *And* the grid is rapidly getting cleaner (42% of new power added last year was wind, and most of the rest was natural gas), while oil is getting dirtier (more syncrude -- bitumen, coal liquefaction, deepwater, etc). It's no contest.
You're not made of Tuesday!
An African grey parrot, we're probably going to be adopting another one. He's between 15 and 17 in age.
First up you're wrong regarding it takes more to refine diesel, par the DOE: http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/non-renewable/oil.html#How%20used
Based on this you can't get a single product from a barrel, while your logic is semi-correct in that if we only refined diesel we'd need to import more oil, we can easily offset that by using any number of renewable crops -- several of which have no human consumption traits, or are not frequently used as food oil -- soy and RME come to mind, followed by Jathropa and Hemp.
Secondly, the Biodiesel Board has something to say regarding emissions with just a 20% blend of renewable fuel in the mainstream: http://www.biodiesel.org/pdf_files/fuelfactsheets/emissions.PDF
I don't really care how you slice it, when you look at a 2.0L Gasoline VW beetle that gets 28/32 and the 1.9L Diesel Beetle that gets 44/51, it's hard to say that the lightly higher NOx content is going to be critical given that the Diesel goes 220mi farther *on the same number of gallons* as the gasoline vehicle.
I'd love to take a look at your papers. You also dismiss condo/townhome owners, Home Owner's Associations that can regulate such things as solar panels or other electrical modifications to your home (such extremes do exist), and the fact that no builder is going to start incorporating it into the home building process as "main stream." On the one hand, I liked the idea of converting our old 89 Golf into an EV, but then I realized that I'd have to throw a 50ft cord from the balcony to the parking spot in front of the building -- assuming I could land that spot every time I come home -- to charge it, and likely deal with vandalism/stolen power in the process (happened before when I was charging the battery on the same car). The end result was, it's just not worth the effort and the savings aren't worthwhile with a midsized sedan getting 41+ economy on a regular basis off more to less vegetable oil.
In 50 years, I fully expect us to be on something electric. For the next 10-15 I would like to see us moving towards diesel powered technologies to drop the number of gallons of oil we use, for the average person a diesel option is $2k more a Hybrid is $4k extra and a pure EV is around $15k more as an option. If You can get a 4x4 SUV with 30 to 40MPG economy with a clean exhaust for $22k, why get the electric for $35k? The problem is neither are truly available right now. I drive more highway than city, and until EVs make sense in that kind of environment (and that applies to about 90% of southern car owners), they won't be popular.
One last thought, your concept is that you "never have to go" to the "inconvenience" of the gas station could hurt those small store owners. Fuel has never been profitable, the soda pop and candy bar were. While I have my own issues with such foods, I think that it's a bad idea to keep isolating society (the iPod's done enough damage) by never forcing social interaction with rituals like refueling your vehicle or grocery shopping.
An African grey parrot, we're probably going to be adopting another one. He's between 15 and 17 in age.
We have a 3-year-old yellow-headed amazon. We take him out to local parks about weekly -- not for shows, but just to meet the local children so he stays well-socialized. He's a real sweetie. :)
First up you're wrong regarding it takes more to refine diesel, par the DOE
First off, your link doesn't state that. Secondly, that's not what I stated; I stated that diesel *contains* more energy (and more mass of petroleum) per gallon, not that it uses more energy to refine. Third, diesel *did* used to take less energy to refine, but it's approximately the same today with modern desulfurization requirements. Oh, and my source on how much energy it currently takes to refine is from my father, who is the CEO of one of the largest refiners in the US.
Based on this you can't get a single product from a barrel,
That's not how it works. They're talking about the average. First off, there's no single type of crude oil. Crude comes in varying average molecular weights, from light to ultra-heavy (and even bitumen), varying levels of sulphur (sweet to sour), etc. The different average molecular weights have differing natural "cuts" between gasoline, fuel oil (varying grades), and so forth. In addition to the average molecular weight requirements (diesel/fuel oil being heavier than gasoline), you also need approximately the right mix of different types of hydrocarbons -- alkanes, cycloalkanes, aromatic hydrocarbons, etc. Again, your crude can have a different natural cut of these, and almost never does it come out just right to be used directly as fuel just by separating by weight.
That's where refining comes in. Refining is not only the process of the separation of the crude, but changing certain chemicals from one form to another. My father got his start, for example, managing cat crackers, which use hydrogen and catalyst beds to break down long chain hydrocarbons into shorter chain hydrocarbons.
Secondly, the Biodiesel Board has something to say regarding emissions with just a 20% blend of renewable fuel in the mainstream
And I'm sure the Tobacco Lobby has something to say regarding the health effects of tobacco smoking. They are correct, mind you, that biodiesel is usually cleaner than regular diesel when burned properly. But it still doesn't come close to gasoline. For example, point to a single diesel or biodiesel SULEV. They don't exist, and it takes some really convoluted methods (like traps and urea injection) to even get down to LEV status.
we can easily offset that by using any number of renewable crops -- several of which have no human consumption traits
There simply is not enough land. Do the math. We're already farming too darn much of this country, a large chunk of it unsustainably in terms of water, and what's being proposed is asking for somewhere between another Florida's worth of irrigated land to about five Texases worth of irrigated land.
I don't really care how you slice it, when you look at a 2.0L Gasoline VW beetle that gets 28/32 and the 1.9L Diesel Beetle that gets 44/51
*Sigh*. I really have to start from the beginning here, don't I?
1) First off, where are your numbers from? From fueleconomy.gov, we don't see a 2.0L Gasoline VW beetle in any recent model -- only 2.5L. The most recent year that a diesel VW beetle was certified by the EPA was 2006. The gasolines ranges from 20/28/23 to 20/29/23. The diesels ranged from 30/38/33 to 31/40/34. *However*, the gasoline beetles ranked from 6 to 9 on their pollution scores, while the diesels both ranked *1*. That's on a scale of 0 being the worst and 10 being the best. Breathe in deep from *that* tailpipe!
2) A gallon of diesel contains about 12% more petroleum, and burning it emits about 12% more CO2. The diesel beetles wer
You're not made of Tuesday!
Do you use a feather tether harness for your Amazon or have you handled him since birth? We just started using a harness and it's been better than I'd expected. I have a more profound respect for YouTube, the videos on parrots and training have been quite helpful....
I'm really not up to debate this anymore. I don't trust the EPA. If you look at the User Input on fueleconomy the TDI New Beetle (pre-2005 models) have 40/50 economy, Motorweek's Review of the 99 model (engine used from 1998 to 2004, then replaced with a 100HP Pump Duse motor, which was in use in all models except the 05.5-06 Jetta which used slightly different 100HP Motor, the 05 Passat was the only model with a 2.0L Diesel). They also noted it emits less CO2 while deliverying 27% more torque than the 2.0L Beetle (the gas engine available until 2005, when the 2.5L came out). The 2.5L is a hog, it gets really bad economy -- thats what we traded (in Jetta form) for the Jeep, and the Jeep has out performed it since. The EPA has historically rated Diesels poorly; they gave the award for "most fuel efficient car ever" to the 99 Honda Insight at 63MPG highway EXCEPT that the 1984 EPA Rating for the Ford Escort Diesel was 68 Highway (see this ad: http://memimage.cardomain.com/ride_images/3/1845/4701/29612350015_large.jpg)... the 84 data is no longer available, and they don't always have the data for all vehicles that came with a diesel for every year. Also they don't list economy for large trucks (F250 or bigger), which is where you *really* see the difference that a diesel makes.
I will say you're as passionate about your vehicle options as I am. I think the two have a place in the US, because we live two very different (but yet similar) lifestyles. I'd really like to see a diesel-electric hybrid, and I hope that VW is solid on their commitment of a Hybrid TDI Jetta in the 2012 timeframe, one made at the new USA/Chattanooga TN plant.
Also, as far as the wiring and HOA restrictions, we have no such protections where I live. I've seen people's solar installs be removed after lengthy court battles, and the HOA wins. Feel blessed where you are but do realize that what is working for you simply can't work for others (due to political limitation, no due to science or anything of legit fact). I've enjoyed this debate with you, but I still hold out that no electric in the next 15 years is going to be able to replace my Diesels. I hope to be proven wrong, but I feel we overlook usable technologies in the quest to find better ones, and yet keep using the same old broken crap.
Indeed, we do use a feather teather, or at times a flight suit. He's potty trained at home, but when he gets nervous, such as around strangers or in an unfamiliar environment, he doesn't always hold it. Much to our surprise, he seems to prefer the flight suit to the feather tether. I think it's the fact that it doesn't go around his neck that makes him less likely to chew at it.
I'm kind of tired with the debate as well, but I'm glad we had it -- exchange of ideas among those of differing viewpoints is always important. :)
You're not made of Tuesday!
I'll bet quartz would be even better.
Right, quartz is expensive and we need cheap. How much does PTFE cost? It lasts well under UV.
Uh oh, the algae would probably prefer a transparent plastic, wouldn't they?
Never mind.
I'd like to keep the parrots in public conversation going, I sent an email to the listed address on your Homepage (via the link in your profile).
Hmm. I'm not sure what email address you used, but I didn't get it. My email is meQme@dauQghtersoftirQesias.orQg (remove Qs to despammify)\
You're not made of Tuesday!