Don't give me that "soul" bullshit. This is/. not some forum for luddites who shouldn't even be using computers in the first place.
Anyways, The Lightning GT (electric car from the UK) has a built-in engine sound sythesiser. I think such devices will become commonplace for reasons of safety.
...or is at least using typical troll tactics. I've seen this before every time a discussion about electric cars or alternative fuels comes up; a clean(er) technology comes along and suddenly it's held to a higher standard.
So here's the answer: of course you CAN use polluting or non-polluting energy to produce hydrogen.
The simplest and most common element, hydrogen is all around us, but always as a compound with other elements. To make it usable in fuel cells or otherwise provide energy, we must expend energy or modify another energy source to extract it from the fossil fuel, biomass, water, or other compound in which it is found. Nearly all hydrogen production today is by steam reformation of natural gas. This, however, releases fossil carbon dioxide in the process and trades one relatively clean fuel for another, with associated energy loss, so does little to meet national energy needs. For high purity needs, a small amount of hydrogen is produced by electrolysis, but this again is only as good as the energy source used to produce the electricity used. There are, however, many possible ways to produce hydrogen with renewable energy. Some of the most promising are the following:
Thermochemical Hydrogen
Heating biomass (or fossil fuels) with limited or no oxygen present can gasify it to a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide known as synthesis gas or syngas or liquefy/pyrolyze it to a liquid known as pyrolysis oil or bio-oil. Syngas can then be catalytically converted to increase the amount of hydrogen with a "water-gas-shift reaction." Pyrolysis oil can be converted to hydrogen using steam reformation and the water-gas-shift reaction. Electrolytic Hydrogen
Electrolysis can electrochemically split water into hydrogen and oxygen in essentially the reverse of the reaction in a fuel cell. To make sense for large-scale use, this process must use an inexpensive source of electricity. Because wind energy is currently the lowest cost renewable energy, it is the leading candidate. It is also an intermittent source that would benefit from being able to produce hydrogen when its electricity is not needed and to add fuel-cell generation when electricity demand exceeds what the wind turbines can provide. The combination also benefits because electrolyzers require direct current and wind turbine power must be converted to direct current before conversion back to alternating current suitable for the electric grid. Electrochemical Photolytic Hydrogen
How about short-circuiting the process to have renewable energy such as solar power produce hydrogen directly? Photoelectrochemical (PEC) hydrogen production replaces one electrode of an electrolyzer with photovoltaic (PV) semiconductor material to generate the electricity needed for the water-splitting reaction. The efficiency loss of separate steps is done away with, as is the cost of the other components of a solar cell. PEC is elegantly simple, but finding PV materials both strong enough to drive the water split and stable in a liquid system presents great challenges for researchers. Biological Photolytic Hydrogen
Another way to directly tap solar energy for hydrogen production is to take advantage of ways in which nature does so. Certain microalgae and photosynthetic bacteria do sometimes use photosynthesis to make hydrogen instead of sugar and oxygen. Among challenges here is the fact that the algal enzyme that triggers the hydrogen production is inhibited by oxygen, which of course, the organism also normally produces. Another biological research avenue is to develop microorganisms that will ferment sugars or cellulose to hydrogen instead of alcohol.
Electric cars are no quieter than a Mercedes-Benz CL-Class and others. It's a selling point to have a car be quiet! But oh, no! We have to find another fault with electric cars and impose a law *just for them*. I'd bet big oil is behind this. Nevertheless, it's easy enough to add a little external noise. The Lightning GT (electric car from the UK) has a programmable engine noise synthesizer as standard equipment.
I don't think it exists. Different things look creepy to different people. But damned if people on the internet don't like to drop the phrase "uncanny valley" at every opportunity. I think they are trying to impress others. I'M LOOKING AT YOU, BOING BOING!
National Renewable Energy Laboratory Photovoltaic Research - PV Manufacturing R&D Cost/Capacity Analysis
The PV Manufacturing R&D Project Coordination Team measures and tracks the progress of the Project's impact on module cost and production capacity. The module-manufacturing partners voluntarily provide the team with two types of critical information: direct costs of module manufacturing and manufacturing capacity. The direct costs are those costs directly associated with module production and do not include such costs as research, sales/marketing, or general administrative expenses.
Direct costs of module manufacturing dropped from $5.89 per peak watt in 1992 to $2.73 per peak watt in 2005 dollars. These results represent a total cost reduction of about 54%, or an average annual drop in direct cost of about 5.5 percent. In addition to supplying the most recent year's data, these partners supply their projections for the coming 5 years.
The cost/capacity graph below shows the 2005 data of 14 Project participants with active module manufacturing lines in 2005. A participant in this case refers to a subcontractor with a manufacturing line. The graph shows continued progress toward meeting the Project goals of decreasing direct costs of manufacturing and increasing production capacity.
PV Industry Cost/Capacity (DOE/US Industry Partnership)
The production capacity shown is the total capacity of the 14 participants. It represents the potential production if all the plants were running at full capacity. Through 2005, the graph shows that total module production capacity grew from 14 MW at the start of PVMaT subcontracts in 1992 to 251 MW at the close of 2005. These results represent a 19-fold increase or about 26% average annual growth in production capacity among these Project participants.
From the perspective of technology learning curves, these data reflect an average 17% drop in direct costs of manufacturing for every doubling of production capacity.
"Window-crash bird mortality is our focus, with the intent of providing some pespective on the near urban-myth status that has been attained regarding wind-tubine caused bird mortality. Historically and presently, the biggest piece of the dead bird pie is, without doubt, attributable to window-crashes. From Audubon Magazine: "Millions of birds perish every year from crashing into glass windows...such small glass kills can add up to big trouble, believes ornithologist Daniel Klem of Muhlenberg College, in Allentown, Pennsylvania"."
"This argument is one of the main ones against wind farms, but is simply not true. The only windfarms to ever kill birds where the very old ones built using high speed blades, and no real gearbox. Those farms would spin at very high speeds, killing birds.
The modern farms spin at much lower speeds - just look at one and you'll see that it moves very slowly! Most birds are able to avoid these blades, and even if they are hit by them the chance of death is very much lower than the chance of death brought about by the high speed blades. The simple fact is, windfarms kill very few birds, certainly far fewer than will be killed by the effects of global warming, industrial pollution, collisions with peoples cars, with windows and with buildings etc."
Just because you can't beat multiple opponents doesn't mean others can't.
My grandfather was a golden gloves boxer turned weight lifter. 5'10" 225-240 lbs when he competed. Could dead lift 500 lbs with one hand. Actually came from the same area as you.:) He was a natural athlete all his life and a veteran of many street fights. He could take on 5 guys, and did on more than one occasion. Would confront gangs of punks well into his 60s.
Took 7 strong men to drag him to the old folks home. Alzheimer's + elite athletes are a dangerous combination.
And did not become Batman. I started at age 33 and by age 39 I had been in Physical Therapy 3 times; once for neck pain and twice for hip pain. I was not very flexible when I started training and was equally inflexible when I stopped. At least I didn't get much worse.
On the plus side, for a while I was reasonably confident in my ability to defend myself in a fair fight against a similarly skilled and otherwise unarmed person. It's now been another 6 years I'm quite out of practice and out of shape.
Slashdot Mirror
I saw it on the front page.
Troll.
...is add some wind turbines to the mix.
Don't give me that "soul" bullshit. This is /. not some forum for luddites who shouldn't even be using computers in the first place.
Anyways, The Lightning GT (electric car from the UK) has a built-in engine sound sythesiser. I think such devices will become commonplace for reasons of safety.
...or is at least using typical troll tactics. I've seen this before every time a discussion about electric cars or alternative fuels comes up; a clean(er) technology comes along and suddenly it's held to a higher standard.
So here's the answer: of course you CAN use polluting or non-polluting energy to produce hydrogen.
From http://www.nrel.gov/learning/eds_hydro_production.html
Hydrogen Production
The simplest and most common element, hydrogen is all around us, but always as a compound with other elements. To make it usable in fuel cells or otherwise provide energy, we must expend energy or modify another energy source to extract it from the fossil fuel, biomass, water, or other compound in which it is found. Nearly all hydrogen production today is by steam reformation of natural gas. This, however, releases fossil carbon dioxide in the process and trades one relatively clean fuel for another, with associated energy loss, so does little to meet national energy needs. For high purity needs, a small amount of hydrogen is produced by electrolysis, but this again is only as good as the energy source used to produce the electricity used. There are, however, many possible ways to produce hydrogen with renewable energy. Some of the most promising are the following:
Thermochemical Hydrogen
Heating biomass (or fossil fuels) with limited or no oxygen present can gasify it to a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide known as synthesis gas or syngas or liquefy/pyrolyze it to a liquid known as pyrolysis oil or bio-oil. Syngas can then be catalytically converted to increase the amount of hydrogen with a "water-gas-shift reaction." Pyrolysis oil can be converted to hydrogen using steam reformation and the water-gas-shift reaction.
Electrolytic Hydrogen
Electrolysis can electrochemically split water into hydrogen and oxygen in essentially the reverse of the reaction in a fuel cell. To make sense for large-scale use, this process must use an inexpensive source of electricity. Because wind energy is currently the lowest cost renewable energy, it is the leading candidate. It is also an intermittent source that would benefit from being able to produce hydrogen when its electricity is not needed and to add fuel-cell generation when electricity demand exceeds what the wind turbines can provide. The combination also benefits because electrolyzers require direct current and wind turbine power must be converted to direct current before conversion back to alternating current suitable for the electric grid.
Electrochemical Photolytic Hydrogen
How about short-circuiting the process to have renewable energy such as solar power produce hydrogen directly? Photoelectrochemical (PEC) hydrogen production replaces one electrode of an electrolyzer with photovoltaic (PV) semiconductor material to generate the electricity needed for the water-splitting reaction. The efficiency loss of separate steps is done away with, as is the cost of the other components of a solar cell. PEC is elegantly simple, but finding PV materials both strong enough to drive the water split and stable in a liquid system presents great challenges for researchers.
Biological Photolytic Hydrogen
Another way to directly tap solar energy for hydrogen production is to take advantage of ways in which nature does so. Certain microalgae and photosynthetic bacteria do sometimes use photosynthesis to make hydrogen instead of sugar and oxygen. Among challenges here is the fact that the algal enzyme that triggers the hydrogen production is inhibited by oxygen, which of course, the organism also normally produces. Another biological research avenue is to develop microorganisms that will ferment sugars or cellulose to hydrogen instead of alcohol.
http://www.teslamotors.com/
0-60 mph 2.9 seconds
256 mpg equivalent
220 miles per charge
less than 2 cents/mile
Link us up, bro'! Or are you just poo-pooing any progress in reducing the cost of solar cells yet again? Yeah, I did a little digging. ;-)
Electric cars are no quieter than a Mercedes-Benz CL-Class and others. It's a selling point to have a car be quiet! But oh, no! We have to find another fault with electric cars and impose a law *just for them*. I'd bet big oil is behind this. Nevertheless, it's easy enough to add a little external noise. The Lightning GT (electric car from the UK) has a programmable engine noise synthesizer as standard equipment.
"The thing to watch will be the next olympics when they would first be eligible and see how they do and then the one following that when would be 24,"
Hahaha. Good one. Methinks a new batch of younger gymnasts will take thier place.
I don't think it exists. Different things look creepy to different people. But damned if people on the internet don't like to drop the phrase "uncanny valley" at every opportunity. I think they are trying to impress others. I'M LOOKING AT YOU, BOING BOING!
And speaking from the US, you're correct! But we have to polarize everything here.
ah, it's fixed. good!
And why is it linked on the main page?
http://i33.tinypic.com/2nb4z1w.jpg
The OP is what 2008 will bring. And if you had gone to the link I gave, you'd see a graph that predicts todays numbers pretty accurately.
Not based on this new technology, but here's the info:
From http://www.nrel.gov/pv/pv_manufacturing/cost_capacity.html
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Photovoltaic Research - PV Manufacturing R&D
Cost/Capacity Analysis
The PV Manufacturing R&D Project Coordination Team measures and tracks the progress of the Project's impact on module cost and production capacity. The module-manufacturing partners voluntarily provide the team with two types of critical information: direct costs of module manufacturing and manufacturing capacity. The direct costs are those costs directly associated with module production and do not include such costs as research, sales/marketing, or general administrative expenses.
Direct costs of module manufacturing dropped from $5.89 per peak watt in 1992 to $2.73 per peak watt in 2005 dollars. These results represent a total cost reduction of about 54%, or an average annual drop in direct cost of about 5.5 percent. In addition to supplying the most recent year's data, these partners supply their projections for the coming 5 years.
The cost/capacity graph below shows the 2005 data of 14 Project participants with active module manufacturing lines in 2005. A participant in this case refers to a subcontractor with a manufacturing line. The graph shows continued progress toward meeting the Project goals of decreasing direct costs of manufacturing and increasing production capacity.
PV Industry Cost/Capacity (DOE/US Industry Partnership)
The production capacity shown is the total capacity of the 14 participants. It represents the potential production if all the plants were running at full capacity. Through 2005, the graph shows that total module production capacity grew from 14 MW at the start of PVMaT subcontracts in 1992 to 251 MW at the close of 2005. These results represent a 19-fold increase or about 26% average annual growth in production capacity among these Project participants.
From the perspective of technology learning curves, these data reflect an average 17% drop in direct costs of manufacturing for every doubling of production capacity.
So much for the theory that says "if operating system X had 90% market share it would be insecure too."
When will people learn to not let big companies like Sony shove expensive proprietary formats down our throats?
Oh, wait.
You insensitive...er, umm...yeah, I'm alright.
And a big "Ha-ha!" to windoze users.
You started it, not me.
Googling around...
http://www.currykerlinger.com/birds.htm
http://www.currykerlinger.com/studies.htm
And some quotes to sum it up:
"Window-crash bird mortality is our focus, with the intent of providing some pespective on the near urban-myth status that has been attained regarding wind-tubine caused bird mortality. Historically and presently, the biggest piece of the dead bird pie is, without doubt, attributable to window-crashes. From Audubon Magazine: "Millions of birds perish every year from crashing into glass windows...such small glass kills can add up to big trouble, believes ornithologist Daniel Klem of Muhlenberg College, in Allentown, Pennsylvania"."
"This argument is one of the main ones against wind farms, but is simply not true. The only windfarms to ever kill birds where the very old ones built using high speed blades, and no real gearbox. Those farms would spin at very high speeds, killing birds.
The modern farms spin at much lower speeds - just look at one and you'll see that it moves very slowly! Most birds are able to avoid these blades, and even if they are hit by them the chance of death is very much lower than the chance of death brought about by the high speed blades. The simple fact is, windfarms kill very few birds, certainly far fewer than will be killed by the effects of global warming, industrial pollution, collisions with peoples cars, with windows and with buildings etc."
What happens when some thug keys your car or drops a match in your gas tank?
Tall tales? You ain't hear nuthin' yet! :)
Just because you can't beat multiple opponents doesn't mean others can't.
My grandfather was a golden gloves boxer turned weight lifter. 5'10" 225-240 lbs when he competed. Could dead lift 500 lbs with one hand. Actually came from the same area as you. :) He was a natural athlete all his life and a veteran of many street fights. He could take on 5 guys, and did on more than one occasion. Would confront gangs of punks well into his 60s.
Took 7 strong men to drag him to the old folks home. Alzheimer's + elite athletes are a dangerous combination.
I was being ironic.
And did not become Batman. I started at age 33 and by age 39 I had been in Physical Therapy 3 times; once for neck pain and twice for hip pain. I was not very flexible when I started training and was equally inflexible when I stopped. At least I didn't get much worse.
On the plus side, for a while I was reasonably confident in my ability to defend myself in a fair fight against a similarly skilled and otherwise unarmed person. It's now been another 6 years I'm quite out of practice and out of shape.
So as usual, YMMV.