Karlos wrote:
That's the rub. Any rechargeable system that ultimately requires recharging from a mains supply will result in increased load on electricity supplies and subsequent increases in emissions from there.
Not necessarily.
Back in 1971 (when I was 14) our teacher performed an experiment about the electrolysis of water in a chemistry lesson that produced detonating gas. Finally he ignited the gas and it blew the test tube into pieces with a loud bang.
Our teacher then said thet the reaction of hydrogen and oxyde is much more fierce, produces much more energie than the reaction of e.g. petrol and air and produces zero air pollution, as the result of this reaction is steam.
At the very same moment my finger went up and I asked my teacher:
"So why do all the cars still use petrol or diesel?"
His answer was:
"If this was possible they would have done so long before!"
Later - in the course of my training as a machinist at KHD (Magirus Deutz) - I asked the same question to my foreman at KHD's engine research centre.
He answered basically the same as my teacher before, but he became more precise:
"If hydrogen and oxygen react, it results in a very high firing temperature, which would make the intake- and exhaust-valves melt."
These answers did not satify me and so I decided to make an experiment on my own.
My hobby was flying RC model aircrafts at that time and from that I had a spare 0.33 cm^3 petrol model engine.
With my limited resources I "electrolysed" me some cm^3 of detonating gas (took me two weeks with a 12V transformer and an old aquarium), slightly modified the model engine by taking off its tank and carburetteur and supplying the detonating gas instead of petrol.
Then I started the engine and - woooohooo! - it ran!
It ran for about 30 seconds until the detonating gas was empty.
Later I re-mounted tank and carburetteur and it ran flawlessly with petrol again.
So I had my proof that it worked.
Later - while studiyng engineering - I learned about constructive measures to avoid the melting of metal at such temperatures. After all the engines of the Space Shuttle (which burn hydrogen and oxygen as well) don't melt either...
But from my own experiment I knew how time-consuming the production of hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis of water would be - and so started to look for a more efficient way to do this. After some years of research I had an idea how I could produce H & O much faster and at an lower energie footprint - I still have to prove with an experiment that it works.
But nevertheless electricity is still reqired for this process. And if we're talking about operating all combustion engines worldwide with H&O, then we're talking about a fair amount of electricity that's needed for the H&O production.
Then a next idea began to shape out.
If I want to reduce the emissions of the cars to save the environment by using H&O, then we can't use "dirty" electricity for that.
I thought about the way it is now:
We drill holes into the earth and pump up what's left of the sunshine from some million years ago (oil, result from ancient forests) and burn this in order to be mobile, while at the same time the sun still sends us a comparable amount of energy like millions of years ago.
So today we end up with the energy of the daily sunshine
PLUS the energy of the daily sunshine from some million years ago that made the ancient forests grow from which the oil stems we burn when we drive by car, sail by ship or fly by plane.
So I thought that if we today "dig out the sunshine of the past" to be mobile and want to change that, we must reduce the daily sunshine that hits the ground here on this planet by exactly that amount we are burning "sunshine of the past" to be mobile.
When thinking about possible solutions, a sunshade sprang to my mind.
What, if we built a huge solar cell platform in the orbit that works as an jalousie, collects the electricity of all solar cells, transfoms it to rays and sends it down to earth wireless?
(I recently read about an technique for wireless energy transmission and it works already on distances up to 30km - I'm confident that with goal-oriented research 300km and more are no problem at all)
If the orbit is calculated accordingly, so that this platform can throw a big enough shadow on desert areas, I would expect low (air) pressure in this areas as a consequence.
As normally rain comes with low pressure, such an desert area might start to grow green again, which would improve our air quality and climate significantly.
That's why I said "Not necessarily" in the beginning...
But I'm afraid such a project is far too big for one nation - and if I look at the current political conditions worldwide I have not much hope that this could be realized anytime soon.
(Sorry for my long posting)
