What drives your car?

[gizz72]

Greetings,

As usual the crude oil prices are affecting all of us. I was thinking maybe it's about time we could use alternative means of fuel rather than gas fuel. Hopefully, cheaper as well but, the alternatives i'm about to writeup isn't cheap. Here goes...

* Water - Abundant alternative energy source. Down side electrolysis process is, i believe, too expensive. Most of the Oil companies will go after you since this technology will ruin their business. Here's one website -->> http://www.jimloy.com/pseudo/car-h2o.htm

* Sun - Fairly abundant. Down side you'll need a BIG battery to store those solar energy. Although hybid cars are STILL in the works and also too expensive. The other downside is acid waste dumps from old and used batteries will just ruin our environment.

* Electric - Endless cycle of energy converting from another form of energy. It'll just complicates things for your car. I'm not sure about the railroad industry, that's faster but flying is still safer, I believe.

* Wind - Hehe! Unless you live in a hurricane alley. Not likely. I seen to recall a Disney Flick that had barque ships with wheels running of endless green fields. Fantasy, really.

* Magnetism - If we can only find a way to levitate a piece of steel without submerging it in -700 degree F liquid nitrogen?? or counter the gravity on earth, without leaving the earth's orbit, we might be riding in to the spaceage of jetsons. Still to expensive.

* Lasers - I've seen one on the discovery channel once about a saucer disc that 'float' using pulse of laser. Very very expensive to build personal pulse lasters. If such a thing happens, we could be into the buck roger's era.

* Nuke - Too dangerous. Think of the radiation suit fashion industry would take advantage of this. Many riots too from demonstrations and all those anti-nuke issues...

Overall, we're still dependent on middle east oil, which is slowly depleting fast. Unless the energy crisis is resolve, we could endup, more likely, the MADMAX era. Part 1: Fighting for a drop of fuel. Part 2: Fighting for water. Part 3: Fighting just to survive.

Back to stoneage.. :-(

Regards,

Gizz

[Ilwrath]

@Gizz-

I mostly agree with your assessment of where the technologies you listed are deficient.  

But, really, nuclear power on a large scale, designed with safety first, is a fairly clean, safe, and modern way of generating electricity.  It's really a shame that the early horrendous accidents, along with the high cost of building nuclear plants, has stagnated the development of this source of electricity.  

A plentiful, clean source of electricity could do wonders for clearing up pollution and raising sustainability.  Nuclear is the closest thing we've got.

Overall, we're still dependent on middle east oil, which is slowly depleting fast. Unless the energy crisis is resolve, we could endup, more likely, the MADMAX era. Part 1: Fighting for a drop of fuel. Part 2: Fighting for water. Part 3: Fighting just to survive.

Well, there's no doubt we're too dependent on fossil fuels.  But, I just don't see it all ending in MadMax style.  It's not like one day the wells stop, and that's it.  They slow over time, and people will struggle to get the deeper and harder to obtain oils.  They will struggle to refine worse grades of oil.  And you know what?  That'll gradually raise the price of oil.  We're not heading for a wall of "running out" of crude.  We're heading for a years long, if not decades long price ramp-up as oil gets harder and harder to obtain.

Eventually the price will exceed the cost of other options, and as that happens, systems will be changed over to save costs.  Honestly, the high gas prices the US is experiencing right now is probably a good thing, in that the prices are moving more toward the reality of the situation.  (The truth of it is, that the US prices are now more in line with world prices...)

[gizz72]

Greetings,

>US prices are now more in line with world prices...)

Yup just refining 'dirty' fuel really is expensive nowadays. I'm not surprise why the US is the driving force of today's world economy.

Here in our country, we have small portions that has fossil fuel. If you recally the spratly islands, beleive to bore some fossil fuel enough to raise a small army. No doubt China and Taiwan wants a piece of it.
Alternativitly, we're looking ways to use coconut oil as alternative fuel source. Cheaper and clean too.

<:lol: joking no offense :lol:>
Just don't make me ride on a nuclear car that said 'made in taiwan'.


regards,

Gizz

[The_Editor]

As always ...

There's BioDiesel.

Give the third world the contract to grow the Rape seed necessary for the process,  curing two problems with one solution !!

[FluffyMcDeath]

Water, re: hydrolysis implies electric.
Sun and wind imply electric.

Electric is the way. Electric is a common currency (oh, pun alert).
Hydrolysis may play a part in electric storage.

The thing about electricity is that you can make it anywhere out of all sorts of things and move it about for almost nothing.

As for cost, hybrids are not more expensive than other vehicles that seem to sell just fine.

[whabang]

The_Editor wrote:
As always ...

There's BioDiesel.

Give the third world the contract to grow the Rape seed necessary for the process,  curing two problems with one solution !!

Then we wouldn't have room to grow food, silly! :-)

[PMC]

What drives my car?  The Force on a very bad morning....

Anyway, We've reached the point where the fuel cell is becoming a viable alternative and a source of clean energy.  The only problem is that separating hydrogen and oxygen requires more energy than is returned by burning hydrogen.

However, a British company has proposed using solar energy to separate the hydrogen and oxygen from water and reckon they're looking at 10% efficiency within the next few years.  

I would miss the characteristics of driving an internal combustion engine, especially a high revving one as electric power has a constant power / torque curve.  But that's progress I guess...  Although if they make an electric or fuel cell engine that sounds like a Ferrari 640 grand prix engine then I'd be converted in an instant.

[whabang]

Don't worry. I'm sure that someone will construct a car with a hyrdogen-driven combustion engine. :-D

[PMC]

@Whabang

A hydrogen powered combustion engine is likely to be less powerful than it's gasoline powered equivilent, plus there's secondary pollution from lubricants and fine particles of metallics from wear in the engine...  Plus the four stroke combustion engine isn't the most efficient device ever invented.

BUT

A properly tuned gasoline engine sounds absolutely fantastic, especially if it comprises of more than four cylinders (preferably twelve).  

You've sold me on the concept of a hydrogen burning engine!  I can do twelve to the gallon safe in the knowledge that most of what comes out of the tailpipe is nitrogen and water vapour, whilst enjoying the aural delights of a V12!

[whabang]

Less powerful? I dunno; hydrogen/oxygen makes a quite explosive combination.
Mind you, many forklifts run on ethane.

[KennyR]

gizz72 wrote:
* Water - Abundant alternative energy source. Down side electrolysis process is, i believe, too expensive. Most of the Oil companies will go after you since this technology will ruin their business.

Like I keep telling people, you can't get energy from water (unless you invent a controllable means of nuclear fusion). The site you linked explains exactly why. You can get energy from moving water though, but not much, relatively.

Sun, Wind: too limited.

Electric, Magnetism, Lasers: All need energy, to give energy.

We only have two real options: vastly decrease our energy usage now, so we have more left to develop new technologies; or learn how to sharpen flint now.

[whabang]

We need cold fusion! (Pun intended)

[PMC]

IIRC the efficuiency comparison between a hydrogen gas engine and gasoline is something like 75%.  

Remember that hydrogen is less dense than gasoline and therefore less volume of fuel is going to be injected into the cylinder unless it's under considerable pressure which results in significant temperature / storage issues.  

However, an engine designed around the properties of hydrogen as opposed to being a fudged gasoline burning design may claw back some efficiency.

We do need a cheaper and cleaner source of energy to provide power for electrolysis (where H2O is separated into constituent elements).  Diesel/Coal/Gas plants simply cause the same pollution elsewhere, wave/wind plants aren't efficient enough and there are long term issues with nuclear waste and radioactivity for nuclear plants to be trusted.

Fusion is a different matter though, but the technology is in it's infancy.

[cybereye]

KennyR wrote:
We only have two real options: vastly decrease our energy usage now, so we have more left to develop new technologies; or learn how to sharpen flint now.

I belve what happen to US gas price is doing just fine. This may be a turning point to make people stop dreamming about alternative energy cars. There always had been alternative energy cars before gas burnning cars. What make people go for the gas burnning cars is a long history behind it.
     I'm keeping an eye on the new electric car company http://www.universalelectricvehicle.com/ . I know at this point it cost too high. I beleve the company is trying to sell fleets of electric cars to company. The only two draw back is one: storge of electric and two: prices. The big 3 cars company in US knows they will not make much money in the long run with electric cars. They make most of the money on cars repair and parts. I'm sure they make money on patents for aftermarket as well. In electric there is very little parts to transfer energy to the wheel. So there is not much to repair the electric cars. When you brought your DVD player, What was the last time you had to get a new one cause your old one got broken?

I'll stop from there, I was about to type a 235 pages about what make people get into gas cars in the first place when there are alternative energy cars. :lol:

[The_Editor]

Super heated water  (Steam)

Use Methanol to achieve intial temp.  Then self generating with super condensors. (electric heaters)

No ??

Oh well ...Back to the drawing board.