Free Fuel? Best alternative fuel video to date
- Thread starter outsidr
- Start date
cruiser guy
Explorer
Photog said:
I'm no chemist or engineer but this http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html looks like the way we should have been going a long time ago. Not only would we greatly reduce our use of petroleum but we could also leave the Muslims to their own and let them kill off each other. Too bad "Big Brother" has hobbled us by not allowing diesel fueled vehicles.
I think the push for ethanol is a waste of time as from what I've heard, it's NOT a net reduction of fuel as it takes as much fuel to produce ethanol as you get.
lowenbrau
Explorer
The whole alternative fuel debate reminds me of the Monty Python "She's a Witch" skit. You get all sorts of uninformed, irrational or near sighted suggestions. "Install this hydrogen producer under your hood" "Use corn for ethanol" "Use canola for biodiesel" "Stick this widget in your intake" " Make Brown's gas" etc. There’s a snake oil salesman on every corner and the gullible masses are clambering to get bilked.
I'm a diesel bigot so any solution which involves fuel to keep them going is attractive to me but any technology which uses or displaces food stocks for fuel is ethically troublesome, far more so than continuing to use fossils, the reserves of which I am confident will outlast my need for them. If there was a commitment from people to stop the consumption of beef and allocate that land to prairie grass production for conversion to bio diesel, that would seem like a gain but there's no way a gout-ridden Westerner like me is going to give up his t-bones until the pain (either in my toe, my conscience or at the pump) becomes intense. Electricity in my neck of the woods is produced with coal generators so there's really nothing green about any solution using it. The distribution of electricity has its own damaging effects on the earth. Places that typically produce Hydro are mountainous and the negative effects of moving that power from there to the user are permanent and significant. Nearly every power line cuts a major erosion path into a water shed and transmission towers often have access roads that are erosion problems. I'm not sure that it is the case now but there was a time when solar panels used more energy to create than they would produce in their lifetime.
Enough of the negative, there are positives. First of all, having this discussion at all is the result of a >$80 barrel of oil. It is finally becoming economically possible to consider alternatives. A couple of years ago I went to the super market to see if I could find a liquid (any liquid) that was cheaper than gasoline. Except for the 5gals bottles of water, there was nothing there. Not water, milk, Coke, cooking oil... nothing. It’s pretty hard to develop anything sustainable when you are competing with a product that is so cheap and has so many dedicated users. Now that fuel is $3-$4/gal in North America some other things are looking more feasible so companies are researching not just groups with gov't grants. We are starting to see some real movement away from fossil fuels. Major cities situated near lakes are going geothermal for all their downtown buildings. It seems that the negative effects are well offset but the positive. I’m excited about the concept of algae based biodiesel. The ocean seems to have great expanses available to this type of production and it takes the pressure off of the food growing land. More experimenting is required to see if there are unacceptable negative results from this. Passive solar is making great improvements and resulting in users offsetting their requirement for gas and electricity at home. This reduces the amount of infrastructure to get those sources of energy to users. Less power lines, less gas lines less environmental damage.
I'm not the biggest greenie in the world but I am a fan of new technology and I support being frugal with our resources. I rarely agree whole heartedly with anything David Suzuki says but a while back I heard him say the given the options (hybrid, electric, hydrogen) he felt that high efficiency diesel was the future of green transportation.
I'm a diesel bigot so any solution which involves fuel to keep them going is attractive to me but any technology which uses or displaces food stocks for fuel is ethically troublesome, far more so than continuing to use fossils, the reserves of which I am confident will outlast my need for them. If there was a commitment from people to stop the consumption of beef and allocate that land to prairie grass production for conversion to bio diesel, that would seem like a gain but there's no way a gout-ridden Westerner like me is going to give up his t-bones until the pain (either in my toe, my conscience or at the pump) becomes intense. Electricity in my neck of the woods is produced with coal generators so there's really nothing green about any solution using it. The distribution of electricity has its own damaging effects on the earth. Places that typically produce Hydro are mountainous and the negative effects of moving that power from there to the user are permanent and significant. Nearly every power line cuts a major erosion path into a water shed and transmission towers often have access roads that are erosion problems. I'm not sure that it is the case now but there was a time when solar panels used more energy to create than they would produce in their lifetime.
Enough of the negative, there are positives. First of all, having this discussion at all is the result of a >$80 barrel of oil. It is finally becoming economically possible to consider alternatives. A couple of years ago I went to the super market to see if I could find a liquid (any liquid) that was cheaper than gasoline. Except for the 5gals bottles of water, there was nothing there. Not water, milk, Coke, cooking oil... nothing. It’s pretty hard to develop anything sustainable when you are competing with a product that is so cheap and has so many dedicated users. Now that fuel is $3-$4/gal in North America some other things are looking more feasible so companies are researching not just groups with gov't grants. We are starting to see some real movement away from fossil fuels. Major cities situated near lakes are going geothermal for all their downtown buildings. It seems that the negative effects are well offset but the positive. I’m excited about the concept of algae based biodiesel. The ocean seems to have great expanses available to this type of production and it takes the pressure off of the food growing land. More experimenting is required to see if there are unacceptable negative results from this. Passive solar is making great improvements and resulting in users offsetting their requirement for gas and electricity at home. This reduces the amount of infrastructure to get those sources of energy to users. Less power lines, less gas lines less environmental damage.
I'm not the biggest greenie in the world but I am a fan of new technology and I support being frugal with our resources. I rarely agree whole heartedly with anything David Suzuki says but a while back I heard him say the given the options (hybrid, electric, hydrogen) he felt that high efficiency diesel was the future of green transportation.
Great discussion ... newbie here, but I thought I'd chime in.
As someone just starting planning (4wd truck camper, retiring soon), a couple of obvious things that could be done is controlling weight, allowing for a lighter vehicle and/or smaller diesel to be used. I've been researching making my bull-bar out of Carbon Fiber and doing it myself. It would be about 1/5th the weight of a standard bull-bar with the same strength. Roof racks are another really good example of an area you could save weight while adding strength. Check out this link for a concept car from suzuki (called the "Basecamp").
http://www.suzukiauto.com/about_suzuki/concepts/view_concept.php?m=basecamp
The light rack is carbon fiber which doubles as a bike carrier (in this case). The cases in the back come from the aircraft industry and appear to be carbon fiber honeycomb with a thin metal sheath for appearance only. Collectively the cabinets in the back (pretty, but not real functional) plus the roof rack can't weight much over 30 pounds.
The auto industry could probably end up using about 300 pounds of carbon fiber composites per vehicle they make, eliminating steel at a total reduction of about 1200 pounds per car (more on a pickup). It would be nice to have a jeep that 4 people could pick up if necessary.
Replace about half the metals in a car or truck and you would reduce it's weight by about 60 percent and fuel consumption by 30 percent BEFORE you went diesel. You'd get the emissions benefit too.
For strength, You could add a layer (maybe two) of kevlar in the build-up of a truck camper. Imagine a carbon fiber honeycomb with single layer kevlar wrap and a single layer of fiberglass over that (get rid of the Ultra-violet issues). Super lightweight ... strong a steel.
Unfortunately, expensive as sin too. But when Carbon Fiber first came it, it cost about $10,000,000.00 a pound to manufacture. It's down to about $8.00 a pound. Get it down to $2-3.00/pound and we could be dealing. Then the raw material cost of a decent bull-bar, made out of Carbon Fiber would be about $450.00 ... right now, it's probably over $1500.00
Throw in labor and engineering, molds, etc and it won't be available next month unless you want to make your own.
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As for Bio-diesel, I can't get excited about using food sources for fuel. Algae is one of the best bets, since it can be raised in a closed system and built in a desert.
----
Toshiba is coming out with a "super-cell" battery ... or really a super charge Ion Battery, which is supposed to be able to recharge to 90% if capacity in about 5 minutes. These things are housed in a 4.2 ampere-hour (Ah) cell.
----------
Once they get this technology worked out, an electric vehicle that is manufactured out of carbon fiber recharged via an on-board bio-diesel generator on a fuel made from Algae .... Of course 4WD (or 6, 8, 10). The basics aren't that far off. It is all do-able right now, it just costs too much. Nothing impacts costs like volume. Increase the volume, lower the cost.
As someone just starting planning (4wd truck camper, retiring soon), a couple of obvious things that could be done is controlling weight, allowing for a lighter vehicle and/or smaller diesel to be used. I've been researching making my bull-bar out of Carbon Fiber and doing it myself. It would be about 1/5th the weight of a standard bull-bar with the same strength. Roof racks are another really good example of an area you could save weight while adding strength. Check out this link for a concept car from suzuki (called the "Basecamp").
http://www.suzukiauto.com/about_suzuki/concepts/view_concept.php?m=basecamp
The light rack is carbon fiber which doubles as a bike carrier (in this case). The cases in the back come from the aircraft industry and appear to be carbon fiber honeycomb with a thin metal sheath for appearance only. Collectively the cabinets in the back (pretty, but not real functional) plus the roof rack can't weight much over 30 pounds.
The auto industry could probably end up using about 300 pounds of carbon fiber composites per vehicle they make, eliminating steel at a total reduction of about 1200 pounds per car (more on a pickup). It would be nice to have a jeep that 4 people could pick up if necessary.
Replace about half the metals in a car or truck and you would reduce it's weight by about 60 percent and fuel consumption by 30 percent BEFORE you went diesel. You'd get the emissions benefit too.
For strength, You could add a layer (maybe two) of kevlar in the build-up of a truck camper. Imagine a carbon fiber honeycomb with single layer kevlar wrap and a single layer of fiberglass over that (get rid of the Ultra-violet issues). Super lightweight ... strong a steel.
Unfortunately, expensive as sin too. But when Carbon Fiber first came it, it cost about $10,000,000.00 a pound to manufacture. It's down to about $8.00 a pound. Get it down to $2-3.00/pound and we could be dealing. Then the raw material cost of a decent bull-bar, made out of Carbon Fiber would be about $450.00 ... right now, it's probably over $1500.00
Throw in labor and engineering, molds, etc and it won't be available next month unless you want to make your own.
----
As for Bio-diesel, I can't get excited about using food sources for fuel. Algae is one of the best bets, since it can be raised in a closed system and built in a desert.
----
Toshiba is coming out with a "super-cell" battery ... or really a super charge Ion Battery, which is supposed to be able to recharge to 90% if capacity in about 5 minutes. These things are housed in a 4.2 ampere-hour (Ah) cell.
----------
Once they get this technology worked out, an electric vehicle that is manufactured out of carbon fiber recharged via an on-board bio-diesel generator on a fuel made from Algae .... Of course 4WD (or 6, 8, 10). The basics aren't that far off. It is all do-able right now, it just costs too much. Nothing impacts costs like volume. Increase the volume, lower the cost.
lowenbrau
Explorer
madizell said:
While we are making corrections, The first automobile to be mass produced in the United States was the 1901, Curved Dash Oldsmobile. I think Ford keeps getting credit or it because his assembly line moved the cars and Ransome Eli Olds moved the workers down the assembly line.
outsidr
Adventurer
madizell said:
I guess you did not know Ford had the first Ethanol plant in Michigan that led to over 20% market share with Standard oil and many believe that prohibition was a block to the spread of organic based auto fuel rather than to curtail the brouhaha at the local gin joint.....Actually, Rockefeller dubbed the fuel name of Diesel and this would have of course rolled Diesel in his grave since the point of his engine was that you don't need a specialized refined fuel to run the engine. Of course we have MAN to blame for not using the diesel in consumer vehicles originally but instead using them in industrial and commercial application..