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Hybrid Vehicles Ethanol - E85 FlexFuel The Inconvenient Truth About Ethanol
626 messages, Last post on Jul 19, 2008 at 8:32 PM
You are in the Ethanol - E85 FlexFuel Forum. Your Host is pf_flyer
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Replying to: fezo (Jun 06, 2007 8:00 am) PS You can make a lot more per acre with flowers. You would have to get 1200 bushels of corn to the acre to make as much as I get off of one acre of anthuriums. And I do not have to do anything. They pay that much for the flowers. |
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You can just set me up in the business and I know doubt will pay back your generosity..... You won't be the first person who doesn't want to underwrite my desired lifestyle.  Sounds great. Leave enough space to grow SOME pineapples, if only for my own consumption. |
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Replying to: jkinzel (Jun 05, 2007 9:35 pm) Not a problem my friend. You just prove to me that you're a good person and cares for feelings of others. |
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i have been reading this forum with some interest. i hope you won't mind if i post a few thoughts. as i see it, there is very little question that cheap oil is gone forever. google the term peak oil and read about it if you doubt this. frankly, it is probably a good thing that that is the case or we, the humans, would surely continue to burn it until we suffocated ourselves out of existence, along with the other animals that depend on oxidative phosphorylation for their survival. so now we ask, how will we continue to live as we do now and not destroy the planet while at the same time not destroying our economy with alternative sources of energy? the fact of the matter is that there is plenty of energy in the world. when one calculates the energy content of wind, hydro, solar, and the tides it becomes quite clear that there is more than enough energy in our environment to sustain us far beyond our current levels of demand. no, the problem is not a lack of an energy source at all. the sun and moon provide that and more. the problem is that we are not smart enough to figure out how to efficiently capture, store and redistribute all the energy that surrounds us. fossils have been a convenient source of stored energy to this point in history and have provided us with the ability develop the technology to reach this point in history. but like the child who can only live off his parents for so long before being forced to become independent, we now have to stand on our own technological feet and invent a way to use what surrounds us every day. further, we must use it in a way that does not alter the environment enough to make uninhabitable for us. to break it down to its simplest terms, battery technology has to be the next great frontier of advancement in this world if we hope to advance beyond where we currently stand today. wind alone holds more energy than we need, but we can't figure out how to get beyond fluctuations in wind speed and availability. this is a storage issue plain and simple. the distribution half of the equation is already solved, the electric grid is in place and fully operational. we only have to figure out how to store the energy that we want to feed into it. all the forms of energy discussed here, except tides and nuclear, ultimately come from the sun. if plants can figure out how to use sunlight to turn CO2 into corn, sugar, cellulosic or whatever other material we want to talk about, then surely we can figure out a way to store and retrieve that energy to suit our needs. at least now, with biodiesel and ethanol, and i believe that they are far from perfect, but at least they are CO2 neutral partial solutions. every carbon in those products that is spewed out as CO2 into the environment, was previously in the environment before being snagged out of the air by some green plant and fixed into a molecule of sugar or cellulose. nuclear, while certainly appealing from a CO2 perspective, has its own set of problems that are seemingly insurmountable. so how do we get there from here? i have no earthly idea. but i do know that we need to become much more serious about funding basic research into energy sciences. we need to stop letting the oil companies set the agenda for energy policy. we need to incentivize technologies that get us closer to these goals (like hybrids) and stop coming up with tax loopholes that encourage people to buy >6000 lb suvs that get 12 mpg. we need to get off our can once in a while and ride our bikes to work and walk to the grocery store. to anybody still reading this, i sincerely apologize for the sermonizing. i got on a heck of a rant there and i feel better now. i think we all want the same thing. we just gotta figure out the best way to get there.
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Replying to: mr_peabody (Jun 06, 2007 5:38 pm) One little item. I think you will find that the oil companies are at the forefront of solar cell developments. I think that is good as they probably know better than anyone when the oil will become scarce and be able to offer an alternative. I totally agree that we need some new break through in battery technology. I'm not impressed with the progress over the last 20 years. A lot of talk and very little evidence. I'm convinced that Li-ion is a dead monkey for vehicles. I could be wrong just a hunch. Now people are using lithium batteries to make illegal methamphetamines. What is the world coming to?
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Replying to: gagrice (Jun 06, 2007 6:21 pm) Welcome aboard, Mr. Peabody! |
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Replying to: mr_peabody (Jun 06, 2007 5:38 pm) When you say battery if you mean energy storage then I agree. I don't necessarily agree that batteries, as most people think of them, need to get any better in order to take full advantage of these abundant, yet intermittent alternative energy sources. For instance you can store the energy as hydrogen. Or you can utilize pumped storage hydroelectricity where you pump water to a higher elevation and release it to turn turbines when it is needed. Actually it doesn't even need to be water. Elevate any mass and you've got stored energy. The conversion efficiencies of these methods are actually fairly high ~70%. Much better than the 30% efficiency of an ICE turning the chemical energy in gasoline into mechanical energy. |
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Replying to: gagrice (Jun 06, 2007 6:21 pm) You're not easily impressed. The best Li-ion cells can store 200 watt-hours per kilogram. 20 years ago you had lead-acid, which were around 30 watt-hours per kilogram. An improvement of almost 7x. The first EV1 had a lead-acid battery pack that weighed 1,600 lbs. and gave it a range of 80 miles. That was replaced by a NiMH pack that weighed 1,000 lbs. and extended the range to 100 miles. The 900 lb Li-ion battery pack on the Tesla Roadster provides in excess of 200 mile range. If you're not impressed with this level of progress what exactly would it take?
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Replying to: tpe (Jun 08, 2007 7:11 am) Until the aging problem with Lithium Ion batteries is resolved I do not see it in a favorable light. 6-7 years before they die of old age will not be viable in automotive mainstream. We need something better or yours and my dream of an EV will not materialize.
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Replying to: gagrice (Jun 08, 2007 7:22 am) NiCads have a serious memory problem and are also toxic. Latest on Chevy Volt progress. http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18833/page1/ |
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