"Lastly, as far as solar goes, I feel that there's no need for pannels, if passive solar is utilized creatively." I think some company has invented solar panels made out of some other material than silicon in order to reduce the cost to fraction like 1/10 or even 1/20th of panels used today. Solar energy and Ethanol are two best ways to find alternative to oil. Electricity offers much more creative potential for MIT type labs.
Some Italians developed the low cost solar panels but the efficiency of conversion is less than the expensive ones. You still get more watts/buck with the cheaper ones but they take more space. I really don't see Ethanol as a good alternative. It is made from corn and the crops are fertilized with materials made from oil. Also, depleting your food producing soil to fuel your cars seems stupid to me.
Anybody care to comment on what I'm very passionate about, but not entirely knowledgeable in as yet. I realize that the amount of electricity needed to produce the hydrogen is greater than the hydrogen work output. But again, I emphasize we're utilizing energy already being expended that is otherwise wasted. In-efficient energy usage in an automobile's current or proposed conventions.
I've heard something about that, however, you have to be very careful of the source, because this is one of those "misdirection statements" that takes the fight out of the arguement before it even gets started. In reality, this has some truth, however, this is in the expensive conversion multi-step process in taking hydrogen from water sources. One thing to remember is hydrogen due to its simple nature is found in vastly more sources than just water, in significant enough quantities which are more efficient in being a reasonable fuel source. This is about the extent of my knowledge in this specialized industry. take a look at this thread too: http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=66669
When I was last in Maylasia (near K L) we were shown an oil palm plantation that produced three crops a year @ 40 cents a diesel gallon. These trees were intewoven with pineapples and one other organic crop. The crop diversity for generating fermentation and fuels is very broad and can be applied to very diverse climates for production. Waste is so valuable for recovery of energy; it is an amazing production set of fuel alternatives and wholly selfsuffient as wall. The range goes from #4 bunker fuel to methane. No smoke stack is required either and water (distilled) one of the 11 products. We had 163 vendors who were bidders on the various re-engineered machines that were involved. The downside always turned out that municipalities were not allowed to make net profits even though they used all the production for infrastucture and municipal operations. Some of the best experimental grants that NCAT generated were incredible and very useful. The focus there was using appropriate technology to aleaveate the difficulties of the poor (CAS based). The answers are all documented and available. As one looks at the entropy scale and all the possibilities, it was never necessary to have this global failure occur and become irreversible. The living earth operates on just the solar energy that falls between the cracks when the three major solar consumptions are rounded off, i. e., less than one percent. Looking at the massive productivity of the hydrologic cycle as a lower entropy largest consumer of solar energy, it is so amazing that the world collectively squandered its opportunity. Biomass conversion is an unlimited opportunity. Going to convenient storage of energy is the answer. I remember merging a dump (methane) and a dairy operation (5,000) head who were eating DDG from the associated alcohol plant and manure was generating methane as well. They sold milk and beef as energy to people; alcohol and electricity to fuel and utilities. Waste was recycled onto the grain fields. They aven made oatmeal cookies from the DDG on occasion. We had to go to federal to fill for docket #'s before the power could be sold (we refused to stock backup circuit and line connectors as dictated by the power companies). You can easily combine CO2 and methane to form urea (a protein) for feeding. A very simple profitable low quality energy loop. The H2 collection can be done with low quality energy as an intermediat by product of other kinds of activity. For example, to move coal it is four times more efficient to do it in an alcohol slurry and after the slurry reaches the application, to then not separate the two beginning products again. You just shave off the rods of alcohol from the carbon molecules at a point where the energy of he solid is five times that of raw coal. A CH combo so to speak. The rest of the stuff can be reformed into gasoline which has broad application. If an intermediate step were introduced to sepate the coall and hydrogen you would get H2 and normal buring coal and forfiet the gasoline production. Coal gasification is one that involves some high quality energy twists and turns but along the way, under pressure and with the presence of water you can squeese a lot of hydrogen out of the coal. The plasma this occurs in is more ammenable to electron like manipulation where a great deal of energy is extracted on the molecular levels. I guess the biggest opportunity for us all at this point is to use pyrolisis on waste. It requres no external fuel source and acts as a converter for all of the petrochemicals found in the current wate stream. I know the petro chemicals need to drop out of the waste stream ASAP. One of the possibilities is to consider the molecular shifts that are exothermic. Miners under pressure were dying regularly. The problem was determined in an unusual way. They were dying of CO2 poisoning where there was no CO2. It turned out that N2 was becoming CO2 and then poisoning the miners. Same thing goes on inside of chicken eggs with differing molecules and atoms of stuff. Spacing of shared components within molecules can give interesting transitions. With nano now getting pertinnet it may be possible to run some neat micro energy stuff that generates timely mechanical power. The H2 stuff is an interesting collection of possibilities. It just has to be organised properly to get the ball rolling. H2O to H2 and O2 and back to H2O isn't too swift an energy consideration at first glance. We need to do some nuancing pretty soon. Organic chemistry is where the smart H2 hangs out. How did the planet form the oil for us? From waste?. I have a friend in Guiness who is big in horticulture. He uses oil shale to get plant nutrients; oil is a left over from his non thermal separating process. His life around Colorado Springs has been offended on occasion. He is going to go to his grave, he says, before he talks to anyone in the oil industry. If you want the sulfur out of coal, the non thermal way is to centrifuge it out. LOL... What would it take for a wake up call to just plain people to get just plain people to help the guys who can solve the problems (make use of the opportunities) to be able to do so. Lobbyists have prevented so much from being unveiled for the benefit of just plain people. Sometimes it just takes an idiot savant to look at the opportunity. Anyone make any energy transfer graphs on the Gulf of Mexico last year??? Un F**king Believable!!!
First, in general... Wow. Thanks for your comments. Second, I highlighted the unfortunate reality that really strikes a major chord with me. It's really all a game of greed for the powers that be. There is simply no other justification. kt
ktmexc20, like you I'm pretty passionate about renewable energy. You may be interested to know that there is an entire army of backyard inventors currently working on ways to run there cars on electrolytic gas (hydrgen and oxgen combined) Most of these systems using the dc power off the altenator to create the fuel on demand through electrolysis. The yahoo group called 'egaspower' had about 1000 active members and a couple of the guys were actually at functional prototype stage. Then out of the blue yahoo simply removed the entire board. Every post, every file, every photo. So I hope that gives you some idea of what we're up against. Runningbear
Thanks for the info. I can't believe what you're saying about Yahoo. I know that technologies/patents have been bought up by the powers that be over time, only to burry them. I'm sure that there's also been plenty of acts of espionage against backyard inventors, etc. It's really all just so un-fsckin' believable. More to add to my societal disenchantment. kt, the idealist
I wonder how much our millions of miles of pavement contributes to global warming? Somebody should think of a way to incorporate solar cells into roads. Yes, maybe that's an idea before it's time since they can't even make roads out of asphalt... Not the roads around my house, anyway.
A company recently developed a speed hump that converts the weight of cars to usuable electric energy. I guess we're getting there. Runningbear