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Henners91 wrote:

kronk wrote:The US alone consumes 21 million barrels per day.

Can you supply that much fuel from this source economically?

Forgive the caps please:

STOP. DRIVING. HUMMERS.

Thx.

Well, Hummers aren't made anymore, so go us, I suppose.

Interesting, the US uses less oil per capita than Canada. Thought three times what the UK uses. It's possible that larger countries (area wise) might use more fuel...

kronk wrote:

Henners91 wrote:

kronk wrote:The US alone consumes 21 million barrels per day.

Can you supply that much fuel from this source economically?

Forgive the caps please:

STOP. DRIVING. HUMMERS.

Thx.

To the rest of the world: Suck it!

(I drive a Prius and get 45-50mpg)

I drive a 92' Toyota Starlet, and I get 43, the Prius is a big joke.

Polonius wrote:
There are upper limits to tech. You can't build a steam engine that's as lightweight and reliable as a diesel. Can't be done.

Except at high altitudes, where steam engines continue to out perform diesel. (much to the astonishment of several South American rail industries) Steam outperforms diesel at altitude due to the way the two engines work. Diesel has a fixed horsepower. Steam gains power as atmospheric pressure drops. Further, Wilcox & Babcock produced a steam engine that was and is more reliable then diesel more than 70 years ago with their 'non-explosive boiler'. The real problem isn't the weight of the engine, it's the weight of fuel. A steam engine isn't as fuel efficient as a diesel engine, and requires refueling more often.

As far as pipelines/etc go: why would you need them? Human gak is everywhere. As long as you can get a culture of the bacteria growing, you could do this yourself in your garage off your septic tank and table scraps.

I actually like the idea of gasoline powered generators powering electric cars. Basically what the Hybrid cars do. Only it would be a lot better if they weren't so expensive, and looked a whole lot better.

BaronIveagh wrote:

Polonius wrote:
There are upper limits to tech. You can't build a steam engine that's as lightweight and reliable as a diesel. Can't be done.

Except at high altitudes, where steam engines continue to out perform diesel. (much to the astonishment of several South American rail industries) Steam outperforms diesel at altitude due to the way the two engines work. Diesel has a fixed horsepower. Steam gains power as atmospheric pressure drops. Further, Wilcox & Babcock produced a steam engine that was and is more reliable then diesel more than 70 years ago with their 'non-explosive boiler'. The real problem isn't the weight of the engine, it's the weight of fuel. A steam engine isn't as fuel efficient as a diesel engine, and requires refueling more often.

My use of reliable was overly broad. Steam requires more maintenance than diesel. Steam has lots of applications, it's just that there are things it can't do that other tech can.

You're example actually really nails my point: you can make steam optimal for certain areas, and guess what? It's used there. Eventually electric will get there, for at least niche applications.

Polonius wrote:Every form of technology has upper limits, based on physical laws.

... which we don't yet completely understand.

As for "selective quoting", when the basis of your post is debatable, the rest, which is derived from the basis, is debatable for the same reasons.

Polonius wrote:

It's possible that larger countries (area wise) might use more fuel...

Shocking revelation there, I drive 6 miles (one way) a day to go to school. There's basically nothing where I live that could be called pubic transportation.

There's an awful lot of "having our cake and eating it" on this thread too. I wonder what the BTU's of this bacteria are and how much of it would need to be produced in order to even dent our oil production. Stop demanding products be made of plastic and then oil prices will go through the floor.

We should also remember that over half of every barrel of oil used here in the US is not used for fuel. Petroleum based products are everywhere around us. The very basic compounds in petroleum are the foundation blocks of medicines and useful chemicals in our lives. Let's stop pretending that oil usage will disappear with some miracle bacteria or algae.

Minerals required for battery production are abundant, but getting them is the hardest part. The quantities needed to replace and retrofit all of the vehicles in the western wold is almost unfeasible. It involves either strip mining (not good), normal quarry mining (scars up the Earth and leads to destabilization of the topography of where the mine is) or deep crust mining (like what happens/ed in Chile & South Africa).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Melissia wrote:

Polonius wrote:Every form of technology has upper limits, based on physical laws.

... which we don't yet completely understand.

As for "selective quoting", when the basis of your post is debatable, the rest, which is derived from the basis, is debatable for the same reasons.

Physics and Chemistry are pretty stable fields of study, Lithium, Nickel & Cadmium have a limited life for retaining energy before they turn into a useless (for retaining electricity at least) isotope.

There's a reason batteries have hit a wall, it's called the Law of the Conservation of Energy. These batteries can only do so much before they become paper weights. Throwing them away leads to aquifers becoming contaminated with pretty nasty chemicals and heavy minerals. Furthermore, the batteries need a charge from somewhere in order to be useful, and the vast majority of our electricity is not made from wind & solar it comes from coal.

If wind & solar were viable they'd have already been done in a large scale.

One question.

What happened to the fuel cells that were supposed to be running our computer and cell phone batteries by now? Over the years, I've read articles like these:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/01/49717
Computer fuel cells that ran on methanol and could run a laptop for 10 hours. 2002

http://www.pcworld.com/article/115549/samsung_readies_portable_fuel_cell.html
Methanol based fuel cell. 2004

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060913100455.htm
Hydrogen-gas generator fuel cell. 2006

http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/pdfs/42284.pdf
2007
Heck, even the US govt did a study and said hydrogen fuel-cell cars were not only feasible but would require less development of infrastructure than any other option. (no drain on the electric grid and able to put fuel stations at already existing CNG and propane facilities).

So. Where are they? The automobile industry blames lack of infrastructure. What? some of them run on water. Heck, I'm sure my garden hose can reach the fuel tank on a car.

Oh wait, the energy industry (read big oil) got involved and now there's a different sort of hydrogen fuel that includes something from oil. Yeah.

GM is tackling the problem in a partnership in Hawaii with The Gas Co. The utility plans to tap into its 1,000-mile utility pipeline system, separate the hydrogen from the synthetic natural gas and sell the hydrogen to refueling nations in Hawaii. The cost to add hydrogen fueling equipment is expected to be $300,000 to $500,000 per pump.

What happened to the water based systems that George Bush Sr. spent billions in developing? Not a word.

To extract the hydrogen from the water you need to electrolyse it, this requires energy and provides you with hydrogen and oxygen. In the engine itself hydrogen is combined with oxygen to form water, the energy acquired from combusting two atoms of hydrogen to form one water molecule is precisely the same amount of energy require to split one water molecule into two hydrogen atoms. This is of course presuming that the operation occurs at 100% efficiency.

In short, you need huge electrolysis stations to create the hydrogen needed to fuel the cars and that station requires electricity that has to come from somewhere else...

corpsesarefun wrote:To extract the hydrogen from the water you need to electrolyse it, this requires energy and provides you with hydrogen and oxygen. In the engine itself hydrogen is combined with oxygen to form water, the energy acquired from combusting two atoms of hydrogen to form one water molecule is precisely the same amount of energy require to split one water molecule into two hydrogen atoms. This is of course presuming that the operation occurs at 100% efficiency.

In short, you need huge electrolysis stations to create the hydrogen needed to fuel the cars and that station requires electricity that has to come from somewhere else...

Yeah, that's why the petroleum industry got involved once they found out it was easier to separate hydrogen from natural gas...

agnosto wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:To extract the hydrogen from the water you need to electrolyse it, this requires energy and provides you with hydrogen and oxygen. In the engine itself hydrogen is combined with oxygen to form water, the energy acquired from combusting two atoms of hydrogen to form one water molecule is precisely the same amount of energy require to split one water molecule into two hydrogen atoms. This is of course presuming that the operation occurs at 100% efficiency.

In short, you need huge electrolysis stations to create the hydrogen needed to fuel the cars and that station requires electricity that has to come from somewhere else...

Yeah, that's why the petroleum industry got involved once they found out it was easier to separate hydrogen from natural gas...

Exactly, electrolysis of water is just not an effective way to acquire hydrogen unless you use a secondary resource to power it such as solar, hydroelectric or geothermal power.

Melissia wrote:

Polonius wrote:Every form of technology has upper limits, based on physical laws.

... which we don't yet completely understand.

I know I don't really understand the law of thermodynamics, but I can assure you, there are people that do.

As for "selective quoting", when the basis of your post is debatable, the rest, which is derived from the basis, is debatable for the same reasons.

If you want to score cheap points, that's your perogative. I was making a different point than you addressed, and given that you selectively replied to that part, I think it shows that you were doing so deliberating. Tech in general has vast limits we can't possibly understand. But to argue that specific fields or uses of technology can all be improved endlessly is simply demonstrably false.

There's simply an upperlimit to the number of ions per unit of Lithium. that's fairly basic chemistry.

There's a reason we can't build cars that get 1,000 miles to the gallon. It's not lack of effeciency, it's simply conservation of energy.

I would thank every god in the heavens if there was a way to stop leaving such a big carbon footprint that it makes the grand canyon look like a bit of hair...

Still doesn't explain why we don't have cars available; the same trucks that deliver CNG could be delivering Hydrogen...

Reformers would be a good alternative as they would allow service stations to produce their own supply of hydrogen on-site.

My point is, it's possible and with gas prices being what they are now, even more economically feasible than 10 years ago.

agnosto wrote:Still doesn't explain why we don't have cars available; the same trucks that deliver CNG could be delivering Hydrogen...

Reformers would be a good alternative as they would allow service stations to produce their own supply of hydrogen on-site.

My point is, it's possible and with gas prices being what they are now, even more economically feasible than 10 years ago.

Getting the hydrogen in the first place is the main issue.

Separate it from natural gas, remove it from water both of which methods could potentially produce copious amounts of hydrogen.

One mole of water (~18ml) turns into 33.6 liters of oxyhydrogen gas. Thus you get about 1860 liters of oxyhydrogen for each liter of water, and correspondingly one liter of oxyhydrogen turns into 1/1860 = 0.53 milliliters of water.

You don't even need to transport it, service stations could produce their own; or you could make it at home. Here's a site that has the plans to make a very very small machine that makes oxyhydrogen gas:
http://www.umpquaenergy.com/hydrogengenerator/homemade-hydrogen-generator.html

agnosto wrote:http://www.umpquaenergy.com/hydrogengenerator/homemade-hydrogen-generator.html

He's using sciency-sounding words that don't have any actual meaning, or uses them to illustrate irrelevant points.

"The produced oxyhydrogen gas is a stoichiometric mixture of hydrogen (2 parts vol.) and oxygen (1 part vol.) and can be combusted in vacuum."

It's like reading mattyrm writing about a British TV show. I'm sure the words are in English, but hell if half of them make sense to me.

Polonius wrote:I know I don't really understand the law of thermodynamics, but I can assure you, there are people that do.

We as a species, across all of our brightest and most learned minds, do not completely understand the laws of physics and how they can be applied.

Melissia wrote:

Polonius wrote:I know I don't really understand the law of thermodynamics, but I can assure you, there are people that do.

We as a species, across all of our brightest and most learned minds, do not completely understand the laws of physics and how they can be applied.

Do you really think developments in quantum mechanics or string theory are going to allow us to build a better steam engine?

You do realize that our understanding of macro-level phsyics hasn't changed substantiall in over a century, right?

Polonius wrote:You do realize that our understanding of macro-level phsyics hasn't changed substantiall in over a century, right?

Yes it has. New understandings of gravity/microgravity, metallurgical concepts, nuclear concepts, etc have been found out quite frequently over the last century.

Nevermind the immense strides we've made in chemistry and biology, or the research done on the physics of the body (which is effecting quite a few health and safety related industries, even defense industries).

Melissia wrote:

Polonius wrote:You do realize that our understanding of macro-level phsyics hasn't changed substantiall in over a century, right?

Yes it has. New understandings of gravity/microgravity, metallurgical concepts, nuclear concepts, etc have been found out quite frequently over the last century.

Nevermind the immense strides we've made in chemistry and biology, or the research done on the physics of the body (which is effecting quite a few health and safety related industries, even defense industries).

I'm not sure you understand what macro-level physics is, because the only thing you listed that's close to that is gravity. We understand why it works slightly (very) better than a hundred years ago, but the mechanics really haven't changed. Nothing else you listed is part of classical mechanics.

Again, my question (which you seemed to dodge) is this: do you think there will be new discoveries that allow us to build better steam engines?

Polonius wrote: do you think there will be new discoveries that allow us to build better steam engines?

Does magic count? Because Steampunk has come up with some pretty sweet stuff.

Polonius wrote:I'm not sure you understand what macro-level physics is

I'm not sure you do. Macrophysics is a rarely used term for "the study of that which can be directly observed."

And yes, we HAVE advanced macrophysics, quite a bit in fact.

Our understanding of the physics of a female body (which is definitely observable, perhaps too much so for certain people) for example has vastly improved even over merely the past five years, as industries such as defense (body armor is being developed for women, using a mixture of physics and biology to provide the best protection, coverage, and comfort) have benefited from.

Our understanding of gravity and microgravity has increased through space exploration.

Our understanding of climate-based physics has vastly improved, as well as our understanding of the natural disasters that are both a cause of and caused by these physics.

Our understanding of the physics of light (again, observable) has improved as well.


As for utterly irrelevant and rather inane question about steam engines? Sure, but that doesn't mean that they'll use it. It has advantages in certain areas and disadvantages in others. The gasoline-based system's disadvantage, for example, is that it takes tremendous amounts of time and/or energy to make gasoline, so we're effectively running on a very limited quantity, and as we use more and more and more-- and we are, as a species-- it will eventually slow down, dry up... and effectively run out.

It's inevitable, it WILL happen. The only question isn't if, but when.

Ahtman wrote:

Polonius wrote: do you think there will be new discoveries that allow us to build better steam engines?

Does magic count? Because Steampunk has come up with some pretty sweet stuff.

lol. I'm a big fan of Thomas Kuhn, as well as gould, so I like to apply the theory of Punctuated equilibrium to science and tech as well.

It's an evolution/revolution dichotomy. We shouldn't hope for our current tech to evolve to meet future needs, but rather look to revolutionary new tech that will emerge. Look at atomic power or space flight: both evolved far less than people imagined 50 years ago. Now look at medicine or communication: vast leaps beyond their wildest dreams.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Melissia wrote:

Polonius wrote:I'm not sure you understand what macro-level physics is

I'm not sure you do. Macrophysics is a rarely used term for "the study of that which can be directly observed."

Yeah, my bad. I meant classical mechanics. We certainly know more, but most of the time because we care enough to study it (kinesthetics of female bodies just wasn't very relevant 100 years ago to scientists) or becasue we have the tools to do (climate modelling requires computers).

The steam engine question isn't inane. It's showing that advances won't improve our existing tech, but will develope new tech. We won't go back and make better steam engines (at least on a widespread basis) because there are simply better options.

It's relevant to the original discussion of the tech level of electric cars, because there's no research that will cause current battery tech to evolve to be really worthwhile. OTOH, you can't stop the research that will lead to the actual electric car, because it'll be new and revolutionary.

Polonius wrote:...It's an evolution/revolution dichotomy. We shouldn't hope for our current tech to evolve to meet future needs, but rather look to revolutionary new tech that will emerge. Look at atomic power or space flight: both evolved far less than people imagined 50 years ago. Now look at medicine or communication: vast leaps beyond their wildest dreams.

I would venture to say the reason why Medicine/Communication has made vast leaps over Atmoic Power/Space Flight is readly available consumers to puchase products thus interest in investment. If we had focused the amount of time and money that we have for Communication into Space Flight, I think we would already be half way to Mars if not already there.

While I think our current understandings of certain Physical Laws which limits us in the energy department, there is essentially an infinite other discoveries to be discovered which anyone of them could lead to better efficiencies of our tech.

Zyllos wrote:

Polonius wrote:...It's an evolution/revolution dichotomy. We shouldn't hope for our current tech to evolve to meet future needs, but rather look to revolutionary new tech that will emerge. Look at atomic power or space flight: both evolved far less than people imagined 50 years ago. Now look at medicine or communication: vast leaps beyond their wildest dreams.

I would venture to say the reason why Medicine/Communication has made vast leaps over Atmoic Power/Space Flight is readly available consumers to puchase products thus interest in investment. If we had focused the amount of time and money that we have for Communication into Space Flight, I think we would already be half way to Mars if not already there.

While I think our current understandings of certain Physical Laws which limits us in the energy department, there is essentially an infinite other discoveries to be discovered which anyone of them could lead to better efficiencies of our tech.

The drive of consumer spending is important, but there's only spending because there are advanced worth buying. Space flight is simply way more limited than we thought. We never really built a bette rocket than Robert Goddard did 80 years ago.

The transistor, antibiotics, and plastics were developments that enabled amazing new products and advances. They were discoveries of completley new ways to do things.

Polonius wrote:The drive of consumer spending is important, but there's only spending because there are advanced worth buying. Space flight is simply way more limited than we thought. We never really built a bette rocket than Robert Goddard did 80 years ago.

The transistor, antibiotics, and plastics were developments that enabled amazing new products and advances. They were discoveries of completley new ways to do things.

Plastics and transistors are great examples of past discoveries and how profound their effects are to our lives. Future breakthroughs will also have the same effect. Honestly, a lot of stuff that has been discovered lately really will not effect our lives until 10, 20, or 50 years down the road. The issues are that a lot of our problems we face today really need to be solved immediately, which usually place new discoveries at odds with safety and security of the consumers of those technologies.

Zyllos wrote:

Polonius wrote:The drive of consumer spending is important, but there's only spending because there are advanced worth buying. Space flight is simply way more limited than we thought. We never really built a bette rocket than Robert Goddard did 80 years ago.

The transistor, antibiotics, and plastics were developments that enabled amazing new products and advances. They were discoveries of completley new ways to do things.

Plastics and transistors are great examples of past discoveries and how profound their effects are to our lives. Future breakthroughs will also have the same effect. Honestly, a lot of stuff that has been discovered lately really will not effect our lives until 10, 20, or 50 years down the road. The issues are that a lot of our problems we face today really need to be solved immediately, which usually place new discoveries at odds with safety and security of the consumers of those technologies.

Yeah, antibiotics didn't balance our humors, and transistors aren't tiny mechanical switches. The next car probably won't be batteries as we know them.

Aren't farts flammable? can't someone make an engine to run on people-gas? That would be great, a bucket of KFC would get me to california & back...