RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable

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awmslave -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/19/2008 7:12:31 PM)
As I see it, the corn starch based ethanol as a fuel for car is one of the stupidest ideas of modern times. 1) It takes lot of gasoline to grow, transport, manufacture 2) We are already paying for this stupidity having high food prices My best guess, there is no net gain, only big subsidies make profit for some while general public pays the price.

TheHeretic -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/19/2008 7:41:04 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: SugarMyChurro quote: ORIGINAL: TheHeretic One of these days we are going to have to discuss the long-term consequences of a genuine economic collapse in the US. It wouldn't be Utopia. Not with your frame of reference, no. [8\|] And you know precisely what about my "frame of reference?" Totalitarianism is abhorrent to me from the left, or right. I doubt either of us would like it very well. I bet my investments would do better though.

Padriag -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/19/2008 7:49:22 PM)
The problem with all bio-diesel fuels is that they can't easily be used. They are highly caustic and require modifications to fuel lines in order to handle them. Existing fuel systems have to be replaced with new lines and seals that are resistant to the more caustic bio-diesel fuels. The same is also true, but not quite as much of a problem when using bio-diesel for heating. An additional problem with bio-diesel is that it requires huge amounts of fresh water and vegetable matter to produce (corn, sugar and sugar beets... in more or less that order, are the favorite choices in the US) in large quantities. This has already resulted in a little known flour shortage in the US. Right now, there simply isn't enough wheat flour to fully meet the demand, which has resulted in resent spikes in the cost of bread and bread products. Farmers are growing more corn and less wheat in the US after being encouraged to do so for ethanol production. So now we have not enough flour... and not enough ethanol... the future of that seems disastrously obvious and short lived. Fuel cell technology could be a viable solution, but both automanufacturers and oil companies are trying to figure out how to cope with the logistics of it... that is, how to set up billions of dollars worth of infrastructure for a market that will for more than a decade only recapture a tiny fraction of that investment. Which isn't to say there isn't a solution... but these things take time and I'm already working 16 hour days dammit! [;)]

atursvcMaam -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/19/2008 7:59:03 PM)
The big trigger is going to be when people stop explaining why it won't work, and are forced to make it work.

Lordandmaster -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/19/2008 7:59:55 PM)
You're kidding! Corn-based ethanol is one of the most brilliant ideas of modern times. Not many other inventions are nearly as effective at keeping poor people poor, fattening the net worth of agribusinesses, and all the while countering the arguments of environmentalists. It's ingenious! quote: ORIGINAL: awmslave As I see it, the corn starch based ethanol as a fuel for car is one of the stupidest ideas of modern times. 1) It takes lot of gasoline to grow, transport, manufacture 2) We are already paying for this stupidity having high food prices My best guess, there is no net gain, only big subsidies make profit for some while general public pays the price.

TheHeretic -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/19/2008 8:06:57 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: awmslave As I see it, the corn starch based ethanol as a fuel for car is one of the stupidest ideas of modern times. 1) It takes lot of gasoline to grow, transport, manufacture 2) We are already paying for this stupidity having high food prices My best guess, there is no net gain, only big subsidies make profit for some while general public pays the price. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6319093.stm There are your price increases. Gee. Do you think that sort of thing might drive even more Mexicans to head north, illegally? One of the really intriguing avenues with B100 is that it can be produced from crops we have no interest in using for food. Microalgae can produce vastly higher output, and do it in places corn and soybeans wouldn't like. Depending on how you utilize the biomass, you can even incorporate production as part of the process at sewage treatment plants.

TheHeretic -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/19/2008 8:17:15 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Padriag The problem with all bio-diesel fuels is that they can't easily be used. They are highly caustic and require modifications to fuel lines in order to handle them. Existing fuel systems have to be replaced with new lines and seals that are resistant to the more caustic bio-diesel fuels. True, but much more a problem with straight biodiesel (B100) and even regular old vegetable oil. With the new low-sulpher requirments in the US, you can run a B20 blend in any engine ready for that. Shifting an older engine to it would require different materials for the seals and hoses and heated fuel lines for cold weather. Easiest solution would be to have purpose-built B100 engines available. The technolgy is already on the shelf. I'm going to have to read up a little on fuel cells.

bipolarber -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/19/2008 8:58:39 PM)
I bought a used Chevy diesel pickup last year. I swapped the hoses out from rubber to neoprene (biodiesel eats natural rubber) and have been running on biodisel salvaged from a local mexican eatery. I use the salvaged grease during the summer, and commercially available diesel during the winter months to avoid the jelling problem with cold lines. During the summer, I pay about $0.30 a gallon. You can bitch about how biodiesel is a crock, but from where I'm sitting, it's the greenest thing I've been able to do that also keeps my hard earned money in my pocket. Once automakers start utilizing the newer high efficiency diesel engines, I think it will be a perfectly viable alternative. Oh, and I come from a corn/soybean farming family. An increase in corn prices just might keep a good many American farmers from having to sell out to the huge co-ops. Apparently, an earlier poster seems to think that American family farms are going to be the next OPEC. Oh, if only that were going to be true!

Padriag -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/19/2008 8:58:59 PM)
Fuel cells themselves are viable enough and also an already developed technology... NASA has been using them for quite some time. The problem is that on a massive scale they will require equally large amounts of fresh water on a daily basis. That's a problem given that fresh water is increasingly in short supply globally and that is only going to get worse. Some projections estimate that within the next 50-100 years as much as 20% of the world's population will not have sufficient drinking water if current population growth rates continue. Fuel cells will excellerate that problem. Unless of course we start desalinizations on a massive scale. One of the easiest ways to do that is to boil it off in nuclear reactors, then use the condensced steam as a source of fresh water. Plus we get more energy from the reactors in the process. Until of course a tidal wave hits the coast line and innundates all those reactors.... oopsie. But the big problem with that is that to meet the demand you'll be reducing ocean levels and gradually increasing ocean salinization levels... eventually wrecking the oceanic ecology... including the massive amounts of algie which produce as much oxygen as forests. I'm kinda attached to breathing personally... Everything has a catch, every solution has attached problems to be over come. Of course there is one solution that solves most problems.... a really good world war.... wipe about a few of billion of you and suddenly there's plenty of everything to go around again. Course some think that would be a tad harsh and inhumane.... always a downside I suppose...

DesFIP -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/19/2008 9:03:59 PM)
In northern New York farmers are investing in rapeseed and building a cooperative to process it into biodiesel. Article in the NY Farmer's Bulletin a couple of months back. I'd offer to locate it and give the month and number of the issue but I used it to get the wood stove going.

atursvcMaam -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/19/2008 9:04:12 PM)
it is okay, the global warming will increase the ocean water levels, won't it?

Padriag -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/19/2008 9:15:15 PM)
Ironic you should mention that... increasing both the consumption of fresh water and the salinization levels of the oceans will accelerate global warming... which will indeed increase ocean levels, change shore lines and then trigger an ice age... eventually. But hey... why worry, let the grand kids deal with it... [8D]

cyberdude611 -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/20/2008 5:15:35 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: bipolarber I bought a used Chevy diesel pickup last year. I swapped the hoses out from rubber to neoprene (biodiesel eats natural rubber) and have been running on biodisel salvaged from a local mexican eatery. I use the salvaged grease during the summer, and commercially available diesel during the winter months to avoid the jelling problem with cold lines. During the summer, I pay about $0.30 a gallon. You can bitch about how biodiesel is a crock, but from where I'm sitting, it's the greenest thing I've been able to do that also keeps my hard earned money in my pocket. Once automakers start utilizing the newer high efficiency diesel engines, I think it will be a perfectly viable alternative. Oh, and I come from a corn/soybean farming family. An increase in corn prices just might keep a good many American farmers from having to sell out to the huge co-ops. Apparently, an earlier poster seems to think that American family farms are going to be the next OPEC. Oh, if only that were going to be true! Cheap now if you do it on your own. But if more people did it, someone will make a business out of it all and make money. And these restaurants wont be giving out their oil for free anymore. They will want some $$$ too.

slaveboyforyou -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/20/2008 5:58:43 AM)
quote: You can bitch about how biodiesel is a crock, but from where I'm sitting, it's the greenest thing I've been able to do that also keeps my hard earned money in my pocket. No it's not a crock because it doesn't work. It's a crock because it's not green. It uses up valuable agricultural land for energy production. We only have so much land that is suitable for food production. It also takes more energy to produce biodiesal than it's worth. Most of our energy comes from coal. So in producing biodiesel, we cause more pollutants to spew into the atmosphere.

Termyn8or -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/20/2008 6:35:37 AM)
You know me by now, so here goes. Did you realize that our normal gasoline (petrol/benzine) burning automobiles already are running on an alternative fuel ? Gasoline used to be a waste product. They were already cracking petroleum before it was ever put in a car. This substance burned too quickly for lamps or heating fuel, and was too aromatic to keep in the house, not only because of the smell, if the fumes get concentrated enough one's lamps or heater might blow the place up. Plus nobody wants to smell it. Along comes Ransom Eli Olds who figures out how to use this stuff in the US. I am sure similar projects went on in other countries, but the one noted stateside here is Olds. Before that they used to burn the gasoline out in the fields. Now, maybe this is why they call me the Terminator. What I have seen in this thread is all fine and good. It is going well, people are polite, ideas stand on firm principle(s) and all that. But I hear one recurring theme. What I hear is not what you said verbatim, it is derived. I shall now express it. Every one of these ideas has one thing in common, that is that whatever resource that replaces gas/deisel has other uses. Electricity, right now there is no advantage to electricity because of the generating costs, both environmental and economic. Distilling corn would work, but that could be food, and in case you haven't noticed food is skyrocketing. Even natural gas or propane, increase the demand, increase price. None of the current options are really viable, and that is why they can gouge us at the pump. Facts are facts. Now back in Olds' day, there was absolutley nothing else they could do with this. Gasoline was a byproduct if there ever was one. You couldn't eat it, heat your house effectively with it or even use it in lamps, and the smell, well you know. He took and turned a waste product into one of the most important commodities in the world. While I admit similar research may have been going on in other places in the world, we are talking 1901 I believe and it may have started here in the US like a few other things. Nobody today is really doing what Olds did. Every option presented has other uses. Electricity I don't even care, nothing is efficient enough yet, especially if you include the cost of generating it. Biofuels of any sort literally take food out of our mouths. And if they can put fuel cells in cars I can think of a few other places they should go first. I mean you could take biofuel and make electricity with which to make hydrogen, but just what did you gain. Thing is, it is true, gasoline has no other use. If we were to miraculously turn off our need for gasoline, what would they do with it ? Burn it out in the fields like before the Ransom Eli Olds days ? Going outside the box for a minute, what if we did. All of the sudden just find the answer and need no more gasoline at all. Well I bet it would make a good solvent and could be used to remelt plastic for recycling, further reducing the need for petroleum. Unfortunately good science shoots down most of the alternatives hands down. We need someone to come up with a way to use something as a fuel that is totally a waste product. Anything else is just swapping one shortage for another. T

SugarMyChurro -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/20/2008 7:01:50 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Termyn8or None of the current options are really viable, and that is why they can gouge us at the pump. Facts are facts. I guess it depends what you mean by "viable." And ordinary dictionary definition provides this: "Capable of success or continuing effectiveness; practicable: a viable plan; a viable national economy. See synonyms at possible." Under that definition I'd say the plan discussed at the following link is quite possible and could probably save our asses: http://www.collarchat.com/fb.asp?m=1789357 The problem is the money and power concentrated at the top. Boy, do they really not want to invest in an energy source that would effectively become very nearly free over the longer term. So maybe we have to set the idea of profit aside and do what's good for humanity first. Maybe energy is something we could create collectively and eliminate the "for profit" middlemen. As a matter of fact, I have never understood why energy needs are not considered a matter of national security and altogether too important a thing to be left to the vagaries of the marketplace. But it's viable, and could even become an international movement. Certainly nations could share or sell off what they would otherwise have to store as excess. The daylight side of the planet could sell to the night side. Sunnier climes could sell to less sunny locales. Etc. A funny thing about the internet is that brings really smart people together, often for reasons other than profit motive.

Padriag -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/20/2008 7:08:58 AM)
An excellent point. I wouldn't say no research is being done in that regard... there in fact is. Part of the problem is that we have reached a point where our energy demands are so great that there are few energy sources capable of meeting that demand. That was and is part of the dream of cold fusion... small, portable, self contained sources of vast amounts of energy relative to their size. Unfortunately things aren't that simple. So while we can use things like methane produced as a waste bi-product of decaying garbage to produce electricity... its limited in its application and will never meet more than a small fraction of the demand. Geo-thermal energy is working wonders in Iceland, but not so much in Iowa. That's not to say we shouldn't use those sources... those fractions do add up... but simply to point out that there are no easy solutions out there and probably no single idea will solve the whole problem. So to extend your point a bit, rather than looking for one alternative fuel source, perhaps the solution is to look for a variety of them that can, in combination, solve at least a signficant portion of the problem. At some point we're going to have to make the leap from a Class 0 civilization to a Class 1... we're going to have to learn how to harness and produce more energy. That means more efficient use of what we have... but also finding and utilizing new sources in ways we haven't thought of yet. Failure to do so will, and I believe this to be an otherwise inevitable result, lead to global war on an unprecedented scale. Either we find the resources to support our growing population... or we will in one way or another reduce that population until some sort of homeostasis with the remaining available resources is reached.

SugarMyChurro -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/20/2008 7:19:53 AM)
Padriag: What you are looking at is the failure of capitalism as the political philosophy of the future. Longer-term it doesn't work without a solid socialist foundation. The profit motive hinders progress because it's backward looking (i.e. already heavily invested in former technologies) and greed driven (fuck you, I'm getting mine). Some things need to be done without a profit motive.

lronitulstahp -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/20/2008 7:21:22 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: lronitulstahp i cast my vote for SOFC's... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-oxide_fuel_cell http://www.fuelcellmarkets.com/fuel_cell_markets/solid_oxide_fuel_cells_sofc/4,1,1,2503.html http://www.iwe.uni-karlsruhe.de/english/sofc.php The problem i have with biofuels, (having one been a proponent of them) is that there seems to be a negative "trickle down"[;)] effect that unfortunately harms those who have less dietary staples than we. http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2008/01/31/haitians_trick_empty_bellies_with_dirt_cookies/ With the price of corn rising...and available land decreasing...we need to think of other sources, that, perhaps aren't as "green" as corn, but are clean, can be made synthetically, and can actually power vehicles. SOFC's , if stacked, can power motorized vehicles...now if only we could find a better way to fuel jets.....

bipolarber -> RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable (4/20/2008 7:28:24 AM)
I keep hearing how we'll end up not producing food, because we'll be producing corn instead. Well, the thing is, sweetgrass is not a food, and it produces vastly greater ammounts of veggie oil than does corn. Also, it grows faster and can be harvested more often. So, we could continue to produce biodiesel, by utilizing the land that the US government is already paying farmers NOT to grow anything on, (as a means of keeping the markets from collapsing) The yeilds that farmers are getting from a single acre of land is almost 10 times what they were before WW II. As we continue to genetically manipulate various crops to produce more and more efficiently, I see no reason why part of that production couldn't also be for energy use. (I just got back from my father's funeral in Illinois a couple of months back, and the big brouhaha up there is that an energy conglomerate is buying up 2 acre lots in lines all over the central part of the state to put up windmill generators. Clean, simple energy that produces no pollution. Yet, the residents there are digging in their heels, since it will mean the loss of several hundred acres. It's bizzare to me that there should be such resistence. They are being paid top dollar for the land. I wonder how they'd feel if the company intened to put another nuke plant in their back yards instead?) Oh, and the carbon footprint of burning biodiesel? It is a net of zero. The plants pull carbon out of the air, only for it to be released again as they are burned. A repeating cycle. Total carbon increase = 0. And yes, if everyone starts takeing the scrap veggie oil from behind bistros to use in their tanks the way I do, I'll have to buy the stuff at the pump. But maybe by then, there will be enough biodiesel on the market that things will become a little more stable. Or another option will present itself.... In my own case, I'm waiting for a hybrid biodiesel/electric car, which I can also plug in for short hops to and from work.

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