US Offers $30M For High-Risk Biofuel Research 183
coondoggie writes "This one sounds a bit like really wishful thinking. The US Department of Energy today announced $30 million for research projects that would develop advanced biofuels that could replace gasoline or diesel without requiring special upgrades or changes to the vehicle or fueling infrastructure. The $30 million would be spent over the next four years to support as many as five 'traditionally high-risk biofuels projects,' such as converting biomass into biofuels and bioproducts to be eventually used for hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals."
$30m/5 years? (Score:3)
That's not much of a development budget....
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err.. 4 years.. still $7.5/year isn't exactly a ton of money. That being said, I think the powers that be recognize that fossil fuels and similar power sources are inherintly a dead end. Creating new fuels is an energy intensive process, effectivly making the new fuel a one-time use battery. And depending on the process used to create it, generally not a very efficient one.
A bunch better way to spend money is developing new battery tech and at looking at utilizing solar energy to power them. That, or get ov
New Battery tech - already being done (Score:2)
A bunch better way to spend money is developing new battery tech and at looking at utilizing solar energy to power them. That, or get over the stigma against nuclear tech and utilize small personal reactors for energy...
Thing is, billions are already being spent on developing battery and solar tech. $30M is a drop in the bucket, but could possibly point to a way to make things like lubricating oil, aviation fuel, etc... from biological sources economically.
Unfortuantly, hydrochemicals still beat batteries like a red headed stepchild when it comes to energy density, and will for the forseeable future. So in applications where you NEED that density, demand isn't going away. Examples I can think of - airplanes, long haul
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That being said, I think the powers that be recognize
I think you're giving them way too much credit here. The clowns don't even know that a diesel compatible oil is shockingly easy, its just that American growing technology requires about 2 gallons of diesel equivalent to grow 1 gallon of biodiesel equivalent. On the other hand, "growing your own gasoline" is a huge problem. Purified toluene and benzene are not really biocompatible, you're not going to grow that stuff and refine it at any reasonable efficiency.
From a chemistry / energy perspective I wonder
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pesky details.... you some sort of tree hugger?
Re:$30m/5 years? (Score:4, Funny)
OMG, what about using a beta-volatic cell utilizing a lightweight isotope that decays via beta emission into a stable element.... Something like say Sulfur 35. Use the small reactory to continually recharge the battery packs in an electric car like a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt....
Beta Emitters = No pesky neutrons, Gamma rays of alpha particles...
The "reactor" actually more like a batter cell type design, can be shielded with the same kind of tin foil bat shit insane people use to cover their heads for crying out loud.
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Most bat-shit insane people I've seen wearing foil hats wear ones made from aluminum. Which is kind of ironic, given that they suppose themselves to be in the enlightened minority, but are unaware that aluminum foil does not offer the same protective properties against telepathic rays as tin. It does, however, protect against beta rays, but it's need to be much thicker than aluminum foil (ord
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Beta Emitters = No pesky neutrons, Gamma rays of alpha particles...
Not quite correct: most gamma ray sources are in fact beta emitters that decay into excited states of the daughter nucleus, which then decays via gamma emission.
There are exceptions: 35S, which you mention, decays entirely to the ground state of 35Cl.
There are still problems, though: bremmstralung radiation from the stopping electrons, modest (126 day) lifetime and long biological half-life (~45 days). The average decay energy is only 49 keV (endpoint is 167 keV) so to generate a watt assuming 100% conve
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How is it that lame memes get modded insightful, yet your ideas about nuclear powered cars gets a funny mod?
I give up trying to understand /. moderation.
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High Risk? (Score:4, Funny)
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Well, that depends on which way the elbow bends, what part of the back the arm is attached to, and whether there's a shoulder joint, doesn't it?
I mean, sure, it could make wiping your ass easier if the arm has a shoulder joint right in the middle of your back, and the elbow bends toward the ass. What if it bends towards the head? I guess that's a bad example,
Re:High Risk? (Score:5, Informative)
High risk or what used to be called "basic research". These are project that may work or provide useful insight for down the road. Chances are they may not lead to some kind of "success" in the commercial world. When companies fund research and development it usually evaluates projects based on the likely hood they'll be able to produce something that is commercially viable and they can break even or profit from the work. We really haven't seen a lot of basic research labs where companies throw money into R&D and see what happens. That's the way it used to work back in the day with places like Bell Labs and even Xerox. Today this is usually done at research universities.
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We really haven't seen a lot of basic research labs where companies throw money into R&D and see what happens. That's the way it used to work back in the day with places like Bell Labs and even Xerox. Today this is usually done at research universities.
Why do your own research when you can get government to throw a bunch of money at it? The US, for example, throws billions of dollars every year at basic research. Where's the incentive for me to do basic research on my own dime?
I see this as one of the big social drivers for destroying scientific progress in the world (not just in the US). Currently, in a lot of fields the only gain from genuine scientific inquiry is status. And that can be gamed too. I see in many decades the possibility of a huge publ
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There never was one. That's the nature of basic research -- there's no monetary incentive to do it.
This is precisely *why* we have public funding for basic research. So that it gets done, absent a natural monetary incentive to do it.
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Some basic research benefits society as a whole without generating any financial rewards at all for the researcher.
That's just a market failure where the researcher isn't being adequately compensated for the research. You were claiming that basic research had no monetary incentive. This is not an example of that since there is a party, all of society, which has a monetary incentive.
There's so much wrong with your assertion that it's difficult to know where to begin... Basic research often leads to a monetary incentive, but generations after the research has been done... i.e. the monetary incentives don't come in to play for the person or entity doing the research, but to later entities who benefit from the knowledge gained from that research.
There is this myth that we can have scientific research with no value, monetary or otherwise, in the near future, but it will have tremendous payout at some future date. The only problem with this assertion is that it's not true. Sure, there might be some research somewhere where no near future value was present, but great future value was present, but no one has found it yet.
For example, electricity and magnetism eventually lead to computers and the foundation of the modern society. So sure, that's tremendous value creation centuries after the fact. But even in the days when people were first experimenting with electricity and magnetism, they were coming up with near future discoveries of monetary value. For example, lightning rods were an early discovery which led to the preservation of real estate from lightning caused damage. The discovery that Earth's magnetic fields were misaligned from true North (and by how much) was a great boon to commerce by sea, which was a huge deal in those days.
You can make similar monetary incentives for every branch of science (and related knowledge) at their infancy. Astronomy - navigation at sea, understanding time better. Chemistry - turning (or not as the case turned out) lead into gold, making new alloys. Biology - breeding better livestock, understanding and treating disease. Philosophy - helping us think more effectively (intangible, but near future monetary gain). Math - describing effectively models of how things work.
Sure the near future application may be far smaller than the eventual goals, but even of the people who claim to do science for science's sake, they routinely have ulterior motives for doing what they do.
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And even at research universities, the proportion of basic research is being actively reduced.
This is partly because of reduced government funding for projects that do not produce tangible viable results, and partly because of the increasing partnership between public research universities and private for-profit enterprises.
Re:High Risk? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the "back in the good old days" version. The reality is that Bell Labs worked almost exclusively on research eventually intended to have commercial yield, any basic research was done in support of that goal.
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How much do you want to bet that the benefactors of this funding turn out to be connected to some political party pretty tightly.
I'm wondering if this isn't actually some sort of payback. This isn't a lot of money to start something like this when there isn't really anything that specifically meets the stated criteria on the market right now.
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High risk as in no chance of being profitable within the next quarter, or even the next year, may not even be profitable before you cache in your golden parachute and move on to the next corp to gut and sell.
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As in, high risk of genetically modified bacteria escaping the lab and turning every carbohydrate it finds into fuel oil?
Hilariously, "fuel oil" already is a moderately short chain length carbohydrate. We're not exactly talking about turning lead into gold here.
The stuff that comes out of the ground has both longer and shorter chain contaminants, and usually some icky stuff like sulfur compounds.
The stuff that comes from sunflower seed plantations generally has too high of a melting point.
The refinery polishes up the major specs, filters out the icky stuff, adds some detergents and hi-pressure lube so the fuel pumps in the c
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But the engine upgrades are what make it fun... (Score:5, Interesting)
Biofuels like Ethanol have a very high octane rating, so you can increase power output with really high compression ratios with superchargers and turbochargers. Supposedly these turbo gasohol vehicles are popular in Brazil, where they can actually grow and produce their cane sugar ethanol with a net positive energy output (whereas corn-based ethanol in the US costs more energy to make than you get from it in return... so it's really just an agricultural subsidy as well as a way to water down imported petroleum-based fuels and decreasing your gas mileage - FTW!)
Meh, some interesting reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel [wikipedia.org]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodeisel#Yield [wikipedia.org]
The yields tropical regions can get from palm are pretty amazing to but what is ideal is using useless land (NV) for algae farms.
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Yep, to copy-pasta one of the interesting charts from Wikipedia:
Energy balance
Country : Type : Energy balance
United States : Corn ethanol : 1.3
Brazil : Sugarcane ethanol : 8
Germany : Biodiesel : 2.5
United States : Cellulosic ethanol* : 2–36**
* experimental, not in commercial production
** depending on production method
Obviously, the "Cellulosic ethanol" is the likely target of this biofuels research. But of course, if all they have
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If one takes ethanol (or E85), this is a good solution -- less MPG, but better HP. Its downside is that oil needs to be changed more often because water dissolves in it, creating an acid. This is also why the service guide tells you to run a tank of pure unleaded every 3000-7000 miles.
However, here in the US, we don't have sugar cane whose by-product can be turned into booze for the car, and the effect of using corn means that food prices go higher since it is an either or unlike sugar cane -- corn goes t
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Sugar beets have plenty of sugar, around 20% of the beet is sugar. And it grows perfectly in the north central USA, such as the Dakotas, Minnesota and Michigan, or farther south. The problem is that corn gets tons of subsidies from the government (corporate welfare for the Monsanto asshats) and beets do not. Beets will get you around 20% more fuel per acre than corn but costs more because of the subsidies on corn. Without the subsidies, it would likely be comparable or cheaper to use sugar beets. You a
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Yeah, good points.
With regards to the hypocrisy, the point is that if you had a smaller high-compression ratio engine turbocharged to 150hp, it would be more efficient than a bigger normal engine that was 150hp in the first place.
But since the goal of the research is to develop biofuels for normal engines, you'll just get decreased mileage without really being able to take advantage of any of the, well, advantages to using ethanol.
So far, just throwing extra fuel into engines has been (artificially) cheaper
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To correct my earlier statement, while engines make more HP at high compressions, they do so by producing more NO2, so they pollute more. And I agree with the turbo comment. Actually, straight 6 engines are more balanced by design, no need to externally balanced. I'm shocked I haven't seen more implementation of them. A well designed I6 with a turbo can be made small enough to still be used in front wheel drive and have extra power on tap when needed, but that isn't what is "sexy".
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heh, yeah... I remember looking for some I6-powered cars after reading about them... seems like BMWs and some Volvos are the most commonly available. Unfortunately, that seems to fit into the "nice car, but you'll pay more for maintenance" sort of thing :P
I like how I6 configuration is pretty typical for use as ginormous internal combustion engines, like in factories and large ships. But beyond that, the most efficient combustion engines seem to be the gas turbines... which are even more delicate and heav
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Most of your serious diesel engines are also I6, from Ram (Dodge) trucks to rigs. Even the bigger V12's diesels are basically twin banked I6s. The old 240z engines, old land rovers (before they were pretty, back when they were tough), as well as many other more serious engines.
Part of the problem is how long they are, which is more of a problem in front wheel drive. By design, the engine should be lower maintenance, it is just the cars they put them in that are high maintenance. Having all your intake o
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So where can I get this pure unleaded?
All our gas here in NY state is contaminated with 10% ethanol.
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Even worse, it may be going to 15% soon in a lot places. For older engines that don't have the ability to change timing for dealing with this, this will suck, not to mention the voided warranties of engines which are warranties to work with no more than 10% alcohol.
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Which older engines would those be?
Unless I'm missing something (which is very likely -- I'm by no means an expert in the field), the ignition systems common gas-powered cars can be split into two different categories: Those which use a distribu
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That's because Brazil can slash-and-burn rainforest and raise cane on the fertile soil. It's a great business plan so long as you can slash-and-burn more rainforest after the old fields become exhausted after a year or two. Massive government subsidi
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You can read more at wikipedia [wikipedia.org] it's pretty complete.
Flex Fuel in the US is a joke (Score:2)
Maybe your flex fuel vehicles are better, but here in the states, GM's "Flex Fuel" technology is completely crap.
Sure, you CAN run your flex fuel vehicle on E85, but doing so drops your fuel milage by 20%+. You wind up blowing through way more fuel to drive the vehicle like a gutless hog.
Ethanol engines can be incredibly efficient. All of our top fuel race cars are burning ethanol. But in order to get that efficiency they have to push much higher compression ratios. To change the compression ratio though, y
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All of our top fuel race cars are burning ethanol.
Almost none of them, you mean?
Real Race Cars like F-1 run plain ole gasoline, although a rather highly purified grade.
"top fuel dragsters", which I believe is a trademark of NHRA, run a mix of nitromethane with a splash of methanol, both way too toxic for the average moron to handle in bulk.
The only "race car ethanol" I'm aware of is the Indycar group has started to use ethanol in recent years, I believe there's a sponsorship thing going on there.
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Unfortunately, here in the US we do not have the right climate for growing enough sugarcane to satisfy our appetite for fuel. Nor do we have the cheap labor required to make it cost-effective.
On top of that, we have various agricultural groups spending millions in lobbying to ensure that *their* crop (read: maize) is the target of most of the research, despite the possibilities of switchg
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Therefore, you have greatly developed infrastructure and what we'll call "international relations" as to obtain oil cheaply.
I wish a) I had mod points and b) "Funny" gave you karma, because man you deserve it.
Urgency (Score:2)
Re:Urgency (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I wouldn't call $30 million over 5 years "urgent". That's doughnut money to the Department of Defense, whose budget is 100,000 times more than that.
US domestic oil production peaked 40 years ago. We've been subject to nasty oil shocks ever since, as well as the unpleasant fact that many key oil exporters are avowed or tacit opponents of the US. We'd much rather be self-sufficient in oil, regardless of whether the rest of the world experiences Peak Oil or not.
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Partially, I'd assume that this stems from the simple fact that, when your oil products have to be shipped to you through hostile territory, you are already experiencing the sorts of prices that peak oilers have in mind(never mind something really dramatic, like enemy infiltrators blowing a few gulf coast refineries just before starting a hot war...)
Partially, I'd assume that it stems from the fact that
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many key oil exporters are avowed or tacit opponents of the US.
Considering we get about 50% of our oil from Canada, I'd say you were absolutely correct!
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I know you're joking, but also recall that oil is fungible. If the Saudis were to cut off the US, we'd need to buy more from Canada, raising the price. If they cut off any US allies, it would raise the price further.
That happened during the 1970s oil shocks, and the US produced more of its own oil at the time.
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That's doughnut money to the Department of Defense, whose budget is 100,000 times more than that.
Let's not exaggerate here. The department of defense only gets about 15,000 times that much. ;)
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I know there's a wink at the end there, but seriously: the DoD budget yearly is $663 billion. This project is $7.5 million per year.
It's closer to 88,000; I originally miscalculated it as 5 years rather than 4.
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Seriously!?
I have no idea what to say about that. I thought it was way less than that. That's fucked up!
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The difference being that, in one case, they're buying a finished product, while in the other they're throwing money at something that may never pan out.
That's sorta like complaining that it costs millions of dollars to build a nuclear reactor, but your crazy neighbor swears he'll be able to build you a perpetual-motion machine - eventually - for only a $100 investment. Maybe the neighbor is worth investing in, on the off chance that he actually makes something useful, but it doesn't compare to buying some
30 Million? (Score:2)
Aren't we spending untold billions of dollars every year chasing Iraqi oil? $30M is a droplet of piss in the sewer. Fund it for real or get the fuck out.
Less wishful thinking then one might think. (Score:2)
In the lab they have gotten microbes to produce crude oil – oil that could go into a standard refinery for gasoline, jet fuel. Etc. Of course scaling from the bench top to a industrial process.
Ethanol fails because it is hydrophilic and can not be transported with our current pipelines.
Re:Less wishful thinking then one might think. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not only in the labs. Terrabon [terrabon.com] is right now demonstrating a biomass-to-gasoline process on a pilot plant scale. It's real gasoline, not alcohol or other alternative fuel.
Uh, how about butanol? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pros:
1) Burns in gasoline engines without modification
2) Can be transported in existing gas pipelines (does not emulsify water like ethanol does)
3) Higher energy content per gallon than ethanol, only a little less than gasoline
4) Can be produced in the same manner that ethanol is (ie, fermentation)
Cons:
1) Does not have a farm lobby attached to it
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Also low motor octane/high sensitivity. Put it in many gasoline engines without modification and they'll either knock heavily under load, or retard the timing severely reducing power and efficiency.
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tert-butanol has an octane of 89, which should satisfy most engines.
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Easy to drop that freezing point with additives and/or keep the fuel warm. Worst case you go dual fuel where you start up on gas then switch to butanol that has thawed out on the engine heat.
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"Cons" should also include that it's toxic (more so than gasoline).
As well as the fact that it's currently expensive to manufacture and distill, with low yields.
Neither of this is necessarily impossible to overcome, but it's dishonest to claim that the only thing wrong with it is that it doesn't have a lobby. In fact, it DOES have a lobby: BP and Dupont have both been working on it.
Dealing with these issues might be a great use of some of that $30 million. But it's not a miracle cure.
Re:Uh, how about butanol? (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently nowdays there's several fancy nickel catalysts that do the trick, but with relatively low yields
BUT, fiberous bed bioreactors are the trick for half decent yields...
I'm out of chem now, I stuck with my computer nerd roots and am in a server room right now, but it was readily apparent (back in the day) that butanol was the clear choice for ease of transition, octane rating, transportability, and it's emissions are 'supposed to be' cleaner than current gas offerings.
ANYWAY, go butanol go! Not quite the same octane ratings as ethanol, but it'll run on almost any vehicle with very little-if any- tuning
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Since butanol can be produced (an on an industrial scale certainly would be) from farm raised biomass... One suspects it's just a wee bit more complex than that.
But, knee jerk blaming the corporations and lobbyists is easier than actually trying to understand the issues.
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Since butanol can be produced (an on an industrial scale certainly would be) from farm raised biomass... One suspects it's just a wee bit more complex than that.
But, knee jerk blaming the corporations and lobbyists is easier than actually trying to understand the issues.
Yes, butanol can be produced from farm raised biomass, same as ethanol. But as far as air time and subsidies go, it's ethanol, all the time. Therefore the logical conclusion is that the butanol lobby, such as it is, isn't nearly as effective as the ethanol lobby. To the point of not existing.
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Yeah, so it's probably not going to happen as long as Iowa's caucuses vote first for our presidents.
What about Compressed Natural Gas? (Score:2)
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Try running 200 million cars on natural gas and those reserves won't be so vast any more. We use it for 20% of our electricity, and it's already one of the most expensive sources of power, useful more for peak load than base load.
CNG vehicles are already subsidized in some cities for air quality reasons. It's ok for buses and local delivery vehicles, but it's a long way from being practical for long haul trucking and personal use.
Grandpa Munster invented this already (Score:4, Funny)
Back in the 60s he invented the Gasoline Pill, which converts water into gasoline right in your tank! Unfortunately he lost the formula, so that's why there's a prize now.
There's nothing that Grandpa Munster, The Professor from Gilligan's Island, or Scotty can't solve with their engineering geniusness!
$30M? Over 4 years!? (Score:3)
Just to put this into perspective - $30M is about 12 hours worth of profit (not revenue, profit) for Exxon. Even with the oil spill costs, it's about a day of profit for BP.
Make Engines That Don't Suck (Score:3)
100 year old Diesel technology is more helpful in our current situation than wasting money trying to conjure up new fuels from nothing. Here's a couple vehicles I have that provide a better solution:
1984 Mercedes 300SD Turbo (OM617): It will run on just about anything. All kinds of oils, both vegetable and petroleum, jet fuel, heck, you can even dump ATF in the tank (though I don't recommend it) and it will burn that.
1983 Chevrolet Suburban (Detroit Diesel/Allison 6.2): This will also run on just about anything. It has the engine that AM General picked to power the HMMWV. There are probably still lots of these 6.2s running around all corners of the earth powered by who knows what.
These vehicles are likely going to still be puttering around for a very, very long time. Rust will get them before the engines go. We need to be focusing on developing better engines so that we don't end up backed into a corner on fuel. If we truly have options on what we can power our vehicles with, we'll be in a much better position.
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ATF? Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms? I recommend burning two of those three, and for the third -- combustion is part of how they work.
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But your old diesel technology also puts out a lot more pollution, doesn't it?
(Though I don't see why they don't make more diesel hybrids, instead of gas hybrids.)
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Actual cost: Hybrids are already expensive. A diesel-powered hybrid would cost even more.
Perceived cost: Around here, at least, diesel typically costs 10-15% more per gallon than gasoline. (Yes, I know that it's still cheaper per unit of usable energy, but the folks buying hybrids realize this.)
Noise: A Prius is very quiet in all modes. A chattering diesel is not. (I personally don't find the modern TDI diesels to be
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Nope. Atleast, not per mile driven. If you just light a gallon of gas and a gallon of diesel on fire, yeah, the diesel would probably be worse. But Diesels get on average ~30% better gas mileage then gas engines. So to get the same use out of the two fuels, you'd have to burn one gallon of gas and 2/3rds a gallon of Diesel.
As far as CO2 goes, Diesels are way better. But the trade off is that they generate more NOX. So you trade green house gases for smog.
Most of what you see coming out of Diesel exhaust is
$30m over 4 years split 5 ways (Score:2)
To clarify (Score:2)
High Risk of not being profitable. Not, you know, of destroying civilization as we know it and rendering the planet inhabitable for human life.
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> Not, you know, of destroying civilization as we know it and rendering the planet inhabitable for human life.
You say that like its a bad thing... ;-)
Henry Ford had it right all along. (Score:3, Insightful)
Think I'm lying? Rather than make stupid remarks about smoking it, try looking it up on Google or Youtube and enlighten yourself!!!
-Oz
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Its funny that Hearst and the US gubmint have been able to suppress this magical plant - yet no other country have discovered how wonderful the plant is. So you are saying that every other country on the plant is just stupid and the US is just oppressed?
Tell me, why isn't Russia, Korea, Japan, China, etc using magical hemp to solve all their problems? They didn't have Hearst "influencing" them. Let me know, I'd like to see a Youtube video explaining it.
It's about time! (Score:2)
They should have been doing this every year since a long time ago! Just imagine, funding research that might actually lead to something useful and solve a real problem!
In soviet russia (Score:2)
high risk (Score:2)
biological photosynthesis efficiency ~1%
inorganic photosynthesis efficiency ~10%
It's nice to grow fuel (or algae food), but there are other good solar fuel options. Inorganic catalysts (iron oxide is this year's sexy "new" catalyst) could use some funding too.
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If the microbe solution can be scaled, no country will need to burn anything down. There will be vast lakes with bacteria eat algae and convert it to fuel. The fuel will be skimmed of the surface of the lake and refined.
The lab microbe are quite specific in that each type produces 1 type of fuel.
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The Oil Companies regularly pay more than that to bury the technology. Or the inventor ...
eh... When the oil companies run out of oil, they can then sell us energy from all the patents they hold. We get to continue using energy and they get to continue making obscene amounts of cash. Sort of a win/win situation... at least until we run out of arable land to produce fuel with. We are all doomed in the end [youtube.com] anyway.
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Remind me again, why we aren't using hemp instead of oil and corn? Oh right, something to do backdoor deals made to vilify hemp [wikipedia.org] back in the day. I guess this isn't the first time political agenda has come before the good of people.. and it sure won't be the last.
Because hemp fuel only seems a viable option if you're smoking a joint.
Gas != hemp or corn or sugarcane. Even Al Gore finally gets it.
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Remind me again, why we aren't using hemp instead of oil and corn?
Our reptilian overlords are allergic to it.
On the bright side, every time we smoke a bowl, we're striking a blow against Alien Oppression!
Re:The big oil and gov are afraid (Score:5, Insightful)
The big oil and gov are afraid of Hydrogen Too easy to make and too hard to control
I wouldn't have bothered responding to this old canard, especially from an AC, but my future son-in-law laid this on me during a (very) long road trip. He was convinced that hydrogen must be that Secret That Oil Companies Don't Want You To Know. After all, it comes from WATER, for crying out loud. You can drop a 9-volt battery and get hydrogen, for crying out loud... all we have to do is put that in a car and run it on water, right? Right?
*facepalm*
For those new to the laws of thermodynamics: Hydrogen is combined with Oxygen to form Water, yes. But it takes energy to get the menage-a-trois separated. And the energy required to liberate H2 from that codependent relationship is, by the laws of physics, no greater than the energy you'll get by combining it *back* with O.
My discussion partner said, "That's ok, we'll just have batteries to do the electrolysis." I gently suggested that if you're going to have enough batteries to generate enough electricity to generate enough hydrogen to run a car, you've got enough batteries to generate enough electricity to run a car -- without that lossy "generate hydrogen" step.
To his credit, I think he understood. That's one. AC, here's hoping you're #2.
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Energy and technology will not drive us to space. Profit will, regardless of the nut factor. If there is profit to be had there you'd be nuts NOT to go.
If someone figures out how to make a buck by shipping people there, then they will. It is that simple.
Satellites are insanely complex and expensive - yet they exist. Why? Because someone made a profit (for the most part) by putting them there and selling their services. All so people can talk to grandma, and watch porn on demand (among other things).
So
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Except the cheapest ways of making hydrogen are from fossil fuels - natural gas, and perhaps coal. The gap's even bigger than the difference between fossil and alternative methods of making electricity.
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"of Hydrogen Too easy to make and too hard to control"
Show us pics and specs of your successful hydrogen-converted vehicle. No one can control YOUR personal production and use of hydrogen, so have at it, bitch-ass AC, and prove your point.
Hydrogen zealots are great at selling equipment to others, and that's about it. Don't fuck off and die, because fucking off wastes time. Just die.
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Hydrogen is essentially a battery - stores the energy that you used to liberate it from water.
Easy to make - yes.
Easy to make in industrial quantities efficiently (or even profitably)? No.
Perhaps one day will will have uber effiecent solar hydrogen generating stations in our homes, but that is a long way off.
And, BTW, even today fresh water is too precious in many areas to simply burn (how crazy is that?). So now we are talking seawater for the hydrogen... which just tripled the problems that must be deal
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Depends on the source of the biomass, there is some work in developing Algae with a high lipid content for use in creating biofuels.
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Nah it's self correcting. When the cars stop moving, people start dying (after all, many of those vehicles are transporting things essential to the sustenance of our overcrowded cities), there's less need for freight and more resources to go around again.
Re:The end winner has to be fueled (Score:5, Interesting)
So you say. People also said that gasoline cars would never be as reliable as a horse and wagon.
Horseshit. I drive a specialized car just for my commute. You think I *enjoy* driving an econobox? I do it becaause it's cost-effective. The family wagon gets used by my wife during the week, and by the family on the weekends.
When liquid fuel prices get high enough, then you better believe people will want to drive a specialty vehicle for commuting... and all their other driving.
Obviously, I disagree. I think there are inherent disadvantages to fuel systems due to:
(1) distribution and transportation costs
(2) the relative inefficiency of small engines, and
(3) the decreased dependence on a limited set of fuels.
With regards to (3), I think from a security standpoint, as well as a market efficiency standpoint, we're far better having a system where we can swap out power sources as needed. This gives us better long-term viability (for example, allowing us to more easily change to nuclear and renewable energy sources).
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Well, IIRC, gasoline is still the most energy dense way of running a car. I suppose you could rig some sort of overhead wire high-voltage system to run cars like buses, but otherwise we're pretty much stuck using gasoline, unless you think the 35 mile all-electric range (which
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I pay about $0.081/kWh [aepohio.com].
Should I install solar panels and run my cars from them?
Why, or why not?
Electric Cars (Score:2)
Ah, you must live in a state with a SANE energy policy. Yeah, not living in California changes the numbers around a lot.
Two different questions, there:
1) Should I install solar?
2) Should I run my car off electricity?
For 1:
If you're a hippie, then sure, yeah, knock yourself out. But there's no economic reason to. Solar will not compete at the 8c/KWH range unless costs come down by a factor of 3 or so. Solar prices
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So you say. People also said that gasoline cars would never be as reliable as a horse and wagon.
That was obviously false based on the simple fact technology would refine the car into something more usable.
Claiming that we are even twenty years away from being able to hold the kind of energy density in batteries does not really look like a good bet, and foolhardy to insist that we have to input energy in the form of electricity - I'm a huge proponent for hydrogen cars which are electric cars, they are simply