Michael Yount
Mustang Master
Alternative fuels - alcohols perhaps, but the infrastructure investment (fueling stations, vehicle changes, production facilities) is absolutely astronomical. Who's gonna pay for it and how? Probably take government action/taxes.....it will likely require term limits so we can simply do the right thing instead of our status quo which is just doing the thing needed to get re-elected.
Hydrogen - people just don't understand; if you look at the TOTAL energy cost, hydrogen is a BIG LOOSER. It's EXTREMELY expensive and energy intensive to get hydrogen from water or natural gas - the two most common forms for which reasonable technology exists. What kind of energy is required to free up the hydrogen? Why burning hydrocarbons of course. Hydrogen vehicles won't reduce our need for hydrocarbon fuel - they'll just cause us to burn even more of it in different locations (stationary production facilities instead of mobile engines). Add to that the equally huge infrastructure investment (refueling stations, trucks/pipelines to transport it, safety equipment - hydrogen is one of the most volatile fuels there is, not to mention the cars/trucks themselves) -- hydrogen is a total economic looser. Politics is involved in the general public only getting a 'piece' of the story -- '....when it burns, you just get water vapor...' If only it were that simple.
Hybrids really do allow us to use less fuel to get more work done primarily because they allow recapture of otherwise wasted heat energy -- braking is done by generator and the electricity is stored in batteries for later use. Otherwise, that heat energy would just be lost to the atmosphere in the form of cooling rotors/calipers.
The next big newsmakers will be low-sulphur fuel diesel hybrids. They'll run well, be as clean as gasoline engines and knock down 60-80 mpg in city cycles in smaller cars like the Prius. If we had the refinery/storage/distribution capacity and could figure out other ways to use the light ends of the crude, diesels would be the way to go. It has a higher specific energy than gasoline, the higher CR's make for more efficiency, and with no throttle the pumping losses are significantly reduced. VW, BMW and Mercedes make some KILLER turbo diesel V8's and V10's in Europe (250-300HP; 400-550 lb-ft torque) that get 50-80% better fuel mileage than gasoline engines with comparable performance.
If we could plan it from the ground up (that is - no new infrastructure were required) you'd have alcohol fueled - renewable source - facilities to free up hydrogen, and the H2 would be used in fuel cells to run electric vehicles. But - somebody's gotta pay for all that. And for the time being - plain ole oil and it's refined products are way cheaper.
Hydrogen - people just don't understand; if you look at the TOTAL energy cost, hydrogen is a BIG LOOSER. It's EXTREMELY expensive and energy intensive to get hydrogen from water or natural gas - the two most common forms for which reasonable technology exists. What kind of energy is required to free up the hydrogen? Why burning hydrocarbons of course. Hydrogen vehicles won't reduce our need for hydrocarbon fuel - they'll just cause us to burn even more of it in different locations (stationary production facilities instead of mobile engines). Add to that the equally huge infrastructure investment (refueling stations, trucks/pipelines to transport it, safety equipment - hydrogen is one of the most volatile fuels there is, not to mention the cars/trucks themselves) -- hydrogen is a total economic looser. Politics is involved in the general public only getting a 'piece' of the story -- '....when it burns, you just get water vapor...' If only it were that simple.
Hybrids really do allow us to use less fuel to get more work done primarily because they allow recapture of otherwise wasted heat energy -- braking is done by generator and the electricity is stored in batteries for later use. Otherwise, that heat energy would just be lost to the atmosphere in the form of cooling rotors/calipers.
The next big newsmakers will be low-sulphur fuel diesel hybrids. They'll run well, be as clean as gasoline engines and knock down 60-80 mpg in city cycles in smaller cars like the Prius. If we had the refinery/storage/distribution capacity and could figure out other ways to use the light ends of the crude, diesels would be the way to go. It has a higher specific energy than gasoline, the higher CR's make for more efficiency, and with no throttle the pumping losses are significantly reduced. VW, BMW and Mercedes make some KILLER turbo diesel V8's and V10's in Europe (250-300HP; 400-550 lb-ft torque) that get 50-80% better fuel mileage than gasoline engines with comparable performance.
If we could plan it from the ground up (that is - no new infrastructure were required) you'd have alcohol fueled - renewable source - facilities to free up hydrogen, and the H2 would be used in fuel cells to run electric vehicles. But - somebody's gotta pay for all that. And for the time being - plain ole oil and it's refined products are way cheaper.
)? Yup - those areas with lots of cloudless days. Kind of works that way. So, you've also got to transport huge quantities of water to the area where you can manage the solar power production. The solar scenario is even more economically unfeasible than simply building more fossil power plants. Which is why I mentioned nukes in the first place. We can't circular reason our way out of this - if you want to reduce use of fossil - hydrogen's not the way; it takes too much fossil to produce the hydrogen. Hence the comment about nukes - to reduce fossil, you have to engage some other form of energy production. Nuclear is the only one we can manage on a large scale right now - and the word 'manage' might be a poor choice. Advances in our understanding of how to make nuclear fusion (as in the hydrogen bomb) possible may hold the key here as it is the link between hydrogen and nuclear power production. But we're a long way away from that....
