Heres a project for thought....

[burninbriar]

One thing that all of us should keep in mind when discussing this is that energy (fuel for cars, electricity, heat) is just a portion of what oil is used for. Almost everything we use in day to day life is made from oil in some part, Even some medicine is made in part from oil.

[Laiky]

"Wind, solar and nuke don't produce enough energy and are not available everywhere. This leaves oil,( aren't we trying to not use this?), natural gas (a by product of oil last I looked), coal ( most people consider this very environmentally unfriendly) to generate electrical power for most people. If you are lucky enough to live near a hydroelectric dam it might work. However most environmentalists are also trying to do away with the dams! Bad for the fish and natural ecosystems, don't you know"

Wind and solar can produce enough energy, we just have to start using them. You can eliminate your electric bill right now with present solar technology. There are enough goverment rebates that if you bought a system it would cost you less than your electric bill for the next 5-7 years (loan) and then free. If you produce a surplus you can sell it back to the power company at retail price. Now if you took all those solar panels that we should be placing wherever possible, you could generate hydrogen for combustion or fuel cell use. Shazam! no more foreign oil. We could actually become an energy exporter. Germany is leading the way right now, they are lining the autobahn with solar panels and have laws in place guaranteeing the buy back price of electricity. Unfortunately our country is run by people with Big oil interests.

[TS-Off-Road]

[burninbriar]

The best way to use less oil to power vehicles is to increase MPG. This can most easily be done by getting rid of all the emmisions crud that has been tacked on to everything.

Thats funny because when I lived in AZ I got tired of replacing the black box, regulator, and battery for the electronic ignition on my Harley and replaced the whole schemeel with a magneto. I got a very pronounced increase in horse power, but the unexpected part was that the emissions were so clean when I took it in for inspection they were accusing me of running alcohol. They couldn't believe that just changing to a magneto could have that kind of effect. It surprised me too. The bike gets great mileage, but I really can't say if or how much the magneto affected the mileage.

[fjk]

What is a totaly underutalized recoup of energy is in the heat lost to braking. Although you could never recoup enough to completely power the same vehicle, think about potentially how much energy could be recovered if everytime a car, truck, train, etc., hits the brakes, that energy is transfered back to the power grid.

The energy can be created mechanically by driving generators/alternators or electromagnetically through induction.

If every single vehicle was so equiped, we might be coming home at night to plug our cars in to discharge the batteries and collect our credit back from the electric companies who now would require that much less fuel to create electricity

the world is way (ok, maybe not _way_:-) ahead of you

the hybrid cars (which have been around for close to 10 yrs now)
use dynamic braking to partly recharge their batteries. if you
put the brakes on "a little bit" or just slow-down by coasting,
or the like, they drive their generator from the wheels, producing
electrons, charging the battery.

diesel-electric locomotives have used dynamic braking for decades.
they switch their electric traction motors into generators, producing
electricity, which is dumped through huge resistor banks to generate
heat. no real energy savings here, of course. (but i seem to recall
that someone is starting to make hybrid rr locomotives now...)

and a lot of all-electric railroad systems (from trolley and street car
systems up to mainlines like the north east corridor in the us) use
dynamic braking and feed the generator power back into the
power distribution system. the problem with this (until the last 10-20
yrs or so) was that you had to carefully synchronize the phase of the
generated power to the phase in the power distribution system - if
you didn't, it could be spectacular... making small/reliable/etc widgets
to do this is a relatively new thing.

f

[DSW]

We need to be building nuclear power plants as fast as we can.

I agree this is a good solution to electrical power. Enlarging/refurbishing current hydro electric systems would also help. In 1984 My scout troop had a special tour of Grand Coulee Dam. The chief eng was the brother of our scoutmaster. They built a second generating plant as Phase II on the dam and it tripled the generating capacity while still maintaining the same gallons of water released. Basically less water went over the dam and more thru the turbines. At that time they installed all the tunnels for Phase III, which was a mirror image of Phase II. Chances of this ever being built are slim however with the then current environmental regs. They still wouldn't have increased the amount of water released even with the 3rd generating station.

I
I'll bet you a box of donuts that if we were to start burning hydrogen on a grand scale, that too would affect the environemnt in its own way... how, im not quite sure bu tmy head is telling me it would have to do with too much moisture n the air...

Yep got it in one. 1st it was CFC's then high sulfur coal emmisions, now CO2. my understanding is water vapor is part of the "green house gas" theory. More water vapor = more reflected and trapped sunlight = more heat. We've had iceages before, 7 I believe. Didn't it get warmer between them? I dont think neanderthal man and his fire was the cause of all of them.

Thats funny because when I lived in AZ I got tired of replacing the black box, regulator, and battery for the electronic ignition on my Harley and replaced the whole schemeel with a magneto. I got a very pronounced increase in horse power, but the unexpected part was that the emissions were so clean when I took it in for inspection they were accusing me of running alcohol. They couldn't believe that just changing to a magneto could have that kind of effect. It surprised me too. The bike gets great mileage, but I really can't say if or how much the magneto affected the mileage.

My '71 Plymouth was similar. When I rebuilt the engine and put it on the road in 96, It would pass emissions standards as a new vehicle. It had 0 emissions equipment installed, just a good tune up on stock parts. Got 20mpg as a true full sized 4 door car.

I don't understand the comment on the new Diesel motors. They are far more efficient than older motors. They produce more power per gallon than ever before and the best are well better than gas motors gallon for gallon. The newer direct injection diesels are far better at potential conversion than any consumer motors ever made and sold before. They turn more of the fuels potential energy into motion and less into waste heat than ever.
The winning cars in ALMS racing are the Audi turbo direct injected diesels. Is the new truck and motor a lot bigger than the old one? Did the rig gain a bunch of weight?

I'd really like to understand this also! The old truck was a F250 4x4 7.3 turbo. Road weight on average 10.5-11.5k as scaled. It runs at 12.5k in the winter with the bal;ast for the plow. Milage regardles of weight 15 mpg city. It got this when I 1st got the truck and it weight 8.5K stripped and empty. New truck is an F550 4x4 with the 6.4 turbo (f350 was $4000 more and I couldn't get the body put on it). Aproximatly same rear ratio when adjusted for the larger tires. I took a long look at everything when I 1st started to get the truck as mpg was inmportant and I wanted to get the best posible mpg. Weight of the truck is 11.5k empty with the body, less than 12.5 with the tools loaded. MPG 8!

From what I have read on the ford site this is not uncommon. Everyone has commented on the dramatic drop in mpg. The cause the scrubber that dumps unburned fuel into the exhaust to burn off carbon. The eupopeans have a much better scrubber system that reduces emmisions signifigantly more and does not effect fuel ecconomy. The reason we can't use it is that our enviromental regs require at least 100K+ on parts the other system must be replaced at about 50k. From what I understand, those that are trying out the new scrubber deletes are getting signifigantly better mpgs. There are still some roblems however as all the stuff is tied in thru the computer and it gets cranky whenyou remove parts.

I'm all for doing everything to reduce oil useage in other areas especially the home. Just installing some of the newer insulations or heating systems can cut useage tremendousely. However vehicles are a poor area to play with.

[hogan]

here is another interesting option

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bo...novator_2.html

[DSW]

The basics of turning tires back into oil has been around for many years. It's always been a question of economics. Is it cheaper to process the tire to recover the oil or is it cheaper to just pump out new oil. Recycling is almost always more expensive. ( it often also uses more fuel than you get.) In the late 80's or early 90's there was a number of companies that wanted to grind up tires and burn them as fuel to either run steam turbines or to breakdown limestone for cement. If I remember correctly, new environmental regs squashed this idea. It just became to costly to install all the scrubbers and dispose of all the residual waste.

I'm sort of currious about how they will dispose of all the residual waste however. Most likely, just as in trash to steam, the waste material will be full of heavy metals and other compounds that easily leach into the soil and ground water now that they have been released.


It looks like the idea might work now that oil is so high. Like so many of these ideas however, they only work as long as oil prices stay high. As soon as the price drops below a certain level they just are not worth it unfortunately.

[burninbriar]

I'll bet you a box of donuts that if we were to start burning hydrogen on a grand scale, that too would affect the environemnt in its own way... how, im not quite sure bu tmy head is telling me it would have to do with too much moisture n the air...

Acid is used when breaking water down to hydrogen and oxygen so that may pose a hazardous waste issue. As far as the moisture goes, I don't see that as a problem since you would not be creating water where there was none to begin with.
With petroleum, you take it from underground and burn it above ground adding a new component to the atmosphere. With hydrogen, you start with existing water, break it down to its elements, and then recombine it so you don't end up with anything you didn't start with, until you add byproducts of breaking it down. Such byproducts would be coalsmoke, if thats how you get the electricity, or nuclear waste if that method is used. Like I mentioned earlier, even if wind and solar is used, you have the acid witch is used in the process of breaking down the H2O.that may become a hazard.

[Laiky]

Acid is used when breaking water down to hydrogen and oxygen so that may pose a hazardous waste issue.

Are you sure about this? To my knowledge its just salt to make the water more conductive.

One of the by products of any kind of combustion is water, only hydrogen combustion makes JUST water.