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How Much Green and at What Cost?

05/05/2008 9:31 AM

Bio fuels=food shortages. Fule cells production=high energy costs and use.

Many years ago I read about a guy who with a junked Datsun installed a D C jet starter motor driven by a 5 horsepower gasoline engine .Got 70 mpg at 50mph.

With present Technology in combustion engines, electric motors and bio fules, how much better can we do?

Maby close to 200 mpg at 90 mph?

If so we could see a 3 gallon tank getting 600 miles per fill.

Reducing the need for carrying 20 some gallons of gasoline and the number of batteries required, this would reduce vehicle weight substantially.

Even with presently petrolume based fuel it seems it would be better than any thing we have now, not to mention how much cheaper to build and purchas.

roy@nscad.ns.ca

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#1

Re: How Much Green and at What Cost?

05/05/2008 3:04 PM

I don't think you should rule out fuel cells... They are constantly being improved all the time, I would anticipate a time very soon when fuel cells will be a cheap form of power production.

John.

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#2

Re: How Much Green and at What Cost?

05/05/2008 5:25 PM

Sigh ...

The fringes of the energy industry are populated by people who "heard about a guy whose second cousin read about a pill that you put in your gas tank that lets you get 100 mpg on a gallon of water." Inevitably, the "oil companies bought it up and are hiding it." - presumably because they'd rather invest hundreds of millions of dollars extracting oil from subsea wells than produce little pills.

There's a reason why credible energy systems research proceeds slowly. Its hard work, with verification at every step along the way. Methods and results are published in peer-reviewed journals for the entire scientific community to critique.

If you heard about some guy who did it alone in his garage, you can pretty much be sure it ain't so. Inevitably, these systems are never allowed to be independently tested, or "have a problem" just before a major demonstration. I'm not trying to criticize the inventive spirit, but the inventor needs to submit their work for verification if they expect to be taken seriously.

Before you swallow any claims like the one in this post, ask for independently verified proof. If they can't produce it, move on.

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#3
In reply to #2

Re: How Much Green and at What Cost?

05/05/2008 9:04 PM

Steve,

I always love the idea of the oil companies (or the auto companies) sitting on patents that could revolutionize the world. Most of them are publicly traded (except when Chavez nationalizes them), and if they had a patent for a little pill, a corporate raider would do a hostile takeover tomorrow morning, spin off the oil business by lunch, and own the world before dark.

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#5
In reply to #3

Re: How Much Green and at What Cost?

05/07/2008 8:45 AM

No one can raid exxon

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#4
In reply to #2

Re: How Much Green and at What Cost?

05/05/2008 9:11 PM

Great answer. Unfortunately, people always seem to prefer to believe the crap peddled by conspiracy theorists out to scam them rather than proven fact. After all, oil companies actually have no reason to suppress the "gasoline pill". If it costs only a couple of million dollars a year to produce enough pills to sell for hundreds of millions every year, why not do it instead of investing millions looking for new oil reserves that may not even pan out?

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