Can We Engineer an Answer to the Energy Question?

Do you really think we have the time? is the energy question not better asked "can we slow the natural process of our un-natural effect to the host planet we live on? by my caluculations, we have approx. 50 years until life at 1200 feet above sea level and below is unsustainable.

Do you really think we have the time?

The question is can we afford not to spend the time on working out a solution?

"Is the energy question not better asked "can we slow the natural process of our un-natural effect to the host planet we live on?"

By finding a solution to this question is that not what would result?

As you have correctly pointed out we have about 50 years before we are in serious trouble, not to a least ask this question would be morally reprehensible and I believe we can solve the problem so lets stop being defeatist before we even get started.

50 yrs .... that's silly

I predict we have at least 51.

But, to paraphrase Masu, "how can we afford not to spend the time?"

Isn't that what this thread is about? Producing future energy with minimal harm to the planet?

Only 50 years --"Nostradamus Lives"-- But the Quatrains do not help us with the exact time.

Dear Masu,

I am subscribing with all my 'energy' to your Energy Question; never is to late to start to think about it. Even seems to be a brainstorm work, an initiative which would maybe "inspire" many lazy brilliant cons minds, I think that finally is a worthy effort for all of us to do that.

Also I am using this way to wish everybody, including the pro and cons guys, a Prosperous Happy New Year in 2007.

Sincerely, Dumitru B.

Great idea it would seem, this Thorium powered reactor.

The picture in the 2nd link reminded me that I often wondered why the conventional water moderated reactors were placed at a higher elevation than their cooling ponds/reservoirs/rivers and required pumps to supply cooling water and emergency pumps on standby when sound fail-safe engineering practice would be the other way around. That is place the reactor below grade, let the water flow in by gravity and require pumps to pump the water out. In the event of almost any failure, the water would flood the reactor and stop the reaction. Stored heat could likely be removed by convection or even steam but more water would always flow in to take its place. But then some very smart engineers did some very stupid things like routing the emergency wiring in the same conduits and panels as the operational wiring, and we know what happened there.

I believe that the answer to our environmentally friendly energy needs lies in the use of all existing technologies plus conservation achieved by more efficient use of the energy we produce. Nuclear, Wind, Solar, Carbon sequestering Coal burning/gasification facilities, geothermal, more insulation in buildings and better designs and siting to take advantage of the sun, and prevailing winds, higher mileage vehicles, more efficient appliances ... all of it. And I even mean to include more drilling for the short term because reducing our energy dependence is of utmost importance also. Taking a long term view, I don't see how driling in Alaska will have any damaging effects, provided there is no permanent related development, roads or settlements. Oil spills are ugly, but they do disappear over time. In the arctic that may take centuries but while it may sound horrifying, pales against what nature does all the time, the length of time radioactive waste remains hazardous, the long term environmental effects of a large hydro-electric dam and so forth.

It has always been so: to light our caves and keep warm we created a lot of soot and smoke inside and outside ... the biggest difference was there were so few of us then compared to now. We have overpopulated our planet and are on the verge of setting off mass extinctions of species. I think we have to consider not just large scale production of power in the industrialized countries but also technologies that can be used in the "third world" for cooking, heating, lighting and transportation: those solutions will be quite different but also important.

In the meantime I will try to think of what new technologies might help.

Phone your friends at Atomic Energy Canada Limited and order one of their Canadu systems. They have been built around the world, and support three fuel cycles, un-enriched uranium, plutonium, and thorium. By their design a loss of coolant also means a loss of moderator and the reaction stops so no melt-down is possible.

These good folks have even developed a modular concept which allows subassemblies to be build off-site and then integrated at the final destination reducing the construction time and resulting initial cost.

Sure they create nuclear waste but compare the volume of waste from a nuclear plant with the amount of garbage pumped into the atmosphere from your basic coal fired power plant before you jump to judgement.

Good question!

I would suggest also that each energy proposal should include statements by the proposer:

• "what has inhibited the use of this form of energy to date?" and
• "what will be the main inhibitors into the future

eg. cost, efficiency, polution, vested interests etc...

NeilJ

I plan to look at everything like that later. There will be separate threads for each of the technologies over the next few months where every aspect can be explored in detail. All I would like for now is to generate a list of possible technologies that can be used as later discussions topics.

Very admirable start of a new thread! I had not heard of the thorium reactor. From studing your references, I gather the result of the spallation is some lighter elements. I assume that these byproducts will then float to the top of the molten lead, where they can be removed. I also assume that because the byproducts are smaller atoms, they will not be radioactive. Are my assumptions correct?

Since our only significant non-nuclear source of energy is the sun (past and present), I believe we should concentrate on using the many forms of solar energy. Since a large fraction of the world's population lives near the sea, it seems to me that more work should be done on capturing wave/tidal energy.

I have seen the many large windmills in northern europe and scandanavia (I don't find them unsightly nor find their noise objectionable as do some). I would like to know what fraction of their total energy needs are from wind.

Some very admirable suggestions. Just a few thoughts:

1. Given that we sit on the crust of a molten mass about 8000 miles in diameter, it would seem prudent to harvest that energy first. It has vast potential and geothermal energy could supply us for many years. Improvements in the technology of drilling or other recovery techniques and understanding of the planet on which we live could reap significant benefits. I do agree though with the position that many of these technologies could be optimized in a very short time if a priority were given [to science and engineering] rather than to allowing business/ political interests to direct national policies.

2. A second area of technology that would reap fantastic rewards is that of future development of superconductivity. Reduction of electrical power losses during transmission would increase power availability drastically and overnight. Unfortunately the costs associated with superconductive power transmission are currently such that it is impractical. A major breakthrough to find a material that is superconductive at room temperature or slightly below would a major step forward to solution of the energy problem. One more point is that ANY means to make a system/material superconducting at room temperature would be beneficial; currently, as far as I am aware we are only looking at techniques to increase the temperature at which superconductivity occurs.

Keep up the good work.

Short reaction

1. Please don't try to harvest the energy in the molten iron core: imagine that cooling it down would have an impact on our magnetic field. We need it as long as we want to live on earth. There where it reaches the crust we already harvest it (eg. New Zealand and Iceland)

2. Superconductivity is industrially used for power generation: a superconductive generator has a much higher efficiency (I know of one installation in a German hydro power-station). For energy transportation you need superconductivity to be present at summer heat. And then you need to replace the power lines. Try to do this overnight.

THANKS MASU, for info on thorium reactor ! Very interesting !

Nic

Ok here is what I think.. Why think up some ONE SUPER idea, if we all know the real solution to the energy crisis is to use ALL OF THE the already available enviormently friendly technologies as in wind, solar, thermal (underground) hydro and "ocean power" etc..TOGETHER..I think if we are serious about having only 51 years left before all hell breaks loose we must develop and expand all these natural recources... rather than to spend time at the drawing board (or on our beds) dreaming of a "super hero" to save us.

Not economical? unpractical? There is no easy way out... SPEND THE MONEY... No cheap free energy... We can build better (expencive , yes..) machines to utilize what nature gives us ...FOR FREE... What about lightning?.. any ideas?

Not to redirect the discussion but the comments about having 50 or 51 years left is pure rubbish!!!

Is climate change happening?....yes..but it has happened time and time again throughout geological time!!

Is man to blame?...nope - the science to date is ambiguous at best and goes against physical science. A lot more definitive work has to be done to explain the observations made to date rather than making blind assumptions as many climatologists have been doing,

Notwithstanding that, we do owe our descendants a better furture - especially one that can accommodate any drastic changes Mother Nature can throw at us.

There have been some great comments posted here and this is the sort of stuff that inventions are spawned from - group brain storming at its best!!!

Impact_Cases, I stated earlier that all we were trying to do with this thread was to generate a list of possible technologies and to whether of not global warming was a reality. However when you make statements like

"Is climate change happening?....yes..but it has happened time and time again throughout geological time!!

Is man to blame?...nope"

I feel that a response is necessary. Firstly the current rate of climate change is dramatically faster than ever experienced during the existence of mankind and is probably second only to disasters like the postulated asteroid/comet strike that caused the extinction on the dinosaurs. Australia has had experienced a 1°C rise in temperature since the middle of the 20^th century. Check this site out for details of how Australia's climate is changing.

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/

If we are already seeing this sort of change what can we expect in the future?

The question is then what is causing the change? Since this has been extensively discussed on other threads and is not the intent of this thread all I will say is that to think we have nothing to do with the current climate change is naive.

The hunt for alternate sources of energy would explode if the govermentmade it a National Mandate like President Kennedy made the moon landing! Think about it. We have alot of knowledge now of ways to extract cheap energy (wind, solar, nuclear, Hydro, etc) but until the goverment drops all of the developement costs (and stop kissing up to "big oil") things will not change.

Energy of the Future:

1. I agree on thorium reactors and other types of "fast neutron reactors".

2. Uranium is not too bad if we cancel the reprocessing of used elements and so get rid of the exceedingly high risc and cost of highly radioactive nuclear waste.

There is ample uranium existing (granite has a mean content of 50g Uranium per metric ton!) and the price of raw uranium-(oxide) does not show up neither in power reactor nor in weapons. The cost is coming from uranium enrichment and other non-uranium-related costs.

3. Fossil fuel will last much longer than pessimistic people warn us today. Oil wells are mined to a small extent only - roughly below 30% of the total oil existing as the rest is too difficult to get out.

4. Oil inside natural sediment (shale) can go up to 20% content and there are much more deposits known than for oil. But the price will go up to 80 to 100 $ per barrel if this has to be used.

5. Gas-hydate mining from the deep see seems possible but has to be developed.

6. Converting organic waste (any type) to oil (as Germany did in WWII) in high pressure high temperature vessels will cost also 80 to 100 $/barrel. This will limit the future rise in energy cost.

7. Wind energy and solar energy are much more costly - so why do politicians support these?

8. Major impact will have attempts of genetically engineering algae to produce oil. There are vast amounts of overfertilised water basins in shallow sea where temperature is high that can be used. This will take longer than the other possibilities.

Above all: There is no big danger of drowning as sea level is declining in cold and in warm periods: The last big warm period that ended around 6 million years ago (then first homo erectus did show) had sea levels around 100m below our momentary level. And had a dry mediterranean sea (4000m below!) as additional water to be deposited in the polar caps and as a driving reason for generating a long lasting very warm period. Naturally there will be big refugee problems - but this is not new. Known historic and prehistoric cold and warm periods were much bigger in amplitude as those that we expect as the human-made warming of today.

We had at least 7 cold (with vast glaciation) and 7 warm periods in the last 1 million years and any of these changed a lot but did not pose a real critical problem of survival. And from the 10thousand years of known history there were a lot of different relocations: from the ancient tribes: greeks to vikings - any of the today known peoples were not in their location where they live today. So this will happen again.

Not the energy will be the real crisis nor the sea level.

The real crisis will come from the inability to be a people of high technical, political and social skill and responsability.

Any of the known historically blooming cultures broke down: by military, economic or social failure. This will happen to the western (north atlantic) culture too.

The only big difference will be that in the globalised situation of today there may be no more "primitive" but strong foreign people that can take over the leadership.

With the very best wishes for the New Year

RHABE

India which has largest stock of Thorium (25% of the world entire stock expected to last 400-500 years) has already developed technology to use it. This reactor requires metal Sodium as coolent. You can get more details at www.igcar.ernet.in

I beleive that Hydrogen as fuel and Fusion reactors will come before 30 years from now, as next technology stop over to last for much greater time. Those putting money on the fission reactors will be losers.

Please provide sources for your numbers!

The big difference between pre-historic, historic, and current situations is the sheer number of humans involved, together with the per capita energy and water consumption. Explorers can no longer find new arable lands to move to. Even if we were to find an unpopulated Earth twin on the other side of the sun (the planetary colonization requiring the lowest possible energy requirement), the energy required to get there safely means that the colonization could only be done by a few select individuals. It would do nothing to solve the population problem on Earth; only help to guarantee the survival of the race.

We must find low pollution methods of creating energy and distributing both energy and water. The only alternative is to accept a vastly lower population (read: kill billions of people) and/or a vastly lower standard of living.

India has done extensive survey some 20 years ago when Canada refused to give us U235. We also needed it to know the environmental problem within India. You need to trust to what I say as data is ours. We have 2 million scientific men in the atomic energy , perhaps the largest under used community in the world. No one else cares any better than we do as far as environment is concerned. However, we are not satisfied people. Our reactors are smallest in the world and only generate <250MW each. No one can say that reactor will be 100% safe as earth itself not safe that way. We might not have seen petroliun if earth was a safe place. We may just become that in time for others to find us useful for their drive.

Folks, can we try and keep this thread on track for the time being. What this thread about is generating a list of possible technologies. We can rip into the feasibility of each technology and whether the political environment will allow it in future threads. Don't panic everybody will have a chance to have their say I guarantee it.

So please folks we desperately need more technologies so get those thinking caps on and report on what you have seen or think might work.

Thorium by itself is not usable. It is first converted into U232 by placing it into nuclear reactors as blanket. Hence, you need those D2O based reactors to first convert the Thorium into usable material. Perhaps India will have such few hundreds of reactors to convert its Thorium reserve to U232. Hence, first build those simple reactors and then fast breeder versions.

No that's not how the thorium reactor I mentioned works. We will discuss the operation in depth later so lets try and keep to the spirit of the thread and list all the possible solutions.

Here is the list of energy technologies I can think of so far:

1) Nuclear Energy - fission reactors (thorium)

2) Nuclear Energy - fussion reactors

a) Hot fussion

b) Cold fusion

3) Electrostatic Energy - Lighting

4) Wind Energy

5) Solar Light Energy - photovoltaics

6) Solar Heat Energy - stirling engine

7) Tidal wave energy

8) Hydro Energy - dams

9) Geothermal Energy

10) Fossil Fuel Energy

11) Organic Oil Energy - ethanol

12) Coal Energy

Seems like a good list.

Under Solar, I'd add passive and active home and water heating.

I'd put Coal under Fossil (as 10 a).

I'd also add:

13. Burning waste (in incinerators heating boilers)

14. Burning plant materials (wood, corn, etc.)

Here is the list of energy technologies I can think of so far:

1) Nuclear Energy - fission reactors (thorium)

2) Nuclear Energy - fussion reactors

a) Hot fussion

b) Cold fusion

3) Electrostatic Energy - Lighting

4) Wind Energy

5) Solar Light Energy - photovoltaics

6) Solar Heat Energy - stirling engine

7) Tidal wave energy

8) Hydro Energy - dams

9) Geothermal Energy

10) Fossil Fuel (oil) Energy

11) Organic Oil Energy - ethanol

12) Coal Energy

13) Burning waste (in incinerators heating boilers)

14) Burning plant materials (wood, corn, etc.)

A great list if there ever was one!!!

Ok here is another thought - with each and every technology listed, there is waste energy given off in some fashion. We need to capture that waste energy somehow and redirected to a usefull purpose.

For instance, many power generating stations (both conventional and nuclear) need water to cool the steam that is used to drive the generators..as a result cooling towers are built to allow the steam made as a result of using water to cool the internal steam is allowed to escape into the atmosphere (which by the way is a major greenhouse gas).

If we can develop a technology that will properly and effectively harness this waste energy..we will certainly be close to achieving permanent self-suffiency on this planet!!

A good numbers in the list indeed. You missed a very good one, Electrolysis of water - Hydrogen fuel energy.

Sorry Shyam, hydrogen isn't a form of energy. It's an energy storage medium. Much like oil is a storage medium for ancient solar energy. You need to generate energy somehow, then use that energy to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen - thus storing the energy for future use.

However, I would add lunar energy to the list. That is, any energy that is derived from the tidal motion of water.

Interesting. My post #56 brings up the same issue, although I think we can get mired in semantics.

Pretty clearly, wind is a form of solar energy. But many would prefer to think of it as a form of energy of motion. Likewise, burning wood, creating methanol from it (and burning that, or using it in a fuel cell), or gasifying it... all are solar energy as well. By extension, I suppose we can say that it is all big bang energy.

Granted, lunar energy makes a certain amount of sense (and we could include not just water movement but land movement as well), but I wonder if it makes things too abstract? If we use this lunar energy, will the orbit then degrade faster?

I suppose, for the time being, it makes sense to get all the ideas out there, and to refine the categorization later.

Dear Stev

I said Hydrogen fuel energy. It is a fuel in sun and it will be fuel on earth. ways to use it will differ and what happens to Hydrogen after reaction will also differ. We have lots and lots of it to ever finish it. I am for Hydrogen.

Shyam,

The reason I said hydrogen is a form of storage, and not an energy source, is that free hydrogen does not occur naturally (as it does in the sun). We need to use energy to dissociate it from the other elements it is combined with. We get that energy back later when we react the hydrogen. Thus, we're using the hydrogen to temporarily store the energy.

The reason that H₂ is not used as an decent energy source today is due to the storage problems.

in decent containers 4% of the capacity is lost per day (24h).

H₂ is so tiny that it migrates through the metal walls.

This is my biggest concern on H₂ as a fuel.

The weight and size of the containers make it also unusable to be used in trucks.

Tons of researcher are working on this subject, in different directions.

I agree that hydrogen has storage problems, but my point is that it's not an energy source, it's a storage medium. We can't mine hydrogen like we mine petroleum and use it to power things. We have to make it first (more properly, dissociate it), which requires at least as much energy as we get out of it later.

It's a fallacy to think of hydrogen "replacing fossil fuel" as an energy source because there is no hydrogen until we generate the energy (using an energy source) to make it.

In the large sense, petroleum is a storage medium also (as opposed to a source). It's just that petroleum is storing solar energy, accumulated over hundreds of millions of years, as carbon bonds. We think of it as an energy source because we didn't have to put the energy into the storage medium in the first place. The sun did it a long time ago.

Not to mention the cost of separating the H2 from H2O in order to product free hydrogen in mass quantities. Using one source of energy to produce another source would seem to be counter productive. However I believe that they are working on processes where the input energy cost would be minimized thereby maximizing the economic benefit of H2 as an energy source.

One of the real problems with hydrogen for use in cars etc is its very explosive nature. If we can control the reaction as per the son, it is a great source for electrical power which we can then harness for transportation...has anyone heard about the new car GM is touting - an electrical - gas hybrid which only relies on gas for longer trips....sounds to me as if they are headed in the right direction.

Hi, Impact:

It seems odd to be agreeing with everything you've said in the last two posts.

Yes, I too think the plug-in hybrids are a good next step. There is already a small industry supplying conversions for Priuses. As you can guess, some of the claims border on fraud (because if you pick a short enough trip, you can claim infinite gas mileage, ignoring the cost of electricity). There are maybe four small companies contending, and their products are roughly the same, but the mpg claims range from 100 to 500mpg.

Here in Georgia, we are at the break-even point, elec vs gas, with current prices for each. (in other words, if you ignore the cost of the car itself, you could run an elec for about the same price as a gas powered car of the same weight.)

But where's the elec. coming from -- same old place, at efficiency and environmental costs about equal to a current gas car.

If only we could get the sun - usable energy conversion refined. There is so much available, but we can't seem to figure how to capture it efficiently.

I believe we can capture it efficiently...it is quite easy to initiate the reaction with a group of focused lasers, however the real problem is containing the reaction..that is where the work needs to be focused on...can you imagine some H2 reactors that are running nearly constantly providing the world with not only a clean source of electricty but also the energy to produce its own fuel?...now THAT is what you call being energy sufficient...

There is a big difference between the sun and what we try to do on earth (in the ICE).

The sun is a fusion reactor, we do need an oxidation reaction to get the energy we want.

The sun is not really reacting in a controlled way, we do exist due to the earths magnetic field. If it would fail, life on earth would be gone in some days (deep ocean life can survive a bit longer)

It is a big dream: to have a portable/movable fusion reactor that can take over the gen-set function in a hybrid car. Some parts of the work is evolved a good way ahead, others are still SiFi. Soviets did a huge development work on this, primely based on the high availability of fission reaction base materials (India and Iran have the same problem).

Nevertheless: H₂ will keep on migrating through the storage tank walls.

Thorium reactors could do it for a train (were the weight is not that important).

I think we need to work on the track we are heading now: improve the ICE, gain as much oil from renewable sources as possible and try to change the way that people handle energy. Biodiesel is a good evolution, but why do they process the vegetable harmless oil to the diesel form? Diesel cycle Ice's could easily work with the original oil. Of course there is a viscosity problem with the actual engine equipment, but that can be solved by heating up these lines and pumps.

Somewhere else I read that the price for gas is getting in equilibrium with electricity, do never forget that you have to add taxes to all fuels you which to use as propulsion of a vehicle, it should be used to build and maintain the roads (and if you see that bill you will realize that the tax is not as high as it should be). If you don't like that, move to Somalia, there is no government to tax you.

Gwen,

Yes, improve the ic engine.

8 b. Hydro energy - Ocean current turbines. (Especially the Antarctic current.)

I must correct Shyam. Canada did not refuse to send India any U235 because we have no separation facilities whatsoever. We did sell you a couple of CANDU reactors which will burn either natural uranium. plutonium, or thorium as they stand. Canada quit shipping nuclear technology to India when India decided to pursue a weapons program.

It should be noted that India liked the CANDU reactors enough to clone them.

We had only one Canada India Reactor called CIRUS. We could not get that useless U238 also so went to Russia or France to get it. That was some 30 years ago. See picture in the right side of that reactor. On the left side is the research reactor Dhruva named on North pole star Indian name "Dhruva". CIRUS is now fully Indian converted design. You can see this picture on www.barc.ernet.in

I have no desire to appear as a confrontational pain in the butt. However Shyam's comments to the contrary, Atomic Energy Canada Limited sold two CANDU reactors to India for power generation purposes. India liked them so much that they cloned the design. Canada may have provided other research reactors but they did sell India two CANDU power plants.

This is not the forum for argument but if you look at the site www.nuclearfaq.ca you will find references to the systems sold to India.

The CANDU systems do not burn U238, they burn natural uranium which contains enough fissile material to work in the CANDU system. You will also find descriptions of the plutonilum and thorium fuel cycles. It does not require liquid sodium as a coolant. The use heavy watter as both the coolant and the moderator. A loss of moderator shuts down the reaction, they are meltdown proof.

The CANDU system seems to be a well kept secret, unlike most others it can be refueled while running using a robotic system that puts relatively small fuel bundles in one end and takes them out of the other. Because it can be refueled on the fly and fuel bundles can be moved it is not necessary to provide excess reactivity and burnable poisons as required in reactors that are refueled once every year or two with the resulting down time. The actual reactor is arranged with horizontal fuel channels which makes this robotic fueling possible.

They are now working on the advanced concept reactor ACR which will use slightly enriched uranium fuel. The fuel needs to be so slightly enriched that it can burn spent fuel from conventional reactors because they have enough U235 left in the fuel to satisfy the requirements of the ACR. The use of SEU means they can reduce the size of the reactor and the volume of heavy water required.

Like all nuclear reactors it does create some plutonium. It is said that as much as 30% of the power obtained from a nuclear reactor is the result of buring the plutonium that is generated as the reactor is run. I guess that this means that all nuclear reactors are slow breeders but power reactors burn a signifcant quantity of what they breed.

I think that most people who think there is a place for the nuclear option would be quite interested to visit the site and learn something about the CANDU system. If I can remember correctly they are in use in Korea, India, Romania, Argentina, and of course Canada. There is even some thought being given to using one to provide process steam for the heavy oil tar sands extraction plants in Northern Alberta instead of using natural gas which we can sell to the US.

I appologize if this post has the appearrance of sermon delivered with missionary zeal. I really do believe that the CANDU (which stands for Canadian Deuterium) is a well kept secret in the nuclear world.

In the course of my investigations I did learn that the plutonium produced by power reactors is considered to be reactor grade and not weapons grade. If uranium is irradiated for to long as would occur in a power reactor it produces isotopes of plutonium which are unsuitable for weapons. The tend to eject neutrons at random which could result in premature detonations with a greatly reduced strength called a fizzle, or they could creat enough heat to melt the carefully created explosive lenses meant to trigger the actual device. I thought I would just add that little non-related tidbit.

I have babbled on long enough, please forgive me.

I agree that there were two reactors. Another one was RAPP or Rajasthan Atomic Power Project. These reactors were very early time before I entered the atomic energy. I have never seen that RAPP reactor. Perhaps problem came on heavy water and not so much for the fuel. Perhaps India might have opted to reprocess the fuel rather than storing it as waste as India needed spent fuel more for waste products for medical use. Perhaps Cs-137 might have come from this activity which was also used in hospitals at that time and now it is restricted.

Plutonium also may have come as waste product which they used as neutron trigger source in some of the reactors to start the fission. I think explosion at Pokharan wasn't required but it exposed the neighbour country that they were having such plans all the time. Had India not exploded the device, they might have kept their design more higgen. To the world this may have had a bad effect and to us as well but we came to knew about others and was the right thing to do.

There were not very great ideas in CANDU reactor and in fact the technology was utter poor. I entered the reactor once and found that ordinary battary charger shop equipments are much better. Most of the countries dump their worst ever technology on others. Can you imagine that France Fighter aircarft come with Apple computer to India and not even IBM-PC while India has its own supper computer. I built a parallel processing computer of my own in 1976. Its instruction cycle was 50ns and 16 machines of 64 bit in parallel. I built it for fast nuclear particle detection in real time and could process million particle information per second very easily.

India can flood the world with reactors if we wish to sale the technology, but funny thing is our administrative people are bagging reactors that may be totally useless to us. Looks to me it is some game and has nothing to do with what we need. We really do not need any thing from out side and have 100 times greater technology for export which we all are relactant to do. Most of us here are used to live without resources and are not business like by nature. A high school educated outside India can employ a Ph.D. from India, but we can not employ even a single outsider. People here can't plan but are highly capable to work. They just go for job. I left the government job and own industry now. I am not like the rest of the India. Now some people started venturing into business but it is too small even now. May be it will change one day.

Shyam:

If the CANDU was utter junk that we were unloading on a foriegn nation we wouldn't be using them ourselves. In one post you deny the existence of the CANDU systems in India then in another you describe having visited one only to find that it was lower tech than a battery charger. If you visit the suggested web page you will find that the CANDU systems have very high uptimes which put them at the top of the list.

Again the CANDU is a wonderful system for a country that does not have access to the very expensive uranium enrichment infrastructure.

The purpose of this thread is not to have a spitting match over a specific technology but I can not stand idle when someone makes derogatory, misleading or untrue statements regarding Canadian technology.

To the others following this thread I appologize for the bandwidth that has been used correcting these misconceptions.

I understand though that India has done some very good work on extracting tritium from heavy water used to cool and/or moderate nuclear reactors. This is good fuel for a fusion reactor so there is some degree of symbiosis there.

Korea is looking at pairing CANDU reactors with convention PWR reactors because the CANDU reactors can burn the waste fuel from the PWR reactors, the residual U235 is higher than that in the natural uranium normally used in the CANDU.

We should be looking at opportunities for symbiotic relationships between thechnologies. As an example a Candu burning spent fuel from a PWR, then tritium is extracted from the heavy water used in the CANDU to fuel a fusion reactor when the technology becomes available. It would be quite a complex.

Another symbiotic relation could be developed at a plant that is going to produce ethanol from grain and biodiesel from oil seeds. the waste products from both processes make good cattle feed so why not combine this plant with a feed lot and digest the cattle manure to produce methane to fuel the ethanol and biodesel plants?

Let us not look just for single technologies but for symbiotic mixes in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

The reason for not knowing RAPP candu is perhaps as there are many reactor at that place and CANDU design was discarded or modified. However, I agree that it was a CANDU and the modification was done before my entry into the atomic energy. While Physical process remains the same, our reactor are now totally different designs. Perhaps people learnt from mistakes.

CIRUS was not for making any great power and was for education. BARC is an education center or like an University. Place has many types of reactor for basic education in nuclear science.

Perhaps when CANDU came to India, we were like tribals. Perhaps Canada can take credit for educating us and in time we moved on to much better designs now. At many places in India, people oppose nuclear reactors. We also can not affrd to harm the environment. Most of us are like university scientists. Some time ago we separated research from power generating engineers. I remain in research even though less paid than others. There is no craize for nuclear power in India. That is why we are surprized with India US agreement. None in India want it and must be some US Indian lobby work with political aim. Whatever it may be, it will not change anything here for good. We are snails and tortoises. We have not learnt the speed of the others yet even though we have all knowldege.

You mentioned nuclear reactors, waste heat, and ethanol in the same post. While I have many reservations on ethanol, compared to bio-diesel, I see a "logical" connection here.

Since ethanol has a higher vapor pressure than water (lower boiling point than water), and ethanol production currently requires the burning of fuel (mostly fossil fuel) to distill it, it would seem to make sense to combine an ethanol production facility with the cooling facilities required for nuclear or fossil fueled generating stations where viable in terms of the economics of relative locations, modifications required, etc.

Your symbiosis point is well taken because the general rule is to make each independent energy production/conversion facility as efficient as economically viable by itself rather than looking at the bigger picture. Since completely different companies or entities are involved, each with their own internalized purposes and goals I'm not sure of how this can best be accomplished .. but it should.

Maybe symbiosis should be a category here in its own right.

Some of the heat energy from nuclear reactors is dumped in the sea, which give a lot of problem as it changes an eco system. We found that lots of Jelly fish were coming to the water inlet in truck loads. Then we placed some lkind of grills and then sea cells oesters took selter on them. I am not sure how they handle all that now. I early retired in 1998.

Shyam wrote: "I built a parallel processing computer of my own in 1976. Its instruction cycle was 50ns and 16 machines of 64 bit in parallel."

--------

1976? Hmmmm.....

What technology? How implemented? As the term "parallel processing" alone says nothing of the topology, how was the machine actually organized? Interprocessor communication? How implemented? What architectural model best describes the processors?

Please forgive my curiosity. Supercomputer architectures have always been an interest of mine.

-e

Shyam

Try visiting this site to update yourself on the CANDU's in India:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor

We have about 4.5 acres of biologically active land per person on earth. If you have a typical US lifestyle, you consume the resources of 24 acres. Here is a link where you can take a brief quiz that shows you about how large your own ecological footprint is.

Although this particular thread is is about one part of (the supply side) the energy equation, if we consider how much we use, we can see the importance of thinking seriously about new supplies.

Imagine if you were given your fair share of the earth. Clearly you'd have to work extraordinarily hard to sustain your lifestyle, wouldn't you. Where would you get the energy to "fuel" your car? You can easily imagine cutting all the trees on your lot for just a couple years' firewood. And where would your food come from?

I believe more effort should be put into developing a system to generate power on a per home basis. The 'black box' would generate power using any combination of safe reliable technologies within the property boundaries of each home.

The existing grid power structure is great for densely populated areas, however considering the trend of increasing load per person added to increasing urban sprawl, the cost of power transmission losses has to eventually make it worth self supply

There must be some kind of research (other than corn stoves) already in progress regarding this type of tech?

Yes, I remember that Alaska is promoting home-based fuel cell development.

David

An interesting concept Mevel123. Actually the existing power distribution system can and is used to distribute the excess power generated by homes that have their own power generation system. I will keep the idea of a distributed per home power generation concept for a thread all on its own.

The concept was not mine, but I do look forward to following up on a future thread. I believe one big hurdle is the lack of a good storage vessel for equalizing the variable energy supply that is nature.

Also; home grown energy keeps the consumer directly involved-this should also improve consumer efficiency.

Good topic Masu-You may have invented a new machine that converts wasted time to useful products.

Mevel123

A power plant gets 1/3 electricity and 2/3 heat nationally (USA). If you can use multiple cycles in the right engine type you can, according to my calculations and models, get 2/3 electricity and 1/3 heat through the .5-25 kw power range.

A typical furnace would call heat and produce electricity (2/3) and heat (1/3). It can be produced for around 3 cents/kw-hr for a net profit of 3+/kw-hr. The house becomes the power plant and uses the heat to heat the home. The heat can also be used in hot climates to cool homes.

This cannot be done with a brayton cycle turbine unit (only 40% max efficient) and it cannot be done with a Diesel cycle (45-58% world record efficiency).

The bottom line is every building, home or office or factory, should produce it's own power, and grid to share loads relative to heat requirements. Central power generation is viable in part because small engines are NOT designed correctly.

A house should NOT have a "furnace" of sorts. A furnace wastes the "quality" of the peak heating available in fuel by dumping it into open air. The peak heating should be used to create electricity, then heat a room.

Such an engine would power a car at over 100 mpg, due in part to the 66% efficiency (2x) and duty cycle improvements from typical engines at low power settings (1.5-3 times), with more savings (40%) when brake recovery is used. That is 4-10 times the fuel economy (100-250 mpg) in a 4000 lbs car. Such an engine could cut base fuel loads by well over 50-75% and more. Such an engine can combine wind and solar as auxiallaries to a main engine and make wind and solar viable, reliable, and more importantly cost effective.

Just like most soltuions that work, it starts in the home...

"A typical furnace would call heat and produce electricity (2/3) and heat (1/3)"

If large commercial power plants are only ≈30% efficient (as you state, and I believe is correct), how do you propose to double that efficiency? A 10% increase in efficiency would be excellent; doubling is almost if not completely incomprehensible.

"Such an engine would power a car at over 100 mpg, due in part to the 66% efficiency (2x)". Please tell us more about this marvelous engine!

dkwarner,

What got me started on my engine design and realizing it was possible to get twice the efficiency are two things. A power plant in Alabama, and the Diesel engines used on ships. This woke me up to the falsehood of the efficiency barrier of 30% or so. The most efficient Diesel is 58% at the shaft. The most efficient plant in the USA, from my understanding is in Alabama, USA, is twice the average for turbines. They use large salt caverns to store and cool air during off times and then feed it back into the turbine during peak time allowing a 1-4 times duty cycle ability as compared to .9-1.0 range.

In a typical compressor and turbine 2/3 to 3/4 th of the turbine power is used to compress the air. By storing the air and then using it later when needed, they have a much wider range of efficient power, unlike a fixed compressor turbine combination found on micro turbine and such. Their efficiencies are the highest in the world. I believe there is one in Germany also. Links? It has been a few years ago. Google it.

How I plan on doing it is still under research. There are many things that have to come together to make get the broad efficiencies. I can see why most large companies stay with the piston crank or turbos. I am finally narrowing it down.

You have to look at the physics of what is happening and ask quality question like: What does a piston (if you fix on that concept) want to do relative to combustion, mechanics, etc. You will find that a piston crank is the limiting factor, and is terrible for combusion and other issues. Read the research literature. They are all playing on the margins, and don't realize that 2 times is possible, but not with their current systems.

Now there are thousands of patents on engines out there. Go read them. Each has a fundemental flaw in some way that is very expensive to fix. The pattern I have noticed after much reading is the inventor does nothing in the way of thermodynamics, and none use multiple cycles to any degree. I combine three cycle. Making it simple is the hard part. Controlling it is a big issue.

If you do a P-V and T-S analysis and compare it to a Diesel cycle (constant pressure heat addition with adiabatic compression and expansion) you can see where the mileage increase comes from when you "throttle" it by reducing the fuel injection amount. The BSFC curve shows this. If you play around and try to add in all the energy that is available you can get around 1.75-2.1 (depending on what you do) times that diesel base rate. When you consider duty cycle and the rise in BSFC at part load you can see on the BSFC curve of a typical Diesel a 1.5-3 times rise for cruise power requirement over loaded. At idle you have an infinite rise in fuel/hp-hr.

It is right there for all to see in plain sight.

That curve, when "fixed," will get at least 2 time the base peak efficiency (Diesel is say .39 lbs/hp-hr at the best range) or around .39/2=.195 lbs/hp-hr. When you consider the duty cycle issue where the BSFC is around .6-.8, you have .8/.195=4.1 or around 4 times.

If you consider brake recovery of 75% (now used in hydraulic UPS delivery trucks and the new Ford f-150) where brake loss is 40% you can get another 30% saving roughly. 4/.7= 5.8 times current economy. So, around 4 -6 times depending on recovery and cycles used.

Add in a clean underside and good aero, low rolling friction and transmission and you could get twice that or over 12 times. Once you make the engine as it should be, aerodynamics then becomes important, but now aero is only 2.2 % of a tytpcial car. If you can recover nearly 95%, weight does not play much of a factor, so making a light car is not the goal for many reasons, such as safety.

Remember, there was a "car" that got 12,666 miles per gallon and many in the 6000-9000 range, so somewhere between 25 mpg and 12,666 is doable. I would say in ten-20 years we could be well past the 250 mpg rage for a 4000 lbs car or ten times what we now get.

In fact I can see a system that could get people around at 1 center/mile in energy. That would be $0.60 per hour. A car now is around $0.15 per mile in fuel, or $9 per hour at 60 mph. At 1 cent/mile energy, most people in the world could travel all they wanted even if they made $1/hr. In fact, just like the internet, energy for transit would be FREE if you were willing to endure the advertisements where each add is $0.05 and an add is new every minute (just like Hotmail or Google), giving the system a $0.04 cent per mile profit. Hmmm. The energy is in reality a zero factor at this point. Crisis? You have to be asleep or brain dead to think we have a crisis.

The bottom line is there is money to be made. Clearly we all are getting totally screwed by the wacko global hoax types, whether it is global warming or the hydrogen economy (yah right...what a stinking joke) who say there is an energy crisis. The only crisis is in leadership, and historically that is a fact.

If pigs had wings they could fly ... do not doubt this, look at birds for yourself.

Again, throwing numbers around, a few facts and some leaps of faith but nothing to support it.

They could make engines more efficient right now, but they wouldn't be economically viable when you try to amortize the added cost against the fuel savings spread out over the useful life of the engine.

Yes the power plant in Alabama gains in efficiency from storing compressed air in an abandoned salt mine, but you are misreading how the term efficiency is being applied. Just as there are different ways to measure a home heating plant's efficiency (combustion efficiency and seasonal efficiency being the two most common), there are different wasy to measure a power plant's "efficiency". And how many abandoned salt mines near power plants are there? Are you suggesting we create their equivalent?

Just because something is theoretically possible, doesn't mean it is practical. It may be at some point or may never be. As energy gets more expensive, hitherto impractical things gradually become practical. Things that conserve energy but were too expensive to economically implement gradually become economical (in the broad sense of the word) and it has always been so. You seem to have an axe to grind against some perceived conspiracy.

Please, just offer one specific idea here, you are obviously intelligent and knowledgeable enough, instead of sitting up there on your high horse slinging arrows hither and yon!

Greg,

My post was to point out that is is possible, which most do not believe it is, such as the head engine guy at DARPA.

How YOU want to do it is your game. How I do it is proprietary to me and my associates.

The physics is there to achieve it, which is central to the doubt that is cast over our future. Most believe mileage is fixed at 25-50 mpg. I know otherwise.

Buidling the machine can be done many ways. I have certain goals relative to aircraft that make my solution perhaps different than what someone else would do. My business plan and technology go hand in hand.

One reason for me taking time here is to stop the insanity about energy and the crisis mentality surrounding it which is reflected in the energy discussions.

If you are a qualified engineer and want to work on the engine I am more than happy to interview you. Someone who has to see before they believe is not qualified to invent new technology because that technology does not exist and it requires "faith" to see it to the end and realize the goal, based in clear understanding and science. Why do I need an engineer when it is solved? I don't, I need production types.

Seaplaneguy:

Sorry to butt in here, but I think that Greg's concern is similar to mine. Your posts have included loads of information that is superfluous to understanding of your engine. As you know, an engine is simply a device for converting chemical energy into mechanical energy, and typically does that by burning something, thereby heating a fluid or gas (often air), which in turn expands and pushes something. That push can operate in a "statics" mode (a piston attached to a crank) or a dynamic mode (mass inertial transfer) as in a turbine. In any of these cases, there is a simple, reliable measure of efficiency: the BSFC curve.

So, you could simply say "I have developed an engine that has a flat BSFC curve from 100 to 5000 rpm. At every speed in this range, BSFC is .1 g/hp/hr (diesel fuel)." Then, that statement can be easily evaluated: If that were your claim, then several of us would say that the implied efficiency is greater than 100%, (in other words, you are getting more energy out of the engine than the BTU content of the fuel going in) and we would be justifiably very, very sceptical.

All the other info -- re regenerative braking, improvements in aerodynamics, whether there is an energy crisis or not, whether global warming is a legitimate concern or not, whether the people in corporations are "slobs" or not, whether DARPA lacks insight or not, etc. -- simply clouds the issue, and undermines your message, if you are trying to promote your engine.

I think what Greg is saying is: Show us your BSFC curve. If you don't have a BSFC curve that is accurate to within 20%, then you are nowhere near prototype stage, and you'd be better off keeping your idea under wraps -- otherwise, you come across as either luny or arrogant.

Mr. Fry,

I was very clear in my previous posts. You seem to be a tad big arrogant yourself, since you have not read or understood what I stated, or are not capable to understand. I clearly stated that the BSFC curve, if you can read it relative to a car duty cycle, shows an engine can due much better than it does now , gasoline or Diesel.

I am keeping it under wrap as I stated before. It is proprietary. That means it is a secret. Get it?

My post was to state that the IC engine has a long ways to go in mileage improvement, which is central to the issue. The central problems of IC engine has been totally ignored. That is not an arrogant statement, just a plain phycical fact.

A gasoline engine is not running at peak performance during the cruise, and is perhaps 10% efficient. If you can make it 60% efficient all the time and at any power setting, then you should get 6 times the economy. Why is that so hard to comprehend or an arrogant statement? It is not. Amazingly you seem to not understand this simple fact that is clearly seen in the BSFC curve. You arrogantly state a "reliable measure of efficiency: the BSFC curve," all the while showing you did not read my post let alone understand it, clearly because I stated and used the BSFC curve as my central point.

Again, I am not claiming I have made "an engine that has a flat BSFC curve from 100 to 5000 prm." If I don't predict the only way you can understand something, it somehow goes over your head? The curve does not need to be flat.

If you think a flat BFSC curve implies "efficiency greater than 100%," you clearly don't understand what a BSFC curve is. If a car engine is 30% at peak efficiency and you double it to 60% efficiency, how is that more than unity? .6 is less than 1, get it?

I know...show me. My point is not to show you or sell my engine, but to make the point that an IC engine can be improved by 4-6 times in economy when used in transit applications, and would be around, in many forms, mine or other designs, for many years and prove much more helpful to world energy flows than fuel cells or a hydrogen this or that.

Currently, most people have given up on the IC engine, including government types (DARPA for one). I think it will outperform even the best fuel cells and pull the rug right out from their research dollars. The solutions people are seeking are right there and can put energy to 1/10th of its importance it is now for transit. You will not likely if ever do that with fuel cells, or the many ideas posted here, in part because of the percieved slight advantage of fuel cells due to duty cycle will evaporated when the IC engine has a flat BSFC, especially in the sub 10% power range where cells are not good. People want to throw the baby out with the bath water, not realizing the IC engine is THE baby with THE solution for the next 50 years. If we did cut fuel by 90% we would be out of the middle east in short order and a barrel of oil would be $15.

Perhaps if I asked you a question, you could then better understand.

Question: If an engine were to get 60% efficiency at all times (100-5000 rpm as you say), what would be the mileage increase be for a typical 3500 lbs car that now got 25 mpg at 65 mph? What would the mileage increase be for a car that got 100% brake energy recovery in the city? Read my posts above for the answers...

Ok I have just read the last 40 posts and have seen nothing new so I think it is time to wrap this up now and I will start a new discussion based on the list in post #66.

Seaplaneguy, at the moment you technology is lumped under 3.3 Improved Internal Combustion Engines but I believe it warrants a discussion on its own so if you can think up a name for it I will split it off from the general discussion of 3.3

Since Sunday is usually a quiet day for CR4 posts I will aim at introducing a new technology for discussion each Sunday.

Masu,

The engine is designed for combined heat and power (electrical) generation. Electrical power should be generated in the building, not in a central power plant where the heat/cooling from heat cannot be used. Include it in the electrical power list because that is where it is going first. I would like to put it in a car just to have "fun" pissing the auto industry off. They will have 8 years to match the economy according to California CAFE officials. Should be fun to watch...

An engine that can be successful in generating power across the wide power spectrum of CHP is also an engine that will work well in transit because of the duty cycle. Generating electricity at $0.03/ kw-hr at 1 kw all the way to 25 kw is not found in any generator today. It is not easy, and the prime mover (engine) is only half the issue.

The electrical generator itself has poor performance outside a small range without very complex and expensive electronics which become cost prohibitive. An electrical power generator must be able to response to 3-5 times loads for short duration very quickly otherwise the generator stalls and the lights go out. When you start a large motor or welder, the generator must be able to respond, which is a large part of the difficulty in power generation on a single house basis.

Put another way, if you want to have distributed power, there needs to be new inventions for electrical generators to allow that generator to work across the power range. This issue is not mentioned or discussed much because a prime mover is matched to a generator, and that system is only ran in a narrow band, or it is shut down. The efficiency of your alternator in your car can drop to 10%, which is a lot less than the 95% quoted.

Anyhow, put me in the electrical power generation section.

Nice list. Should be interesting.

Masu wrote:

Since Sunday is usually a quiet day for CR4 posts I will aim at introducing a new technology for discussion each Sunday.

What happened this past sunday. I did not see any new topic posted?

Elnav

Seaplane:

You've missed my point entirely. That point is this: You must produce at least a BFSC curve for your engine. That curve is not proprietary. (You don't want to keep the curve secret; just keep the means of achieving it secret.) You talk about "fixing the curve" and imply, but never state precisely, that doing so means to make it level (or relatively level), something that any engine designer would agree is desirable but very difficult to achieve.

Is the curve flat? If so, in what range of RPM… or is it flat at all operating speeds – (which, you would have to admit, will cause a lot of skepticism). Do you believe that your engine will achieve a BSFC of .195 at all speeds, or at just one? The current world record is about .260 on diesel fuel, but only at that engine's most fuel efficient rpm and loading. So .195 would be impressive, even if that number is only at a narrow peak. You seem to be claiming that your engine "fixes" the curve which makes it more impressive (or unbelievable) yet.

But you never actually produce this curve for your engine. Without the curve, you have no engine, just a dream. You can't make any sensible claim to proprietary content in the curve, any more than you could patent your engine on the basis of a curve you've dreamed up.

You write: I was very clear in my previous posts. You seem to be a tad big arrogant yourself, since you have not read or understood what I stated, or are not capable to understand. I clearly stated that the BSFC curve, if you can read it relative to a car duty cycle, shows an engine can due much better than it does now , gasoline or Diesel.

There is so much extraneous garbage in your posts, you cannot claim that they are clear. For example, stating that the head engine guy at DARPA doesn't believe you does nothing to make your case clear. Further, many of your quasi-engineering "facts" are just plain wrong, and dramatically so. For example you write "Once you make the engine as it should be, aerodynamics then becomes important, but now aero is only 2.2 % of a tytpcial car." The statement is completely unclear, (aside from the misspelling). Aero is only 2.2% of what??? The budget? The designers' concern? Or 2.2 percent of the energy consumption? If the latter, then at what speed? We have to assume at cruise, because many of your claims seem to be referenced to cruising speeds. If we make those assumptions, then the statement is patently false. At cruising speed on a level road, aerodynamic drag is, by far, the largest energy consumer, even on today's most streamlined cars.

Yes, you clearly stated that "the BFSC curve" (we'll assume a generic one) shows that an engine can be much better than it is now. But even that statement is ambiguous. All engineers with even tangential awareness of ICE's would say "Yes, ICE's are inefficient." But to then suggest that it is a simple matter to double efficiency, despite thousands of capable engineers having spent many lifetimes trying to do just that, is absurd. To suggest that you have done this, without your having produced any evidence whatsoever that you have done that, will be taken, by many engineers, as arrogant. As DKWarner said: 10% improvement would be impressive.

You present the UPS hydraulic hybrid trucks as supporting your idea, apparently. Here's a description of the system:

The U.P.S. van has four "accumulator tanks" of 22 gallons each which can be pressurized as high as 5,000 pounds. When fully charged, the system holds 2,000 horsepower-seconds of energy, according to Benjamin M. Hoxie, engineering manager for hydraulic hybrids at Eaton, an automotive supplier that built the prototype, using technology developed by the E.P.A..

Stated differently, it could deliver 100 horsepower for about 20 seconds. In electrical terms, that is less than half a kilowatt hour — but no electric battery could absorb and deliver energy so quickly.

Contrast this thousand-plus pounds of fluid and accumulators with the 88 pound battery pack in a Prius, which is 1.3 kilowatt hours, or 2.6 times the capacity! Engineers in large corporations like Toyota are not all the "slobs" you make them out to be.

(Actually, batteries can easily deliver 100 hp for 20 seconds. Charging is a little trickier, but can be controlled through super capacitor peak absorption. So the last half sentence of this quote is very misleading.)

You go on to say:

If you think a flat BFSC curve implies "efficiency greater than 100%," you clearly don't understand what a BSFC curve is. If a car engine is 30% at peak efficiency and you double it to 60% efficiency, how is that more than unity? .6 is less than 1, get it?

Clearly, you did not comprehend what I wrote, which is as follows:

So, you could simply say "I have developed an engine that has a flat BSFC curve from 100 to 5000 rpm. At every speed in this range, BSFC is .1 g/hp/hr (diesel fuel)." Then, that statement can be easily evaluated: If that were your claim, then several of us would say that the implied efficiency is greater than 100%, (in other words, you are getting more energy out of the engine than the BTU content of the fuel going in) and we would be justifiably very, very sceptical.

A diesel engine with a BSFC of .26 g/hp/hr is world class efficient, at just over 50%. Therefore, if you claimed .1 g/hp/hr, you would be claiming roughly 130% efficiency. Nowhere did I say that a flat BSFC curve implies efficiency greater than 100%. .1g/hp/hr, on the other hand, does imply such effieciency. Your condescending tone ".6 is less that 1, get it?" is offensive. My point was that if you expect to be taken seriously among engine designers and among people like me who are interested in sourcing efficient engines, you must either produce actual BFSC curves for different loads (as you did elsewhere for the DeltaHawk engine) or describe them in sufficient detail. As it is, I don't know what your claim is: .195 at some speed? More or less at another? Who knows? Where is the set of curves?

To simply say "Well… if we had 60% efficiency, and we did some regenerative braking, and managed the duty cycle, and maybe improved the aerodynamics, we could get great fuel mileage" (or your hundreds of words to that effect) is to restate things that engineers have known for decades. If you want to be taken seriously by people at DARPA or elsewhere, you need to show that you've got something more than a dream. Any high school student who has participated in the Shell challenge can mouth the words, after all. And at least they can say they have really done something that might not be highway worthy, but at least shows the possibilities.

No need to reply. This is not the thread for such things, nor do I have the time.

Good luck in your endeavors.

Blink wrote: "The U.P.S. van has four "accumulator tanks" of 22 gallons each which can be pressurized as high as 5,000 pounds. When fully charged, the system holds 2,000 horsepower-seconds of energy, according to Benjamin M. Hoxie, engineering manager for hydraulic hybrids at Eaton, an automotive supplier that built the prototype, using technology developed by the E.P.A." - end quote

I'm not that well acquainted with hydraulic systems. Can someone explain why hydraulics are used instead of batteries.

Blink also wrote: "Contrast this thousand-plus pounds of fluid and accumulators with the 88 pound battery pack in a Prius, which is 1.3 kilowatt hours, or 2.6 times the capacity!" - end quote

This is more like what my system designs are like. As a practical expedient and a concession to clients who eschew "strange new technology" I stick with using off the shelf equipment and confine myself to standard voltage ranges already in use. The familiarity seems to provide some sort of comfort zone to the clients. You should see them react with anxiety when they see 230V instead of 220V on my schematics. Sheesh!!

This thread is beginning to highlight the importance of being able to store energy for a time interval between when it is generated and when it is being used. The trick is to minimize the conversion losses from one stage to the other.

Elnav,

The weight of the car is a battery of sorts. Momentum is converved. It takes typically 3-4 times the installed HP to stop a car just before skidding (1G). If you don't have a system that can handle that kind of power, you loose it. Electric Hybrids simply do not have or have not been able to do better than 25% at very low deceleration rates. The hydraulic system can do 75%, which is 3 times better than the electric hybrid. In a utility stop and go truck this may likely double the economy.

Don't get me wrong, I don't really like the hydraulic system, but it is much better than the electrical system by 3 times. Neither system looks at the engine itself where the answer is and where there is no need for the hydraulics. It is a good bandaid for now, I suppose.

Hi Elnav,

Sorry for the slow response -- I had a great time skiing yesterday, just three hours (by car) from Atlanta. Ironically, I met a guy there who was also from Atlanta, but lived in Maine until recently. He said that his family in Maine says they haven't been able to ski, for lack of snow, or even good snow-making temperatures. But way down south, we're sliding around just fine.

I'll add some details off-line, but the short answer to the question is that hydraulics hold the promise (at first glance) of accumulating almost all of the energy that would otherwise be dissipated in brake heat. In older battery-based systems, absorbing this energy in an aggressive stop was not possible, because you'd cook the batteries. Now, however, you can absorb the inrush energy in capacitors, and use the capacitors to more slowly charge the batteries. As you know, battery technology has improved dramatically lately, with charge rates possible that are full orders of magnitude greater than possible (in a realistic, ready-for-production sense) just a few years ago. So energy absorption rate is very quickly becoming less of an issue. (But in any event, the capacitor intermediary already solves the problem, albeit at some cost and one more "step" in the process than you'd really want... it's not terribly elegant but it works.)

The UPS design was done by the EPA, and although well-intentioned, you can see that the energy storage capacity is laughably low, even given 5000 psi pressures, which translates to more costly and heavier hoses, etc. (Even heavy construction equipment, which, in the old days employed hydrostatics for tractive force, now use hybrid diesel - electric systems, with electric motors driving the tracks or wheels.

Although you might not work with hydraulics much, I can tell from your posts that you grasp this stuff quickly. As you can guess, if you don't already know, the same sort of energy conversions you probably do every day (electrical watts to mechanical watts, to HP etc.) all have perfect analogies in the hydraulics world. So the .5 kilowatt hour capacity of this massive UPS truck storage system is a small fraction of the 1.3 kilowatt hour capacity of the (old generation Ni MH) battery in a Prius, a tiny, very light car. The 1.3 kilowatt capacity of the Prius battery is just barely adequate for optimum performance, given the design constraints within which Toyota engineers worked (which is as it should be). If you add the weight of the hydraulic fluid, the very heavy accumulators, the huge valves, the heavy hydraulic motors and pumps used in the UPS system you find that the weight of just that stuff exceeds the entire weight of a Prius (the entire vehicle)! AND EVEN THEN, you only have a bit more than 1/3 the storage capacity of the Prius's 88 pound battery.

Obviously, putting a system comparable to the UPS system in a car would be far beyond absurd: it's more than an order of magnitude too heavy.

I like hydraulics for some purposes, and, in fact, was enough of an enthusiast that I outscored every engineer in our department (of over 50 engineers) on a lengthy "Principals of Hydraulics" test, in a company that was "all about hydraulics." We made underground coal mining equipment which used electrics as the prime mover, but all mechanical motions (even traction) were hydraulically mediated. In garden tractors, weight is a positive attribute, so hydrostatics make sense. But in more sophisticated equipment, even where weight is an advantage, (as in construction equipment) electrics are now used for traction.

In Seaplaneguy's view, I guess that makes me one of the electrical "mafia."

Oddly enough, and contrary to Seaplaneguy's assertions that seem to imply that I've given up on the ICE, I love the ICE. For at least 10 years, I made a very good supplemental income working on classic Ferraris. I did mechanical restorations that often involved making parts from raw hunks of aluminum, or hand gas-welding cracked headers to exactly match the welding technology originally used (rather than using TIG, which would have been much easier and would have resulted in better welds -- but would not have looked exactly right). Still, after all these years, the sound of an early (late fifties, early 60's) Ferrari stirs my soul.

Re hydraulics vs electrics, the above is a gross oversimplification, but it gives you a place to start. If we have a very, very heavy vehicle, making very, very frequent stops and starts (a garbage truck) then hydraulics would almost begin to make sense, if we were several generations of battery technology back from where we are. Even then, it's tough to justify. For a car -- of course not.

Mr. Fry,

My engine does not use hydraulics for the reasons you mentioned about weight. My engine must fly and with hydraulics I'm fried, Mr. Fry.

Hydraulics are not thermal pneumatics, which is what the engine is. I like to stay in one domain and solve the problem in that domain and not move to another domain that has it's one issues.

At cruise in a well aerodynamicaaly designed car, thermal loads are 50% of loading in cold and hot times of the year. In an airplane, ice is a critical issue. Jets use bleed air to heat the wings, and Hydraulics just do not lend itself to synergies with thermal humans and a thermal environment. Electrics is a medium, not a source. It cannot recover thermal benefits and thermo electrics are 10% efficient. I am using an electric heater for starting, maybe. Electrics has it's place.

The reason they use electrics on large machines is because the typical engine cannot go to zero rpm and give torque like an electric motor can. The torsional resonance and windup issues dominate in a mechanical energy distribution system with power pulses. Electic motors have the different but similar resonance issues, but when the motor is in the wheel, there is no elasticity to deal with. If you solve the dead stop transition issues and resonances, you may find a pneumatic system is MUCH lighter than an electric system by 2-3 times. Electric motor are heavy.

Because nobody has solved the issues found in a diesel, does not mean an electric solution is ultimately the best, it just means their energy coversion source, a diesel, is not compatiable with the mechanical drives. Change the engine by solving the problem and electrics will not be the best option, IMHO.

Mr. Fry,

I can care less whether you take me seriously or not. You opinion is worthless, just as mine is. If it works it works and no opinion is needed. An intelligent person relies on facts, not opinion. However, a specific engine is not the point, which you seem to have missed. I simply stated that the IC engine can go a long ways. If you think it is up against a wall with no improvement, then have at it. You can believe what you want to believe.

You did not answer my question. When you answer that question, you will begin to see how to move it along.

The BSFC of .26 lbs/hr-hr is 52% at 135,000 btu/gallon and 7.2 lbs/gallon. .195 is about 70%, which is about the limit I can see without new materials. 60% is .225. The world record is 58% or .233. 100% is .1353.

So, ask the question how they got 58%? Then ask how to make it for a car, airplane, or house. If you cannot use their method how else can it be done? This is what discussion is about. But first you should get off your high horse and realize that the status quo could be a lot better, not just ten percent better in a narrow band. I agree that if you don't change the basic engine layout it will not change. Rather obvious, gel?

You assume all these "experts" have looked at everything. I have worked with "experts" from Cal Tech, Stanford and so forth, (four of my relatives are professors) and they are clearly "smart," but they miss a lot, like 50% sometimes. One group did an electric car only to forget to do thermal load calculations, which turned out to be 50% of the load in cold and hot climates…So much for the electric car in Alaska. We are thermal beings last I checked, and most people like warm and frost free windows.

You seem to think 50% is the limit at a narrow rpm band. Then have at it. I think that is bull crap, and from your tone, so do you. You know as well I do that if someone made an engine that ran in the 60-66% range through the band, and not just in a narrow power range, it would cause a lot of people who "source" engines to go elsewhere, or go out of business. Hmmm Did I ruffle your feathers? I hope to be your worst nightmare…

The point of Masu's post is to see what is the best R&D money. Most reject the IC engine because of attitudes like yours. If an IC got 66%, would we be putting fuel cells on the list? Maybe. Not likely. If that engine got 60-66% from 1-250 hp would that make a difference? Massive to say the least. My post pointed out what the difference would be based on real world cars, on average. You still have not answer the question.

As for my engine, when the engine is done, it is done. I have not made a claim on my engine or what the BSFC curve is like, and expressly avoided it. If you misunderstood, then correct your understanding and move on. The point I made was very clear. I don't care if some shell student contest guy can say what they say. Have at it. So what. The shell students got 6-9k miles/gallon, why? How? Learn from it, don't blow it off.

I can care less about DARPA. If they had a clue and real ability they would be making that new engine, not sucking off the tit of Uncle Sam. Frankly, the arrogance of government is amazing. You have a guy who can't do, who has access to taxpayers dollars, and he has no proper loss feedback loop to make him get reality. The entire system is the height of supreme arrogance. They make "investments" and don't have the risk of loosing their entire fortunes. How insane is that? The same applies to corporations who have hired guns running the place.

"Seriously by engine designers and people like" you? Hmmm. You are not my gatekeeper. An "engine designer" is not my gatekeeper. I am not going to present this to them for their approval or opinion, nor the SAE, ASME or CAFE. I can care less what "they" think. Get it?

Your comment on the hydraulics shows how you think as an engineer. You missed the entire stinking point. Think about it for a nanosecond or two. If you can decelerate at 1 G and your engine can accelerate you at .25 G and your engine is 250 hp, how big must the generator and battery charging rate be??? Around 1000 hp! Do you see a little problem as big as the Hindenberg with the battery idea? Hmmm. Capacitor, ok.

Maybe the "slobs" at GM are correct, and the "slobs" at Toyoda are out to lunch. The question of which domain to run the power in is a real question—electrical, thermal-pneumatic, hydraulic or some combination. The electrical mafia thinks that all transit should be via electric motors partly because IC engines "pollute." What if an IC engine only made water and co2? No smog, no nothing, except good co2 and h20. Your car would be a fertilizer machine and the more you drive the better…. My research says it is possible, but not with the current architecture. Yes, billions wasted hitting their heads against a wall. Pick up any research paper on HCCI or RCCI or this new injector or that. Wake up people and stop playing with 1-2% when 20-30% (a doubling) is there. Better yet, stay asleep, because this is an opportunity for me…

Hey Seaplaneguy any idea when you might have something to show the world? I could use your engine in my designs. Ossapower and Solomons Technologies cost too much and do not delive enough power for the price or their equipment volume. Regenerative braking doesn't apply in my designs.

Elnav

Elnav,

Thanks for the links. I am a seaplane kind of guy, not a boater. Boats are too restrictive and too difficult to haul around from lake to lake.

I take it you are into boats? I read the Ossa power tech brief and it seems they are doing Diesel electric boat drives, and by using generator and motor plus some fancy contols they get 10% better in the cruise-50% better on the low end, sometimes. Great.

The reason for all the electrical stuff is to solve a problem with the Diesel engine and its characteristics. A hydraulic variable speed system might be able to do the same thing if you can get 90%+. If you can solve the engine problems you would not need all the electrical or hydraulic stuff. If you solve the engine problem you also solve the low speed maneuvering issues and the wave issue.

My engine would definite NOT need all the electrical stuff. It would be more efficient by some amount due in part to not needing the conversion, and being better across the power band. The reasons for the fuel flow variations per hp are taken care of by my design. Any engine with with a flat BSFC curve (none exist now) would also not need the drive.

Basically the need for going into the electrical domain is not needed. I like to keep the electronics to a minimum, or basically to informational needs, such as lighting, GPS navigation, radios, and such. Electric motors are very heavy.

The duty cycle of a boat and airplane are somewhat similar. It is like having a pilot pitch up and down doing "weightless" at the peak cruise speed where the prop is near Mach. Kids love it, for a while. More! more! then comes the barf bags, but I digress.

A two speed (planet gear) drive would do to cover the prop band and power range. High and low. If you only need a short burst of power to get on step (seaplane term) for a planing boat, you would not need gears because of the way my engine works.

Seaplaneguy wrote: The reason for all the electrical stuff is to solve a problem with the Diesel engine and its characteristics"

Well not exactly. I asked about your engine design because I need generators of better efficiency than present designs. And the electricity is needed for hotel services not propulsion. But of course if I can get electric drives that are better than the present day mechanical drives that opens up more design possibilities.

Elnav

A house should NOT have a "furnace" of sorts. A furnace wastes the "quality" of the peak heating available in fuel by dumping it into open air. The peak heating should be used to create electricity, then heat a room.

Exactly what I would like to hear more about in future threads. Thanks for replying

Highway Vehicles:

Combine the best features of existing automobile technology and our existing energy infrastructure to create a diesel engine driven plug-in hybrid.

Reduce energy waste:

Since some form of politics HAS to enter into this, "push" governments (they have far too much influence in terms of funding, regulations, research grants etc etc to be left out of any realisitic energy scenario) to adopt higher efficiency standards across the board.

Every joule saved at the consumer end of the energy pipeline is at least 1.1 joules less we have to produce and a much higher multiple that we have to consume in terms of primary fuel and related "overhead" to produce it. (For example: It isn't just the energy in the coal that we burn to generate electricity, but the energy it took to mine and transport it and so on.)

We should be at the forefront of this effort, since we, much better than the average public are aware of how much energy is currently being wasted and are the very ones who can/will reduce it, if only we are called upon to do so.

We can come up with all the energy producing/saving ideas we want, but they will come to nothing if "somebody" doesn't apply us (the engineering/scientific community) to make them a reality; we cannot do that on our own. Current market forces are not enough.

Happy New Year to all!

My vote would go to Stirling cycle engines, sometimes also called Rankine cycle engines. Sweden is building large submarines propelled by Stirling engines. A variety of heat sources can be used. The difficulties encountered so far seem to be technical not political. Hence a technical solution should be feasible.

The thorium fission is less easily done in a small pilot project since any such construction would require a number of permits from a host of administrative bodies. Optimizing technologies of a more benign and socially acceptable nature promises quicker public acceptance and thus more sales appeal to the masses.

Despite the promise of economies of scale, I feel small scale distributed power generation is a viable alternative to huge civil infrastructures with the attendant public polarization for or against.

Wind energy is also viable in some location. Unfortunately large scale wind farms also encounter political opposition. Smal scale wind generators for individual farm use may be much more acceptable and refining the wind turbines for greater efficiency also seem to be waiting for a purely technical solution.

Despite having been involved with wind power back in the 1970's I have yet to see any radical new generator designs emerge in the past decade. Surely this also needs only a technical solution.

Elnav

Masu,

I already answered this question for you many times in the "global warming is a hoax" post. You want to run before you can walk. We progress line upon line, precept upon precept. The next step is NOT fission or fusion, but what I have suggested to you.

Seaplaneguy you were invited to take part on this discussion but I did ask that we kept the politics and denial out of it and just look at generating a list of possible technologies. This discussion is for all the 3,900 CR4 registered users and guests so referring to what you have or havn't said elsewhere isn't appropriate to this discussion. Please list your solution as I have asked and it will, I promise, be discussed in full, along with the politics, warts and all, in future threads.

"You want to run before you can walk. We progress line upon line, precept upon precept."

This is precisely what I am trying to do. The first step is to see what possible answers there are to the question. The subsequent steps will look at the suitability of each of those technologies and then we will look at ways of implementing those solutions. Exactly as you said We will progress line upon line, precept upon precept

Masu,

I stated it several times in my posts. Click on "seaplaneguy" and read my posts, or perhaps search my posts for BSFC. If you look at a BSFC curve and fix the reasons why it is shaped so, and consider duty cycles, you will get at least 4 and perhaps 6 times the fuel economy or 150 mpg. This requires several inventions, which is what I am working on.

If you combine high brake recovery (40% of losses typically), which is part of the engine, you may reasonably approach 250 mpg, or 1/10th the fuel flow. This all will require an air hybrid, not an electric hybrid, which allows infrastructure for hydrogen in cars and compressed air combination (stored compressed air cycle...) for in house refueling, along with Natural gas usage ($1.00/gallon). They build on each other and complement each other. Such an engine can use (bio) diesel, gasoline, and hydrogen, allowing multiple sources and not just one.

I have had discussions with some of the leading researchers of air hybrids. They are only 2-3 steps in 10 to where it needs to be. Such an engine does not produce NoX, CO or Hcls, just the global warming chemical dihydrogen monoxide and co2, which is a good thing.

I think you believe that only some government or big corporate slob can figure this out, not a little independent guy like myself. Yah, I know, show me. That is what I am doing. Holidays are over. Back to work...

The bottom line is that we can cut at least 75% of the fuel for transit out of the flow with such technology and generate ALL the electricity in houses using such an engine, thereby reducing fuel flow from houses and office building with combined heat/cooling and power by 50-75%. It will take many years before the "ideal" solutions come on line, if such a thing exists, but this will take less than 5-10 years after first article, and will lead to a "hydrogen" mixed bio fuel economy that will retain competition, and lead to energy independence for most nations, including the USA.

As for a hydrogen economy, there are perhaps more unknowns about the environmental damage from free hydrogen than that of co2 ("a good thing"). We may be investing in a dead end with hydrogen that leads to Australia burning up from Ozone depletion via hydrogen. My engine hedges both bets, and is the only idea I have seen in 3 years of research with a high return chance. This is why I am investing in this research with MY OWN MONEY, not taxpayer's.

That is about all I am going to argue with you. Nice talking to ya. I have had my fun and fill. One reason I have spent time here is to see the reaction and mind set a broad based group of engineers when given a viable solution to our energy issues. It is as expected... My hypothesis was correct...

Seaplaneguy you keep forgetting that not everybody will have read all your posts. The idea is for everybody to know what you are talking about so you need to give a brief description of your technology and some links that can be used for background reading. I will happily include your engine in one of the future discussions but we need more information than just claiming you can get 150-250 mpg.

This thread isn't for discussing the merits of each technology is just to create a list that will be used for future discussions. Something along the lines of my thorium reactor post would be very helpful. It would be a pity not to include your ideas so pleas help us and I will even make your engine the first technology to be discussed in detail.

What else can you expect when you furnish no details?

Please provide some or some links..... something, so that I my educate myself as to what you are talking about regarding engine technology.

Seaplaneguy:

I could not find any posts by Masu in the "Global Warming is a Hoax" thread. I found many posts by you there, but found those to be mainly nonsensical or comical. I assume you were, for the most part, joking in that thread.

If, in fact, you are not simply joking once again, and are trying to add something constructive to this thread, what is it? Please let us know what you mean by "what I have suggested to you". In other words, what constructive suggestions do you have for discovering, developing, engineering, or promoting new energy sources?

Hi Masu,

Thanks for your congrats on the other thread. Sorry for not replying sooner. I've been out of the loop the last few days helping my girlfriend move halfway across the country.

Thorium reactors are a promising technology; thanks for the info and for starting this thread.

I'm afraid my contribution (such as it is) is somewhat more mundane. Methane is a byproduct of a number of natural and man-made processes, and it's becoming a problem of some concern lately. One promising technology for its disposal can produce heat energy at fairly high energy densities (up to 20 kW/in³) which can drive small turbines, thermoelectric generators, and so forth to generate useful energy at small - and portable - scales. Electro-sprayed flameless catalytic combustors have been developed with help from the NSF (Nat'l Science Foundation) and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) that will burn various hydrocarbons at up to 97% efficiency whilst producing very low concentrations of NOx and other waste gasses. One company, PCI, has done quite a bit of work in this area. One of their catalytic combustors can burn methane at concentrations of less than 2 ppm. Landfills, cattle, organic waste, and so forth produce copious amounts of waste methane as a byproduct.

I'm not quite sure how this technology might be used to curb cattle emissions, however (I'm being polite here), other than to consider how cows might be outfitted with optimally-placed posterior catalytic afterburners which might serve to charge some sort of NiMH saddlebag battery. Beaming the energy via microwave is definitely out, as microwave links are line-of-sight technologies. As anyone who's ever lived on a farm can tell you, cows have notoriously bad aim.

Happy New Year to you and yours,
-e

Regarding the cattle "pollution":

If meat could be produced sans animal, valuable cropland presently commited to growing feed for livestock could be diverted for energy crops, preferably for bio-diesel which is much more efficient to make than ethanol. Grazing land would be freed for possible solar arrays or wind farms.

Research is presently being conducted in a number of labs with this very goal (growing animal muscle tissue cultures to replace meat from whole animals) and I have no doubt they will succeed. Some milestones have been achieved already but more work remains to be done, and then it must be commercialized, but is not far off. This research is in parallel to but benefits from research into growing human organs in vitro.

A few links:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3208

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71201-0.html

http://www.hedweb.com/animimag/invitro-culturedmeat.pdf

http://www.new-harvest.org/img/files/Invitro.pdf

http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/scitech/release.cfm?ArticleID=1098

http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2005/062905/Cell_combo_yields_blood_vessels_062905.html

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/71002201/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Here is the list of energy technologies I can think of so far:

1) Nuclear Energy - fission reactors (thorium)

2) Nuclear Energy - fussion reactors

a) Hot fussion

b) Cold fusion

3) Electrostatic Energy - Lighting

4) Wind Energy

5) Solar Light Energy - photovoltaics

6) Solar Heat Energy - stirling engine

7) Tidal wave energy

8) Hydro Energy - dams

9) Geothermal Energy

10) Fossil Fuel (oil) Energy

11) Organic Oil Energy - ethanol

12) Coal Energy

13) Burning waste (in incinerators heating boilers)

14) Burning plant materials (wood, corn, etc.)

In addition to #7 and #8 there is another form of hydraulic power generation. Its called "run of the stream" and overcomes the objections to a hydro-electric dam impeding the natural fish migration to their spawning areas. It involves extracting energy from free running streams without creating dams or obstructions to the normal flow.

I do not see methane digesters listed. Extensive tests and prototype developments have already been done in the US midwest. Unfortunately little development has been done to optimize generating plants that use the methane as fuel. Most of the digesters feed conventional recriprocating engines converted to run on methane gas but these are no more efficient than conventional fossil oil fuel engines. What we need is some sort of micro turbine design to convert methane directly to electrical energy.

As well as listing the means of generating power we need to look at what we will need the power for. And thus the type of power.

And notwithstanding your request to keep politics out of it, I am afraid that politics has an enormous bearing on the solution - as does cost.

We (as engineers) can only ignore costs and politics for the purpose of assessing the engineering concepts in terms of viability. Having done so, we will be in a better position handle the political and cost argument when it comes to objections from the Flat Earth Brigade (FEB) and the self-interest of the politicians and accountants who want to maintain their positions of power in the status quo.

Personally I like the Geothermal idea. Dig a hole deep enough to get the heat out and use the steam to drive generators to produce electricity. This will heat our homes, drive our factories, charge batteries (for vehicles and anything else) etc.

The alternative is some form of nuclear power (if we can solve the safety problems).

But there are others - and perhaps some unlikely outsiders. So in the spirit of things why not have a list of unlikely runners as well.

For instance a bicycle-pedal driven generator to power home essential items (it gets the weight down as well).

Europium #35 has proposed a bovine battery charger.

"Europium #35 has proposed a bovine battery charger."

LOL. Cattle have been implicated, but the severity of the "problem" depends on who you talk to. Could you imagine an Aussie cattle station owner's reaction to my proposed tongue-in-cheek "solution?" I'd be pulling buckshot out of my posterior for weeks!.

-e

Horace40 you stated

"And notwithstanding your request to keep politics out of it, I am afraid that politics has an enormous bearing on the solution - as does cost."

You are absolutely correct and I intend to get into the politics involved with implementing new technologies later. This is just the first in a series of discussions that will probably take the most of 2007. For the time being we just need suggestions.

Hi Masu,

There sure seems to be a strong impetus to involve politics in spite of your frequent urgings to the contrary. How's about starting a separate thread for the political side of this issue to give these folks a separate, on-topic place to vent?

Just a thought...

-e

Horace40 wrote:

"As well as listing the means of generating power we need to look at what we will need the power for; and thus the type of power."

Reducing our dependence on oil would greatly improve matters. One of the major arguments against alternative power solutions is that they cannot replace our existing power demand and appetite for oil. Someone asked how much wind derived power replaced conventional power. I read an article recently that said Denmark is supplying 30% of its total electrical power from wind turbines. Danish companies have recently won contracts to supply several US projects with propellers and genitors. Evidently they have the technical edge at the moment. Political pressure from some VIP has stalled a large wind farm off Martha's Vineyard on the US east coast. A similar project planned for Lake Erie (Great Lakes) has also met stiff political opposition.

If we restructured our lifestyle to eliminate a lot of needless travel, look how much oil derived transportation fuel we would save.

This list exists because of the internet. I work with a group of designers scattered across the country and communicate via the internet just as we are doing here. Telecommuting offers huge savings in transportation fuel consumption. So why are we not doing it?

Elnav

A short note regarding Windfarms:

They are considering building one in the waters off Long Island, NY where I live but I am against it.

Not because I am not in favor of them, but because our rates are presently approximately $.20 per KWh and less than a third of that is the cost of generating the power. The proposed windfarm would produce power at a significantly higher cost than what it presently is.

The reason for our high rates is not from generation costs but mainly the politics that closed and dismantled the Shoreham nuclear plant after it was finished but before it added any power to the grid, meanwhile overtaxing it as though it were operating, during the years of construction. We ratepayers are left with paying off something like $3,500,000,000 for our folly. Yes, politics matter.

Wind energy if harvested in large quantity near sea coast then it sure wukk affect eco system. Who cares for eco system any way. My car should run full throttle and all others should live on water. Can we ever change the mind set of evil? Much worst is that evil will justify what it is doing and put blame who has nothing to do with it. We need some good air from all the corners of the earth to make our earth a better place. Are you joining the cause or your foot is quick fixed to accelerator for ever? No, I don't own any vehicle that consumes oil. I am a walker and my fuel is bread permitted by Jesus Christ.

So you are opposed to wind generators because some greedy corporation screwed up the financing of a nuclear power plant in your area. Hmmm?

This thread was to discuss the technical merits of various alternative energy sources to what is currently being used.

Re-read my post please ... there was no greedy corporation involved.

Yes, I am aware of the purpose of this forum and have and will continue to add technologies. But forums are ... well, forums ... as you so amply demonstrated with your own "off the thread" post.

Have a Happy New Year!

We actually have large number of these wind turbines placed on east cost of on India facing Bay of Bangal. This has affected the way cyclones used to move naturally and now we have disasters where people are not prepared to face it. India can survive without world resources coming to it but unfortunately our people have habit of going and asking for things from others. Entire world put together can not feed us but we can feed the entire world if that comes to need. We stock food for 3 billion people at any given time for 3 years on regular bases. Our plans are real ziant when it comes to people. We expect that we will be 3 billion in another 20 years and the rest of the world will look real tiny in numbers. At current rate a couple will have 5 new couples generated in 20 years.

That sort of adds the technology of birth control as a means or reducing the effect we have on the environment. There is this moronic concept being pushed by economists and politicians of sustainable growth. All I can say to people that think thins can keep growing indefinitely is get real, this is a finite planet and has finite resources so there is an absolute limit to the number of people it can support. What that limit is, is open to debate but there is a limit.

I don't know if anybody has ever bothered to look at the birth and death rates around the world but in Australia deaths outnumber births. The only reason our population increases is immigration. China has had a strict policy of one child per family for quite some time now so birth control is being used as method of solving the energy problem therefore I will include it in the list of technologies for discussion.

Masu:

I agree 100% with what you say up until the last paragraph which I'm not sure of its interpretation regarding the approach of the Chinese government.

This planet has the potential to be a "Garden of Eden" or some kind of hell depending in large part on the number of us humans.

However, I ask you to reconsider inviting birth control into the forum because if there was ever a hot-button topic burdened by all manner of social, political, cultural and religious biases, birth control is at or near the top of the list.

Looking at birth / death rates demonstrates a correlation between education levels, standard of living and overal economic development that offers much hope: that is that as societies move up the economic ladder the birth rate drops of its own accord based merely on the free-will decisions of people. This is well evidenced by the population declines predicted for most of the industrialized world if immigration was discounted.

Thank you for starting this thread on the energy question.