Chavez and oil Brazil and ethanol

[bow-tie]

Since I am not even close to being qualified to get into the nitty gritty there, I won't.  But even if corn-based etoh produces double the BTUs that go into it, it still isn't a viable option for more than a tiny (and heavily subsidized) portion of our energy needs.... 

That's got my vote... based on what I have read from the seemingly "unbiased reviews".  Of course, all you read in the Wallaces Farmer or Iowa Farmer Today is what a brilliant idea ethanol is and how we can't build the ethanol plants fast enough.

 

[TromboneAl]

Being a Keep It Simple, Stupid (or as Jesse Ventura says it "Keep it Simple and Stupid") guy, I'd vote for

drum roll...

All electric cars. Old proven technology, existing charging infrastructure exists (in homes) and easily added (in garages/parking stations).

Only one well-defined hurdle: range/batteries.

Hydrogen may work out or it may be the beta-max of the 21st century.

Too bad people like Bush are the ones deciding which technology will be pursued.

 

[youbet]

Only one well-defined hurdle: range/batteries.

Saying that electric cars have "only one well-defined hurdle: batteries is like saying growing crops in the desert has only one well defined hurdle: water.

I can't find any literature saying that the required improvements in battery technology are near at hand.  Between improving capacity, lowering weight and cost and having a safe way to dispose of them or cheap way to rebuild them, there's a lot to do. 

I'm just saying I wouldn't assume that the battery issue will be solved in the near term and therefore other possible oil substitutes should be disregarded.

 

[jeff2006]

Saying that electric cars have "only one well-defined hurdle: batteries is like saying growing crops in the desert has only one well defined hurdle: water.

I can't find any literature saying that the required improvements in battery technology are near at hand.  Between improving capacity, lowering weight and cost and having a safe way to dispose of them or cheap way to rebuild them, there's a lot to do. 

I'm just saying I wouldn't assume that the battery issue will be solved in the near term and therefore other possible oil substitutes should be disregarded.

I recently read that Toyota (any maybe other mfgrs as well) will soon have a plug-in hybrid with a range of about 40 miles without using any gasoline. Will meet a lot of peoples needs. Probably about 2009.

 

[youbet]

jeff2006:

I agree that plug-in hybrids may be a good compromise while we wait (and wait and wait and wait  ) for battery technology to get us where we need to go.  Especially in urban areas, a 40 mile range sounds OK.  And you can always start the engine, burn some gas and go farther if your plans change.

I'm a big fan of electric powered transportation and live in an urban area where it's likely to be practical. The battery thing is serious business though.......

 

[lets-retire]

http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/15/technology/disruptors_eestor.biz2/index.htm

I thought this was interesting. I think they're going about it the right way, too. They sound like they're not "attacking" the automobile market directly they're going after the electric car side first. If the technology proves to be usable it would be a vast improvement over what is already being used.

 

[Zathras]

Youbet, this is closer than you think.

Check out www.teslamotors.com. First cars will be high end performance vehicles so will have a limited market. These will be available next year. The year after that Tesla is planning a sports sedan.

These cars have a 250 mile range. Not enough for a cross country trip, but plenty for 90% of trips. My guess is the market will be targeted and 2 car families.

I like the EEStor idea, but there is still so much under wraps it is difficult to say if they will really be able to deliver.

The batteries used are recyclable and are not hazardous material.

And, electric cars are more efficient than gas, bio-deisel, ethanol or hydrogen.

 

[youbet]

Zathras,

That was an interesting read.  Thanks!

It still sounds like they're a long way from having a battery that is economical enough for a car for ordinary Americans.

" 900lbs of its total weight of 2,500lbs comes from its battery, made up of 6,831 liquid-cooled, lithium ion cells of the kind used to power laptops. Tesla promises that the battery can be recharged in around three hours, gives a range of 250 miles and has a life of at least 100,000 miles, after which it can be recycled."

I bet that battery is going to cost at least $5K to replace.  Maybe closer to $10K. (I'm using the $4K replacement cost of a Prius battery to base this on.)  They're estimating the car will only use one cent per mile of electricity.  But it will use from five to ten cents per mile of battery life!  Oh boy.......

Of course, it's a $100K nitch car, so those kind of numbers are not discouraging for the folks who can afford them.

Still, it's a good sign!  And I'm pulling for these guys to succeed!  But I still am dubious about the R and D time and feel other solutions such as hydrogen should remain on the drawing board. They have a long way to go to get to a battery for a $30K four passenger sedan.

 

[wabmester]

Isn't this the way it always plays out? There's a surge in interest in electric cars, solar power, etc whenever oil prices surge. And when oil goes back to $20/bbl, we lose interest. Until the next time....

 

[Zathras]

Unfortunately it does often follow that pattern wab.
However, with each peak, the bottom gets higher and some of the interest seems to 'hold on'.

youbet, you hit the biggest issue dead on. The plan for Tesla is to use the funds from their 'niche' vehicle to support the sports sedan planed for 2008 for a price around half of the roadster. Then, with the money that raises produce a more economical version the year after that.

I agree we should not stop work on other areas. You never know what advances will be made to make something else a better long term solution.

 

[TromboneAl]

From the EEStor article.

it will charge up in five minutes and provide enough energy to drive 500 miles on about $9 worth of electricity.

Sounds too good to be true.

Apparently the device is a capacitor.

Here's more at The Energy Blog.  Scroll down to check out the posts.

 

[2B]

Any moonshiner will tell you that you can get a lot more ethanol from sugar than corn. Our sugar industry is heavily subsidized and protected from "cheap" foreign sugar. There's also no provision to grow sugar cane or beets just for the ethanol. The whole ethanol bit is intended as a boost to the corn growing states. Economics and technology be damned.

I am wondering if buying sugar at our inflated prices might still be cheaper than buying corn even without the subsidies.

 

[astromeria]

are those corn-subsidized states the same ones that dont want to help the South with our hurricanes? :

 

[Zathras]

We do want to help. I installed CFBs to lower my personal contribution to global warming just last week

 

[mb]

The "Device" does appear to be an Ultracap.

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/01/eestor_ultracap.html

The important info is:

The product weighs 400 pounds and delivers 52 kilowatt-hours.

This gives a specific energy of 286 Wh/kg.  This basically corresponds to how far it can go between charges.

For comparison a lead-acid battery is about 35 and the best Li-ion currently available is about 200.  Devices with 250 Wh/kg may reach the market in a few years.

Most ultracaps are no where near this value,  I would say less than 10 Wh/kg typically.  They have never been able to compete with a battery on energy density.  This claims to be a factor of 28 better than that and better than the best rechargeable batteries.

Ultracaps have always had good power density, i.e. the property related to how fast you can accelerate and also how fast you can recharge them, the problem with them has always been energy density.

If they can actually do this for the stated cost it is a pretty significant break through.

I question the electric vehicle market strategy though.  If it is really that good they should go after the portable electronics market first.  That is a real market and they would get rich a lot fast that way.   It is a lot easier and a lot faster to market to make an energy storage device for a cell phone or a computer and you can sell it for a lot more money per unit energy.  Then you go after the other markets such as hybrids, pure EVs, portable tools, etc.

When California (late 80s ealy 90 ?) mandated clean air vehicles everyone doing energy storage/conversion R/D talked a lot about electric vehicles.  That was mostly BS.  Nobody in the commerical world gave a s*** about EVs unless it was out of pure idealism because they knew that it was not going to happen or a least not happen on the mandated time scale.  (Hybrids were a different story.) The whole idea was to suck up gov R/D funding and leverage that to get into a business where you could actually make money.

I have seen claims like this before that never materialized.  Hopefully this will be different.

I will admit that the situation is a bit different now because of the price of oil and the success of hybrids.          

MB

 

[unclemick]

Hmmm

Vague memory says I was marginally involved with a 1967 NASA version - used the discharge to drive "really big titanium rivets". The units charged quickly with factory 200/440 volt power.

Was adapted from a New Orleans version 'mag hammer' to take dings/oil cans out of Saturn rocket tanks.

Would be interesting to see if they have evolved significantly for auto use.

I wonder if we'll revisit compressed air, stored flywheel energy, and the steam or freon engine concepts of the past.

evolution not revolution

heh heh heh heh heh heh

 

[Zathras]

I question the electric vehicle market strategy though.  If it is really that good they should go after the portable electronics market first.  That is a real market and they would get rich a lot fast that way.   It is a lot easier and a lot faster to market to make an energy storage device for a cell phone or a computer and you can sell it for a lot more money per unit energy.  Then you go after the other markets such as hybrids, pure EVs, portable tools, etc.

That is actually a very good description of exactly what Tesla Motors has done and where they came from.

Most of the founders are people that made their money in dot-com businesses. Starting with the batteries, they built the engine around that, then the car around the engine.

Battery technology has made a lot of advancements. I suspect we are right on the cusp of the technology being mass-marketable.

 

[youbet]

I question the electric vehicle market strategy though.  If it is really that good they should go after the portable electronics market first.  

Agreed MB. Even the new Tesla electric car uses same-old Lithium Ion technology commonly found in computer and cell phone batteries for many years. The only difference is that they've figured out an efficient way to interconnect many, many cells together into a six ton block.

I do believe that when truly new technology appears, it will be within current applications such as cell phones or laptops.

We need a real break through in batteries.........

 

[Lazarus]

http://mb-soft.com/public2/storing.html

Above page gives comparisons of energy storage methods. It takes a lot of batteries to equal a gallon of gas.

Lets not forget that the electricity to charge the batteries must be generated.

http://mb-soft.com/public2/storing.html

So the electric car is really a coal/nuclear/natural gas/water/petroleum powered car.

From the article:

Nonwater renewable sources of electricity generation presently contribute only small amounts (about 2 percent) to total power production.

Where will we get the additional fuel to supply the increased electric demand if everyone switches to electric cars? We would need additional power distribution infrastructure to handle transporting the power to the charging stations.

And how will we handle recycling the used batteries?

Increased demand for electricity would drive up the cost per KWH.

I don't think there is an easy solution here.

 

[Gone4Good]

http://mb-soft.com/public2/storing.html
Where will we get the additional fuel to supply the increased electric demand if everyone switches to electric cars?

Given the price of natural gas, coal fired power plants are currently in vogue. Nuclear is again under consideration but nobody has committed to building a plant given the high construction cost and risks.

Renewable power, mostly wind, is getting serious investment but it will never amount to more than a fraction of the total supply needed. This is largely due to the fact that it is unreliable (the wind doesn't blow just because someone turns their dishwasher on). A large percentage of wind (or solar, hydro, etc.) can create reliability problems for the local distribution companies, limiting its overall usefulness as an alternative energy source.

Burning fosil fuels and splitting atoms is still the best way to generate electricity, and will be for the foreseeable future.

I can't wait until environmentalists start complaining about the disposal of all those used batteries once electric cars become popular.

 

[Nords]

We need a real break through in batteries.........

Submarine batteries haven't substantially changed in a century-- still lead-acid technology with incremental improvements.

The last big step forward was fueled by Cold-War funding for the OHIO class... nearly 25 years ago. Tighter tolerances squeezed out a few more amp-hours and higher discharge rates, but most of the improvements were in personnel safety.

I don't know how much of DARPA's budget goes to this research, but I'm sure that all five services are pounding on their respective logistics staffs for ultimate batteries.

 

[Zathras]

Even if all the electicity came from coal burning plants you are still burning half the fossil fuels to get the same mileage as the electric motor is roughly twice as efficient as the internal combustion engine.

Lead to nickel batteries was a major breakthrough as was lithium when they became available. While lead and nickel batteries are toxic, Lithium batteries are not so disposal is easier.

 

[Brat]

Some of us in coastal areas wonder how tidal energy could be used without detrmental impact. I don't want turbine blades chopping up sea creatures, but all that ebb and flow surely could be put to work.

 

[TromboneAl]

If it is really that good they should go after the portable electronics market first.

Yes, but 400 pounds is too heavy for an iPod. Ha ha.

But seriously, current batteries work pretty well for portable electronics. They don't quite cut it for electric cars, so that might be a good market to go after.

---------------

It's interesting that nuclear plants were so heavily protested by environmentalists, and now it turns out that they are good for the environment, greenhouse-gas-wise.

---------------

Ocean wave generation is being pursued out here. They were planning a test device near us a while ago. It consisted of large bouys a few miles out to sea that generated power from the up and down motion of the waves.

 

[Lazarus]

Even if all the electicity came from coal burning plants you are still burning half the fossil fuels to get the same mileage as the electric motor is roughly twice as efficient as the internal combustion engine.

Lead to nickel batteries was a major breakthrough as was lithium when they became available. While lead and nickel batteries are toxic, Lithium batteries are not so disposal is easier.

Don't forget the battery losses and the transmission losses to the battery chargers.
The fact remains that the storage density of lead acid batterys does not approach that of a gallon of gasoline.