Re: More Infor on BioDiesel

There is no fossil fuels invovled in GEOTHERMAL ENERY. Iceland is moving towards a 100% hydrogen powered society and will soon be able to EXPORT hydrogen to short cited idiots like you. Here in Canada we have hydro electric dams already producing hydrogen. Ballard, the leading comany in the Hydrogen fuel cell game is not a UK company. Your ignorance precees you.

I think you mean fictional byproducts.

Are you a complete idiot? Try 300,000 people and 150,000 cars boats and trains all running on 100% inported oil because they did not have a way to store their massive energy reserves in a transportable way, until now. Iceland has heated streets, do you have enough excess free energy in your town to HEAT THE STREETS? I can not believe the ignorance about the outside world that is being exposed in this thread. When Iceland stars exporting Hydrogen from their 100% renewable energy source powered stations, and the good oil USA is left holding their dick again importing 80% of their energy needs will the army be trading in their desert camo for white and black?

Wind farms in the ocean, tidal force hydroelectric, and geo thermal are all more economically viable. Hawaii has the potential to be the USA's new Texas. Of course the Texan's that run the goverment won't let that happen in your lifetime.

When the oil is gone they won't be using the desert for much else. And if the middle eastern countires again corner the market on energy production, well...

Why? 6 billion of us don't live in Saudi Arabia do they?

On or around Sun, 16 May 2004 11:08:40 -0300, Chris Phillipo enlightened us thusly:

Tidal power has a lot of potential but there are relatively few sites where it can easily be exploited. geothermal is very good in places like Iceland where it's easily tapped. NZ is another such, as well as Hawaii as you say.

however, the people doing the research I quoted address other possibilities like wind power, and conclude that you'd need a couple of decent-sized states covered in windmills.

On or around Sun, 16 May 2004 12:37:58 +0100, snipped-for-privacy@malloc.co.uk (Steve Firth) enlightened us thusly:

not sure about chlorine, dunno as you'd get much of that unless you're using seawater. But you'd have to desalinate the seawater anyway to be able to electrolyse it, AFAIK.

On or around Sun, 16 May 2004 10:52:09 -0300, Chris Phillipo enlightened us thusly:

I grant the truth of what you're saying, but I doubt that there are readily available renewable resources in sufficient quantity.

I started trying to work out how much fuel is used in passenger cars per day in the UK, and it's a hell of a lot. Even if by running fuel cell cars you can double the efficiency of current cars, you still want a hell of a lot of fuel.

figures...

UK population about 60 million. assume 1 car per 3 people: 20 million cars assume car usage as follows: 10% of cars in use on average 24/7 cars do 20 mph on average. cars do 20 mpg on average.

so:

OK, they're guesses. maybe the usage isn't as high as 10%. Maybe it's only

and that's without counting trucks, buses, trains or planes.

OK, taking the lower figure, 16M gallons or 72.6M litres of fuel. now assume that you can have hydrogen fuel cell cars and they're twice as efficient, so you'll want about 37 million litres of hydrogen per day.

Just found this:

-------------------------- (a) 1 kWh (kilowatt-hour) equals 1,000 J/sec x 3,600 sec = 3.6 million joules; (b) 237.13 kJ/mole ÷ 3.6 MJ/kWh = 0.06587 kWh/mole; (c) 1 kilogram of H2 is approximately equal to 1 gallon of gasoline in its available energy content, given a conversion efficiency of 100% [for a comprehensive and well-done Hydrogen Energy Equivalence table, ref.:

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

Hmm.

Nick

So you could do it easily on a plot say 60 miles square. How about the place they used to test nuclear devices? Lots of sun, bugger all use for anything else, and a certain ironic appeal.

Nick

|> >But you are certainly right about "bio-diesel" not being a reasonable substitute |> >for petroleum. It's a laughable idea: The fellow here who offered the idea is |> >not real fond of arithmetic or careful research. He just skims a couple of |> >web pages and goes off the deep end... |> |I'm have not and have never said bio-diesel would replace petroleum oil |derived diesel fuel. We use 178 trillion gallons of petroleum products |per year in the United States today. The most we can hope to replace |with Bio-diesel under the most favorable conditions is about 2 to 5%. | |May be with a crash program that would convert a large part of our |agricultural lands to the output ot bio diesel and ethanol we might make |it up to 10%. However that 10% would go a long way to wipe out our |balance of payments debt.

By law (2003 Ag bill) we are now required to have 20% of our diesel supply in the US be soy diesel. | |> in what way? are you saying it's not viable due to the number involved? |> 'cos if so, I expect you're right. Technically, it can be done - you can |> also do ethanol for spark-ignition engines. |> |> however, we *will* deplete the oil supply if we carry on as we are, so we |> need some sort of alternative. And the much in-vogue hydrogen is a long way |> from practical too. |> | |The main purpose for my comments on bio-diesel is to run a diesel gen |set and to make fuel for my C-120 in the case of a major disruption of |resource markets by war, or economic depression.

What you might think of is how to run a generator on steam. It is not that hard to build a good steam engine that would power a small generator (under 20KW).

|>If it does come to that sort of situation , you may do well to look at |>powering a perol power genset from woodgas . |>Not a whole comunity as alan carries on about , but a small producer unit |>big enought to run a small engine. |>They burn anything that will burn , literaly , coal ,wood ,old tyres ... |>if things get realy desperate , it may not always be real easy to locate |>vege oil or fat to turn into bio- diesel , but we always got crap laying |>around what will burn... | |Some things running on anything that will burn... | |

|That's it! | |We should eat beans and capture it for our countries! | |Splendid idea, instead of taking a bubble bath with my reserve of methane |from eating beans tonight. I shall go to the convenience store, get a bottle |of soda, and harness both the anal and upper G.I. methanes and ship it to |whomever it may help. | |Refinish King

One of the complaints that the Greens had about cows was that they produce too much methane. How can we harness this?

The key is and always has been to diversify, use all these methods where they are appropriate. Right now the major investors in these technoligy are the members of OPEC, they see the future and the USA will be screwed once again.

Another interesting fact is that as of the year 2004 80% of the mineral rights to minerals under the United States. Mineral rights also include petroleum deposits as well as coal. The United States has the largest total of BTU's of fossil fuel on the planet earth. Most of it is in coal, oil shales, and tar sands. In fact I read somewhere that the United States has something like 38% of the world know deposits of fossil fuel deposits.

Another place that could be exploited for Geo Thermal energy is Yellow Stone National Park. Magma is only 5000 feet under the surface. 5000 feet is nothing to drill these days. Drill down to the magma (it is not under pressure at this time as it would have broken through to the surface) pipe down water and pipe back up steam to run through your turbines.

Of course the tree huggers will never let that happen.

The Independent

--

First off, the "balance of payments debt" is one of those silly fictions. _Specific_ companies buy _specific_ shipments of crude or refined oil: they don't incur any long-term debt.

Second, it's a fiction anyway.

Another one of those silly, uneforceable (watch) laws. Unless the U.S. government sets up its own soy diesel company and undercuts the normal diesel market, people will buy what is available and cheapest.

Governments can't issue edicts to markets and actually enforce such edicts.

But Bush probably thinks he can. This is what comes of getting a "gentleman's C" at Yale in his economics class.

--Tim May

You are conflating energy storage (ethanol, for example) with energy production (hydropower, for example). And if by steam you mean energy production, this is available in literally only a few hot spots in the world, including Iceland, parts of Northern California (Geysers, CA), etc. If by steam you mean steam-powered vehicles, this is doubly-conflating, as the steam does not _power_ a vehicle, nor is it a _storage_ mechanism...rather, steam is only the _working_ energy transfer method.

And hydropower has enormous environmental costs, which even the greenheads are starting to understand. Far greater costs than, say, nuclear power. For starters, damming of rivers disrupts fisheries, even affecting ocean ecologies. Also, the cycle of river cleaning, marsh cleaning, etc. is affected. The Aswan High Dam is a good example of this disruption. An even greater disruption has been the Three Rivers Dam in China, a train wreck in the making.

This whole thread is filled with so much bad physics, bad economics, and bad engineering that it's laughable.

--Tim May

What renewable resources are those? You can run electricity through fresh or salt water (the latter limiting you to the coasts, and the former being in short supply everwhere) but first you have to generate the electricity....

Make more sense to use the electricity directly. Or you can run super-heated steam over red-hot carbon, which takes water and carbon and fuel to heat both.

Be much more efficient to use the carbon source (coal/oil/wood) directly.

"Renewable resources" are only renewable if used responsibly. Trees are a "renewable resource", but at the rate you are going, there won't be any left in 50 years...

AC