Alcohol Mixed Gasolone... WHY?!?!

Very well put. The only problem that I have is the fact that we wasted 8 years under Clinton while diplomacy was the primary tactic used against people who were just buying the time needed to get their plans in order.

It is good that we now have an administration that has finally decided that it is time to quit letting other countries make our decisions for us.

You do not understand the basic reason for a low or no emission vehicle. They are called this because of the level of emissions where they are being used.

The power plant used to power these vehicles can be located in an area more suited to power generation and you have better control over maintenance of the pollution control devices on a power plant than you do when you have a large number of vehicles scattered all over the place.

Wind chill has nothing to do with whether or not something will freeze, only with how fast it will come down to the ambient temperature. If the ambient is above 32F then the wind can blow 100 knots and water still won't freeze.

Explain then, why when the air temp is -30 with no wind you can walk around outside for several minutes w/o getting frost bite on your face/hands, but when the wind kicks up to even 10mph that time drops in half approximately. I agree that unless the air temp is below 32 F water won't freeze (at sea level), and I know my wording was a bit misleading because the coldest the gas inside the tank will only be as cold as the air temperature outside since it is not affected at all by the wind. What I was getting at was in order for wind chill to drop to neg 100 F, the outside temp is probably going to be -40 to -70 F, therefore freezing everything around it. Bad wording on my part I agree.

Ok, here is my take on this. I keep hearing "it takes X amount of energy to produce ethanol therefore it isn't really helping the environment", ok, that may well be true, but it also takes Y amount of energy to produce gasoline which doesn't help the environment either. I'm not a scientist, but I have seen oil refineries and ethanol plants. It "appears" that the pollution produced at oil refineries is greater than the pollution at ethanol plants. And since it can be argued that ethanol burns "cleaner" it would appear that ethanol is the overall cleaner product. I could be wrong, like I said this is just a visual observation. Personally I always run ethanol, it's the highest octane blend of gas that I can buy out of the pump around here (94 octane) and is often less expensive than 92 octane "super unleaded".

Heat transfer from your body parts is by two modes: radiation and conduction. A third method, convection, is also cited but, strictly speaking, convection is not a mode of heat transfer, it is a mass transfer that has the effect of making heat transfer by radiation and condecution more efficient.

When the wind does not blow the heat transfer rates by radiation, conduction, and convection are low. The reasons for this are that radiation, at small temperature differences and from an inefficient radiator like your skin, doesn't transfer much heat. There's little conduction because there is a boundary layer of static air near your skin that insulates you. The heat that does get transferred to the air warms that air, and the warm air stays near the skin because, although warm air does rise, at these temperature differences it rises only slowly. This movement of air is called "natural convection".

When the wind blows, it (a) moves the warmed air away from your skin and (b) breaks up that insulating boundary layer. It keeps cold air right up against your skin at all times and so you lose heat much faster. This is called "forced convection".

You'll note that there is a fan behind your car's radiator for the specific purpose of creating forced convection.

John's explanation is correct, but I will say essentially the same thing in different words - go with whichever explanation you can understand (or maybe both will help): There is some temperature at some depth in the skin at which frost bite (nerve damage, etc.) occurs. If your skin is exposed to cold temperatures, the temperature in the exposed skin at any given depth will be somewhere between the body's core temperature (normally 98.6°F) and the outside ambient temperature.

There are two competing mechanisms at work that determine the temperature at any given point of interest in the skin: (1) The temperature of the surrounding tissue and nearby blood flow tending to warm it up, and (2) The temperature of the skin's surface and the rate of removal of heat by the surrounding air. If the air were totally still, there would be a gradual change (decrease) in temperature going from inside the skin to the surface and into the air away from the skin (i.e., your skin would be warming up the air surrounding it, and the exposure time to cause frost bite would be very long, depending on the ambient temperature).

**BUT** if the air is moving, the air next to the skin surface will be continually replenished with air that is at the ambient air temperature (the air next to the skin will not heat up), so the heat will be sucked out of the skin at a much faster rate - faster than the blood and surrounding tissue can heat it up - skin temperature drops, and the result is mcuh quicker frostbite

Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")

approximately.

Show me one example of a self-powered zero emission vehicle. (bicycles don't count)

-DanD

You are stumbling over what this means.

It simply means that if I am driving through downtown Los Angeles, I am not adding to the pollution in LA.

You still have to generate electricity to charge the batteries, but this is not done in downtown LA.

The idea is to provide a high degree of control over where the pollution occurs so it can be more easily controlled. You can more easily upgrade the scrubbers on a single coal fired power plant than you can control the exhaust emissions of a few million gasoline powered cars.

Keep in mind that the ethanol produces Z amount of energy, where X>Z and gasoline produces W amount of energy where Y seen oil refineries and ethanol plants. It "appears" that the pollution

There's a whole lot more pollution produced before the corn ever gets there. Tractors, trucks, pumps... The math just doesn't work out.

The final product burns more cleanly, but the process from end to end does not.

As to the price, it's heavily subsidized by tax money. The rest of us are chipping in a little on every tank.

-DanD

No, it's quite clear.

How do you figure? The electricity used in LA isn't generated all that far away, so the pollution still hits.

Right, but there are still emissions. Speak of displaced emissions or reduced emissions, but the term ZERO emissions is a flagrant lie.

Also keep in mind that storage batteries are not very efficient. They're somewhere around 50%. This is where fuel cells stand to do the most good.

-DanD

You might want to brush up on your history. You only need to go back half a century or so.

You mean, like we did 12-13 years ago, against the very same country (Iraq), with Bush's dad leading the way ?

You mean, not counting the reconstruction of Germany and Japan after WWII ?

John

Good point. But power plants are also a HELL of a lot more efficient than internal combustion engines, for obvious economic reasons.

So it doesn't just reduce the emissions at the place of use (where the car is), but overall as well.

John

Gasoline is not exactly a low-risk fuel either.

True, but propane is also heavier than air, whereas natural gas (mostly methane) is lighter than air.

This means that if a tank of LNG or hydrogen ruptures, the stuff will quickly dissipate into the atmosphere. Whereas, if a tank of propane ruptures, it just sits at ground level and mixes up with air, until something sets it off.

Hydrogen is lighter than air (much lighter) too.

BTW, many people think that the next major terrorist attack is likely to involve propane. Piracy is commonplace in the Straits of Malacca. Apparently pirates are now practicing piloting the tankers before they escape. The fear is they'll drive a big propane tanker into a major harbor like Boston, dump all the propane, and blow it up. It'll be close to a tactical nuke in destructive power. (Supposedly all other traffic in Boston harbor is suspended when a propane tanker arrives, because such a thing happening, accidentally, is such a terrifying scenario).

John

P.S. And guess what, taking Saddam down is probably not likely to do much to stop this from happening. Badly damaged int'l relations probably makes it more likely.

It's not stored under extreme pressure, but it is explosive.

Yet another reason I like diesel so much.

I think the pressure difference is worth it. YMMV.

Both of which are preferable (to me) over gasoline.

And more explosive than propane or natural gas, and would probably be contained at a much higher pressure.

Natural gas or hydrogen could be similarly detonated. I heard on the news this morning that it has become economical to transport liquid natural gas at high pressure and low temperature using refrigerated ships, so we'll likely start receiving it that way. A station is planned or being built in Baja, CA, to receive these shipments. Good plan. Store the stuff away from major population centers.

A well-shielded nuke sailed into New York's harbor would be similarly destructive.

Saddam was a big over-comfortable fish in a small pond. He really didn't have anything to gain and much to lose by striking out. I never believed he posed any threat to the US whether he had WMDs or not.

Now he doesn't have anything to lose by striking out.

-DanD

The reason for using ethanol is that there is supposed to be a zero effect on the enviroment as the co2 made when the ethanol is burnt is reabsorbed by the plants that they use to produce it, whereas burning oil is just producing co2. This is why there has been a push to plant more trees so as to absorb some of the co2 emissions that we produce.

As to how this actually works in practise is anybodys guess. It sounds nice in theory so if it does help a little in reducing co2 emissions then it could be good. :-)

Are you sure about that ? You get a mixture of propane and natural gas with the right amount of air, and it doesn't take much to set it off.

I don't think so. Because of their light weight, they will quickly drift harmlessly into the upper atmosphere, unless the detonation is well-timed. With the propane, just let it sit there - something WILL set it off soon enough.

Actually, the reason propane is so bad is that its heavier-than-airness allows it to dissipate over a very wide area (without floating up and away) and so do more extensive damage when it goes off. Even if a hydrogen or natural-gas explosion was timed to go off before it drifts away, it wouldn't be able to spread out that far.

Yep, seems to me LPG is FAR more dangerous as a terrorist weapon than is LNG or H. Yikes, this is spooky. Hopefully we've pulled a few resources away from invading soveriegn states that haven't attacked anyone recently so that they can think about stuff like this ...

Yeah, but a wee bit harder to come by than a tanker full of LPG !

John