But, neither of those will ever happen, since the only interest Exxon or Shell have in the whole matter is keeping the gate receipts at Disneyworld high enough that only people who complain is Cuba.
Why say this? It is meaningless. It is not what peak oil is about.
Electrolysis is a favored method for hair removal.
Much simpler solution.
Raise corn. Ferment corn into alcohol. Drink alcohol and say to hell with the rest......
There are vast untapped sources of oil that is more costly to extract. Building bandwidth is just that, building bandwidth. And these sources are far from energy negative.
It would be fantastic if we could make electrolysis of water efficient enough to run an internal combustion engine. And have that engine produce the electricity required to keep the electrolysis going until it ran out of water. Unfortunately our current internal combustion engines aren't capable of running on the small amount of hydrogen produced using a reasonable amount of voltage. I experimented with 24 volts dc (2 motorcycle batteries wired in series) and some sea water (the salt makes electrolysis more efficient). A small amount of hydrogen gas was produced and it did burn. But you would need a very efficient means of producing electricity from this small amount of hydrogen.
It is called EROEI and lead time to production.
I have yet to see a positive ERoEI for kerogen. What do you have in mind?
If you never get started... And investment returns are just fine for those currently exploiting them. So long as oil stays above US$40 they are fine.
Heavier oil, oil sand, recent light crude discoveries, and even oil shale all in the Americas and profitable at more more than US$40 a barrel.
Of course Saudi oil is far more profitable when the US taxpayer is footing the bill for the problems in the middle east.
And the example is?
Heavy oils don't produce so fast. Cite the discoveries and compare them to demand. Sand oil from Canada may see another 1-2 mb/d in two decades, 'if', you cut the U.S. off from natural gas exports. That hardly offsets the decline of Cantrell.
In that same time demand could grow 20,30, or more mb/d.
It is profitable because it is cheap. Less than $2/barrel.
Which compounds the problem.
Interestingly, the best selling drug in US is crack cocaine - is that a good thing too ?
Seeing as the cost of extracting the oil that is already tapped today includes the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents (and tens of thousands of not so innocents), what will be the true cost of the untapped stuff ?
Building bandwidth for any kind energy resoure, renewable or otherwise is costly - why not put the cost into something that won't run out and won't start wars that result in mass murder just so you can drive a gas guzzling pickup ?
A firm grip on reality, would be my guess.
A totally nonsensical myth, based on using only corn and fossil fuel for the heat.
The use of natural gas for motor fuel should be avoided if possible, it is far too precious a fuel.
It isn't a question of either-or, all possible processes should be implemented to conserve natural gas and oil, and ethanol is the easiest renewable liquid fuel source.
Look for more interest than ever in ethanol after the Indy 500 this year, the increased power of ethanol should receive a lot of media attention.
Joe Fischer
Screw the engine and just wish for perpetual motion DIRECTLY.
Why can't people get it through their heads that each hydrogen-oxygen bond contains a certain amount of energy. BREAKING two of those bonds to get an H2 molecule requires the same energy that you get back when you burn the H2 and re-create the hydrogen-oxygen bonds. EVERY inefficiency in the system represents a net loss of energy.
The only way to possibly benefit from electrolysis is to use nuclear, solar, or wind power to create a portable (barely) energy source that is zero-emission when you burn it. Hardly worth the effort.
snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote: ...
Fantastic is hardly the word. Impossible is more like it. This is the very definition of an over unity (or perpetual motion) device.
Anthony
I've cited the articles over and over and over and over and over again as this topic has kept coming up. The oil sands are in Alberta, the light crude in central america, the heavy oil in hugo chavez land, and the shale in the USA. All combine to be several times more oil than saudi arabia has.
Right now production is trivial because there is little investment to get it out. Rate of extraction is proportional to what has been built. How much oil would saudi arabia produce if it had one well from 1952? Not much.
So throw up your hands and say it can't be done, because that's the answer of course. Just leave it in the ground and throw up your hands.
And the military costs are? Has Iraq hit a trillion yet off budget? What about the lives and lost productivity... oh that's right, the oil companies lobby and the taxpayer foots the bill for them.
Not nearly as much considering it is in the americas.
I wouldn't drive a pickup if you gave me one and the fuel to run it.
The reason is simply, because it's *PART* of a solution. It's best to do a number of things, and especially when the processes to use this oil already exist, the breakthroughs already made while battery technology and H2 storage breakthroughs are still somewhere in the future.
The youth of America are not learning it, at any rate. I think it is available in the schools, but we, ladies and gentlemen, are evolving toward a race of ignorant trailer trash.
Then we agree - we need to firstly admit there is a problem on a global scale, look at all the ways to fix it and go after all of them aggressively.
Sorry - I had you down as one of the parts of the problem as opposed to part of the solution. I should pay more attention to thread attributions in future.
It's very complicated, David. Natural gas is a good fuel. No doubt. But we are running short of it. Importing it in liquified form in tankers is adding to our national deficit, and is creating enormous risks.
Alcohol is a reasonably good fuel. We have not yet embraced it. We keep arguing about the details.
Hydrogen is a good fuel.. We have no cheap source of it yet. Maybe we never will.
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