Running a car on water via electrolysis

You're ignoring the biggest problem with hydrogen - where does it come from? It doesn't just grow on trees, and it's not like a real fuel where you can just skim some off the top to power your equipment - it takes more energy to make than you get out of it.

nate

Well, when you elect a person who intends to rule solely and as long as he lives, you have a seeming paradox, dont you?

Even the Cuban people didnt know, for the most part, that Fidel Castro was going to lead them into a communist regime. The USA certainly didnt know, and we supported him.

Chavez runs as a socialist but has a long history of red underwear. As I remember, he tried to get Carlos Andres Perez assassinated and overthrow the government some decades ago.

If Obrador should win in Mexico in the next election, can he - would he- suspend the constitution? Maybe. Bush has done pretty well at it.

Dont be fooled that they want enriched uranium for nuclear power. For power generation you need 4-8% of fissionable uranium in the fuel pellets.

Iran has already achieved over 30%. Not weapons grade yet, but they are headed there.

A lot of that land in Brasil is pretty poor quality stuff, Steve. Mandioca doesn't really need a lot of nitrogen and phosphorus as corn does. But, most of Brasils production comes from sugar cane.

In some of the really poor land, they plant mucuna to put nitrogen into the soil Cattle can eat the mucuna leaves and vines, and people DO make the beans into bread, although they probably shouldnt.

I believe the production will be sustainable in the long run. They have to make alternate energy work. They were knee deep in the alcohol program when I moved there in 1976. I thought it was another BS program, but they made it work.

Several years ago the government also planted large forests of quick growing trees like eucalyptus and gmelina. The idea was to use these forest products as fuel as well. Dont know what happened to that project.

You dont get methanol from sugar cane, or corn, or potatoes. You get ethanol.

Methanol was recovered from destructive distillation of trees years ago, giving methanol the synonym "wood alcohol". Now it is made almost exclusively from petroleum products.

I prefer the use of neutron bombs but not having them the use of conventional clean thermonuclear weapons would do. I'm fairly sure a few well placed shots would convence the world that we are quite serious about getting all the oil we want and it isn't that smart to get in our way.

You imply that if the US were to attack Iran the rest of the middle east would stop selling us oil. I pointed out that nothing has seemed to have happened along those lines with the attack on Iraq and a reason why it would probably not happen with an attack on Iran. Seeing as how Iran has stated it would love to see Saudi Arabia's monarchy be replaced with a Islamic theocracy I'm sure SA wouldn't mind seeing the current government in Iran replaced.

No, of course not - and most certainly not suddenly. And I think we're talking at crossed purposes here - and actually in agreement. My point was that it is perfectly possible to use renewable energy sources to power electrolysis, not that we could do it tomorrow (although we can do it today on a small scale) or that we could do it on a scale that would replace the gasoline economy, or that it was particularly efficient.

Amusing... both of you.

And eeyore, you know what I drive and that I wouldn't use a pickup as a daily driver if you paid for the gas and gave me the truck.

But anyway... how to get it from chavez land? Buy it, already processed. Chavez, knowing that the key to using that oil is a stable price of oil has tried to get the price fixed at US$50 a barrel. The reason is simple, at that fixed price the heavy oil in Venezuela is profitable.

Why pay $60 when Venezuela will supply at $50?

You know, I actually did know that. Stupid brain doesn't always type what its thinking... :-p

Even if I grant you ALL of the above.... you still can't grow sugar cane much north of Houston. The fact that Brazil is an equatorial nation gives them THE BIGGEST POSSIBLE advantage in biofuel production. If they're anything less than wildly successful, the US won't be able to make it energy-positive no matter what. And God help Great Britain, Europe, Scandinavia, Canada, Russia, Japan...

Um, yes, that was pretty much my point. I tend to be pretty pragmatic, so when you have to qualify something that much my executive summary will be something like "it won't work."

And dammit, stop being civil and reasonable. that's not how we do things here on Usenet.

nate

Sure why not? Solve three problems at once. The oil storage, over population and global warming.

Not really, they seem to like having us to keep the nuts under control w/o having to spend their own money on a military. Think about how much money those countries are not spending. Look at Japan and Canada. They are covered by the US umbrella therefore large amounts of their money can be saved.

BTW, Even heard the phrase; No better friend, no worse enemy.

If you have a one crop-one fuel-one solution mentality you are correct. There are other crops out there that can be used for fuel that would allow the soil to rest. There will also have to be other fuels added to the mix before it would work.

Another common theme is stupidity of an uneducated people. They don't seem to know that it has NEVER worked. The only government that has ever 'lifted' the people out of poverty is capitalism.

Hum. . .I seem to remember that Cuba was a dictactorship even before Castro. The 'communist revolution' did nothing but take one dictator and replace him with another.

Because since Korea we haven't had the gonads to do the job right. Cuba wound up the way it is because JFK wasn't man enough to stand behind his word and provide the support he had promised at the Bay of Pigs. South Vietnam fell because JFK, LBJ and RMN were afraid to take the fight to the enemy. That's like the police trying to fight crime w/o leaving the police station. If it weren't for Reagan standing up the congress and the USSR we'd still be fighting the cold war. Even today Bush has shown he's weak in the knees. If he weren't he tell congress to stuff it and let the military going into Iraq the way it went into Germany in 1944-45. How long do you think it would take a 1940's type of sustained attack to end the problem?

IT 3 44 555 66666

There numbers supporting it. Seeing as how you cut the msg up I'm left to guess that is what you wanted.

no spam wrote:

Like expecting it to quit at any moment. :-)

Even without the need for renewable and sustainable and affordable fuels, the gasoline ICE should have been phased out long ago.

To tell just how bad the ICE is, think of a big V8, turning at 600 RPM, that is 10 revolutions per second, and 80 pistons being pushed down every time the engine turns twice, or 40 power strokes per second. Chances are it will stall, 40 power strokes per second, 2400 per minute, will not keep the engine running.

An electric motor doesn't use any fuel while standing, and will produce more torque at low RPM from a standing start.

Don't confuse the horsepower issue with low RPM torque, horsepower increases with the RPM and speed.

For city driving, torque is needed, not horsepower, and very little horsepower is needed for cruising at road speeds.

To accelerate, the ICE must ask the transmission to downshift so the ICE can turn faster at a lower gear ratio, wasting fuel, while the electric motor can produce substantially more torque without downshifting.

Joe Fischer