Virus

Oznog

I’m getting the feeling that the know-how exists on this site and other forums to come up with a workable solution but the willingness to venture in something like this is not qualified, maybe because of a lack of knowledge specifically regarding the availability of new and incorporated technologies.

Virus

RODALCO

It will be a few years away.

For example 60 litres of petrol or diesel can propel a 3 Litre car for about 600 km's in city traffic with lots of start and stopping with no problems.
The weight of that fuel is just under 60 Kilo's.

To get the same actieradius from batteries you need probably about 2000 Kg of batteries which make the car very heavy and cumbersome.

To get good traction from AC or DC motors is no problem, look at the railways or modern tramsystems or trolleybusses.
Their advantage is that they are externally powered from OH catenary or 3rd rail power from the local substations.

Imagine the chaos to supply cars via an OH system.

At some stage in the future, perhaps 20 years away a viable battery or accumulator will be designed.
At this moment in time the oil companies control the transport sector and will do whatever they can to sell more fossil fuels and perhaps limit the development, or buy out the franchise of alternative fuel sources.

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There are more ways to get to Rome.

Electricity, Electric clocks, Meters and Trains are great.

Super_voip

Also consider the time taken to refuel, 2-3 minutes at a bowser Vs???. I know removable battery solutions have been put forward in the past but there is still the problem of the weight. Fuel cells on the other hand need only to be topped up rather like LPG cars.

mneary

The oil countries and companies have total control of prices.

At this time, oil is the cheapest, safest, and most portable energy source.

Before any real alternative can get established, they'll just decrease oil prices till those options are killed. Then when it's done, they raise the price!

Oznog

Well don't keep comparing it to gasoline. There's every sign that gasoline is going to become more and more expensive to the point where living with a limited range and taking hours to recharge is far better than spending a huge sum on a tank of gas.

Actually you can get large range with a light, low drag car. EV1 got 75-120mi, Toyota RAV4 EV got 80-120mi and that's a 4-seater small SUV. The new Aptera concept vehicle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptera_hybrid_car
had an all-electric version with 120 mi range, and the batts are probably a lot smaller.

The EV1 and RAV4 got their range out of NiMH batts. The EV1 tried lead acid in its gen1 and gen2 and they were somewhat disappointing. Unfortunately, when the EV1 was killed ChevronTexaco bought up the patents for large-scale NiMH batts and they're not really practical to obtain anymore. For technical reasons, long story short, many small NiMH batts won't work like a single big cell.

What's interesting is that people worry a lot about being able to drive across country, yet realistically 90% of their driving is within the ranges provided by the EV1 & RAV4. Actually if the public charging stations had worked out as planned you could restore tens of miles to your range just while shopping or grabbing lunch, or put it all back while at work. In fact you could easily commute 70 miles away to work, charge there, and have it fully charged for the trip home.

So if you and your wife are going to have 2 cars anyways, one of you drives the EV and one drives the long-range gasser.

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I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.

Oznog

Well, this is the type of motor the EV builders use:
http://www.evsource.com/tls_impulse.php
That's a series-wound motor which is very easy to build a powerful controller for, but it cannot do regen braking. Technically separately excited can do regen but I think people just tend to go for the far more complex AC drive motors.

Unfortuantely simply adding a motor/generator to an existing gasoline vehicle will not make it a "hybrid" like a Prius. The engine probably won't be any more efficient and in fact any energy stored in the batts will suffer efficiency penalties that will only reduce mpg. Unfortunately there have been some guys circulating plans on the net for this and lots of other things that won't work.

As far as putting batts in the trunk, here's the relevant info:
An EV converion car requires around 0.3 to 0.5 kWh per mile, with the weight of the engine taken out.
Large cars which started out with poor mpg end up on the high end of that.

So adding a big deep cycle batt, 100AH, actually only has about half that useable (varies though) because 1) you will murder that batt fast if you run it down all the way repeatedly and 2) something called Peukert's Equation says with high amp loads only part of the batt's capacity is even usable.
So say you count that as 50 AH, 0.6kwh as usable. That gets you around 1-2 mi of range per batt. A car will need to have its suspension reinforced for many batts. Also the added weight in ADDITION to a car engine will reduce the car's overall mpg nad kwh/mi needs. Well one estimate I saw said each 50 lbs is 1%-2% penalty in mpg for general driving (more energy needed to get it moving, more rolling resistance in the tires) and that batt I mentioned weighs around 75 lbs at least.

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I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.

Nigel Goodwin

Well you get cheap oil in the states, in the UK most of the price is tax, so that couldn't happen anyway.

But in any case, the oil companies wouldn't do that, most are spending a fortune trying to find alternative energy sources - so they will continue to make money by selling you the alternatives, and the oil will be used for plastics production, and will last longer.

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Hero999

The cheapest option is to have a diesel car and brew your own biodiesel.

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Pommie

I think the battery problem will be solved by a chemist. If a chemist came up with a way to convert CO2 and Hydrogen to a hydrocarbon that uses electricity (or heat) that was reasonably efficient, similar to how Haber made fertilizer from Nitrogen and Hydrogen, then it would be the best battery ever invented. After all, a battery is just a way to store energy, why not store it as a liquid and use the same tank/engine/gearbox etc.

If such a process was discovered/invented then nuclear power stations or even heliostat arrays could produce vast amounts of synthetic hexane in remote deserts and the fuel could be shipped just like it is now.

The use of ethanol is a similar process. It (allegedly) takes the same amount of energy to make ethanol as it will produce when burnt. As long as that energy is from the grid then it is no different to a battery. The problem with ethanol is it uses up valuable resourses (food).


Mike.

Hero999

I don't see who that could be of any benefit.

It will take more energy in burning fuel to generate the electricity or heat, to convert the CO2 and H2O to a hydrocarbon than what would be released when the hydrocarbon is burnt. With out doing any calculations, I would estimate that the whole process would probably be around 10% efficient and that's being optimistic.

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Pommie

Before the Haber process was discovered the idea of producing fertilizer from Nitrogen and Hydrogen was unthinkable as it would require vast amounts of energy. Haber found the catalyst that made it energy efficient.

The interesting thing about such a process is that most power stations produce vast amounts of steam and carbon dioxide. The chemist that comes up with that catalyst will rival Bill Gates for wealth.

Mike.

Hero999

All the Harber process does is reduce the activation energy for the reaction, not the amount of energy required to convery hydrogen and nitrogen in to ammonia.

It takes a certain amount of energy to break all the bonds in the CO2 and H2O, some of this energy is released when they bond together as a hydrocarbon. You don't gain anything by converting H2O & C2O to methane and oxygen, it just takes energy and funnyly enough more energy than what would be released when you burn the methane to get CO2 and H2O.

We are talking about the first law of thermodynamics, energy cannot me made or destroyed, it can only be converted from one form to another.

I'm not meaning to be patronising but you seem to be unaware of bond enthalpy.
http://www.webchem.net/notes/how_far...y_diagrams.htm

Try doing the reverse of the example in the link above, calculate how much energy you would require to convert CO2 and O2 to propane.

The moral of the story is that chemicals only store energy, they don't create it.

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Pommie

That was exactly my point, chemicals are the perfect battery.

Mike.

Hero999

Chemicals are the perfect battery as the can store large amounts of energy, the problem is have to burn them to get heat energy which you then convert to mechanical work; this is horribly inefficient. The second law of thermodynamics means that it's very inefficient as it determines how much work can be extracted from a temperature differential.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_...thermodynamics

You, need a primay energy source to convert the H2O and CO2 to a hydrocarbon like methane. Assuming the source of energy is a heat source The maximum efficiency is governed by the maaximum temperature the process will effectively work out and the temperature of the sourroundings.

You need a way of converting the chemical energy back to work and this again normally involves burning it. Yet again, the maximum efficiency is governed by the combustian temperature and the temperature of the surroundings.

It turns out that practical heat engines are very inefficient as current technology doesn't allow for the high temperatures required to make them efficient. Given that a typical coal fired power station is only 36% efficient and an automotive engine is only 25% efficient, the overall efficiency will be less than 9%, even if you ignore the losses involved in converting the CO2 and H2O to methane and back again. You're much better off using a hydrocarbon like oil or natural gas to fuel your car rather than a coal fiered power station.

This is the reason why there's so much interest in hydrogen fuel cells which allow us to convert them in to electricity more directly from hydrocarbons rather than burning them and using an inefficient heat engine to generate electricity.

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Virus

Say, I like your way of thinking, at a power station you have excessive heat that is lost in the form of steam , you also have the potential in the high pressure steam that is also lost and the burnt ash.

What would the end product be (for example) if the waist at a power station could be reused in different ways, any idea’s.

Come to think of it what was the price of fuel when coal power stations where built (developed originally)? ? ?, one would think their would be a flood of research into recovering this loss of energy.