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Ethanol Fuel Friend or Foe?
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jhoefer
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 5:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

flyinglow94 wrote:
Why bother with foreign wars or ethanol period. Let the American oil companies drill here at home we have plenty of natural gas and shell oil. Unless some people believe wind, solar and ethanol will save the world. Remove the lies and you can see the truth.


Why bother? Because it will run out. If we don't have alternatives to offset the production volume difference, we are fucked.

It's like an early pioneer in his covered wagon reaching his destination and instead of planning ahead and planting crops, decides everything's fine because he's still got a couple cases of beans in the wagon.
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 6:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

jhoefer wrote:
Why bother? Because it will run out. If we don't have alternatives to offset the production volume difference, we are fucked.


You will never see it in your lifetime or your children lifetime. They estimate there is enough oil here in the USA to last another 200 or more years. It's all a bunch of political bullshit.
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 10:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

vwracerdave wrote:
jhoefer wrote:
Why bother? Because it will run out. If we don't have alternatives to offset the production volume difference, we are fucked.


You will never see it in your lifetime or your children lifetime. They estimate there is enough oil here in the USA to last another 200 or more years. It's all a bunch of political bullshit.


This is why the Green movement alla GE is crap. You need Cole, natural gas, water and nuke to make power. Wind, solar and corn are a big GE joke and some of us are buying the bull shit. Just drill and get it over with. You cannot force/subsidise electric magic power if it were possible we would have. Were is another Tesla? Not the car the man.
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 10:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Amen to that!!^
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 12:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

after what ive seen i also hate the stuff!

BUT i will be prepared for when it comes!

so far in my isolated state we only have E10 in very few locations. but i am pretty particular where i get my fuel from as ive heard these discount fuel places have been known to dilute it with ethanol.

i dunno what i did today but after i filled up with Shell (i usually run BP) 91RON unleaded the bug went mad! noticeable amount of torque/power increase!
it just seemed better. however, the atmospheric conditions affect the performance in my book.
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 7:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

when I buy fuel at the "Gasoline Only" station, the car runs better within a couple minutes if I've had any Ethanol in the tank.

You shouldn't have to have a Flex Fuel engine to be able to run around without re-tuning...... They should sell both so we have a choice. It's not THAT hard.....
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 8:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

To Chime in what I say is controversial and why I am saying it is on this page alone racerdave made a point, someone keyed into his point, and then we have corn, so I have something that ponders the mind and what goes on with U.S. Imposed Trade Embargoes as well as Terrifs...

See, lots of deals are made behind closed doors and as well not put on paper but rather what people see in the area of the Grey Area of why things exist, theories, possibilites, direction, entailed direction, ect.....

Thing is this, yes, I have studied up on oil over my life and even the experts say we will be in our reserves in 200 years. Thing is this, that is like 3 generations, some of us will be grandparents is all.

So, I say this, there is a panel of Oil Experts composed of loads of back grounds that even admit we have not even tapped but like 25% of Oil's Potentil, this is use and theoretical use.

What Theorist and Scientitst suggest we may even be able to find the answer to cancer is some petroleum derivitive down the road, hell, even plastic and a long list of daily items come from oil.....

But think this for 200 down the road and you are a grandpa or grandma or great what ever or your kids are.... Why do we depend on corn, why not canabis for fuel, grows like wild-fire they say, all around the world, and is not a food sorce...

Now what powers politics now days, trade embargoes as leverage keeping things on a 100 year old guide line, it is 2011? So, why not Canabis as a fuel, don't ever here that as fuel alternative, who says you have to smoke it, they make hemp products out of it, why not fuel???????? 200 years, that is just right around the corners, thing is it is going to take all kinds of alternative fuels to keep the world going, thing is they are only alternative fuels in definition, thing is they have been around for centries, alterntative by definition is "new" and untapped and off the band wagon is all, not an alternative meaning just "out there" and to far to grasp. Have to start somewere, hell, I think wind mills ard cool, why, quiet energy like solar and there is a place for it, like there is a time for it, I guess just in the next 200 years are planning and implimintation stages are inacted......

Think about this as well for Hydrogen peeps..... It takes 4 times the amount of energy to make Hydrogen than to charge a battery to go the same distance of the hydrogen................. That is with today technology, also Tesla has a car that on one charge can go 350 miles, and Tesla has been around for over 10 years producing it.....

Sorry for the rant, just that time is time, like to see some cool stuff implimented when I am 80 is all like we as people may know what we are doing with the world's resources and in its environment..... RB
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 10:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm all for electric vehicles but only when it's done as well as this.
Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.

The Prius is a piece of garbage and it is only there so people can feel good about themselves even though it's doing more harm than a normal car. I for one am glad that companies are being forced to think outside of the box. Porsche is developing a hybrid that has a total of 718 hp. That's a 500 hp gasoline engine with an on demand 218hp boost electric motor, driving that thing will be just like hitting a NOS button. Cars were pretty much stagnant for 20-30 years and now someone is mixing up the pot. Why do you want to be dependent on oil if there are options?
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 12:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

vwracerdave wrote:
jhoefer wrote:
Why bother? Because it will run out. If we don't have alternatives to offset the production volume difference, we are fucked.


You will never see it in your lifetime or your children lifetime. They estimate there is enough oil here in the USA to last another 200 or more years. It's all a bunch of political bullshit.


Only if you assume consumption doesn't increase. And the US has no shale oil production currently. We shut it all down in the 80's when oil got cheap again. And just like a regular oil well, you need a 10+ year lead time to spin up production to useful levels.

You didn't even refute my point, you just said "won't affect me" like that's a reasonable reason to ignore any problem. I'm not even an eco guy, I just know we need to be planning for this shit.

So, back to cars, that Tesla S is damn good looking. I think if more people actually got a chance to drive an electric with decent power like the Tesla, they'd be impressed by the low rev torque and throttle response and be asking the big 3 why they don't make some. Unfortunately, we really need a breakthrough in battery technology before they can take over.
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 4:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

jhoefer wrote:
vwracerdave wrote:
jhoefer wrote:
Why bother? Because it will run out. If we don't have alternatives to offset the production volume difference, we are fucked.


You will never see it in your lifetime or your children lifetime. They estimate there is enough oil here in the USA to last another 200 or more years. It's all a bunch of political bullshit.


Only if you assume consumption doesn't increase. And the US has no shale oil production currently. We shut it all down in the 80's when oil got cheap again. And just like a regular oil well, you need a 10+ year lead time to spin up production to useful levels.

You didn't even refute my point, you just said "won't affect me" like that's a reasonable reason to ignore any problem. I'm not even an eco guy, I just know we need to be planning for this shit.

So, back to cars, that Tesla S is damn good looking. I think if more people actually got a chance to drive an electric with decent power like the Tesla, they'd be impressed by the low rev torque and throttle response and be asking the big 3 why they don't make some. Unfortunately, we really need a breakthrough in battery technology before they can take over.


I think that alternative energy and fuels are a good thing don't get me wrong. But I believe the way our Government is going about it is all wrong. Instead of a subsidy how about a reword. If you want to catch a criminal you will off a reward well why not for the best power source? Our government rewards these companies for garbage. Look at the wankel rotary all the manufacturers were made to produce one and only one succeeded and still produces it today. The electric cars right now are junk and to dispose of the batteries and replenish them in say 5 to 9 years well another catastrophe waiting to happen. I like the old KISS philosophy.
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 4:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There are such grants and awards out there, they're just an insignificant fraction of a percent of our budget. For a privately funded example: the Progressive Automotive X-Prize has a total award pool of $10 million for the best 100 MPG cars. And just for comparison, from an article yesterday, the amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan is $20.2 billion. That's more than NASA's total budget. It's more than BP has paid so far for damage during the Gulf oil spill. It's what the G-8 has pledged to help foster new democracies in Egypt and Tunisia.
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 7:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

wompninja wrote:
Cars were pretty much stagnant for 20-30 years and now someone is mixing up the pot. Why do you want to be dependent on oil if there are options?


Options? I have no problem with options - what I do have a problem with is a federal government that passes laws that do exactly the opposite. Limit my options. Ethanol is the perfect example - the idiot lawmakers in DC have mandated a certain % of our fuels be mixed with ethanol. Who is benefiting? Follow the money.

Whats the next mandate? Banishing all oil burning cars?

I like OPTIONS! Options do not limit my choices. If you want to burn ethanol thats great - but give me the option not to burn it.

I do not like MANDATES! All it means is someone is getting rich at our expense. Why do you think GE wants a cap and trade bill? So we can 'go green'? Trust me - its THEM who will be 'green'. As in flush with profits.

Perhaps nobody here noticed a bill that passed the Senate last year about this time that would mandate that ALL gasoline be mixed with a % of ethanol by 2012. It did not pass the House. Thank God! Right now you can still get 100% gasoline in some stations.

Find your local station here :

http://pure-gas.org/

For those who like the ethanol - great - leave the 100% gasoline to us.
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 10:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually the requirement in law (I think the Clean Air Act) was to require oxygenated fuel for various portions of the country where they could possibly not meet minimum air quality standards using conventional gasoline.

The 2 major ways (that are politically viable) to do this was to require either to use:

A lot of MTBE
or 10% Ethanol.

Until you come up with a way to do it better, quit whining.

Neither are a perfect option for various reasons. Since I am in Maine, I am at the end of all of yoru tailpipes. I feel guilty passing that disgusting air on to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 11:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

jhoefer wrote:
vwracerdave wrote:
jhoefer wrote:
Why bother? Because it will run out. If we don't have alternatives to offset the production volume difference, we are fucked.


You will never see it in your lifetime or your children lifetime. They estimate there is enough oil here in the USA to last another 200 or more years. It's all a bunch of political bullshit.


Only if you assume consumption doesn't increase. And the US has no shale oil production currently. We shut it all down in the 80's when oil got cheap again. And just like a regular oil well, you need a 10+ year lead time to spin up production to useful levels.

You didn't even refute my point, you just said "won't affect me" like that's a reasonable reason to ignore any problem. I'm not even an eco guy, I just know we need to be planning for this shit.

So, back to cars, that Tesla S is damn good looking. I think if more people actually got a chance to drive an electric with decent power like the Tesla, they'd be impressed by the low rev torque and throttle response and be asking the big 3 why they don't make some. Unfortunately, we really need a breakthrough in battery technology before they can take over.


the tesla is nice, very fast, but it costs about $100,000 for that car, and the range is closer to 100 miles tops, less if you have fun in it.

if we all drove electrics, where would we get the power????? we already have black outs in summer months when folks use AC at home, what happens when 100 million electric cars get plugged in on a hot summer day? new power plants fed by coal, oil, gas, nukes????
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 11:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Randy in Maine wrote:
Actually the requirement in law (I think the Clean Air Act) was to require oxygenated fuel for various portions of the country where they could possibly not meet minimum air quality standards using conventional gasoline.

The 2 major ways (that are politically viable) to do this was to require either to use:

A lot of MTBE
or 10% Ethanol.

Until you come up with a way to do it better, quit whining.

Neither are a perfect option for various reasons. Since I am in Maine, I am at the end of all of yoru tailpipes. I feel guilty passing that disgusting air on to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.


the mtbe and ethonal are more likely mandated to help the makers of these additives. with catalytic converters and smog devices, the air is plenty clean, the ethonal actually requires more energy to produce than what we get out of it, oh and higher food prices too. farmer green jeans and his ethonal lobby bubbies are laughing all the way to the bank with this one
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 11:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The problem is in the way the requirement is stated. They always use PPM per gallon burned (parts per million). Great! So if I can get my fuel formulation so that it fits into the PPM requirements for all the types of pollutants but my car gets 20% worse mileage than it did on straight gas (lets say the straight gas goes 10% over the PPM limits...and it does not in real life) then I put out more pollutants per mile driven than on straight gas.

Say the car gets 20mpg on straight gas then it gets 16mpg on Ethanol or whatever other stuff they might use to get the PPM down. to go one hundred miles is 5 gallons on straight gas and 6.25 gallons on Ethanol mixed fuel. That is 25% more fuel burned for the same 100 miles. In other words it took 125% of the equivalent straight fuel gas for the same 100 miles but the straight gas only put out 110% of the pollutants compared to 125% pollutants from the ethanol mix. The percentages are comparative where the Ethanol mix is really 100% pollutants at 16mpg but 125% compared to 20mpg.

So the rating should be PPM per mile driven and all the pollution will drop. Think about what I just said and turn it around......The Ethanol and MTBE fuels have actually RAISED the overall pollution levels for every mile driven in this country.

It is a political conundrum because Congress had to use a common method of measurement like PPM because how can they legislate something that varies per vehicle and yet it has us roped into worse pollution than ever. It's all because of political lobbies and the Congressmen are NOT chemists and physicists and what-not....they are Congressmen because they DON"T know anything and the majority couldn't survive in the real world with a real job. They don't understand a 1/4 of what they legislate.

I give up!
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 11:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually the question to be asked is:

Are the total emissions (primarily CO and hydrocarbons are the emissions of interest) from the vehicle exhaust more or less when using an "oxygenated fuel" vs a "non-oxygenated fue"l source?
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 11:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Randy in Maine wrote:
Actually the question to be asked is:

Are the total emissions (primarily CO and hydrocarbons are the emissions of interest) from the vehicle exhaust more or less when using an "oxygenated fuel" vs a "non-oxygenated fuel" source?
They should be less per gallon with special fuels but that is a fallacy since you burn more gallons to go the same distance. Ethanol doesn't even reduce our dependance on foreign oils.....it raises it. 10% less gasoline in a gallon but 20% less mileage so the actual "gasoline" burned per mile is higher also......it never ends!
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 2:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

flyinglow94 wrote:
vwracerdave wrote:
jhoefer wrote:
Why bother? Because it will run out. If we don't have alternatives to offset the production volume difference, we are fucked.


You will never see it in your lifetime or your children lifetime. They estimate there is enough oil here in the USA to last another 200 or more years. It's all a bunch of political bullshit.


This is why the Green movement alla GE is crap. You need Cole, natural gas, water and nuke to make power. Wind, solar and corn are a big GE joke and some of us are buying the bull shit. Just drill and get it over with. You cannot force/subsidise electric magic power if it were possible we would have. Were is another Tesla? Not the car the man.



Actually....you need to study up a bit on solar. I have worked directly for one of the highest efficiency solar power manufacturers in the market and work indirectly with a few others.

Let me enlighten you a little bit. Bear with me here it will be a bit long.

Solar power works very well. Its short coming is not that it cannot produce plenty or power. Its that its being horribly misued.

Since 2004, thick film solar cells have dropped by almost 50% in price. The efficiency of not only the cells themselves has increased. Typcially normal silicon based cells produce between 16 and 18% power conversion with the better ones producing 23%+. Thin film (CIGS and CdTe) produce 12-16% conversion. The converter DC to AC technology is now efficent to under 2% loss.

The grid parity gap...meaning cost per watt/kilowatt produced by solar as compared to all other forms of generation has dropped in areas using primarily natural gas generation (most of California and virtually everything west of the Mississippi)....to about 5% difference...and even cheaper that natural gas even at current low prices....in several key areas.

In short...a well made solar system is cheaper per watt than natural gas and most nuclear.....already.

Add to that...because of production scaling world wide...the cost of a full power solar roof for an average single family dwelling has dropped to between $15,000 and $23,000......and is still dropping.
This is significant because....thats within about 15% of the cost of a new roof...which most houses need about every 10-15 years in the hot sunny regions.
If you have to replace the roof....and can do a solar roof for roughly the same cost...whats the excuse not too....also realizing that the solar roof will last longer by about 10 years....while simultaneosuly producing power the whole time.

The horrible mis-use of solar......is that we are subsidizing this power source by forcing power companies to buy your residential and light business solar power...so you can pull it back in from the grid.....whether they need it or not

This causes huge inefficiencies at large scale conventional (gas, coal nuclear, hydro) power producers because it causes them to scale back generating capability at inefficent and inoppertune times. It screws up their efficiencies. They waste more energy in this manner...than you save by producing solar power.

This problem will be gone soon...because the thin-film, printed battery industry is growing explosively right now....worldwide. There is a major revolution in progress right now....with proven and existing technology...that is producing batteries that use 1/10th of the metals and that are 1/5th the mass and weight of existing lithium batteries for traction, transportation and power applications. Most of them are going into industrial traction applications.

An example of where these batteries will go next as supply increases are those damn hybrid cars. The average hybrid car battery weighs about 350 lbs.
A printed thin film battery weighs about 65-80 pounds and is about 1" thick....and can be shaped or presssed into a structural body panel....instead of taking of space. And...they produce power output in amp hours at a rate of 2.5-3.0 times higher than existing lithium or zinc air or nickles hydride.....thick batteries.

Why does this make solar a better deal? Because in about 3-5 years....you will be able to have a battery about waist high that fits in the hall closet ..about 3' x3' square....that will hold everything your solar grid can generate and supply more power than the average single family dwelling requires.....and take solar off the municiple grid....freeing up large scale generation to supply industrial base load. At that point...there would be no excuse for NOT using solar for residential and light business.

We all know solar cannot at this point supply industrial base load. It does not need to.

That is what we have natural gas, coal, nuclear and hydro for.

But it can supply ...easily....100% of the power needs for nearly 60% of all residential dwellings in this nation....at a cost equal to or cheaper than conventional generating methods....when large scale thin-film printed battery systems hit the market full scale.

This year alone...32 large scale production facilities have opened up....about 8 are already in full production. They are feeding the industrial traction battery market with batteries that are twice the power , half the cost, and 1/3rd the size of existing traction battery systems.

Wind power is another story altogether.

It currently is the worst thing in the world for commercial power generation efficiency.
The generators themselves are fantastic. The average single 90' blade win turbine produces about 350Kw (some produce up to 1/2 megawatt)...at 440 to 660 volts. If you want to say that wind power is bullshit....you better say it to someone who doesn't know better.

But....wind power produces this power 24/7...especially in times when extra power is not needed. That is the big problem. The municipal power companies are forced to buy power they do not need...in off-peak hours...causing even worse inefficiencies in their systems.

At least solar only runs during peak load.

The only place wind power belongs...and can be consistent....is offshore....and it should be forced by law to be turned off at night...after peak load.

Also for those who have this beleif that wind power is clean and undangerous.....should look at some of the videos of wind turbines self destructing. This happens ALL THE TIME...crazy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpKyyCjwqho&feature=fvst

One other little tidbit....those who think solar is not cost efficient...have poor math skills! Wink

Example: Since 2009 the TVA is building a 880 megawatt natural gas power plant. Its cost is $820 million dollars. The current cost to build a solar version of that 880Mw plant at current costs (not that you would wnat to centralize solar power like that)....is about 1.1 billion at current efficencies.

So....solar power is not as efficient you say in cost per Kw/Mw?......wrong!
because that $820 buys you a power plant...with NO FUEL! Once the equivalent solar electric power plant is complete....you get roughly 25-30 years of operation at "0" fuel cost.
Yes...it can only supply residential...but that is a shitload of residential for free.

The current generation of commercial solar power cells (not military or spacecraft type) has a maximum theoretical efficency of power conversion of about 33%.
The next generation of solar cells...already proven and under testing to see if they can be manufactured in mass scale...are quantum-dot type, dye based cells. Those have already shown the ability to convert 55-65% of all solar energy...including incidental light....and HEAT....in power.

Next time you want to rant about how solar is a GE myth...make sure you know something about how it works and what it can do.

I agree wind power sucks. Its being misapplied...and is costing money. It may never reallywork correctly. Solar is fantastic.....its just being mis-funded because they do not have a storage solution yet. Ray
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 3:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Randy in Maine wrote:
Actually the requirement in law (I think the Clean Air Act) was to require oxygenated fuel for various portions of the country where they could possibly not meet minimum air quality standards using conventional gasoline.

The 2 major ways (that are politically viable) to do this was to require either to use:

A lot of MTBE
or 10% Ethanol.

Until you come up with a way to do it better, quit whining.

Neither are a perfect option for various reasons. Since I am in Maine, I am at the end of all of yoru tailpipes. I feel guilty passing that disgusting air on to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.


MTBE is now banned in the US for general use because it contaminates groundwater and is carcinogenic. Ethanol or ETBE are used for oxygenating fuel.

RockCrusher wrote:
The problem is in the way the requirement is stated. They always use PPM per gallon burned (parts per million). Great! So if I can get my fuel formulation so that it fits into the PPM requirements for all the types of pollutants but my car gets 20% worse mileage than it did on straight gas (lets say the straight gas goes 10% over the PPM limits...and it does not in real life) then I put out more pollutants per mile driven than on straight gas.

Say the car gets 20mpg on straight gas then it gets 16mpg on Ethanol or whatever other stuff they might use to get the PPM down. to go one hundred miles is 5 gallons on straight gas and 6.25 gallons on Ethanol mixed fuel. That is 25% more fuel burned for the same 100 miles. In other words it took 125% of the equivalent straight fuel gas for the same 100 miles but the straight gas only put out 110% of the pollutants compared to 125% pollutants from the ethanol mix. The percentages are comparative where the Ethanol mix is really 100% pollutants at 16mpg but 125% compared to 20mpg.

So the rating should be PPM per mile driven and all the pollution will drop. Think about what I just said and turn it around......The Ethanol and MTBE fuels have actually RAISED the overall pollution levels for every mile driven in this country.

It is a political conundrum because Congress had to use a common method of measurement like PPM because how can they legislate something that varies per vehicle and yet it has us roped into worse pollution than ever. It's all because of political lobbies and the Congressmen are NOT chemists and physicists and what-not....they are Congressmen because they DON"T know anything and the majority couldn't survive in the real world with a real job. They don't understand a 1/4 of what they legislate.

I give up!


E10 is only 3% lower in energy content than pure gas. Your car is way out of tune if you're getting a 20% mileage drop using it. My car gets 1 MPG less with it. E85 would give you 30% less mileage, though.

Comparing pollution output is not that simple. Adding ethanol to fuel decreases some pollutants and increases others. Plus some of the reductions from burning ethanol is offset from the increases that its production causes.
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