damn this thread is still going.....i still am dreaming of the car that runs on beer...i think of all the chaff wasted, when all you'd need is some enzymes to ferment it....
Poll: Do you have, or plan to get, an electric car?
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You don't strike me as someone who would want to divert beer that could go in your stomach.
making my own car fuel would be so awesome!
But you'd be making less beer for yourself.
And grain prices would probably skyrocket, so the price of beer would skyrocket. Most cattle producers I knew back in the early '00s felt the pressure from ethanol, grain prices rose, and fed cattle prices didn't rise immediately. Farmers were worried for a while.
Plus, you know, it's taking a bunch of calories out of the food supply without replacing them.
There are still plenty of people in the world dealing with malnutrition.
i'd have start getting political.. i just am pretty sure when we run out of dead dinosaurs to pump, a more [practicle alternative, is fermenting cellulose.....
edit: recycled paper? what do they do currently with the corn stalks? sure the gas would be a bit spendier...but with the way it looks? how much?
If it's that difficult to get energy out of something with fairly simple carbohydrates, how difficult would it be to get energy out of cellulose.
Corn stalks have a variety of uses. In a lot of dairy &/or beef operations they're chopped up with the corn, go through anaerobic fermentation, and are fed to the cattle.
They're also made into round bales. On my family's farm, we'd mostly use these for cattle bedding. When we'd run short of silage in the late summer, and if the previous year's bales were still in good shape, we'd occasionally just put a bale in the feeder every few days and they'd eat those, stretching our supply of silage.
just saying you can get pretty creative making ethanol....and i'd rather pump up the tank for a trip, then charge a battery....which is more cost prohibitive? replacing batteries, or a few extra bucks for gas? electric is dandy, but liquor is quicker!
edit: and locally they turn all the yard waste into compost at the moment....perfectly good ethanol source? i'm pretty sure? not 100% though....if you see the piles, probably would fuel the entire city, just trimming the yards....
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How are you so sure that it would be as low as "a few extra bucks"?
Also, replacing batteries at the cost of the consumer is rare so far, unless you're looking at early Nissan Leafs. They're doing real world tests of swappable batteries, and those only take about 10 minutes and doesn't involve much effort for the driver. It's more common to recharge. And charging tech (speed) is improving all the time.
i'm saying i'd rather pay $10-15 for a gallon of ethanol, then buy an electric car.....and if cellulose can be enzymatically broken down to sugar, like mashing starch....source is unlimited....all the paper that ends up in landfills, yard waste....i'm betting you ethanol is the future, not electric...because we will run out a composted algea underground...it'd be a better solar panel, and more convient.....
I don't think that's a good bet to make
Bilsch
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Would it not seem simpler (and cheaper) to put some silicon wafers, with no moving parts, out in the free unlimited sunlight and collect all the energy you need to drive and also run your house?
Also I hear there are a lot of people around these parts that believe alcohol is for drinking and not burning!
this is general chit chat, i'm getting an urge to punch faces and take names!
\
mr. henry ford original deisgned the car to run on ethanol......if i remember my tv watching documentaries......the only way electric cars will be viable, is if they start fueling them with nuclear rods...like big boats....
in fact how big of a nuclear rod would a compact car need? only way i see electric better then liquid fuel..like old steam engine trains....burning coal...
and yet some some like making fuel too....
and @doug293cz i wait to see an elecrtic plane that can carry more then a mouse.....
but esteese's did have me shooting all kinds of stuff into the air with solid fuel? lol
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Bilsch
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this is general chit chat, i'm getting an urge to punch faces and take names!
mr. henry ford original deisgned the car to run on ethanol......if i remember my tv watching documentaries......the only way electric cars will be viable, is if they start fueling them with nuclear rods...like big boats....
in fact how big of a nuclear rod would a compact car need? only way i see electric better then liquid fuel..like old steam engine trains....burning coal...
We are all just having a polite chat, no need to smash any faces.
In their day Ford, Edison, Bell, Telsa etc were certainly on the cutting edge but how many of their ideas or inventions are we still using in their original form? Could either Edison or Bell have imagined almost all humans on the planet have in their pocket a portable high quality movie and sound studio we can also use to communicate with the world? Similarly transportation technology has advanced and will continue to get better. Liquid fuels have their strong points but efficiency and renewability aren't among them. The age of drilling cheap hydrocarbons from the ground is coming to an end and the in the future it will all be about the economics of the energy storage medium. And right now storing and using electrons directly is the least costly solution. Sure there will be some edge cases like aviation but those limitations are shrinking every day.
Nuclear rods aren't necessary when we have perfectly functional batteries that propel cars around without hassle or big expense. I do it every day.
Speaking of Ford.. near the turn of the last century horse and buggy drivers didn't much care for the newfangled automobiles that were being churned out in Detroit. They were certain it was a fad that would never catch on. But 120 some years later we can see clearly how that turned out. Technology will march on even though humans are resistant to change.
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i like the fact you reserved yourself......i'm dosing off now!
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Not me. I'm fantasizing over one that runs on spent grains. Imagine all the beer I'd just have to brew. SWMBO'd would be all, like, "Hey, Honey. Why don't you order another twenty or so 55# sacks of grain from More Beer? I need to fuel up so I can get to the hairdresser."
here you go! lol
https://www.labdepotinc.com/p-15110...KvywqnhzJTthwtLi6CWa8Z2IbZdnHhaQaArUREALw_wcB
glad to help a brother out!
thanks for the viewing suggestion.
i did have my usual thought watching it though, this just seems like people that don't want to get blood on their own hands.....
NickTheGreat
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Cellulose ethanol is a thing, it's just harder and more expensive to make than the stuff from from corn grain.
Bilsch
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And both of those are more expensive than pumping the dead dino juice from the ground which is considerably more costly than running on electrons from any fuel source.
(Except hydrogen)
Yea, the remedy for current owners isn't pretty, but not as bad as risking a house fire.
nuclear. So much depends on it, from powering our cities to powering space travel. That's where we need the breakthroughs. Just a safe little nuclear-powered sterling engine in the trunk.
Ogilthorpe2
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Cattle are supposed to eat grass, not corn or it’s remnants.
anti-matter....how many giga watts did the enterprise generate? or a lightening bolt, according to back to the future....which i would point out, eventually ran on beer also! (in the sequel anyway)
how true, unless you're trying to make them fat and die early....just like we're supposed to eat seeds, as far as i can tell....
When it was 9 hundredths of a percent of batteries that had issues, I would debate whether it was risky to park a vehicle in the garage.
But GM's risk management team decided that it was better to risk temporary consumer angst.
Had I gone with a Bolt instead of a Volt (which I seriously considered) I wouldn't have a huge problem with this. The inconveniences would have been setting up an appointment to get the battery dealt with and needing a loaner vehicle for a while. Parking outside? I wouldn't be all that diligent about that.
Barring a disaster (like a collision or loss of income) I still plan on replacing the Volt with a true BEV when it hits my usual threshold for number of miles on a vehicle. And if they're still making Bolt EUVs at the time, that will be among the vehicles I consider.
your hands aren't blood free, and there's significant loss transmiting the electrons over a distance....
edit: i mean honestly, when you think about it.....you gotta figure out how to turn an electric motor, to generate the power then transfer THAT, to you...and there's losses involved over the lines....just so electric car people can feel clean?
edit: i mean honestly, when you think about it.....you gotta figure out how to turn an electric motor, to generate the power then transfer THAT, to you...and there's losses involved over the lines....just so electric car people can feel clean?
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Bilsch
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Line losses due to transmission are roughly 4% falling from an average of 6% which was the norm in the latter part of the 20’th century.
Someone hasn’t been doing his homework.
maybe not...just someone that is dreading having to plug my car in to go to the store......i don't even like it when i have to charge my battery, because i haven't driven in a few weeks...to get the thing to start..
and if you look at that PDF, most of kent's power is generated, by burning coal...to turn a electric motor, generates power...and then he FEELs clean because it's electricity now! all good!
like the red stuff in a steak is 'juice'...or throwing a crab or lobster in boiling water is just 'clean air escaping them'.... edit: and i know, there's all kinds of ways to turn an electric motor, and trade that for money....but i haven't any that are PC...
edit #2: so it's like a bike with a chain of electrons......one sproket, goes to another....but it's still takes fossil fuel...and just because your sitting over the back whell and someone else is peddling, it's still happening....
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Ogilthorpe2
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EV’s are not as clean as you’d hope, but the MPG equivalence of using coal to generate and then charge an EV is still leaps and bounds ahead of burning gas in your car. The bigger question is the cleanliness of mining/processing and the recycling/disposing of the metals used to manufacture batteries. I’m not yet convinced that batteries are the ultimate answer. I wouldn’t count hydrogen fuel cells out just yet, especially for Aviation/Railway/Shipping/Trucking applications where supply infrastructure would be easier to establish.maybe not...just someone that is dreading having to plug my car in to go to the store......i don't even like it when i have to charge my battery, because i haven't driven in a few weeks...to get the thing to start..
and if you look at that PDF, most of kent's power is generated, by burning coal...to turn a electric motor, generates power...and then he FEELs clean because it's electricity now! all good!
damn, never thought about that...in a serious way...nuclear ACTUALLY probably would be viable?
https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/energy/biofuels/energy-briefs/history-of-ethanol-production-and-policy
if you read the first few lines...cars started out burning ethanol, and like an old fashion trend. my bet is what was old will be new again...
Ethanol’s first use was to power an engine in 1826, and in 1876, Nicolaus Otto, the inventor of the modern four-cycle internal combustion engine, used ethanol to power an early engine. Ethanol also was used as a lighting fuel in the 1850s, but its use curtailed when it was taxed as liquor to help pay for the Civil War
Bilsch
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I hear that argument a lot but just look at the environmental disasters that are caused by drilling for unrenewable oil as well as the geopolitical messes and war it causes. Conversely there isn’t anything in an EV battery that is un-recyclable. Hydrogen’s problem as an energy storage medium is it is half as efficient as just storing and using directly the electricity used to make the H2 in the first place. Not to mention all the other associated problems of high pressure or cryogenic storage, hydrogen embrittlement etc.
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Nuclear won't go anywhere until they come up with a permanent solution for dealing with the waste. Also, when things go wrong, they go really wrong - Three Mile Island, Fukushima, Chernobyl ...
Brew on
Nuclear won't go anywhere until they come up with a permanent solution for dealing with the waste. Also, when things go wrong, they go really wrong - Three Mile Island, Fukushima, Chernobyl ...
Brew on
Like I said, there's still some work to do
Bilsch
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We've known how to make fast neutron reactors since the 50's that are capable of consuming actinides (the really bad stuff with long half lives) and are more fuel efficient. There were at least 20 examples of FNR built and run over the years. Fast spectrum molten salt reactors not only burn down their own waste but can also be fueled with the stockpiles of nuclear waste we have already generated.
There are proven tested ways to produce nuclear power with very little waste, we just need the will to do it.
Years ago I had a professor who had worked on molten salt reactors. In theory, they look very good, but my prof said that they hadn't been able to develop alloys that would stand up to the molten salt over long periods of time. Has this situation changed?
Brew on
Bilsch
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I also get the impression molten salt reactors could be ways off however fast neutron reactors are already here. Currently China, Russia and India have them in operation.
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