Alt fuels was Re: [AT] Gasoline $

[George Willer]

Ken,

A reactor is the only way that hydrogen could possibly be produced to fuel 
the miracle vehicles many  (on other sites) have been promoting.  Hydrogen 
fuel cells are really a way to store energy produced elsewhere.  (There can 
never be wells producing hydrogen, as many seem to forget).  The waste 
shouldn't be a problem... just bury it in the same hole the uranium was dug 
from!!!!

A friend (and mentor) many years ago was searching for a crop that could 
produce the fuel he would need with enough density to move his farming 
operation to a third world country.  He's no longer with us, but I remember 
his first choice... yams.

If you could produce and install enough solar panels with high enough 
efficiency (1KW per square meter), Arizona would freeze over!

I just came back from a trip to TSC, and on the way passed the boondoggle 
project... a natural gas fired power plant under construction on my great 
grandfather's farm.  I still remember all the back slapping all the big-wigs 
gave each other over landing such a worth while project.  Can you say first 
magnitude stupid?

George Willer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ken knierim" <wild1 at cpe-66-1-196-61.az.sprintbbd.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2005 4:43 PM
Subject: Re: Alt fuels was Re: [AT] Gasoline $


>
> I'm not sure how a reactor is going to power my car or tractors, but
> anything is possible, and you're right, it would reduce that demand on
> electrical generation. There seems to be some question on what to do
> with the waste stream from nuclear power (arguably less than for other
> sources, I'm told). One more note... a lot of reactors are being uprated
> to get more power out of them. By bumping the output of existing
> reactors, there has been a considerable increase in nuclear power.
> Obviously there are trade-offs, as they have had some issues with
> components wearing out faster and such.
>
> As far as solar, you might look at what else the crazy Zonies are up to:
> http://www.greenwatts.com/pages/SolarOutput.asp
>
> It's certainly not the do-all and end-all but it's in commercial
> production and without trying something, we're not going to get
> anywhere.
>
>      Another idea, touched on briefly by Len Rugen, is using
> photosynthesis. This makes some of the best sense to me. Sweden (and
> others) used wood gasification to fuel motive power during WWII. While I
> don't see this passing EPA in my lifetime, there are derivations of this
> that might make sense, depending on economics.
>    The wood gasification process can apparently be used to feed a
> catalytic conversion process that generates ethanol from the gases. I'm
> not a chemist so I have no idea how well it would work, but it's one of
> the many novel ideas that people start to look at when fuel costs start
> to hurt.
>    It would be nice to see some new crop that actually gets more
> valuable as the price of fuel goes up. Hmm.... am I dreaming again? :)
>
>> >
>> In the long run the only real solution to 99 percent of the problem is
>> Nuclear power. Use it instead of oil and oil derived products for
>> electrical generation and you will see large gains.
>> Solar sounds good BUT the cost of making the cells, maintenance and the
>> back-up storage systems for the times when power spikes or low sun days
>> wipes out any perceived advantage for large scale use. The last time I
>> checked it would run almost 20K for a system that would deliver
>> equivalent power to my home/shop and that was just the array, no storage
>> or backup systems.
>>
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>
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