Gas is not really needed.....

[heathenbrewing]

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you cant generate power via windmills on a car because the increased drag will consume more power resulting in zero energy gain if the system was 100% efficent, and negative gain in reality because nothing is even close to 100% efficent. its a catch 22.

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I disagree. Small blades inside of scoops (think the knockouts that are in the bodywork for driving lamps) would not cost more power than they produce.

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there is NO way around this. if there was, everyone would already be doing it on cars, boats, trains, espically airplanes! man can you imagine a propellor connected to another propellor on a plane and no engine? it would be sweet but its not possible.

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Again, I am not saying a replacement, but in addition to. 1% + 6% + 3%..... eventually equals 'X'% less oil we have to import, and less wars we have to fund, freeing up even more money.

Take CFL house lights. Its all about baby steps.

 

[heathenbrewing]

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Don't get me wrong, if there is a good wind site, or a dam releasing water, the energy should be captured and used.

But to suggest replacing oil with either compressed air or hydrogen will require vastly more coal to be burned than the oil it saves.

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Thats all I am trying to say (in bold).

I disagree with the second half of your statement. There are many ways to generate electricity that release no pollution.

 

[Shannow]

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I disagree. Small blades inside of scoops (think the knockouts that are in the bodywork for driving lamps) would not cost more power than they produce.

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Well you'd better go out and write yourself a patent for this, because you are on the verge of becoming the richest man in the world.

The rest of us poor saps who live under the laws of thermodynamics, will lap up these free energy devices.

As to pollution free electricity, there is no way that the U.S. could generate any more than a fraction of it's current demand without burning fossil fuels.

Add transport to the demand on the grid and it's even less possible.

 

[odessit]

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you cant generate power via windmills on a car because the increased drag will consume more power resulting in zero energy gain if the system was 100% efficent, and negative gain in reality because nothing is even close to 100% efficent. its a catch 22.

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This statement is true. If anything this will increase our reliance on oil.
BTW - this idea is used for emergency power generation on many modern airplanes - but it is not for fuel savings.

 

[heathenbrewing]

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Well you'd better go out and write yourself a patent for this, because you are on the verge of becoming the richest man in the world.

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Too late. There is already one.

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The rest of us poor saps who live under the laws of thermodynamics, will lap up these free energy devices.

As to pollution free electricity, there is no way that the U.S. could generate any more than a fraction of it's current demand without burning fossil fuels.

Add transport to the demand on the grid and it's even less possible.

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Well, it is the fastest growing clean enegy source in the worls. It could provide up to 29% of the worlds energy, so that seems like a pretty high (and worth) fraction to me.

 

[oilyriser]

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Small blades inside of scoops (think the knockouts that are in the bodywork for driving lamps) would not cost more power than they produce.

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How about just putting up a sail?

 

[Shannow]

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Too late. There is already one.

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linky ?

I'd like to see how perpetual motion made it through the patent office.

Unless it's a "hybrid", where the ducts open only on deceleration.

 

[bulwnkl]

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you cant generate power via windmills on a car because the increased drag will consume more power resulting in zero energy gain if the system was 100% efficent, and negative gain in reality because nothing is even close to 100% efficent. its a catch 22.

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I disagree. Small blades inside of scoops (think the knockouts that are in the bodywork for driving lamps) would not cost more power than they produce.

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My BIL called me about this idea once. He's a great guy and I love visiting with him, but outright cerebral power is not his forte. His thought was to use the radiator fan to generate electricity which would power electric motors that would help power the wheels. I reminded (actually, minded; he hadn't thought of it and was not exactly convinced but just took my word for it since he knows he doesn't really know) him that fuel being burned is what started the car moving in the first place. ALL its motion is due to the fuel being burned. Just as a super-slick (aerodynamically) car needs less fuel to be burned to go a certain speed, so a car without the extra drag of the rad fan being attached to a generator will use less fuel. Translation: there's only the airflow you talk about because of the basic propulsion system of the car. Increasing the output of this propulsion system in order to replace the energy you expend on propulsion could be only a zero-sum game in a mythical perpetual motion machine. In our world it's an energy loser.

That doesn't seem to stop people wanting to believe the contrary, however.

 

[Shannow]

Check out this forum subject...lots of perpetual motion devices on offer.

 

[oilyriser]

large electromagnet on front bumper...

 

[odessit]

even better - large electromagnetic lance, semi will not even notice

 

[oilyriser]

more reliable than a suction cup on a harpoon launcher

 

[ShiningArcanine]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
Quote:
The cars could also be fitted with small "windmills", incorporated into body "scoops" for example, which could be connected to dynamos which also could provide electricity for that purpose - and no wind is necessary for this, just driving along would activate these "windmills".


There you've just explained your lack of understanding of the laws of energy and mass. You are trying to create a perpetual motion machine.

I'm against hydrogen as a storage medium for many of the points that you've already (validly) mentioned, plus others.

My point was that if we use existing energy infrastructure, the pollution problem becomes worse.

We generate electricity at 35% efficiency, consuming coal and water. Transform/transmit it at 90%. Compress it at 75%. Expand it at 75%...17 percent (if you are lucky) of the energy in the coal.

Solar panels ?

Let's say your car is 2 metres wide, 4 metres long, and 1.5 high. A box, with surface area 28m2. Lets say half the sides face square on to the sun (impossible), and lets say the sun is providing 6KWhr/m2/day ( insolation figures for Oz ).Then assume 20% solar cell efficiency, 75% compressor efficiency.

The stored energy will be 45MJ, almost exactly the same as a single litre of petrol. Albeit that you can use it at twice the efficiency of that litre of petrol.

My point with reticulation is that if we decide that we are not going to use existing coal/nuke infrastructure, and building a new coal power station to fuel the "Compressed Air Economy" then we will be reliant upon some other means of getting compressed air, probably some sort of renewable.

Wave and Wind are ideal for providing directly compressed air, rather than conversion to electricity, transmission, distribution, compression etc. Then you need reticulation.

As to using air powered turbines...turbines are exactly the wrong power source for extracting tractive effort out of expanding air.


The answer would be to use nuclear power, as when nuclear power is used energy efficiency typically does not matter and for all intents and purposes, nuclear power is renewable, as 99% of spent nuclear fuel rods is still good and there are breeder reactors that can be used to remove the 1% that makes spent nuclear fuel rods spent.

 

[Shannow]

I think that you need to read up more on nuclear technology and the quantities of Uranium (particularly U235) on the globe.

Maybe P.M. Al...he's pretty good on that.

 

[oilyriser]

Nuclear power has the side effect of gentle population control.

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: Shannow

Maybe P.M. Al...he's pretty good on that.

Well honestly I'm not. But obviously the problem is spent fuel. We don't reprocess it. We have long term storage facilities in every Nuke plant. Personally I don't think we are to the point where we can reprocess it. Its too radiation intensive. When you deal with even small sources of high rad it gets ugly bc even one small invisible of hot particle can cause problems.

I don't see it happening in the foreseeable future. I like Nukes but the regulation, training and liability issues are huge. Funny..the only thing that is known to work is conservation and we don't seem to want to try that one.

 

[Gary Allan]

Wind mills. We had a big one go up somewhere in Bern township (Berks county). This was about 20 years ago. As soon as it was built (private enterprise) ..a group was formed called "The Swishers" ...a protest group that whined about some low level vibration that annoyed them. I don't think they ever got to produce any power of merit.

 

[ekpolk]

Heathen:

Shannow is correct; at least in part, you're suggesting a perpetual motion machine. No help there.

Consider. A car in motion at speed x has a certain amount of momentum, and it will require a certain amount of energy to maintain that momentum. Yes, bodies in a perfect system will tend to remain at a constant velocity, but in the real world, we have to overcome things like air and tire drag that constantly act to slow a car.

If you then try to make electricity, that necessarily involves adding a device (we called them ram air turbines in my flying days in the Marines; they could be deployed from a little compartment in the side of the jet in case both generators failed in flight). In a car, this would mean added drag in order to operate the generating device. In order to overcome that added drag, you'd have to burn more fuel. No energy free lunch to be had anywhere, except....

In cars like the Prius (an example of which I happily own). In the Prius, when the car is slowing, it uses the motor-generators (obviously in generator mode) to slow the vehicle instead of friction brakes. So instead of converting the vehicle's motion (kinetic energy) into heat at the brakes, the car converts that motion into electrical energy, which is promptly stored in the traction battery, and later re-used to propel the car.

Bottom line: energy is neither created nor destroyed, anywhere, including our cars (in plain english, no energy free lunch anywhere).

 

[DJ]

Originally Posted By: heathenbrewing
-There is already infrastructure in place for creating massive amounts of compressed air (check your local home center for air compressors)

-Air turbine technology, closely related to steam turbine technology, is a practice over 50 years old. It is simple to achieve with low tech materials.


If you owned an air compressor and air tools you would understand how innefficient this stuff is. A 2hp compressor(6hp advertise) with a 33 gallon 150psi tank needs time to catchup to an impact wrench if used heavily at 90psi.
Industrial compressors are certainly more efficient but the fact tremains it takes a lot of energy to compress air. If significant numbers of people tried to have an air car and run it off a home compressor the whole country would need rolling blackouts and such because electrical usage would hit new record highs.