Hello, I’m new and haven’t the time to look through the many threads that may contain my question... I’m not going to get in depth (T hope you guys do though) about the facts and what and when. When we run out of oil and it gets so scarce that it isn’t available widespread anymore what will replace it? Natural gas, as well as coal will run out... Only thing seriously left is a car that runs off of electric current weather it be onboard or trollied like certain busses and monorails... My question is do any of you think we will have Cold Fusion by the time oil isn’t available widespread ~2025-2040...
GM fuels, corn for instance. We can potentially grow our fuels thus meaning a major renewable resource that can burn like fuel.
All fine and dandy but what about the pollutions from it? It may be more 'environmentally friendly' then crude oil but it still pollutes, and, what happened when we don’t have free land to grow it? The population projected to grow to 500 million by 2050... Do you know what the current state of fusion is? Is it still only a 1-2 second reaction? Thanks!
Fusion perhaps, cold fusion .....I really wouldn't want to bet on it. Hydrogen would be my fuel of choice. We could get photovoltaic arrays on houses and other areas to generate electricity to produce hydrogen as well as nuclear reactors, fast breeder type would be best IMO. People can produce their own hydrogen at home if they want to right now. All you need to do is make a electrolysis device and pump the hydrogen into cylinders to use for fuel for cars and home use. Below is a link about the process but there are more designs out on the web to find that will give you a better detailed description of how to do it. Water is everywhere , so far, so why not use it to create hydrogen because once you burn hydrogen it returns back to water, which means it is perfectly recycleable. http://www.nmsea.org/Curriculum/7_12/electrolysis/electrolysis.htm
hmmm... I heard that scientists are aiming for 2010 to develope fusion. But for now, I'd say Wind and Hydrogen power and by the time we run out of natural gas, I bet these two alternates will be very advanced.
Worse case, we end up with millions of poorly homemade solar panels and windmills to power the basics for people. More likely is that we'd develop more energy efficient technology and have less kids (both of which are already happening).
:m: The whole point of developing energy crops is that their combustion will only release as much atmospheric contamination as is absorbed by their growth. Willow coppice, for example, draws down carbon dioxide as it photosynthesises - pulping the wood and burning it in a power station returns the same amount of carbon to the atmosphere. In the same way, growing plants can soak up oxides of sulphur, nitrogen etc from the air, and the net pollution from using them as fuel should be almost zero. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! As for land: many nations already produce more food than they need. To convert some of their farmland into energy-generating, carbon-sink biofuel woodlands would be a massive ecological improvement, with new wildlife habitats as a fringe benefit. Many farmers in the 3rd World would gladly grow something other than food crops, if was profitable (except subsistence farmers,I know). We need international economic policies to promote and subsidise this sort of thing.
Have you seen Fight Club? I don't think that state-imposed compulsory liposuction would be a clever policy for any government. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The following is a reprint from an article in the Feb. 14 ,'04 Albuquerque Tribune Combine this information (potential) with the last page (10) in the "Earth helps space,..." thread, a connecting article, on the same page, about the cost of upcoming electrical power line infrastructure maintenance, and the concept of a small commuter hybrid vehicle charging both it's own batteries, and the homes, the total amount of heat/CO2 stopped from being pushed into the ecosystem, the jobs created, and the rep. the US gains through "globalization", (etc.) and you get an idea how important this can be. Reactor Produces Hydrogen (and Electricity/Heat) from Ethanol by Lee Bowman, Scripps Howard News Service Minnesota scientists said they developed the first reactor capable of producing hydrogen from a renewable fuel source -ethanol-, using a device built around an ordinary engines fuel injector. "For hydrogen to become economical, we need a safe, portable, liquid fuel," said Larry Schmidt, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. "Ethanol is one of the best available." His team reported Friday in the journal "Science" that a self-heating catalyst produces hydrogen from ethanol, water, and air at about 60% efficiency; generating electricity at about 4 cents per kilowatt hour. Although Hydrogen is by far the most common known element in the universe, no free hydrogen exists, its all locked up with other elements. The major stumbling block to shifting to a hydrogen fueled economy has been that it costs four times more than the next least expensive fuel, and has to be extracted from fossil fuels (natural gas or coal). Hydrogen is now produced by -exclusively- by a process called steam reforming, which requires very high temperatures and large furnaces, consuming a lot of energy and suitable only for large refineries Schmidt said. "Hydrogen is hard to come by," he explained. "You can't pipe it long distances. There are a few hydrogen fueling stations, but they strip hydrogen from methane/natural gas on site, and it increases carbon dioxide emissions, so it is only a short term solution until renewable hydrogen is available." Ethanol, produced from corn, is already used in car engines, But as a hydrogen source for a fuel cell, the process would be three times more efficient,* " Schmidt said. A bushel of corn would yield three times as much power if its energy were channeled into hydrogen fuel cells, rather than burned with gasoline.* "We can potentially capture 50% of the energy stored in sugar (corn), whereas converting sugar to ethanol and burning ethanol in a car would only harvest 20% of the energy," Schmidt said.* The difference says researcher ---Gregg Deluga, ---first author of the paper---, is that all the water needs to be removed from ethanol before it goes into the gas tank, while the new process actually strips hydrogen from water, producing more hydrogen than ethanol would alone. The invention uses a catalyst made from rhodium and ceria that heats up to temperature of nearly 1,300 deg. F and coverts the ethanol, water, and oxygen vaporized by the fuel injector into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The whole reaction takes only 50 milliseconds, and is much cleaner than ethanol combustion in an engines. However, the carbon dioxide in the mix means that the hydrogen won't work in the --high power-- fuel cells being used to power cars (on their own), although cells might eventually be adapted. Schmidt said the team is still working to improve the process so it will yield even more hydrogen molecules for each ethanol molecule. The hydrogen the scientists have been able to make thus far could work on some fuel cells. One application of the process might be in remote areas where it is not feasible to run power lines. where a unit small enough to hold in your hand could generate on kilowatt of power /hr. almost enough to supply an adverse home. * + The potential of incorporating a Sterling heat recovery engine (on this size of a conversion) to boost the total electrical energy recovered per volume of fuel (to 75%{?}). Welcome to the revolution.
To Do all the we will require water and for water DAMs hence … Don’t waste energy by putting only one generator at the bottom of dams, instead extend the pipes coming out as long as you can, may be till end of river. And install smaller electric generators at regular intervals inside the pipes such that the pressure the for next generator is equal to the first one. Try not to lose the pressure at entire length of the pipeline, as the river is always going down water has no choice but to flow down. The pressure generated at the bottom dam is due to the height of the water in the reservoir and hence when the pipe reaches down the river, after the same height we get the same pressure (more but not less as now the height is twice and so on ….). Now imagine how much power can be produced at the entire length of rivers. For getting water supply, higher the dam the better the total electric output, so we can instantly use this technique for all dams that are far away from cities hence plan new cities far away from dams or vice-versa and get that power U have been wasting all the time. Check it out http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=540956
Thanks Cosmic, that is quite interesting. Here is an article that goes into a bit more depth http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1044486.htm Apparently eventually the process might be refined to be able to run a car engine on hydrogen produced on demand. Notice that this second article hints that the reaction once started is self-sustaining. I don't know why they are concerned about the carbon dioxide release as it comes from the atmosphere in the first place and leads to no net build-up. Many combinations of catalysts, heat and base alkali solutions need to be tested. Sounds like this may become a major source of energy.
