On Sat, 12 Oct 2002 15:40:50 -0500, Dan Minette wrote: Please forgive the lateness of my reply. Life gets in the way.
..much snippage throughout... > Feel free to check my figures, but it appears that the energy storage is > consistant with about 12% efficiency. Which kinda makes sense, because > air compression at high pressures is not terribly efficient. >Further, the tank appears to be a 77 gallon tank. Yet, it contains less >energy than 1 gallon of gas. That is not efficient energy storage. It >appears that the car must have tremendous mechanical efficiency and be >run at very slow speeds to work as advertised. I rather suspect that the real >figures are much worse. Well, I am not qualified to check your methods but I will take your word for it considering your expertise. So what they need is the equivalent of a 125mpg (using your 1 gallon of gas figure) vehicle to put this energy source in to overcome the inefficiency of compressing the air and meet their speed and range specs. Impossible? Maybe. An engineering challenge to be sure. I may be overly optimistic because it is my personal belief that now is the time to start a shift away from non-renewable fuels, starting with oil. Any vehicle that will run on anything but gasoline will play a part in starting that shift. If this vehicle worked, it might help fill the gap until practical fuel cells are available. >Or, the government decides to make them prohibitively expensive. Even in >the US, taxes have been a significant part of fuel costs. Far from prohibitive now. But, that is another good point. Since much of fuel taxes go to road construction and maintenance (hence rebates for use in aircraft or farm vehicles), any vehicle not running on gasoline will be effectively evading this tax. It is likely, that if alternative fuel vehicles gained a significant market share, it would have to be made up in the form of additional taxes on electricity. This should bring gasoline taxes down. However, if they are only urban runabouts, they shouldn't shoulder the burden of highways such as the interstate system. >>I'll assume you meant 0.5% in the US. It is somewhere around there. >Nope: >http://www.eren.doe.gov/consumerinfo/refbriefs/da8.html Yes, my number was high. I was likely remembering a projected number. But, to be fair, your data source is 2 years old. Wind capacity in the US has close to doubled in that time. >>Agreed. the infrastructure is in place and the bugs have been worked out. > >Ah, its much more than that. My friends have developed technology that >allows 1 platform to cover much more production than was possible 10 >years ago. That alone has cut billions off the cost of production. The >reality is that the oil and gas sector have been improving their efficiency so >well, that the alternative energy sources have not been able to catch up at >all. But, is overall efficiency improving as oil becomes harder to find and more energy intensive to extract ?(I disagree with the use of the term oil "production"...this is PR :) Or are we more efficiently depleting a non-renewable resource. This is good news only as long as there are no alternatives. >I can understand that. But, let me point out, its not immediate. I'm >probably a bit older than you. I remember the PR for these technologies >being about the same for the last 30 years. So, I look for an indication >of real new technology advances. When I don't see them, I tend to conclude >that this is just more of the same. Over that 30 years, the cost of producing energy from wind and solar has reduced by a factor of 10. is this due to PR?. Meanwhile, the average SUV gets 15mpg. The model T Ford got 23mpg. This is not progress, this is a better example of what PR can do. I had the privilege of riding in a '08 Model T once. Quicker and nimbler than you might expect for a 20hp engine (are you still sure your older than me? :-). >I can understand that. When I read about things like that, I do a back of >the envelope engineering calculation. If those calculations don't add up, >I'm rather skeptical. Further, there is a means that engineers and >scientists use to discuss real breakthroughs. They put hard numbers up >front. They highlight real advances and explain how they achieved them. When I first saw "compressed air" I said hey!, thats real! Its not cold fusion, zero-point energy, or ORMUS. I'll leave the details of making it work to the engineers. If you do have a breakthrough while researching a potentially lucrative application, I imagine you would do this for your fellow engineers and investors, but I don't think you would advertise it before you launch your product. Anyway, they claim to have filed over 30 patents on this project. that should be public information. I would definitely demand a demonstration or at least a detailed engineering analysis if I were to consider investing. >I've been around both real advances and PR BS for years now. >Occasionally, real advances are sold with BS. However, the engineers can > usually get enough of the hard numbers that they have to sell the advance to > the other technical people. When the numbers get softer the harder you look, > then I'm skeptical. >I'm not quite sure where the idea that a number of us just like to use this >as a forum to show off how bright we are. What good is that? I would >invest such an effort to impressing customers, not a mailing list. The ego-meter does occasionally peak on this list. :) No accusations intended. >I do have a preference for hard data over soft data. I do have a preference >for critical thinking over simply typing one's own preferences. I will admit my interest in this is based almost solely on PR (i.e. news articles). You are right that they have yet to walk the walk. If it is bogus, they are either con-men or chumps. If they are con-men they can rot (and maybe you should forward your professional assessment to the authorities). If they are chumps, I will likely applaud them for at least looking into it at little expense to me. ..a later message... >> In a message dated 10/12/2002 1:35:54 PM US Mountain Standard Time, >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >> Further, the tank appears to be a 77 gallon tank. >> >> A simple question from a not very technical mind. If this is a 77 gallon >> tank at 300 atmospheres, what happens if it ruptures? >Very bad stuff. If a square cm of the tank blows, for example, >the force on that square cm is about 310 Newtons. Assuming >that sq. cm is carbon with a density of 2 g/cc. , and assuming >a 1 cm thickness, we have 310 Newtons (kg m/s^2) acting on >2 g, so the acceleration due to the pressure is 500*310 > m/s^2= 155,000 m/sec^2. After only a millisecond, the > velocity should be 155 m/sec. >Can we say shrapnel. More PR. Your largest assumption being that the tank will fragment into 1cm chunks. Compressed gas storage is old tech. And can be made safer today with new materials and design tools. > I remember that in a Howard Hughes film biography, his engineers were > trying to reinvent the steam car. [1940s I think.] They suceeded only be > putting radiators in the car doors. > > Howard had the car reved up for a while and then took an ax and threw it > at the car door. "We are not going to cook our passengers. Scrap the > project." [Or something to that effect.] > > The point of the story being it seems that nobody thought of taking an axe > to a compressed air car. Howard Hughes is a good example of a kook who did have a few successes. > FWIW, that's another aspect of PR engineering projects. No-one worries > about secondary aspects, like safety. I would like to hear one example of a "PR" project that was brought to market while bypassing all regulatory safety requirements. Meanwhile, the big 3 auto manufacturers have a long history of putting cars on the road with known safety problems and perpetuating the myth that the heavier a vehicle is, the safer it is. >Part of it is the good guy-bad guy view of technology...its seen anywhere >from movies to leftist propaganda to Ann Rand novels. There is the plucky >bright oddball inventor who will help us all; but for the horrid conspiracy >against him. If someone is working for the good guys, green for example, >then he automatically does everything right. They automatically make safe >cars. >Unfortunately, safety is not automatic. My guess is that an engineer who >worried about the safety of the compressed air would be considered "not a >team player." My guess would be that any company that wants public acceptance of its product would be concerned with safety. Anyhoo, I'm not selling these things. Dean _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
