----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, October 27, 2002 2:48 PM Subject: Re: cars, air L3er
> 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. Well, most of the new cost of "interstates" is in the city. The real cost effective solution is > >>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. Are you sure, at http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0004691.html I obtained the following historical trend 1989 7034.4 MWh 1990 9379.2 MWh 1991 9379.2 MWh 1992 8793 MWh 1993 9086.1 MWh 1994 10551.6 MWh 1995 9672.3 MWh 1996 10258.5 MWh 1997 9672.3 MWh 1998 9086.1 MWh 1999 13482.6 MWh 2000 14948.1 MWh 2001 17586 MWh 2002 2931 MWh 2002 is very low because it is just for the first quarter. However, there is absolutely no indication of higher usage in 2002 than in 2001, since 4x2931 < 17586. It seems to me that the two-year increase is no more than about 30%. The two big jumps coincided with tax breaks, so that's not surprising. > >>Agreed. the infrastructure is in place and the bugs have been worked out. > > . > > But, is overall efficiency improving as oil becomes harder to find and more > energy intensive to extract ? Actually, it is far less energy intensive to extract than it was 20 years ago. :-) > Or are we more efficiently depleting a non-renewable resource. This is good > news only as long as there are no alternatives. It is nonrenewable, but will probably last another 100 years, at the present growth rate. Then there is coal and, then shale after that. Yes, we do need to come up with alternatives, but I'd argue we need to do real research now, instead of trying to commercialize stuff that isn't really ready. We do have a very environmentally friendly alternative, but it is not PC, so it is being phased out, alas. No global warming, a strong safety record in the West. > >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?. Actually, yes. Let us look at solar costs from: http://www.solarbuzz.com/StatsCosts.htm A wonderful graph, showing a factor of 4 reduction in 17 years is given. According to the graph, the costs were $6000 per kWp in 98, and to reduce to about $4000 in 2001. But, in reality, the costs were $8000-$10000 per kWp in 2001. So, the factor of 4 was really a factor of 2. Plus, they give the month by month trend over the last 2 1/3 years elsewhere at the website: showing a slight rise in prices over that time. >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? :-). You might be my age, but then you would remember the 50 mpg cars that existed in 1979. I owned one of them: a diesel rabbit. SUVs are big monsters that get low milage...plus the pollution controls cut gas milage significantly. > 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. Well, I am both a scientist and engineer. > > 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. They were doing a launch. And yes, I did it at launches and even before launches. > > 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). Well, the problem is that the authorities are not at all versed in the art. That's the principal problem with patents > > >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. Safe, sure. But collision safe? What happens when it gets hit at 15 mph? > > I would like to hear one example of a "PR" project that was brought to market > while bypassing all regulatory safety requirements. He's not selling them in the US, right? What is the regulatory environment in South Africa. I'm guessing its not a coincidece that he is going there first. 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. Well, if it is a myth, then why have my kids been hit several times and hardly noticed it in our conversion van? > > >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. Not necessarily. Lets look at solar energy. It is clear to me that the death rate per unit of energy for home solar power must be much higher than any other power source. Falls cause 13,000 deaths a year. Solar energy requires people to get on the roof from time to time, representing a significant risk of falling. Nuclear, on the other hand, has a near spotless record in the West. In the USSR, where safety was job 1,384,385,134,144,431, approximately 200 people were killed in a very well publicized accident. People are really weird about safety; they swallow camels and strain at gnats. Dan M. > > Anyhoo, I'm not selling these things. > Dean > > > _______________________________________________ > http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
