The Black Vault

This is a 3 page article so read it here"
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/c ... 058678.htm

Its uses an ICE that in itself is inefficient, the world has to move beyond ICE technology.

The main problem with Ethanol was it was jumped on quickly without much thought by industry at large. The largest fallout from this has been a reduction in food crops, mostly corn, in third world countries. The solution to the shortage was to use Algae to make ethanol & biodiesel, but going that way is as bad as jumping onto hydrogen (hydrogen is 42% efficient)fuel cells at this point. The reason is simple electrical vehicles (electrochemical is 70% efficient) will soon surpass ICE (gasoline is 18% efficient), but they also have a pitfall, and thats what their electricity is stored in. Luckilly there are various kinds of electrical storage units and batteries out there and some are still being discovered. Furthermore there are shortrange inner city vehicles that run on clean compressed air.

Fortunately Ethanol is passe as the future automotive energy storage medium. So anyone still looking at it or bringing arguments against is looking at the equivelent of an 8-track tape instead of compact disc.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with making alcohol from corn. But, don't waste it by putting it in your gas tank.

Halfabo! Yes! My thoughts exactly.

Aquatank wrote:Its uses an ICE that in itself is inefficient, the world has to move beyond ICE technology.

The main problem with Ethanol was it was jumped on quickly without much thought by industry at large.

Fortunately Ethanol is passe as the future automotive energy storage medium. So anyone still looking at it or bringing arguments against is looking at the equivelent of an 8-track tape instead of compact disc.

Industry jumped on Ethanol because of government. Govt created huge tax benefits and subsidized profits, plus put in the mandate for ethanol to be used. Industry was a no brainer after that move.

But as usual with government action more harm is done than good.

No ethanol is very much a part of fuel for cars today and will probably be even more so given Dear reader's admin, and all of their misguided ideals.

The ICE works. It could certainly be better than it is in terms of efficiency and power but it's what we have at hand.

There is no shortage of oil to make fuel, and it is being created faster than it is being used. It is not simply dinosaur-extract, it is created by polymerising natural gas at high temperatures and pressure, and the deeper one drills the more there is.

Probably the chief reason ICEs are relatively inefficient is because of the additives in gasoline. The additives in the gasoline are there to make it virtually impossible to ever get good mileage from your car's engine. They have the effect of gunging-up your fuel system if one tries to use one of the many designs of carburettors which atomise the fuel thereby increasing economy.

Fuel injection is only more efficient when it atomises the fuel more than a carburettor does. The system itself is not inherantly more efficient, and fuel injection systems are not easily serviced at home, and are susceptible to failure at many points. One point being that people allegedly in authority such as the police have devices which will fry your car's computer-controlled systems and leave you stranded or at the mercy of whoever points it at you.

I have discovered that a lot of the people attempting to create different systems to replace the ICE are doing so more as a means to diminish their reliance on Big Gov than to save money - but if the gov didn't have the monopoly on power generation then whatever energy was available would become cheaper without someone controling a monopoly.

There is another point about ICE that makes it inefficient and that is it requires long vehicle supply lines from the source to the pump. A properly decentralized alternative energy national power grid would allow EVs to charge up without relying on the various problems (social-economical-political-technical) of acquiring, processing, and shipping fuel. Furthermore an EV does not need additives.

Probably the chief reason ICEs are relatively inefficient is because of the additives in gasoline.

I think it more has to do with the fact that heat is the primary energy making factor, and more then half of the heat given off by the combustion of fuel is released as waste.

The ceramic engines they experimented with for a bit did well because they were able to lower the amount of heat released in the form of waste and thereby maximizing the heat used for kinetic energy.

Yes. There have been many augmentations of the ICE and we are still stuck with basically the same design as ones a century ago.

It is not for want of a better design, the reason we are still using old chronically inefficient cars is political.

Electric cars (which can be charged via various sources) will enable us to be less dependant on Big Oil.

One thing which pisses me off when I think of it is that how come I'm living in Japan, where they've got plenty enough tech to make electric cars and scooters and the only way I can get one is to import one which is made in the PRC? But the system has been rigged so it won't be worth the cost of importing one.

I made my own electric scooter for local shopping and I love it! But I am just one man trying to do all the jobs needed to make a vehicle so naturally it isn't as good as a bought one would be.

Let me go down to the shops and purchase a scooter which will get 100 km/h and 40 kms between charges and I'll STFU. ... Yamaha Scooters made an electric scooter prototype. It looked awful, its speed was about 25 km/h, and its advertised feature was that it had an i-pod charger onboard! WTF?

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!