Doug.... you did very well, on all topics. ha ha I'd vote for if he could just do it!

I agree with the gist of the statements, mainly that our politicians have let us down. However, there are a few HUGE problems I have with what he stated. Two primary things really.

1) Iraq.

While I agree Iraq really does owe us, they are not in a position to provide the needed oil to our country. It would probably take them 10 years to get up to speed to provide anywhere near the needed volumes for us. Asking for a discount is nice and all, but won't work. Oil is a fungible asset and cannot be manipulated as easily as you would like. A better solution would be to assist them in bringing up production to a point to drive down world oil costs. Additionally, I HIGHLY agree with increasing our domestic supply as much as possible. I would prefer to see this as we (the citizens) own the oil that is on public lands. If we were to develop these oil fields in a 'Manhattan Project' kind of way, along WITH the oil companies, it would also help drive down world oil prices. Additionally, our current suppliers would have a huge problem with this. The number one and two suppliers being Canada (Hi Dave!) and Mexico. Saudi Arabia is a close third.

If you would like to take a big chunk of the oil royalty payments and put towards subsidizing gasoline at the pumps or towards alternative energy research, fine, but is not ultimately necessary. This brings me to the other comment...



2) Hydrogen. The idea of using hydrogen as a replacement source of energy is idiotic on so many levels. If you think about it, hydrogen is merely a energy storage medium. While hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe, there is VERY little of it available on it's own here on planet Earth. It is almost all tied together with oxygen in the form of water (yea, I know, a pretty DUH?! statement.)

In order to create free hydrogen, you must take a hydrocarbon, or water and split the hydrogen off of whatever it is bonded too. The primary way this is done is to introduce a large amount of energy to split it off. Today, this is mostly done with electricity. There is the crux. Why would you take an already perfectly good energy source, electricity, and utilize it to make another form of energy storage? It makes no sense. Additionally, in order to distribute this huge amount of created hydrogen, we would need to build a massive infrastructure. This infrastructure would cost trillions of dollars to install. Without it being in place, large amounts of people will not switch over to an alternative energy source like hydrogen.

What we need to do is develop our electrical system and come up with better batteries and/or capacitors. This is the way to power our future. We already have a massive electrical infrastructure in place with a ton of extra night time capacity to utilize. Currently, most oil is used for our vehicles. If electricity is used, most people will charge there vehicles at night when there is not such a huge load on the system. This would allow an almost immediate boost the the electrical vehicle industry and no immediate main infrastructure would need to be added to get people to start to switch over. As the population does start to switch, new power plants (nuclear in my opinion) can be added along with additional power lines along existing corridors throughout the country. I am not resistant to a government subsidy for the purchase of electric vehicles to help get things rolling.

Also, by going the electric route, it allows for the additional introduction of solar, wind, tidal, natural gas, oil, clean coal, geothermal and whatever else we can come up with to EASILY integrate into the national power grid structure.

John McCains idea of an X-prize like reward for new battery technologies I believe will assist in getting something to market quicker. I also think the government should add additional 'prizes' to companies or individuals that can come up with true forms of alternative energy STORAGE devices.

I will not even address bio fuels as I think they are THE biggest mistake we can make as a country. There is ZERO chance of supplying enough to supply our needs without using vast amounts of our food generating lands to do so. There are better alternatives.

OK, enough of my rant.

Tim.

So where does the energy to generate electricity come from? Electricity is not an energy source, it is a energy conversion from an actual energy source.

I am very resistant to electric vehicle subsidies. They are less efficient than present direct energy vehicles.

I agree with you on the biofuels and hydrogen economy myth.

Did you even bother to read what I said?

And electricity is one of the purest forms of energy.

I probably should clarify that a little. Technically electromagnetics is a form of energy. Electricity is the measurement of flow of an electromagnet field.

I bothered to read what you said. Sounds like you agree with me in your second post that it is not an "energy source" but is a form of energy.

My mistake: I call the beginning of an energy conversion process an energy source. Not calling things by their correct names is an unfortunate byproduct of looking at a lot of things at the same time to understand how the big picture works. What would you call the first step of the process?

You getting into semantics now.

Electricity is a measurement of electromagnetism. Gasoline (hydrocarbons) are NOT a form of energy. They are a storage medium FOR energy. Electricity (moving electromagnetism) is much closer to a pure form of energy than gasoline. It is a flow of electrons.



Remember Einstein? The purest equation for energy is E=MC^2

But this is getting silly and way off point.

I'm not trying to get into semantics, I'm trying to avoid semantics as part of this discussion. I'll use whatever term you want so we can get on with the discussion.

Gasoline is normally referred to as an energy source. Is that okay to say?

No. It is an energy storage medium.

Fine. That's what I wanted to know. Back to the topic.

"So where does the energy to generate electricity come from? Electricity is not an energy storage medium, it is a energy conversion from an actual energy storage medium."

i am still trying to figure out how to feed my car pinto-beans (it works on me)

Let's not get into methane production (although it sounds like you may already have the secret).

There are many types of technology to convert one form of energy to another. One of the main issues with moving vehicles is safe and efficient storage of the reserve energy.

Electrical motors are becoming more efficient at converting stored electrical energy into mechanical energy. So are fuel engines. Both are limited and will never be highly efficient.

If you take into account the source of the electricity used to place the energy into storage, electrical energy is not highly efficient when the whole picture is taken into account, unless it comes from wind, solar, or hydro power. Here in Michigan, most is derived from natural gas or coal, which are not efficient ways to produce electricity. Solar, wind and hydro are not capable of generating electricity within a moving vehicle, so better technology to create inexpensive electricity is needed before electric cars can be considered a solution rather than part of the problem.

Hybrid seems to be a reasonable compromise with today's technology.

Water fed fuel cells are indeed very clean. They are still not at a developmental stage where they can be applied to cars.

I have a packet from a manufacturer of zinc pellet storage systems that convert zinc to zinc oxide while releasing stored energy, and electricity is used when available to reverse the process. Cool stuff.

"Water fed fuel cells are indeed very clean."

Haven't heard of those. Fuel cells combine hydrogen and oxygen to make water and energy (heat and electricity). How do they reverse the process and use water?

Well, a reasonably clean source of electricity is Hydro (dams); however in many cases dams play havoc on spawning cycles, ie salmon....

Why can't they utilize tidal differences, I know there are many test projects out there, and cost is a factor....but so are building large hydro-electric dams.

And yes, we are a large producer of oil cat, so why the H am I paying 6 bucks a gallon!!!...I think I am going to go Nigerian and hack a hole in that pileline running south and get me some of my own

lmao,it works on me too,just ask my girlfriend as she is running for cover,or should i say"fresh air"

http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html

http://www.sem.samsung.com/cms/_work/en/company/news/newsView.jsp?seq=641

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080613/153276/

Water undergoes electrolysis or through a permeable membrane to split the hydrogen and oxygen for combustion. Carrying water is relatively safe, though of course in winter there could be some minor complications.

I've seen small water fuel cells demonstrated that can power somewhat insignificant objects. It's not ready for prime time. But it's another cool technology.

Interesting articles! But as usual there's no free lunch. The aluminum in the first example needs to be "recharged" or refined back to its initial state which requires an energy input. That puts it in the energy storage medium class (battery in my way of thinking), so the energy input to return all the various parts to the original state needs to be examined and rated for its "energy to the wheels" efficiency.

The other two appear to be the same process, which as was noted is about the same as adding Draino to aluminum cans to release hydrogen while oxidizing the aluminum.

Electrolysis is a reversing of the hydrogen-oxidizing process and because of the inefficiencies involved will be a net loss. As usual, the entire process ending with energy to the wheels needs to be looked at. If electrolysis was 70% efficient and the fuel cell was able to release 75% of the remaining energy as electricity (both numbers on the optimistic side), the overall efficiency to the wheels would be well within the range of the present internal combustion engine because you still have to account for the energy production for electrolysis.

I'm not against it; part of one of my jobs in research and development was solid oxide fuel cells so I know the advantages. I also know the disadvantages.

I first looked into zinc/air fuel cells by Metallic Power back in 2000, to see if they would be practical for use in place of a generator for our remote cabin or for power outages here at home. Unless coupled with solar for regeneration, they'd have been of no use at the cabin (no grid). For emergency use it would have been cost prohibitive compared to a gasoline or natural gas generator, and we'd have needed to keep a significant volume of pellets on hand for the 3 - 5 day power outages. Not as convenient as a couple of 5 gallon gasoline cans.

Every conversion has inefficiencies. It's the amount and cost of the inefficiency that will make or break it. If fuel was free, would we care about fuel economy?

Exactly!

just drill here in the meantime...we are already set up ffor storage, delivery , the users (cars , plants etc)...yes lets get other sources too, but in the meantime lets keep drilling...
get wind , solar etc...

It is this kind of early generation technology that really makes me believe that electric will be the primary source in the future:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/automotive_news/4272875.html