[Fot] Electric cars

Wed Apr 3 14:33:04 MDT 2013

Yup. Numerous ways of making hydrogen, but all involve either natural gas or
methane as a feedstock plus steam to feed the reaction, or hydrolysis, using
electricity. It's just a transportable storage medium, the same as electricity
in batteries. And of course it takes more energy to produce it than it
releases when you recombine it. Trust good old themodynamics to apply a tax.

Transportable fuels require a lot of energy to make and transport, including
gasolene and diesel.

A common error is to just look at how much energy is required to obtain and
refine the fuel. It also takes energy to build and maintain the refineries,
and build, operate and maintain the transportation structure to and from the
refineries, build, maintain and operate the gas stations. Seven percent of the
energy in the US is used to operate refineries. Crank that up to include all
the infrastructure and transport costs and it's probably more like ten
percent. That works out to about 15KWH per gallon.

Gasolene energy equivalence is roughly 33 KWH/gallon

Ethanol generates about 25 KWH/gal. Ethanol gets a bad rap, mostly because the
early plants (1980) were inefficient. State of the art plants for corn-based
ethanol are nearly twice as efficient as early plants, and create co-products
that have value as feed, fertilizer, and plastic feedstock. An energy output
of around 84,000 BTUs/gallon requires 48,000BTUs/gal to produce and the
co-products are worth about 36,000 BTUs for a net energy gain of about 72,000
BTUs -- about 150%. That calculation includes all energy inputs, including
bulk transport, fertilizer, etc. but does not include the infrastructure
energy costs required to build refineries.

Of course corn used for ethanol starves a kid in india, so they say. That
arguement didn't work for me when my Mom told me to clean my plate. It remains
a bit thin today. Ultimately there's cellulosic ethanol, and if the ethanol
market keeps growing we'll be making that too. The yield is higher in terms of
energy in/energy out, but the infrastructure is more expensive. No one is
jumping on that. The co-products from cellulosic ethanol are more valuable
than corn-based. Good plastic feedstocks, surfactants, building materials,
specialized alchohols, etc.

Again, no easy answers, but facile statements like "ethanol takes more energy
to produce than it yields" is simply repeating what some flack got some lazy
reporters to publish.

On Apr 2, 2013, at 12:23 PM, "Tim Murphy" <timmurph at fastbytes.com> wrote:

> Hydrogen has to be produced also.  You can either extract it from the air
or
> strip it off of water molecules.  Both processes take energy, and if I
> recall correctly, not necessarily an insignificant amount.
>
> Tim
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fot-bounces at autox.team.net [mailto:fot-bounces at autox.team.net] On
> Behalf Of Tylerpthompson at yahoo.com
> Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 3:00 PM
> To: Randall
> Cc: fot at autox.team.net
> Subject: Re: [Fot] Electric cars
>
> You are correct.  It takes coal fired power plants, gas fire power plants,
> hydro, solar and wind to power these batteries!  Then they end up in a
> landfill as it doesn't pay to recycle them.  But they are "green" vehicles
> and
> oh so manly. I am waiting for a hydrogen vehicle.  Zero emissions and
> power....maybe not in my lifetime but.
>
> I almost got hit walking in a parking lot a few months back. The guy was
> backing up in his Prius and since it makes no noise, he just about clipped
> me.
> Had I not heard the sand under the tires, and yelled, well.....
>
> Ty
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
> (Please excuse any errors or typos)
>
> On Apr 1, 2013, at 12:07 PM, Randall <tr3driver at ca.rr.com> wrote:
>
>> ---- RACER BUD <budscars at comcast.net> wrote:
>>> What happens to The electric cars when the batteries are  no good
>>> anymore..?..and what does it cost to replace tham..or..what becomes of
> the
>>> car?
>>
>> They're kind of expensive to replace; buddy of mine said the battery for
> his
> 1st gen Prius was $7k but he convinced Toyota to cover half (which I
suspect
> means the wholesale price is closer to $3.5k).  (Yes, I realize a Prius has
> a
> relatively small battery, it's just a data point).
>>
>> When the car isn't worth the price of a new or rebuilt battery, it gets
> scrapped just like any other car that isn't worth repairing.
>>
>> At the moment, AFAIK the nearest Li-ion battery recycling facility is in
> Canada.  Toxco was supposed to open a new plant in Ohio last year, but it
> doesn't seem to have happened yet.  At the moment, lithium is so cheap that
> it
> doesn't pay to recycle it; but likely that will change if electric cars
gain
> more acceptance.
>>
>> Personally, I don't see full electric as ever replacing internal
> combustion.
> There is certainly a niche market for them, short distance commuting and so
> on.  But the advantages aren't nearly as great as some folks like to claim.
> They aren't anywhere close to "zero pollution"; its just that most of the
> pollution comes out somewhere else.  NFI, YMMV, etc.
>>
>> Randall
>> _______________________________________________
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