[Spridgets] What do YOU think?

[bjshov8 at tx.rr.com]

I have thought about this subject a lot.  We someday will have more oil shortage than we have now.  We have other forms of energy- nuclear, solar, wind, hydroelectric, that can continue into the future and can be developed more, and we will have to convert to these.

Vehicles need a power source that they can carry with them, and gasoline is a good material for storing energy.  It stores a lot of energy with respect to its mass, and the mechanism needed to make use of that energy is well developed and not too heavy or expensive.  So we need something that we can synthesize and use in place of gasoline.  I'm not a chemist so I don't know what fluids could be synthesized with the input of energy, but I know that hydrogen can be generated with the input of energy.  So if you had a factory that used electricity to generate hydrogen, you could then transport the hydrogen to where people needed it and use it to power cars.  Hydrogen generated from wind/solar/etc. would generate no hydrocarbon pollution nor would it take away from our supplies of oil.

I've noticed advertisements for the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, which can both function as all-electric vehicles.  Certainly if we can generate electricity with non-polluting sources and use it in vehicles, then that doesn't generate any hydrocarbon pollution either.  I don't know if we are close to the point of manufacturing enough batteries of enough capacity to replace a significant portion of current automobiles but who knows how this will develop in the future.

Convincing people to move away from gasoline/diesel vehicles is another problem.  And developing electricity generating plants that don't use coal and oil is another problem.  As I understand it we have a lot of coal and could generate cheap electricity with it for a long time.  Someday it will run out too.  But as someone also said, if you generate the pollutants at one location then that makes it theoretically easier to control, capture or clean up the pollutants.

All of this discussion is with respect to automobiles and trains.  Trucks and airplanes are a different story.  I don't think electric trucks are feasible, but maybe most long haul truck transport would revert back to trains.  I don't think we will ever have electric OR hydrogen powered airplanes, so we will always need a liquid fuel source for them.  We may have to retain some form of oil fuel for airplanes, even if it is generated from algae or something similar to that.

I'm an engineer but I sometimes wish I was a chemist so I could go farther with these ideas.  Surely we have smart chemists somewhere but I don't think they are doing all that they can do to develop alternate sources of energy.


> Air-powered cars work fine.  But it is silly to think they have no 
> pollution.  That comes from whatever engine compresses the air - power plant 
> or diesel compressor, etc.  And the perpetual motion idea demonstrates that 
> the maker of the video hasn't a clue about how the thing works or even basic 
> grade school physics.