We will NEVER see this - A Short Rant on Petroleum

Jaybird180

Final Approach
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
9,034
Location
Near DC
Display Name

Display name:
Jaybird180
I read an article this morning about a company that has developed a replacement for oil from which fuel can be made for $1.50 per gallon and burn cleanly without producing hydrocarbons. Its synthetically made and can be available in large, steady supply (think price stability). They also state that it's non-toxic and other benefits. But you know what, We'll NEVER see this "Cella Energy".
 
Here is an article on this technology.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...l-cost-just-90p-GALLON-run-existing-cars.html

It still sounds like it is a ways off. Don't forget that the government is going to add tax to that too, so that $1.50/ gallon is on the low side.

It would be nice to see and if it can be done without modifications to cars it will be amazing. In the schematic in the article I did see a heater added below the fuel tank, so that might be an issue as well.

Then it will need to be approved for aircraft use, but that's another story all together.
 
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/01/uk-cella-energy-develops-hydrogen-based.html

Use of the technology
There are two ways to use these materials:
Pure hydrogen solution for Zero carbon emissions or as a fuel additive.

Hmmm... If it does hit the market, I'm thinking it'll be $5-6 gallon for crapenol laced standard gasoline by that point plus $1.50 per gallon as an additive like crapenol currently is used. Who's ready for $8-10 per gallon in order to use this stuff?

Pessimistic or realistic? Take your pick but consider that maximized profit margins is the driving factor in everything nowadays.

I wonder if it has the same energy output as non contaminated gasoline. If it'll counter what crapenol has done to fuel, bring it on.
 
I have heard of a perpetual motion machine that will continue its motion forever without any speed reduction. You'll never hear about this produced within your lifetime.
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm

If you do not believe in perpetual motion, enplane why the earth rotates around the sun for how may billions of years with out adding power?

man just isn't there yet.
 
I have heard that there are engines that work on water but the government is preventing them from coming to the market.

Here's one...but the government only uses them themselves.
ssme.gif
 
If you do not believe in perpetual motion, enplane why the earth rotates around the sun for how may billions of years with out adding power?

man just isn't there yet.


It's not "perpetual" motion -- just really, really long motion. :wink2:



All we gotta do is make celestial bodies the size of the earth and the sun and then power the earth into orbit and then gravity will do the rest!!!

:thumbsup:
 
If you do not believe in perpetual motion, enplane why the earth rotates around the sun for how may billions of years with out adding power?

man just isn't there yet.

Seriously? Orbital motions most certainly do obey conservation of energy and momentum.
 
It's not "perpetual" motion -- just really, really long motion. :wink2:



All we gotta do is make celestial bodies the size of the earth and the sun and then power the earth into orbit and then gravity will do the rest!!!

:thumbsup:

Every time we send a probe into the outer solar system via a "slingshot" around Jupiter, we degrade Jupiter's orbit just a tiny bit. Of course the velocity change is proportional to mass...

Take Voyager 1 for instance. It has a mass of 815 kg. Jupiter on the other had has a mass of 1.8987 × 1027 kg, so the spacecraft received an acceleration that was 2,329,693,251,533,742,331,288,343 times as great as Jupiter did in the interaction.
 
True -- but not much impediments to inertia in space.

Kinda makes you wonder how the motion started... :rolleyes2:

If you take a cloud of gas that's several lightyears across with a slight gravitational disturbance, then that cloud comes contracts to the size of the solar system, conservation of angular momentum takes care of it.
 
Every time we send a probe into the outer solar system via a "slingshot" around Jupiter, we degrade Jupiter's orbit just a tiny bit. Of course the velocity change is proportional to mass...

Take Voyager 1 for instance. It has a mass of 815 kg. Jupiter on the other had has a mass of 1.8987 × 1027 kg, so the spacecraft received an acceleration that was 2,329,693,251,533,742,331,288,343 times as great as Jupiter did in the interaction.

Doesn't earth also take a hit for each projectile launched?

(This is why I think the Space Elevator isn't a good idea...)
 
Doesn't earth also take a hit for each projectile launched?

(This is why I think the Space Elevator isn't a good idea...)

Rotationally, yes, everything that is launched into earth orbit impacts the length of the day just a tiny bit.

Orbitally, no. Unless it's launched out of earth orbit, it's part of a "closed system" so balances out on an orbital scale. Even launching to the moon doesn't impact us orbitally because that still part of the Earth system.

The Voyagers will actually impact not only the Earth and the planets they passed, but the entire solar system's orbital path around the galaxy.
 
Seems a little deceptive to show a photo of a "hydrogen bus" that's actually powered by a fuel cell, and not this wonderful new fuel.

My take from the referenced article, is that there is no new fuel. Just a proposal to store hydrogen via hydrides (not exactly a new idea).

So the fuel cell is fair. But the idea that you can convert existing internal combustion engines by changing the fuel tank is, well, nonsense. Just like a lot of other things in the article.

The down side to H2 IC engines is that you need to run pretty lean (assuming one wants the engine to be re-usable) - lean enough that you need a significantly larger engine displacement for the same power. So, one would replace the O-200 in their Cessna 150 with, say, an O-360 (or larger) to get the same performance - but at some loss of useful load. Then there is the issue of energy density when storing Hydrogen via hydrides. Expect further losses in useful load and reduced range. Other than that, it should work OK.

And, of course, no article about Hydrogen would fail to claim:
"As it is hydrogen-based, it produces no greenhouse gases at all so an added advantage is it could help nations slash the size of their carbon footprint."

Or,

"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” (Adolf Hitler)
 
And, of course, no article about Hydrogen would fail to claim:
"As it is hydrogen-based, it produces no greenhouse gases at all so an added advantage is it could help nations slash the size of their carbon footprint."

Because when you combust Hydrogen, you get good ol' H2O...which is...wait for it...a major greenhouse gas!
 
Because when you combust Hydrogen, you get good ol' H2O...which is...wait for it...a major greenhouse gas!

Unlike CO2, H2O leaves the vapor state at normal atmospheric temperatures. (Look at clouds for proof!)

The net result of that is that the heating effect of adding water vapor to the atmosphere is much shorter-lived than it is for CO2.
 
Last edited:
Because when you combust Hydrogen, you get good ol' H2O...which is...wait for it...a major greenhouse gas!

And one has to ignore the fact that most of the local H2 is tied up in either H2O or in oil / natural gas. And, when you look at how much CO2 you generate extracting the H, you can end up with MORE CO2 in the atmosphere than burning oil.

Note: If you extract H2 from natural gas and burn it in a fuel cell, you do end up releasing somewhat less CO2 than you would have by turning oil into gasoline and burning in an I/C engine. But, if you buy a H2 fuel cell automobile to drive to the 7-11, you won't have enough money left over to buy a slurpy after making your car payment...
 
If you do not believe in perpetual motion, enplane why the earth rotates around the sun for how may billions of years with out adding power?

man just isn't there yet.

Please tell me your joking? Or is it time for a bit of a physics lesson?
 
Doesn't earth also take a hit for each projectile launched?

(This is why I think the Space Elevator isn't a good idea...)

Yes, but that rotational momentum is regained when the satellite re-enters the earths atmosphere and transfers all that energy right back to the earth. The only net loss is for satellites that escape the earths gravitational field entirely - and only a few of those have ever been launched.
 
If you do not believe in perpetual motion, enplane why the earth rotates around the sun for how may billions of years with out adding power?

man just isn't there yet.

The power was imparted billions of years ago. It just hasn't worn out/entropied away
 
I have heard that there are engines that work on water but the government is preventing them from coming to the market.

Naw, it's big oil and GW Bush doing that. :hairraise:
 
And one has to ignore the fact that most of the local H2 is tied up in either H2O or in oil / natural gas. And, when you look at how much CO2 you generate extracting the H, you can end up with MORE CO2 in the atmosphere than burning oil...
Much like electric cars, the applicability to "greenhouse gases" is that you've separated out the car's immediate power source (i.e. the power source that travels with the car) from the ultimate source of that energy, and your net contribution to atmospheric CO2 or pollutants depends on that ultimate source.

But making that separation is half the problem. It's the easy half, but it is half (so maybe this makes it a "tenth" instead of "half"). You still need the solar, hydro, nuclear, etc, on the back end.
-harry
 
Yes, but that rotational momentum is regained when the satellite re-enters the earths atmosphere and transfers all that energy right back to the earth. The only net loss is for satellites that escape the earths gravitational field entirely - and only a few of those have ever been launched.

Most satellites in the higher orbits will not come back to Earth for eons. GPS sats and anything in geosync just stays up there after they are worn out.
 
Yes, but that rotational momentum is regained when the satellite re-enters the earths atmosphere and transfers all that energy right back to the earth. The only net loss is for satellites that escape the earths gravitational field entirely - and only a few of those have ever been launched.


Reentry which converts mass to heat -- so the force would not cancel out.
 
If you do not believe in perpetual motion, enplane why the earth rotates around the sun for how may billions of years with out adding power?

man just isn't there yet.

Are you assuming that meteors and such don't add any power? How many do you think has hit in Billions of years? Take a close look at the Moon...
 
Reentry which converts mass to heat -- so the force would not cancel out.
You need more than a little wind resistance to convert mass to heat. You will convert a lot of the satellite's potential energy into heat. That energy came from the chemical potential energy of the rocket fuel.

The "earth spins a little slower" argument is about conservation of angular momentum. Consider a spinning ice skater and what happens as she extends and retracts her arms. From this perspective, once the mass returns to Earth we're back to square one (sort of, depending on what happens to the mass of the rocket fuel exhaust, at least some fraction of which I presume remains in orbit).

Of course this exercise in high school physics ignores a few little details (as high school physics problems are wont to do), namely that the Earth collects millions of pounds of meteorite flux per year.
-harry
 
Sigh. The "law" of conservation of energy/mass being what it is aside (a joke, and wrong), perpetual motion is unobtainable.

What I believe is obtainable however, is near perpetual motion....that is to say, somehow, somewhere, we have the ability to create a machine that can run for many lifetimes before needing more energy to continue.

It just takes getting a real understanding of how physics work....and no one has it yet, despite their "laws" of conservation.
 
What I believe is obtainable however, is near perpetual motion....that is to say, somehow, somewhere, we have the ability to create a machine that can run for many lifetimes before needing more energy to continue.

That's fine, and well within current understanding...all you need is a machine that does no work.
 
That's fine, and well within current understanding...all you need is a machine that does no work.

Or a machine that takes the gaps in our understanding of physics and actually does work.

Or a machine that takes another machine that is nature run and does work.

Or a machine that creates energy, which our current understanding prohibits (but is wrong).
 
What I believe is obtainable however, is near perpetual motion....that is to say, somehow, somewhere, we have the ability to create a machine that can run for many lifetimes before needing more energy to continue.

Perpetual motion is useless even if it was obtainable.

What you actually need is not a perpetual motion machine, but rather an energy creating machine. IOW, something like a spinning wheel that doesn't just turn at X rpm, but one that increases RPM constantly as long as it's not loaded.
If it runs indefinitely on it's own for a thousand or even a million years, that's all fine and hunky dory for the museum or science lab curiosity. The instant you put a load on it though, you're draining energy from the closed system and it'll eventually stop unless more energy is added.
 
$1.50 production cost..... What do you think a gallon of gas costs to produce? What relevance does production cost have on market cost? By the time profit, distribution and overhead as well as taxes are applied your $1.50 product will cost $6.00+. A gallon of gas costs about $.60 to produce.
 
Perpetual motion is useless even if it was obtainable.

What you actually need is not a perpetual motion machine, but rather an energy creating machine. IOW, something like a spinning wheel that doesn't just turn at X rpm, but one that increases RPM constantly as long as it's not loaded.
If it runs indefinitely on it's own for a thousand or even a million years, that's all fine and hunky dory for the museum or science lab curiosity. The instant you put a load on it though, you're draining energy from the closed system and it'll eventually stop unless more energy is added.


Exactly.
 
Back
Top