Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Granted Tim, the Russian bloke's machine was the closest thing I've seen to "perpetual motion"... seemed to work by weighted balls moving along track from perimeter toward centre of wheel and out again as the wheel turned, hence out of balance, gravity driven.

Probably not explaining it very well, but it was a facinating program and the English engineer/scientist bloke trying to pick it apart was dumbfounded

The biggest limiting factor in most of these alternative energy cars, etc. are energy density - how many BTUs, Joules or whatever you can fit in a specific volume of fuel, and how to extract that energy on demand and convert it to motion.

There are several reasons that electric cars are not making as good a name for themselves as might be desirable - 1- They lack power - to get the get-up-and-go, you have to greatly overpower the engine and that makes it so that you are throwing away money whenever you aren't using the full potential of the engine. 2- batteries are heavy - when your power source adds significantly to your overall weight, you are paying most of your energy to transport your power source around. 3- Batteries are expensive, and need to be replaced - especially when they are deep cycled - which is needed unless you want to carry around a lot more extra weight. 4- Electric cars don't have the range or rechargability that petroleum based vehicles do.

To overcome these issues, the hybrid has started to show prominence, since it uses the electric to give it the get-up-and-go, regenerates some of it in the breaking, and uses the petroleum based engine for steady-state consumption. Fuel cells have some promise too, but they aren't at the efficiencies needed for public consumption, and they also are too expensive to be very practicable.

Other alternative fuels have some limitations. If I want to drive from my house to my sister's house 800 miles (1300km) away, I don't want to have to make six stops each way to recharge my batteries for a couple hours. If there is only a limited number of places that I can refuel, I may have to plan my route to meet the needs of my car, rather than to meet my needs.
While it is always easy to blame industry, government, etc. It takes much more to look at ourselves and what we do, what we want, and determine what can be done within our power. One of the advantages of electric cars here in the USA is that roads are taxed via the fuel taxes, so there are several people that have bought electrics to bypass some of that taxation. There are some governmental bodies that responded by creating a taxation and monitoring system to charge electric car owners by the mile driven. Thus taking away a large part of the incentive for moving to alternative fuels.

To create an alternative fuel source is only part of the issue. To make it workable, you would have to create a distribution system making it practicable for people on long trips to refuel in a very short time.

One option is to use Kinetic batteries (like flywheels). They charge very quickly from standard power sources, they can be made to very high power densities, they can be deep power cycled for tens of thousands of cycles with no deterioration to efficiency. There has been some research into these, but they have their limitations. They are impact sensative (bumpy roads could damage them), the containment systems can be bulky and heavy, and a breach of the containment systems could be disasterous.

Sorry for the long post, but this is one of my interests. Until we can overcome some of these issues, we're looking at keeping our petroleum based vehicles.

that would do in the idea for most of Australia. You can just about make milkshakes in the car over a 10km trip here.

You can just about make milkshakes in the car over a 10km trip here

That's one of the reasons they haven't done them more. Power companies use them all the time.

Talking about cheap power reminds me of the car that went from melbourne to sydney on $10.00 worth of power they forgot to mention the extension lead $4000.00 boom boom

Apparently from what I have heard GMC and Ford and probably the rest have net losses of around $10 million a day or something.... All the Ford production lines are pumping out the huge truck/utes and V8's and no one are buying them... There are car lots full of them...They need some common sense...

yet CarsGuide voted the 6 Litre V8 Calais as car of the year

who has the money to feed the beasts?

now I know I woke up too early today as my eyes are all blurry - I read your post as:

gosh, I had to go back and check then just to make sure that I hadn't typed that

LOL - nope, this time its me
I have a very bad night and am suffering from sleep deprevation

A couple of points to contribute to this discussion.

I believe that use of hydrogen as a fuel is not as far away aw we might think. Use of LNG/H2 mixtures like Hythae on conventional engines would be a good first step - Hythane is an ideal bridging fuel to when new technologies become available.


1. re Hydrogen

have a look at the Boeing Pyron solar cell site. It has some very interesting Hydrogen production calculations. These solar cells are probably the most efficient in the world right now in production of electricity and also Hydrogen.

links :

http://www.pyronsolar.com/US/index.htm

http://www.pyronsolar.com/US/phes.htm

heres their take on H2..

AIMS OF PYRON - PYRON SOLAR FOR INDEPENDENCE FROM COAL AND OIL

The annual electricity-consumption of the United States is about 3,479 billion kWhr.

PYRON solar power plants can produce this amount on 7,731 km2 (87.92 km x 87.92 km or 54.64 mi x 54.64 mi) at a yearly solar radiation of 2790 kWhr/m2.

To deliver the United States annual consumption of 11,835 kW-hr for each person of the US-population of 290 million, only 26.3 m2 or 31.51 sq.yd per capita of desert would be needed.

Regarding household electricity consumption of 3,547 kW-hr/yr, a miniscule 7.88m2 (9.42 sq.yd) of desert would suffice.

In comparison, supplying one person’s food needs 2,820m2 of valuable agricultural land (and a lot of petroleum too). His electricity consumption produced by PYRON-SOLAR-generators requires about 350-times less land than farming.

H2 INSTEAD OF GASOLINE AND DIESEL FUEL.

Today natural gas is occasionally used as a motor vehicle fuel. The long-term aim of the car industry, however, is the hydrogen-fueled motor vehicle.

Demonstration H2-vehicles are already running. Hydrogen offers much better efficiency via fuel cells and electric motors, than internal combustion engines.

The actual annual fuel-consumption in the United States is 460 billion kg, representing 4.2 Terawatt-hours of energy per year.

Hydrogen has an exceptionally high energy content of 33.3 kW-hr/kg, vs. oil’s 9.2 kW-hr/kg, reducing the annual hydrogen equivalent to 116 billion kWhr.

Electrolytic production of hydrogen has a 76% efficiency, so that the Hydrogen production for all US traffic would require 152.67 billion kWh.. Since the hydrogen vehicles will use fuel cells and electric motors with 2.5 times higher efficiency than today’s automotive and locomotive engines, annual energy consumption need only be .610 billion kWhr, requiring 1,356 km2 (.36.82 km x 36.82 km or 22.88 miles x 22.88 miles) of desert land.

Today’s 230 million motor vehicles of the US would require 5,94m2 or 7.04 sq yd of desert per hydrogen-driven vehicle.



2. Our very own Aussie CSIRO has invented a hydrogen fuel celled car tht runs using solar power. I've included the link for this.

http://www.solve.csiro.au/1105/article15.htm



CSIRO is developing a solid-state system based on polymer electrolyte membranes for on-demand hydrogen production at homes, small-to-medium enterprises, remote locations, service stations and other end-user sites, where water and electricity are available.

Dr Badwal says the team is still in the research and development stage, but “would like to have a commercial partner on board, as full-scale commercialisation is three to four years away”.

The technology can best be described as reverse to fuel cell technology. “The hydrogen produced is of such high purity that it can be used directly in a fuel cell or anywhere else without further purification. The electrolyser responds instantaneously to applied load and is capable of accepting large load variations, making it easy to use this technology with solar or wind power.”

The hydrogen generated can be stored for long periods and be converted to electricity when needed. The ability to generate energy on-site and on-demand would reduce up-front infrastructure costs, he says.

Hydrogen cannot at this stage compete economically with fossil fuels, but potential oil prices could create a different scenario, Dr Badwal says. “We just need to look towards future oil import costs. By 2010, Australia could be importing 60 per cent of its crude oil. Our abundant renewable energy sources are major drivers for a shift to the hydrogen economy, as in many other countries.”

However, with commercialisation of the electrolyser just years away, the balance could soon tip in favour of hydrogen.

Hey Blueman, along that line check out the aussie guy using "freznel" lenses to concentrate solar on to cells.... Solarcube

http://www.greenandgoldenergy.com.au/

Thats exactly the kind of technology that we all need.

Boeing Pyron say they are going to bring out a residential model of their unit in 2008, but the solar cube/sunball is already there.

I keep telling people that there are lots of ways that greenhouse emissions can be reduced by 25 to over 50% without big changes to the way we live - provided that we make the right kind of changes and install the right kind of electrical power generating infrastructure.

The problem is not a technical one, but a political issue.

government cant get their heads past the idea of power utilities to look at a combination of utilities plus micro generation from homes and they also fail to embrace the concept of retrofitting of existing infrastruacture to take advantage of effciencies.

Government are really part of the problem at this point when they should be more open to new ideas and would therefore be part of a solution.

Part of this I believe is that big biz interest groups have way too much influence in state and federal govt and because of this, ordinary folk are shortchanged very badly.

There is approaching a billion vehicles in the world and under the current 'economist fantasy' there is expected be 2 billion+ by 2030-50.

Multiply a billion or so by say $15,000 (assuming some retro-fitting of relatively new vehicles and some outright new vehicles), add in the massive infrastructure overhaul and then contemplate the financial cost (one way or another to the already heavily debt ridden average consumer), the resource cost and the environmental cost of switching to a global electric powered vehicular system.

The financial figures are staggering to say the least, besides which, we simply don't have the resources - even if there was government or corporate will..which there isn't. I'm sure the environmental cost is obvious to most who take an interest in such things. If we'd done it decades ago (say when Jimmy Carter first got serious about doing something about 'oil addiction' in the late 70's) it would be remotely feasible...today, the opportunity has passed us by long ago. It only takes a calculator and a vague idea of the figures to realise that at this late stage, it's a case of trying to get blood from a stone and then imagining (before you even begin) that you can do so forever.

There is a company in the US working on new ceramic battery technology which will give electric cars far greater range, storage and efficiency, but it's all too little too late...think about it...a few billion ceramic batteries...endless billions of new rubber tyres...endless billion tonnes of plastic and metals...endless billion megawatts of power to build these things...all for endlessly increasing billions of people...on and on forever.

There is a lot of very clever technology appearing all the time, but none of it has the slightest relevance to the big picture.

Globally speaking, there's already too many people who all want too much and are encouraged in various ways to pursue these 'needs.' We currently have a choice of either acknowledging that fact and beginning work immediately (if not sooner! ) towards sustainable, well managed Powerdown whereby everybody (with the Western world leading) uses far less, far more sustainably, or we can continue to entertain myopic fantasies that the cult of growth and rampant blind consumerism can be maintained indefinitely when our entire resource base (not just oil) is already stretched or becoming stretched to the limit.

Soil, arable land area, silicon, copper, uranium, fresh water, seafood...choose a resource and our production levels have already 'peaked' or are rapidly approaching that point. To spend valuable time, energy and will trying to work out technological means to continue consuming at unsustainable rates (whether that be personal transport or any other 'consumption), is nothing short of ill-informed madness.

It's up to each individual to decide whether working at a governmental (political), community or individual level is the most fruitful to achieve Powerdown and Relocalisation. All other choices involve violent, organised or chaotic fascism sooner or later. A privileged few controlling remaining resources by force and the powerless multitudes submitting to their power.

It's not very pleasant to think about, but those are the cold, hard facts regarding our choices in a world of finite resources whose inhabitants invariably fail to recognise this fact.

Personally, I much prefer Powerdown and Relocalisation, but I have little faith in either government or the typical community to get their head around the problem and do something about it within the given time contraints, so I choose to prepare at the only level I do have faith in - the small, relatively isolated community where everyone is pretty much in the same boat, and at the individual level.

As I said, it's up to each individual to work out where their ability to change society stands, but please consider; holding out for a 'techno-fix' to our current situation is IMO, just as bad as blindly consuming what resources we have left - they both amount to the same thing in the end...the endorsement of endless growth and consumption on a planet with finite resources...resources which are already over-exploited when compared to our demand for them.

Just a couple of other notes:



Indeed blueman, that's why the US is currently pushing NATO to begin to 'protect' oil supplies (Click).

Of course, 'protecting' oil supplies is a short step from 'controlling' the flow of them altogether, as I'm sure many would appreciate. This revelation slipped under the radar largely, but it's of enormous consequence IMO.

And finally, for those interested in bio-fuel production at an individual or small community level, Copaifera langsdorfii (Diesel Tree) is something to look into. ~40 litres yield per year, per tree and it needs no refinement - just filtering which can be done with no energy cost. Grows best in warmer, wetter regions, but is fairly hardy and adaptable if you can improve a temperate micro-climate or irrigate a more arid climate.

Personally, I think bio-fuel is a very poorly thought out solution at a macro (full society) level, but it does have some merit on a small scale if you use perennial multi-use species sustainably (i.e. not annual, resource intensive, single use crops). It certainly is no substitution for oil - replacing oil with annual sourced bio-fuels would require another couple of uninhabited planets.

Some links:

Farmer planning diesel tree biofuel

Copaifera langsdorfii Species Information