[mrdelayer]

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Originally Posted by Roam /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm going to put up some numbers to illustrate how ridiculously infeasible a hydrogen based transportation system is. From here daily US gasoline consumption is 383.3 million gallons a day. There's about 125400 BTUs of energy in each gallon so over a year that works out to 17.5 Quads (quadrillion BTUs) or so. Car engines are about 25% efficient so that's about 4.4 Quads worth of work. Current fuel cells are about 60-70% efficient, call it 65%. For 4.4 Quads of work that's 6.7 Quads of Hydrogen. Liquifying H2 which is the only practical way to transport it takes about 40% of the energy content of the H2, so now we're up to 9.5 Quads. H2 evaporates at 4% a day so add that in and let's round it off to 10 Quads. Current electrolysis methods are about 30% efficient so that's about 33 Quads. Congratulations, you've nearly doubled the US energy consumption for transportation, and upped the overall consumption by close to 20%.

You never factored in the cost (energy-wise) of production of gasoline (drilling for oil, transporting the oil to refineries, refining the oil, transporting the gasoline to stations...) thus, you're basically comparing apples with oranges.

 

[Roam]

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Originally Posted by mrdelayer /img/forum/go_quote.gif You never factored in the cost (energy-wise) of production of gasoline (drilling for oil, transporting the oil to refineries, refining the oil, transporting the gasoline to stations...) thus, you're basically comparing apples with oranges.

It only makes a small difference. The oil industry has a nice handy measure known as energy returned on energy invested, in other words, how many barrels of oil does it take to pull a barrel out of the ground. Depending on where you are, this ranges from about 2:1 for oil sands projects to hundreds to one for oil fields in the middle east. Refining & transportation takes another small percentage, overall loss for the entire chain is only 5-10% or so on average.

There's a reason why ExxonMobil et al pull in $10 billion in pure profit every quarter.

 

[mrdelayer]

Takes two oils to get one out of the ground? So suddenly 17.5 quadrillion BTUs becomes 37e15 BTU.

We will run out of oil eventually. What better time to develop alternate fuels than now?

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

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Originally Posted by Roam /img/forum/go_quote.gif Sure, every place in the world is magically windy every day.

Its not magic. Its planetary rotation. LOL

I kid, but the beauty of the electric grid means that the windy areas support the non-windy areas. Do you really think the 10,000 residents of Lewis County New York need enough turbines to power 800k homes? No, the power is mostly shipped to NYC.

The world has enough windy places, and amazingly these places are lightly populated with cheap land.

 

[Cake]

I'm pretty sure that the future of transportation, for the US at least, lies with biodiesel and ethanol. Or SHOULD lie with biodiesel and ethanol, though there are powerful interests pushing other options.

Both are more or less carbon-neutral, since they are made from plants (plus etc) that have absorbed their carbon content from the atmosphere. So environmentally they're a clear-cut win.

And moreover, they—biodiesel especially—could make the US completely energy independent right NOW. Not in 20 years, but right now if we started growing adequate crops and switched our production. Even back in 1998, biodiesel had a 3.2 energy yield, meaning for 1 unit of fossil fuel used in production you get 3.2 units of biodiesel energy (compared to 0.805 for petroleum gas).

And now, scientists have discovered a species of algae that has a greater than 50% oil content... meaning that the entirety of ALL transportation fuel used in the United States could be replaced by biodiesel produced from growing algae, using only 0.3% of the landmass of the U.S. for algae farms. AND the algae would actually grow best in desert climates... and there is a ton of desert land in the U.S. that's otherwise unused, meaning that algae production wouldn't even have to displace our food crops or anything. As I see it, it's the perfect solution.

And that's not even mentioning thermal de-polymerization, which, unlike hydrogen which has massive efficiency problems within the process of conversion, has an 85% conversion efficiency rating. Meaning that of all the potential energy within animal fats, unused feedstock, and other waste products (including potentially human and animal sewage!) put into conversion, even adding in the fuel needed to power the conversion process, you get 85% of the total energy converted into the form of biodiesel. That's extremely efficient, and it can only get better.

All the facts involved in that are from the Wikipedia site on biodiesel, and are from cited, reliable sources.

So if our government and our corporate energy suppliers REALLY wanted to get it done, the United States could be approaching energy independence right NOW. Especially if we'd reconsider our dated and reactionary nuclear energy policies and change most of our electricity production from coal to nuclear, like some European countries have done.

So yeah. I, for one, have no idea why we're still buying oil from the Middle East, considering the political problems, environmental problems, and security issues of energy dependence involved in that. And I have no idea why hydrogen is considered anything more than a pipe dream, at least for the near future. But such is the way the world runs.

 

[Trippytiger]

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Originally Posted by Cake /img/forum/go_quote.gif So yeah. I, for one, have no idea why we're still buying oil from the Middle East, considering the political problems, environmental problems, and security issues of energy dependence involved in that.

Oh my goodness, do you have any idea how much of America's oil actually comes from the Middle East? Only three of the top fifteen countries that the US imports oil in are located in that region, and of them two are US allies and one is currently occupied by American troops. Together, they accounted for only 23.5% of oil imported from the top fifteen countries in January. The "all of our oil comes from the Middle East and that's bad!" argument bothers me to no end.

You can find the data I'm basing this off of here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/p...nt/import.html

On another note, those are some interesting facts about biodiesel. It seems to be more promising than I realized.

 

[Cake]

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Originally Posted by Trippytiger /img/forum/go_quote.gif Oh my goodness, do you have any idea how much of America's oil actually comes from the Middle East? Only three of the top fifteen countries that the US imports oil in are located in that region, and of them two are US allies and one is currently occupied by American troops. Together, they accounted for only 23.5% of oil imported from the top fifteen countries in January. The "all of our oil comes from the Middle East and that's bad!" argument bothers me to no end. You can find the data I'm basing this off of here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/p...nt/import.html On another note, those are some interesting facts about biodiesel. It seems to be more promising than I realized.

I know we don't buy all our oil from the Middle East. I believe much of it actually comes from Canada. But it's undeniable that our interests in the stability of Middle East oil supplies have caused numerous problems. The first Gulf War, for example. And the shaky alliance with Saudi Arabia, which wouldn't have existed in the first place without them having control over oil supplies, though now the relationship is sustained by our interests in anti-terrorism action.

I guess, simply, I just find it irritating that we (the U.S.) have the capability and the incentive (financially, politically, and socially gasoline and oil prices have been a deep, deep concern in the U.S. ever since the 70's) to be energy-independent and still we don't do it.

 

[Born2bwire]

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Originally Posted by mrdelayer /img/forum/go_quote.gif Takes two oils to get one out of the ground? So suddenly 17.5 quadrillion BTUs becomes 37e15 BTU. We will run out of oil eventually. What better time to develop alternate fuels than now?

That's for shale oil, which for now does not account for a significant amount of the oil that's drilled. As said before, the EROEI for oil varies, I've heard that it's as low as 5 for deep sea wells and has been in the hundreds as Roam already stated. The EROEI on ethanol is rather poor, around 1-2 at best. It's better for sugar cane, I think it might be around 1.8 where corn and soy is maybe 1.3.

Another major problem with biofuels is the cost of resource it takes. Illinois is the second largest producer of soybeans in the country and we have a target of meeting half the gasoline needs in the state with biofuels. The US has some of the largest amounts of arable land in the world but having to produce the crops for biofuel would put a large strain on our land and water. What happens with countries like Japan that are not even able to produce enough food for themselves?

 

[Trippytiger]

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Originally Posted by Born2bwire /img/forum/go_quote.gif What happens with countries like Japan that are not even able to produce enough food for themselves?

Obviously they would import, like they do with everything that they can't produce in sufficient quantities to sustain themselves right now.

You make an excellent point about the sheer amount of additional resources that converting entirely to biofuels would entail. It's something I've thought about a lot myself, although I've never looked for numbers. However, producing ethanol from cellulose should make it a less daunting prospect, as that allows for substantially more biomass to be converted to fuel than current ethanol production methods do. That should increase the volume of ethanol produced per acre of crops greatly.

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

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Originally Posted by Cake /img/forum/go_quote.gif And now, scientists have discovered a species of algae that has a greater than 50% oil content... meaning that the entirety of ALL transportation fuel used in the United States could be replaced by biodiesel produced from growing algae

Will exhaust smell like fishsticks? That would be kickass!

 

[Cake]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Born2bwire /img/forum/go_quote.gif \Another major problem with biofuels is the cost of resource it takes. Illinois is the second largest producer of soybeans in the country and we have a target of meeting half the gasoline needs in the state with biofuels. The US has some of the largest amounts of arable land in the world but having to produce the crops for biofuel would put a large strain on our land and water. What happens with countries like Japan that are not even able to produce enough food for themselves?

That's why I don't think ethanol, which displaces food crops, is as promising as biodiesel, which can be produced most efficiently from algae grown in desert land that isn't otherwise arable.