Physics For Future Presidents twists facts on electric vehicles and nuclear blasts 9

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1. 

   Delay And Deny Posted 1:56 pm
   16 Sep 2008

   Brainiac Goes HydrogenWorld-Famed Scientist in Nanostructures Says Hydrogen is Plentiful, Affordable and Proven
   http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=7666
   The man Time Magazine once named Hero of the Planet, Stanford R. Ovshinsky, will give a keynote presentation on the subject at the important nanotechnology conference in October.
   But Ovshinsky revealed the basics of his findings in a recorded interview on The Promise of Tomorrow, a scientific radio program to be aired Sunday, Sept. 21, more than a week before the conference.
   On the radio program Ovshinsky explains in the most elementary way how we got into the energy mess and how science already knows the easy way out:
   Currently the only portable and easily available energy source for our vehicles are gasoline and natural gas (both finite), and electricity at our wall plugs. But oil needs to be conserved and used for airplane fuel, and electricity isn't there yet (the new Chevrolet Volt will only have a range of 40 miles). While hydrogen is plentiful when converted day and night by the power of wind farms, the tides, solar, thermal, and hydro. And, when stored as a solid, is much safer than gasoline while just as portable.

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2. 

   vakibs Posted 9:42 pm
   16 Sep 2008

   energy density is not everythingJoe
   You have a round about way of rebutting the criticism against battery vehicles. What are these weird factors of multiplication to factor in the capacity of battery vehicles to get charged overnight ?
   Agreed, energy density per weight is a sound advantage for liquid hydrocarbons. But this advantage is important only when we consider the driving range.
   Energy density places key barriers on the driving range of a vehicle. Most consumers look for driving ranges below 100 km for daily use, and the current battery technology is good enough for this.
   New generation of batteries such as Lithium-polymer and Lithium-sulphur batteries provide much higher driving ranges.. around 1500 km.
   As long as your requirements are within the driving range offered by the technology in question, you don't care about energy density anymore. What you care about now is energy efficiency, for which electric drive is the king.
   We have to accept that there will always be cases which have driving range requirements which far exceed what are offered by batteries. For such cases, we have no other way but use hydrocarbons. These cases are rare and the corresponding requirements for hydrocarbon fuels are much smaller : biofuels can be used to satisfy that need, in a post-peak-oil scenario.  
   There are new promising technologies which offer an energy density which is higher than hydrocarbons. Boron gas can be used in fuel-cells, and this technology beats gasolene in the energy density advantage. (Hydrogen fuel cells beat gasolene when you consider energy density per weight, but energy density per volume is much lower for Hydrogen). If Boron fuel cells become popular, we would have no need for liquid hydrocarbons at all. Boron fuel cells compress 3 times as much energy as gasolene of the same volume. And their energy density per weight is 1.19 times that of gasolene.
   
   
   
   Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.

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3. 

   Biodiversivist Posted 1:27 am
   17 Sep 2008

   Many families have two carsAn electric or plug-in hybrid would be ideal as a second car. The other car can always be used for longer trips or commutes beyond electric range. I think this will be the niche for the first viable electrics. The i-MiEV, due to hit the Japanese market next year may be that car.
   http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/photo/unumediastudio1.jpg
   I don't know why anyone would use a book like this anymore. It isn't peer reviewed. You are better off doing research on any given subject using Google than reading a book in today's world. My daughter used to buy books on pet care for her various pets. She soon learned that a book is just one author's opinion. The internet offers dozens of conflicting opinions and the trick is to find the wheat for the chaff. Books like this are rapidly becoming obsolete.
   The internet is serving as a kind of informal peer review system.
   
   In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

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4. 

   vakibs Posted 1:32 am
   17 Sep 2008

   or simply you can rent the other carThe other car can always be used for longer trips or commutes beyond electric range.
   Most people use a rented car anyways, whenever they are making loooong trips.. in order to avoid all the hassles of insurance + accidental damage + need for bigger cars + need for camping cars etc..
   
   
   
   Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.

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5. 

   gzuckier Posted 2:25 am
   17 Sep 2008

   and....of course, the favorable torque curve of the electric motor makes it unnecessary to have a motor which delivers several hundred horsepower at 6000 rpm in order to have enough torque at 1000 rpm to accelerate the car rapidly from a standstill; nor does the electric motor have the same pumping losses when run at cruising power that the large gasoline engine shows at part throttle (not a problem for diesels).

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6. 

   Pangolin Posted 2:37 am
   17 Sep 2008

   Or rent a trailer-generator.One of the prototypes to the Tesla electric vehicle was fitted with a trailer-generator for road testing and long trips. There is no reason why these couldn't be standardized in 10KW and 20KW sizes and rented at U-Huals. With pre-registration there is no reason that a driver shouldn't be able to pick one of these up in the same time period it would take to fill a gas tank.
   As people would only be using these for the occasional long trip the trailer would also provide extra luggage space that removes some of the need to have extra vehicle volume.
   
   Put the Carbon Back

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7. 

   edarnold41 Posted 5:05 am
   17 Sep 2008

   Batteries and dischargeYour article quotes a useful life for Lithium-ion batteries of 3,000 "deep-discharge" cycles; were you aware that this means draining the battery completely (thus, your plug-in car is dead in the water)? Unfortunately, a known problem with Li-ion batteries is the memory effect: after a partial discharge, recharging the battery does not take it back to 100% capacity, and repeated partial discharges, the most likely real-world operating cycle, result in less and less stored charge. Unless your charging system has a capability of fully discharging the battery before starting each recharge, your 40 mile radius example might quickly become half of that or less.
   "Physics is remorseless: it doesn't care about your good intentions."

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8. 

   Earl Killian Posted 6:21 am
   17 Sep 2008

   energy density is not everythingvaklbs, please note that I was the author of Confusing Future Presidents, not Joe Romm. Joe cross-posted it here from ClimateProgress. I agree with you about energy density. The 2002 Toyota RAV4-EV in my garage has its 63Wh/g EV-95 batteries, and it works fine.  Professor Muller is criticizing Li-Ion because it is only 160 Wh/kg.  I apologize if my rebuttal seemed too roundabout.

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9. 

   Earl Killian Posted 6:27 am
   17 Sep 2008

   Batteries and dischargeedarnold41, you state that Li-Ion batteries have memory, which is not true.  You are thinking of NiCd.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-Ion_battery

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