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Out of Fuel: Why Hasn't Innovation Provided a Reliable Alternative to Oil?

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Re: Out of Fuel: Why Hasn't Innovation Provided a Reliable Alternative to Oil?

#21

Post by ig1 »

runningdogx wrote: post #16
ig1 wrote: post #9

It has, biofuel companies are even hotter than startups which huge amounts of money getting pumped into them. As the price of biofuels drop and the price of oil rises it's inevitable they'll cross-over and people will start buying biofuels because they're cheaper.

How are biofuels viable as a replacement for oil in the quantities our current lifestyle demands? They can't be produced in the same quantities that oil can be, and producing them requires farmland, so food prices go up. stats and graphs: http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-ethanol-production....

Simple Answer: We can't produce oil (we discover it), we can produce crops. We're pretty good at it.

Complex answer: If demand for crops goes up then farmers can grow more crops. Although it's hard to see if that's happening right now as corn ethanol subsidies and corn import taxes completely distort that market. If you want to produce corn ethanol you buy domestic corn as you can get US gov subsidies for it, you don't get those subsidies if you use imported corn, so naturally US produced corn ends up disproportionately in fuel production. Also it's worth noting that DDG is a byproduct of corn ethanol production, and DDG is used as animal feed. So it's misleading to think that corn used for fuel production is pulling it completely out of the food chain.

Re: Out of Fuel: Why Hasn't Innovation Provided a Reliable Alternative to Oil?

#22

Post by saulrh »

gaius wrote: post #12
demallien wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, and whilst we are on the subject, Does anyone here have their favourite theory for where the next big advance in energy tech is going to come from? Personally I'm surprised by the lack of government investing in nano-tech. Battery tech, fuel cells and solar panels all seem like prime candidates to benefit from a better understanding of how to construct materials at the molecular scale.

What can you do with "nanotech" that you can't do already? Bear in mind the scale that CPUs are manufactured to now.

A lot of our nanotech is still in the micro domain or dealing purely with chemicals. A CPU's fundamental organization is too small to be seen without a really, really good microscope, nanomedicines currently only deal with germs and minor changes to their environment, and so on. We have yet to touch the macro domain. For example, nobody has built a car body out of carbon nanotubes so far, and just imagine what would happen if someone found a way to make photovoltaic cells self-assemble on boards dipped in a vat.

Re: Out of Fuel: Why Hasn't Innovation Provided a Reliable Alternative to Oil?

#23

Post by angdis »

I think the question is wrong. It assumes that the problem is to find a "replacement" for oil, in other words, that all we need to do is replace the oil and everything else will work "the same."

For whatever reason, Americans are locked in to thinking that cities should be designed for cars and that every errand should involve driving somewhere (with the expectation that your destination should furnish your car with a free place to park).

It doesn't have to be that way, although I can understand why a country that burns up 20% of global output of petroleum commuting to work everyday might feel that we need to "replace" oil and that will "solve" the looming crisis.

There are OTHER ways of thinking about a solution that does not involve simply replacing oil. These would include:

* Go back to human-scale cities by increasing density and diversity of housing, businesses and facilities.

* Invest in public transit infrastructure, alternative transportation modes. Mandate walkable metro-centers.

Of course, people won't change unless there's a reason to do so. What I am saying is that "market forces" will push us towards those kinds of solutions INSTEAD of towards an oil replacement. People will be better off if they can adapt to this reality rather than hang on until the bitter end to the idea that the future will involve "happy motoring" forever.

Re: Out of Fuel: Why Hasn't Innovation Provided a Reliable Alternative to Oil?

#24

Post by mechanical_fish »

nickff wrote: post #4

The answer to the why we have not found an alternative is simply that we value volumetric and mass energy density, and this graph on Wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Energy_de... shows that gasoline has both of these, along with good resistance to premature ignition, and other favourable ignition characteristics. The solution will not be in finding something new, which is superior in ever…

A vivid demonstration: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&v...

Re: Out of Fuel: Why Hasn't Innovation Provided a Reliable Alternative to Oil?

#25

Post by ck2 »

demallien wrote: post #13
gaius wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, the thing is tho', there isn't much upside to shifting burning fossil fuels from the engine to the power station. Sure the power station is more efficient in burning the fuel - but then you have to charge batteries too, so that efficiency goes away again. There's really not much point to electric vehicles until you can run them all on batteries charged by nuclear power.

I agree, but the article was specifically talking about oil, not fossil fuels. But I don't think we're dead in the water on the electrical utility front - fusion research is finally starting to enter the final stretch before commercialisation - ITER is expected to get us to the point where we can construct the first commercial-break-even reactor: http://www.iter.org/proj/iterandbeyond Actually, I find ITER as a prett…

NIF is a well designed/funded scam to do weapon research, it will never have a consumer benefit.

Re: Out of Fuel: Why Hasn't Innovation Provided a Reliable Alternative to Oil?

#26

Post by Duff »

Easy. Oil is an awesome fuel for energy generation, especially distributed generation. In the 19th century, it was awesome enough for people to go to sea for months at a time slaughtering whales and rendering their fat to provide light to homes.

As someone who grew up in the country and got to spend lots of my childhood quality time splitting logs and hauling wood around, I have to tell you that the day the oil-fired boiler was installed in my house was a happy day.

That said, I think people take advantage of a good thing. I work in a downtown city center and live about 5 miles away. $5/gallon gas means about $60/month to me in direct costs. My co-workers live an average of 20 miles away, with a 15% living over 75 miles away. That's insane!

Re: Out of Fuel: Why Hasn't Innovation Provided a Reliable Alternative to Oil?

#27

Post by ry0ohki »

"The same legislation passed in the 1970s to force increased fuel efficiency, for instance, has brought no new innovation to U.S. vehicle fuel consumption in two decades"

I disagree with this. We've seen hybrids, pure electric and much more efficient normal engines created in the past 20 years with things like cylinder shut-off, etc. If someone from 1970 saw a Toyota Prius it would seem like something straight out of the Jetsons.

Re: Out of Fuel: Why Hasn't Innovation Provided a Reliable Alternative to Oil?

#29

Post by eftpotrm »

divtxt wrote: post #17
gaius wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the market prefers oil, is why. And it's easy to see why: oil packs an awful lot of kilojoules of energy into a given volume. That matters whether you are a motorbike or a cargo ship. And its price per KJ is pretty low too - remember that most "electric" solutions simply burn fuel in power stations instead of in engines, and use that to charge batteries, losing energy at every step of the conversion. We will…

Oil is like finding an underground vault full of batteries of vastly superior energy density to any electric battery you can make. How are you going to compete with that?!

That would be coal; oil adds the property that they vanish completely (from the user's perspective anyway) when they're flat, so you've got zero disposal issues.

Re: Out of Fuel: Why Hasn't Innovation Provided a Reliable Alternative to Oil?

#30

Post by roc »

angdis wrote: post #23

I think the question is wrong. It assumes that the problem is to find a "replacement" for oil, in other words, that all we need to do is replace the oil and everything else will work "the same." For whatever reason, Americans are locked in to thinking that cities should be designed for cars and that every errand should involve driving somewhere (with the expectation that your destination should furnish your car with…

That's pretty much it. Our infrastructure and assumptions are built on the existence of oil. Its ease of transport, its energy density, its relatively low costs. And there is no alternative with all those features.

So you need to address those assumptions before you can see where it's going.

Which is why we should probably stop spending 10x as much subsidizing commuting over transit. Because most of those suburbs are probably not going to recover from this housing crash. Growth economics allowed us to waste money building, zoning and living that way. But it's not going to work anymore. Not for nearly as many people.

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