There were major changes in practices in response to this, so it isn’t happening ever again.
nigeljsays
Thomas @323, “Civilization itself is managed by damned fools…etcetera!”
Good god man, you might be right! But what makes you think you would be any better?
Personally while I get your cynicism and reality check, I still prefer a bit of optimism and hope thrown in for my sanity. We have to at least try the conventional approach to mitigating the climate problem. Good to see you are open minded about energy solutions.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @338 yes there’s some bias and partisanship in the link posted by KM on EV’s, but are you any better? Couple of examples.
“Heck, even charging at home every day is more of a pain than occasionally filling up. ” But almost nobody would be chaging an EV every day. Once a week is more realistic.
“EVs are heavy.” Would your multi engine fuel efficient cars end up being that much lighter? On the drawing board maybe, but the real world?
“There isn’t a GHG rationale for EVs. ” Not much yet but obvioiusly it wouldn’t make sense to wait until the grid is perfect, or near perfect, before deploying EV’s. It would just delay the development of EVs making things even harder. There will always be people who buy EV’s for a variety of reasons and it all synergises together ultimately.
EV’s are very quiet, and have no noxious exhaust fumes. This can be reduced on ICE’s, but it adds weight with extra sound insulation, and complicated exhaust systems.
But the same principle applies to your ideas. There’s room for varied approaches to transport. The world is right in the middle of a grand experimental phase.
Al Bundysays
nigelj: But the same principle applies to your ideas. There’s room for varied approaches to transport. The world is right in the middle of a grand experimental phase.
AB: Yep. Batteries could take a serious leap or s-curve out. We don’t know the future. I’m like you and zebra: explore all paths without picking a winner and we’ll see which one, two, or three build the future.
(I’m betting on the flux capacitor. Nothing like arriving at your destination before you set out.)
E-P, PHEV is not BEV. Home charging is slow, which is grand for PHEVs but sucks for EVs. You and I are on the exact same page with regard to vehicles: Hybrids give the most bang per KWH of battery carried by the fleet. For what it costs batterywise to turn a single ICE into an EV one can turn perhaps 20 ICEs into hybrids (preferably plug-in). The improvement in fleet performance that 20 hybrids represent is an order of magnitude greater than what a single EV represents. Batteries are unbeatable for short trips since ICEs suck for the first few minutes of operation. That’s one reason my design uses two engines: only a threeish horsepower engine ever has sucky operation. Internal combustion rules the highways because liquid fuel is light and ICEs don’t degrade like batteries do (other than that stone-cold startup). PQEVs (plug-in quadbrid electric vehicles) allow for each energy source to exist smack dab in its comfort zone while minimizing vehicle weight. I can’t think of how a pure ICE vehicle would have much use in the future. Thus, discussions that compare EVs to pure ICEs are dorky. And since I dislike dorky I whine and complain about said discussions.
And yeah, an accident in the 1970s says just about nothing about future nuke safety. Like software: ya find a bug, ya fix said bug and it will never happen again.
Al Bundysays
nigelj: EV’s are very quiet, and have no noxious exhaust fumes. This can be reduced on ICE’s, but it adds weight with extra sound insulation, and complicated exhaust systems.
AB: You’re not considering how noise is made. Current ICEs are noisy because they do not expand their gasses to near atmospheric. That exhaust poppet opens and BANG! much of the remaining energy in the charge (about 1/3 is left) is turned into noise. If ya expand gasses to atmospheric then the opening of said exhaust poppet is durn near SILENT.
And you’re not considering scale. Since a quadbrid vehicle’s larger engine is perhaps 25HP the mechanics and whatnot are all TINY and LIGHT. That includes the itsy-bitsy insulated engine box. Engine design works best when almost all variables are eliminated, or at least tightly constrained. Since atmospheric temperatures reach around 120F engines MUST be designed to work in at least that warm an environment, unless you want to screw up your engine’s performance by adding another variable.
And of course my engine is designed to literally clean the air by burning up more pollution that exists in typical intake air than leaves the exhaust pipe. Surely you didn’t think I’d accept anything less?
The scope envisioned on the Introduction page pegs the requirement at at least 50 ppm or around 400 hundred gigatons. That’s too small?
…and haven’t figured out that Mark Z. Jacobson is a charlatain…
I admit to taking a mild approach, but I thought I’d made it reasonably clear Jacobsen’s ideas, and indeed the entire renewables approach, would not come even close to what needs to happen.
The basic premise of the Approach is the idea of recycling the carbon. Given the energy needed nuclear of one form or another would be needed. Given the inevitability of oil depletion, but also given the current impact of its use now, recycling seems to me a better tack than trying to lock it up. Perhaps some combination of the techniques would make sense, but at least some of the carbon, I should think, would need to be converted to some sort of alkalai and introduced into the oceans, given the carbon load already present and the effect it is already having.
The scale of the problem just seems so overwhelming I figured we’d need to go big and go long. If I didn’t communicate that please provide some additional suggestions.
Al Bundysays
nigelj,
and you’re not considering temperature. If an engine’s exhaust is below 570F then sound-deadening silicone pipes and baffles can be used instead of clanging metals. Silicone exhaust systems are lighter, cheaper, and way quieter than metal systems. Kind of the opposite of your initial thoughts, eh?
The problems “inherent” to ICEs are simply the result of poor design that has propagated because it has become “common knowledge” and “axiomatic”.
Al Bundysays
me: Surely you didn’t think I’d accept anything less
AB: than doing whatever it takes to be able to say, “EVs SUCK because they don’t clean the air”?
Al Bundysays
nigelj,
Perhaps you misunderstood what I meant by “occasionally filling up”. At 200mpg a 5 gallon tank lasts a month and a 10 gallon tank lasts two.
nigelj: But almost nobody would be chaging an EV every day. Once a week is more realistic.
AB: Home charging is slow. So you either do it efficiently and often or go elsewhere to bake your battery.
nigelj: Would your multi engine fuel efficient cars end up being that much lighter? On the drawing board maybe, but the real world?
AB: A 3HP engine and a 25HP engine combined weigh perhaps 150lbs all in. 10 gallons of petrol weighs 60lbs. A Maxwell ultracapacitor truck starter weighs 21lbs. So a constantly varying 171 to 231lbs, for an average of 200lbs. Add in 50lbs for whatnot (and the Maxwell might not be appropriate) and still pretty minor compared to battery weights for a similar 2000 mile range, eh?
nigelj: Not much yet but obvioiusly it wouldn’t make sense to wait until the grid is perfect, or near perfect, before deploying EV’s.
AB: Batteries die (but may go on to a second life) in about 10 years so it is idiotic to build vehicles that will need new batteries before the grid allows EVs to beat hybrids, with the metric NOT being at-end-of-life but averaged-throughout-life. When it comes to building cars today who the ef cares about the grid of 20+ years from now?
Al Bundysays
nigelj and Kevin McKinney,
Thanks for prompting me. I’m in the process of pondering the course that I’m the source of and kinda-sorta an adjunct professor for and you guys have helped a ton.
And Kevin, I’ve been hardest on you cuz I respect you no end. (At a par with Ray…)
Al Bundysays
zebra,
Perhaps I’m wrong but E-P’s point is that reactive power is “ghostly”. It ain’t so much a load as a math problem.
Methinks that you are suffering from aversion blindness. I have NEVER seen an E-P post that was completely wrong. Yep, I’ve disagreed with many, but his underlying facts are damn near irrefutable.
Al Bundysays
me: it is idiotic to build vehicles that will need new batteries before the grid allows EVs to beat hybrids, with the metric NOT being at-end-of-life but averaged-throughout-life.
AB: at a 1 to 20 ratio. Remember, it ain’t about making the coolest and bestest but about dropping CO2 emissions. 20 hybrids NUKE a single EV and NOBODY here can say diddly to refute that. E-P is right. Do the friggin math instead of clinging to emotion.
I’ve read that capacitors require a resistor and so are limited to below 50% efficiency.
If anyone actually wrote that, they are totally wrong. If you are able to do your own calculations, try doing some numbers based on the declared resistance of e.g. Skeleton ultracapacitors vs. the capacitance for 5-second charge from zero to rated voltage.
If you aren’t able to do your own calculations, you are not competent to have an opinion.
E-P 348: Are you a paid agent of fossil fuel companies (which is what Greenpeace is, as that’s where lots of their money comes from)?
BPL: Are you sure it doesn’t come from the Jews? Channeled through the Vatican? Perhaps via the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, and George Soros?
zebrasays
Al Bundy, about your kludgemobile.
Dude, I hope your actual engine design is nothing like this.
What about all the clutches? And all the separate engineering teams fighting with each other? And so on?
I offer this critique because I’ve always had to fight the tendency to over-design. Hence I have come to see the merit in setting things up to evolve organically… nudgeing instead of kludgeing. You might get a complicated result, but it will by definition work.
And if you want to do a real-world exercise in motor-counting: Should a standard BEV have 1, 2, or 4 motors? There’s a whole bunch of design engineering even with that simple question.
JCHsays
Athena, the 166-teraflop Cray XT4 system which is four times as powerful as the Earth Simulator, is being utilized in a dedicated mode in an attempt to resolve the role of clouds in climate variability and change.
The effort is the result of a partnership of climate research organizations from the United States [NICS, ORCCSI, Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA)], Europe [European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)], and Japan [the University of Tokyo and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC)] and funded by the National Science Foundation.
“The ultimate goal of these simulations is to explore the possibility of revolutionizing climate and weather prediction, taking advantage of a large computing resource,” said Principal Investigator and COLA Director Jim Kinter. The project has been allocated the entire Athena system for at least three months, beginning its work on Oct. 1.
“Using Athena’s computational might to more fully understand the interaction between the earth’s weather, its land and its oceans, is a step in the right direction to addressing the vexing issues associated with climate change,” said Tim Killeen, NSF’s assistant director for Geosciences. “We applaud the University of Tennessee for leveraging these resources and taking leadership in this international collaboration.”
Did a nobody learn about the above from the Palmer and Stevens PNAS article?
Killiansays
Re #345 Al Bundy said AB: OK, I’ll translate “stupid” for you: Drunk as a Skunk.
Nice mirror you’ve got there. I do typically respond here late at night, and I find the old thing about men in their fifties being sleepyheads to be unhappily true. I’ve had sleep apnea for years, but in the last year anytime sleepiness hs become absurdly common. Sleepiness comes and goes at all sorts of hours of the day, but is, of course, worse late at night when one is up longer than one should be… responding to idiots.
But, hey, if my son were not 12 years old, being a drunk might be a great way to ride out the apocalypse.
Or, maybe I was using my phone to post here… a true nightmare.
Killiansays
Re #327 Engineer-Poet said And Killian reasons in a circle @299:
Bullshit. There is ZERO proof, let alone evidence, you can store *anything* safely for 30k years, let alone nuclear, and certainly not for hundreds of thousands of nuclear plants built over tens of thousands of years.
That you think the risk of the ecosystem for something you have zero ability to control for the entirey of its lifetime when there are solutions that have ZERO environmental risk shows how absurd and bizarre your thinking is. It’s not circular, it’s delusional to the point of insanity.
Understand this: You SAYING containment will last longer than radiocativity does not make it so. It is, in fact, unknowable. Buildings and bridges fall. Engineering fails. Humans screw up. Nature does as she damned well pleases.
Only a fool or a crazy person would consider nuclear when safer, more sustainable options exist.
You are a one-issue activist, and that makes you the biggest fool on this site, more dangerous even than the denialists.
almost nobody would be chaging an EV every day. Once a week is more realistic.
I’ve charged my PHEV 3x in one day, and that was only limited by opportunity. There is NO reason not to plug in and charge at EVERY stop, if charging is available. That begs the question: WHY ISN’T CHARGING AVAILABLE? You can park right under a pole with a transformer on it, but it might as well be miles away for all the good it does the driver right now. We have a “last-yard problem”.
“There isn’t a GHG rationale for EVs.” Not much yet
There is an excellent GHG rationale for EVs; NG-fired turbines are less carbon-intensive than petroleum, especially with all the emissions from well-drilling through refining and down to dispensing.
David B. Bensonsays
Killian @369 — The salt domes east of Carlsbad, NM, have been there for many tens of millions of years and will remain for many tens of millions of years more. These provide ideal storage for so-called nuclear waste.
nigeljsays
Engineer-Poet @371, yes I understand your point about charging an EV’s lithium batteries frequently. I understand its best to charge them before they get below about 50% because it prolongs life? My Electrolux stick vaccum cleaner sits permanently on a charger cradle.
However you missed my point, which was that AB was complaining about the so called inconvenience of charging an EV (or PHEV) everyday, and I simply mentioned that you dont have to charge everday if you dont want to, once a week, or every few days, would be ok for most people if they arent too worried about battery life.
Good comment about NG turbines.
Thomassays
#369 “There is ZERO proof, let alone evidence, you can store *anything* safely for 30k years, let alone nuclear, and certainly not for hundreds of thousands of nuclear plants built over tens of thousands of years.”
Sure. It’s a very long bow to expect that’s possible or sensible.
While there already exists ample evidence that VHTG Nuclear reactors can quite adequately (using present level technologies) process (burn up/reprocess) all existing nuclear waste products incl weapons grade waste back down to either a reusable Nuclear fuel for safe GenIV reactors or to an inert form where less than 100 years of long term storage might still be advisable.
This could be done right now. Unfortunately there is no global consensus to adapt such an approach nor an agreement on how best to fund the infrastructure required to make it economically viable and fair to all.
iow all nuclear actors (and the UN too I expect) need to be involved and agree to a streamlined process for the long term benefit of all. Who what where and when and then where to store the excess waste products and who pays for that.
While there is no global ban on nuclear weapons or an enforcement process to have the existing stockpiles destroyed completely (by collective military force if necessary) it really doesn’t matter that much what is done with all the nuclear waste for the time being.
nigeljsays
AB @359 & 362: “Batteries die (but may go on to a second life) in about 10 years so it is idiotic to build vehicles that will need new batteries before the grid allows EVs to beat hybrids, with the metric NOT being at-end-of-life but averaged-throughout-life. When it comes to building cars today who the ef cares about the grid of 20+ years from now?…..Remember, it ain’t about making the coolest and bestest but about dropping CO2 emissions. 20 hybrids NUKE a single EV and NOBODY here can say diddly to refute that. E-P is right. Do the friggin math instead of clinging to emotion.”
20 hybrids nuke a single EV? I’m not seeing it, so YOU need to do the maths and prove it. I’m assuming you mean a conventional hybrid that has actually been built and runs on petrol, not biofuels.
But I do accept EV’s have fairly minimal value in reducing emissions if run off coal fired power. The efficiency of the engine probably counts for something but not much and gets offset by the manufacturing of those large batteries.
But none of that was my point. If we wait until the grid is zero carbon and then start making electric cars it will be years, decades before enough cars are made in quantity because it takes ages to ramp up construction. Thats lost time. You want to make them now so manufacturing plant is built, and there are plenty ready when the grid is zero carbon or getting towards it. And so that problems are ironed out earlier rather than later. You are thinking one dimensionally.
In addition EV’s make some sense if run off gas fired power.
And EV’s they are cheaper to run than petrol countries with cheap power, although I know you were referring just to the emissions issue. But that cost alone is a temptation for some people. Taxi drivers love hybrids because they are quiet and cheap to run.
Thank’s for the comments on the size of engines and all that. I hear where you are coming from. ICE engines are not my thing, but intuitively it looks like theres “room for improvement”.
Ray Ladburysays
David Benson: “The salt domes east of Carlsbad, NM, have been there for many tens of millions of years and will remain for many tens of millions of years more. These provide ideal storage for so-called nuclear waste.”
Well, if you don’t count the brine in those salt deposits, which is attracted by the heat from nuclear waste and will make short work of the casks containing it. For long term storage, intact granite bedrock is a much better option.
AB 354: an accident in the 1970s says just about nothing about future nuke safety.
BPL: It says that particular accident won’t happen again, but it points out that unexpected ways to fail keep popping up. E-P and his pals assume that everything has been worked out, so there will never be a Brown’s Ferry, an Enrico Fermi, a Three-Mile Island, a Chernobyl, or a Fukushima Daiichi again. But I see a pattern of humans failing to cope with an immensely complicated and dangerous system. I assume people will continue to make mistakes; the nuke freaks discount that possibility.
PHEV outsources the storage problem to the grid (stationary). Stationary storage is VASTLY easier and cheaper than mobile storage. This is why it is IMPERATIVE to push transport-related storage issues out to the grid; better for everything. Seriously, compare the cost of a kWh-worth of molten “solar salt” to a kWh of Li-ion battery; vastly cheaper and far smaller problems with cycling wear.
Home charging is slow
Sez who? If I finished and installed my 240 V charger kit, I’d be able to fully charge my car in about 80 minutes despite having only half the current draw (16 A) of a full EV. Your typical EV like a Leaf would get a full charge in a few hours. That’s plenty fast if you have anything else to do in the meantime; just takes planning.
which is grand for PHEVs but sucks for EVs.
The grid is the grid; there is no reason for home charging to be much slower than anything except fast DC chargers for highway driving (which is only a small fraction of total driving). My own home electric service more than saturates the max charging power of my car; it would saturate it even if my car could charge at 32 amps. This is not a home-based problem.
Wanna fix a real-world problem? Find out what to do with waste polyvinyl chloride. There’s way too much of it in things like packaging. I have worked out a stoichiometric result of breaking it down but I have no idea if that’s what would happen IRL.
The scope envisioned on the Introduction page pegs the requirement at at least 50 ppm or around 400 hundred gigatons. That’s too small?
Not on the CO2, but the energy requirements. You’ve got to get enough energy to not merely displace the carbon from fossil fuels, but (for the next few decades) also have enough surplus to pull atmospheric CO2 down by as much as 100 ppm. This is an eye-popping number, but ultimately manageable.
You’re NOT going to do it by reducing CO2 to hydrocarbons and pumping them back in the ground. That is at least 10x as hard as capturing it as carbonates; IOW, ain’t gonna happen. I would love to know how much energy it would take to get rid of that CO2 via “enhanced weathering”; that is very likely the easiest (lowest-energy, thus fastest and cheapest) path to atmospheric remediation.
30k years is NOTHING, and we only need 500 years. We’ve got this.
zebrasays
#361 Al Bundy,
“Never completely wrong.”
AB, I know it isn’t your area of expertise, but it should be obvious to you that when someone says that
1. “capacitors don’t store energy”…
2. “capacitors store trivial amounts of energy”…
and then talks about ultracapacitors that might be used in automobiles…
clearly doesn’t know what he is talking about, or has cognitive issues, or is otherwise impaired.
He had his chance at #173, and he failed the test.
As I said to Mal, I’m trying to provide people with the correct science on this, in ways that can be understood. EP is not at all different from the Denialists who keep repeating the same memes no matter how often they are debunked.
zebrasays
Picture Worth ….,
I just referenced my #173 responding to AB, and if you go through some of these images you will see all the missed opportunities:
How much CO2 could be saved building those communities with proper orientation, solar panels, geothermal slabs, R30-50 insulation, and a local DC grid, and some small batteries…
And what would you have to give up? Some extra ugly design features, or granite countertops, or gold-plated toilets? That stuff can be retrofitted if you have the money sometime in the future, much of which you will accumulate through savings/profits on energy.
There is an excellent GHG rationale for EVs… especially with all the emissions from well-drilling through refining and down to dispensing…
Yes. I’ve noticed that the emissions footprint of petroleum distribution tends to ‘hide in plain sight’: even though we all see those tanker trucks from time to time parked at our corner service station; even though we occasionally pass by refineries; and even though we know perfectly well that the raw materials have been (at best) pipelined hundreds or thousands of miles, or (at worst) shipped halfway around the planet, to get to the refineries in the first place; nevertheless, we tend to forget that all of that gives the gas/petrol a significant embedded emissions cost before ever we pump it into our tanks and drive away.
Throwing away somewhere between 3/5ths and 4/5s of the chemical energy as we do–because that’s the thermal efficiency level of contemporary ICEs:
(Which is reason to wish Al godspeed in his endeavors to improve that number drastically. But it also highlights that, yes, most analyses find a considerable GHG warrant for BEVs–and one that ‘automatically’ improves as we continue to clean up the grid–which, yes, we actually are doing across the developed world.)
Ray Ladburysays
Killian: “I’ve had sleep apnea for years, but in the last year anytime sleepiness hs become absurdly common.”
You have my sympathy, and I hope the next year is better for you and for all of us.
Al Bundysays
E-P: NG-fired turbines are less carbon-intensive than petroleum, especially with all the emissions from well-drilling through refining and down to dispensing.
AB: I suppose that depends on fugitive natural gas emissions. I’ve read comparisons of CH4 and coal. For example, some guy named E-P was talking about how little has to escape to make natural gas a loser.
And yeah, I’m amazed at how little care seems to have gone into preventing the escape of volatiles when filling a vehicle.
E-P: If you aren’t able to do your own calculations, you are not competent to have an opinion.
AB: Which is why managers never have opinions about their engineers’ projects. Why audiophiles never have an opinion about stereo equipment unless they design stereos. Really, ‘How efficient are ultracapacitors?’ brings bile? What happened to ‘I’m here to educate and inform’?
________
zebra: What about all the clutches? And all the separate engineering teams fighting with each other? And so on?
AB: Only one clutch, for the cruising engine. The smaller engine is just a generator to feed the battery. Of course, the cruising engine can instead be built as a generator, which gets rid of the clutch, eliminates the direct link between the cruising engine and the world outside the engine box, and eliminates the need to finesse the motors’ output when engaging the cruising engine. However, it reduces efficiency. In this case I’d suggest three or four generators of different sizes so the car can dial in a precise power output by selecting which generators are engaged. This eliminates the need to alter combustion characteristics as torque requirements change.
No transmission. No radiator (pre-compression cylinders function as oil coolers and since the engine box is held at a constant temperature any cooling can be handled to perfection by fins). No muffler to speak of. No spark. No throttle. No EGRecirculation. No scavanging. No valve overlap. No variable valves. Minimal exhaust treatment.
The flywheel(s) or ultracapacitor targets a storage level inversely proportional to vehicle speed, so at rest it’s at full charge and at top speed it’s empty.
The electric drivetrain is essentially the same as any old EV. (I prefer two motors, one for each front wheel.)
______
Killian: Bullshit. There is ZERO proof, let alone evidence, you can store *anything* safely for 30k years, let alone nuclear, and certainly not for hundreds of thousands of nuclear plants built over tens of thousands of years.
AB: E-P gave a detailed plan, with short half-life stuff allowed to decay or be used for whatnot and long half-life stuff either used for fuel or scattered into the ocean or stored in designed-to-be-indestructible casks, with various options for storing said casks. It was pretty comprehensive, included examples, and gave reasons for various options. It’s too bad you missed it. Probably the comment-hiding bug in RC’s system.
And my posting point stands. When tossing an insult (as opposed to a normal post) check your post carefully or you’ll look like a doofus. Even more so if you make not two but three errors in a short comment and then post a correction for only one of them.
nigeljsays
Disposal of nuclear waste controversy. Its fair comment that you can never 100% guarantee that a storage site wont have an accidental leak, but Chernobyl was a pretty good example of a spectacular accident, and potential ecological damage, but even the most polluted 10kms exclusion zone bounced back fairly fast ecologically.
And accidents at storage sites can be minimised, and would be fairly rare so I’m not sure its a huge issue. Ecosystems are threatened by all sorts of things including natural forces that can wipe out areas for quite long periods of time.
However the other side of the argument is the fact that the world cant seem to get its act together on a proper system of long term storage for nuclear waste. This is quite perplexing, and doesn’t inspire confidence. Its certainly kicking the can down the road pun not intended. And the stainless steel sarcophagus over Chernoblyl is already rusting….
nigeljsays
Sorry I’m talking nonsense about the stainless steel Chernobyl Sarcophagus rusting. Bit of a typo. The old concrete and steel sarcophagus was pretty rough and rusted and is being replaced by a stainless steel sarcophagus as below:
Keep on digging that hole for yourself Zebra. Must be pretty deep by now. Take a break and google “Dunning Kruger” :) Mr Nuclear Man was right about capacitors and transformers in the context at the time.
Al Bundysays
zebra,
I had to smile at “klugemobile”. My primary focus has been to eliminate all the kluges in current engine design. They add weight and expense while reducing efficiency. There’s no wiggle room above 60% at the shaft.
I call the all-generator design a digital engine. Since the generators’ output affects supply as opposed to load there’s no need to be concerned about precision or response time. As long as the battery’s drain or charge rate never gets above its comfort zone everything’s good. And the battery is protected by that super-powerful ultracapacitor or flywheel. Interesting how “simple and bulletproof” can be seen as “klugemobile”.
That said, the first configuration I mentioned grabbed an extra 10-20mpg in highway mode via what could be considered a kluge. So your point is well taken. A mechanically connected cruising engine is probably a concept car thing.
Al Bundysays
nigelj: 20 hybrids nuke a single EV? I’m not seeing it, so YOU need to do the maths and prove it.
AB: I’ve posted it here before. It’s simple. Use whatever numbers you prefer, but for example:
You are going to build 20 vehicles next year. You have enough batteries to build one EV or ten hybrids and ten PHEVs. Regular petrol cars get 35MPG. Hybrids get 55MPG. PHEVs get 75MPGe. EVs get 10,000MPGe (to give EVs a chance). All vehicles go 10,000 miles.
So, choose a fleet to build:
Fleet 1: 19 petrols at 35MPG = 5429 gallons + 1 for EV = 5430 gallons.
Fleet 2: 10 hybrids at 55MPG = 1818 gallons + 10 PHEVs at 75MPG = 1333 gallons for a total of 3151 gallons.
Given a baseline of 5714 gallons for 20 petrols, fleet one saves 284 gallons and fleet two saves 2563 gallons. 10:1 is way beyond skunked. “Nuked” is appropriate.
nigelj: If we wait until the grid is zero carbon and then start making electric cars it will be years, decades before
AB: You forget that the same technology for EVs applies to hybrids, too. It is the opposite of waiting. Call it training wheels or final solution. Whatever. It means that every vehicle built will have electrification technology aboard. A small rebate for hybrids would let them cream pure petrols into extinction quite rapidly. A large rebate for EVs just gives the rich toys to play with while they hog all the batteries.
Ray Ladbury @376 — The salt domes are completely dry but even so the radioactive waste is enclosed in ceramics called glass logs. These will last more than long enough.
Granite, on the other hand, can support cracks through which water can flow. Salt is self-sealing.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy #391, good answer. I must admit its hard to understand why Hybrids have not caught on more, given the fuel economy alone and even at the normal (unsubsidised) price. One reason may be that the body styling the Toyota Prius may have put a lot of people off hybrids. Humans are ultra fashion conscious.
The Apple Iphone was probably a hit partly because of the slick body styling, compared to the clunky Nokia Communicator. Humans are just monkeys who like shiny nice looking things.
The logic holds if batteries are a hard constraint on what you can build. But, obviously, if you can build 20 EVs, then it is everything else that gets ‘nuked’ mileage-wise.
To be fair, batteries are indeed a constraint–now. But the evidence suggests that that is a matter of capacity-building, not what I called a ‘hard constraint’.
nigelj wrote @375:
(deleted redundant response to AB’s 1 EV/20 hybrids, he got it in 390)
I do accept EV’s have fairly minimal value in reducing emissions if run off coal fired power.
I recall reading an anecdote of an expat in Singapore who bought a Tesla and was hit with a carbon-tax penalty because Singapore’s electricity is overwhelmingly from coal. At 380 Wh/mile and ~1000 g/kWh, a Model S charged on coal-fired power emits roughly 380 gCO2/mile. If we assume that gasoline produces about 9 kg CO2/gallon this is equivalent to 23.7 MPG fuel consumption.
This changes immensely with the type of power plant. If charged from a CCGT emitting 330 gCO2/kWh, the effective fuel economy of the Tesla leaps to almost 72 MPG. And of course methane leakage complicates it again….
If we wait until the grid is zero carbon and then start making electric cars it will be years, decades before enough cars are made in quantity because it takes ages to ramp up construction. Thats lost time.
This is true, and why I consider the PHEV to be in the current “sweet spot”. It bags immediate fuel savings, provides far greater energy flexibility and does not incur the weight and other penalties of a pure BEV. We should be pushing for almost every LDV sold to be PHEV.
I see a pattern of humans failing to cope with an immensely complicated and dangerous system.
Yes, there were screwups. Chernobyl was the ONLY one with measurable health consequences, and those consequences were vastly smaller than the every-day impacts of burning coal (or any other carbon-based fuel) to generate replacement power.
I assume people will continue to make mistakes; the nuke freaks discount that possibility.
The biggest mistake is calling people “nuke freaks” when they’ve got the only time-tested means of saving the planet from an anthropogenic climactic mass extinction event, possibly to include ourselves.
I’ll give you a hint: power-factor correction capacitors are rated in microfarads. Energy-storage ultracaps are rated in KILOfarads. I have a portable generator which was broken when I bought it; the engine ran but there was no electric output. It turned out there was a 12 μF 400 V capacitor in it which had failed. Replacing it made it produce juice. A 12 μF capacitor stores just 0.96 joules when fully charged at 400 volts. It is NOT an energy-storage device; it is generating reactive power to counter inductance.
I’m trying to provide people with the correct science on this, in ways that can be understood.
You understand nothing. You have nothing to contribute.
sidd @391: Thanks for that, more reading to do. The €10/tCO2 figure in the first paper is an early eye-opener.
zebrasays
#397 Engineer-Poet,
In my world, “understanding” means being able to explain things in one’s own words. Sometimes, getting a student to that point can take a while.
I asked you originally “what is the capacitor doing if it is not storing energy?”. Now you say that it is “generating reactive power”.
But here’s my problem:
I thought that you and I were actually in agreement that capacitors were used to eliminate reactive power… just a few comments ago, right?
This is very confusing.
And we were likewise in agreement that reactive power heated up lengths of wire, no?
This is also very confusing (or perhaps a wonderful breakthrough). If a capacitor can generate power, which can be used to heat a length of wire, we wouldn’t need either solar panels or nukes, would we?
But I just don’t think that’s the case; it sounds, as I said about your pre-heating plan, a bit like perpetual motion.
So we are back to the question: If the capacitor isn’t storing energy, what is it doing?
The logic holds if batteries are a hard constraint on what you can build. But, obviously, if you can build 20 EVs, then it is everything else that gets ‘nuked’ mileage-wise.
“If”. Tesla hasn’t even finished Gigafactory 1 yet. When complete it’s supposed to be able to manufacture 30 GWh/yr of cells and 50 GWh/yr of completed battery packs. This would do for half a million vehicles at 100 kWh each.
The USA buys about 17.5 million new LDVs per year. If each one was a Tesla-class BEV, it would require 35 Gigafactories to build their batteries. It would take considerable time to build that much manufacturing capacity.
Hybrids and PHEVs can use much smaller batteries with less energy-dense electrode chemistries like LiFePO4 which use mostly abundant materials. 17.5 million PHEVs @ 10 kWh/ea. would require the output of just 3.5 Gigafactories, less than twice what Tesla is already planning to build. We could make every new LDV a PHEV within 5 years; no way could we do that with BEVs. It’s nigh-trivial to achieve a 2/3 cut in liquid fuel consumption with a PHEV, and not overly difficult to get 75-80%.
To be fair, batteries are indeed a constraint–now. But the evidence suggests that that is a matter of capacity-building
Multiple supply chains are involved, and some of the most commonly-used electrode chemistries depend on scarce, expensive stuff like cobalt. Even if the lithium, cobalt, nickel etc. deposits exist, mining is an environmentally damaging affair and much of the world’s cobalt lies in what is and is likely to remain a war zone.
Zebra @398 asks EP “So we are back to the question: If the capacitor isn’t storing energy, what is it doing?”
For goodness sake how many times does Zebra have to be told something before he gets it? I don’t agree with EP on everything, but EP seems to me to have given reasonable answers regarding the functions of capacitors and transformers.
I checked out of curiosity with a simple google search as below, which confirms that 1) capacitors do a whole lot of things in addition to storing energy and 2) this list is consistent with EPs discussion about reactive power and similar matters. The worst you could accuse EP of is not being crystal clear.
“It’s (The Capacitors) function is to store the electrical energy and give this energy again to the circuit when necessary. In other words, it charges and discharges the electric charge stored in it. Besides this, the functions of a capacitor are as follows:
It blocks the flow of DC and permits the flow of AC.
It is used for coupling of the two sections.
It bypasses (grounds) the unwanted frequencies.
It feeds the desired signal to any section.
It is used for phase shifting.
It is also used for creating a delay in time.
It is also used for filtration,especially in removing ripples from rectified waveform.
It is used to get tuned frequency.
It is used as a motor starter.
It is also used in conjunction with a resistor to filter ripples in a rectifier circuit.”
“In electric power distribution, capacitors are used for power factor correction. Such capacitors often come as three capacitors connected as a three phase Electrical load. Usually, the values of these capacitors are given not in farads but rather as a reactive power in volt-amperes reactive (VAr). The purpose is to counteract inductive loading from devices like Induction motor,electric motors and transmission lines to make the load appear to be mostly resistive. Individual motor or lamp loads may have capacitors for power factor correction, or larger sets of capacitors (usually with automatic switching devices) may be installed at a load center within a building or in a large utility electrical substation. In high-voltage direct current transmission systems, power factor correction capacitors may have tuning inductors to suppress harmonic currents that would otherwise be injected into the AC power system.”
I’m not qualified in these areas, and so my understanding is limited, but its obvious this is close to what Engineer Poet said!
BPL wrote @340:
That was a fire in a cable pass-through. It had nothing to do with the reactor proper or fuel pool, let alone fuel in dry casks.
There were major changes in practices in response to this, so it isn’t happening ever again.
Thomas @323, “Civilization itself is managed by damned fools…etcetera!”
Good god man, you might be right! But what makes you think you would be any better?
Personally while I get your cynicism and reality check, I still prefer a bit of optimism and hope thrown in for my sanity. We have to at least try the conventional approach to mitigating the climate problem. Good to see you are open minded about energy solutions.
Al Bundy @338 yes there’s some bias and partisanship in the link posted by KM on EV’s, but are you any better? Couple of examples.
“Heck, even charging at home every day is more of a pain than occasionally filling up. ” But almost nobody would be chaging an EV every day. Once a week is more realistic.
“EVs are heavy.” Would your multi engine fuel efficient cars end up being that much lighter? On the drawing board maybe, but the real world?
“There isn’t a GHG rationale for EVs. ” Not much yet but obvioiusly it wouldn’t make sense to wait until the grid is perfect, or near perfect, before deploying EV’s. It would just delay the development of EVs making things even harder. There will always be people who buy EV’s for a variety of reasons and it all synergises together ultimately.
EV’s are very quiet, and have no noxious exhaust fumes. This can be reduced on ICE’s, but it adds weight with extra sound insulation, and complicated exhaust systems.
But the same principle applies to your ideas. There’s room for varied approaches to transport. The world is right in the middle of a grand experimental phase.
nigelj: But the same principle applies to your ideas. There’s room for varied approaches to transport. The world is right in the middle of a grand experimental phase.
AB: Yep. Batteries could take a serious leap or s-curve out. We don’t know the future. I’m like you and zebra: explore all paths without picking a winner and we’ll see which one, two, or three build the future.
(I’m betting on the flux capacitor. Nothing like arriving at your destination before you set out.)
E-P, PHEV is not BEV. Home charging is slow, which is grand for PHEVs but sucks for EVs. You and I are on the exact same page with regard to vehicles: Hybrids give the most bang per KWH of battery carried by the fleet. For what it costs batterywise to turn a single ICE into an EV one can turn perhaps 20 ICEs into hybrids (preferably plug-in). The improvement in fleet performance that 20 hybrids represent is an order of magnitude greater than what a single EV represents. Batteries are unbeatable for short trips since ICEs suck for the first few minutes of operation. That’s one reason my design uses two engines: only a threeish horsepower engine ever has sucky operation. Internal combustion rules the highways because liquid fuel is light and ICEs don’t degrade like batteries do (other than that stone-cold startup). PQEVs (plug-in quadbrid electric vehicles) allow for each energy source to exist smack dab in its comfort zone while minimizing vehicle weight. I can’t think of how a pure ICE vehicle would have much use in the future. Thus, discussions that compare EVs to pure ICEs are dorky. And since I dislike dorky I whine and complain about said discussions.
And yeah, an accident in the 1970s says just about nothing about future nuke safety. Like software: ya find a bug, ya fix said bug and it will never happen again.
nigelj: EV’s are very quiet, and have no noxious exhaust fumes. This can be reduced on ICE’s, but it adds weight with extra sound insulation, and complicated exhaust systems.
AB: You’re not considering how noise is made. Current ICEs are noisy because they do not expand their gasses to near atmospheric. That exhaust poppet opens and BANG! much of the remaining energy in the charge (about 1/3 is left) is turned into noise. If ya expand gasses to atmospheric then the opening of said exhaust poppet is durn near SILENT.
And you’re not considering scale. Since a quadbrid vehicle’s larger engine is perhaps 25HP the mechanics and whatnot are all TINY and LIGHT. That includes the itsy-bitsy insulated engine box. Engine design works best when almost all variables are eliminated, or at least tightly constrained. Since atmospheric temperatures reach around 120F engines MUST be designed to work in at least that warm an environment, unless you want to screw up your engine’s performance by adding another variable.
And of course my engine is designed to literally clean the air by burning up more pollution that exists in typical intake air than leaves the exhaust pipe. Surely you didn’t think I’d accept anything less?
Engineer-Poet writes at 329:
The scope envisioned on the Introduction page pegs the requirement at at least 50 ppm or around 400 hundred gigatons. That’s too small?
I admit to taking a mild approach, but I thought I’d made it reasonably clear Jacobsen’s ideas, and indeed the entire renewables approach, would not come even close to what needs to happen.
The basic premise of the Approach is the idea of recycling the carbon. Given the energy needed nuclear of one form or another would be needed. Given the inevitability of oil depletion, but also given the current impact of its use now, recycling seems to me a better tack than trying to lock it up. Perhaps some combination of the techniques would make sense, but at least some of the carbon, I should think, would need to be converted to some sort of alkalai and introduced into the oceans, given the carbon load already present and the effect it is already having.
The scale of the problem just seems so overwhelming I figured we’d need to go big and go long. If I didn’t communicate that please provide some additional suggestions.
nigelj,
and you’re not considering temperature. If an engine’s exhaust is below 570F then sound-deadening silicone pipes and baffles can be used instead of clanging metals. Silicone exhaust systems are lighter, cheaper, and way quieter than metal systems. Kind of the opposite of your initial thoughts, eh?
The problems “inherent” to ICEs are simply the result of poor design that has propagated because it has become “common knowledge” and “axiomatic”.
me: Surely you didn’t think I’d accept anything less
AB: than doing whatever it takes to be able to say, “EVs SUCK because they don’t clean the air”?
nigelj,
Perhaps you misunderstood what I meant by “occasionally filling up”. At 200mpg a 5 gallon tank lasts a month and a 10 gallon tank lasts two.
nigelj: But almost nobody would be chaging an EV every day. Once a week is more realistic.
AB: Home charging is slow. So you either do it efficiently and often or go elsewhere to bake your battery.
nigelj: Would your multi engine fuel efficient cars end up being that much lighter? On the drawing board maybe, but the real world?
AB: A 3HP engine and a 25HP engine combined weigh perhaps 150lbs all in. 10 gallons of petrol weighs 60lbs. A Maxwell ultracapacitor truck starter weighs 21lbs. So a constantly varying 171 to 231lbs, for an average of 200lbs. Add in 50lbs for whatnot (and the Maxwell might not be appropriate) and still pretty minor compared to battery weights for a similar 2000 mile range, eh?
nigelj: Not much yet but obvioiusly it wouldn’t make sense to wait until the grid is perfect, or near perfect, before deploying EV’s.
AB: Batteries die (but may go on to a second life) in about 10 years so it is idiotic to build vehicles that will need new batteries before the grid allows EVs to beat hybrids, with the metric NOT being at-end-of-life but averaged-throughout-life. When it comes to building cars today who the ef cares about the grid of 20+ years from now?
nigelj and Kevin McKinney,
Thanks for prompting me. I’m in the process of pondering the course that I’m the source of and kinda-sorta an adjunct professor for and you guys have helped a ton.
And Kevin, I’ve been hardest on you cuz I respect you no end. (At a par with Ray…)
zebra,
Perhaps I’m wrong but E-P’s point is that reactive power is “ghostly”. It ain’t so much a load as a math problem.
Methinks that you are suffering from aversion blindness. I have NEVER seen an E-P post that was completely wrong. Yep, I’ve disagreed with many, but his underlying facts are damn near irrefutable.
me: it is idiotic to build vehicles that will need new batteries before the grid allows EVs to beat hybrids, with the metric NOT being at-end-of-life but averaged-throughout-life.
AB: at a 1 to 20 ratio. Remember, it ain’t about making the coolest and bestest but about dropping CO2 emissions. 20 hybrids NUKE a single EV and NOBODY here can say diddly to refute that. E-P is right. Do the friggin math instead of clinging to emotion.
Al Bundy wrote @344:
I’ve given out hydrogen balloons. They’re fun to light off with fuses.
Al Bundy wrote @346:
If anyone actually wrote that, they are totally wrong. If you are able to do your own calculations, try doing some numbers based on the declared resistance of e.g. Skeleton ultracapacitors vs. the capacitance for 5-second charge from zero to rated voltage.
If you aren’t able to do your own calculations, you are not competent to have an opinion.
E-P 348: Are you a paid agent of fossil fuel companies (which is what Greenpeace is, as that’s where lots of their money comes from)?
BPL: Are you sure it doesn’t come from the Jews? Channeled through the Vatican? Perhaps via the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, and George Soros?
Al Bundy, about your kludgemobile.
Dude, I hope your actual engine design is nothing like this.
What about all the clutches? And all the separate engineering teams fighting with each other? And so on?
I offer this critique because I’ve always had to fight the tendency to over-design. Hence I have come to see the merit in setting things up to evolve organically… nudgeing instead of kludgeing. You might get a complicated result, but it will by definition work.
And if you want to do a real-world exercise in motor-counting: Should a standard BEV have 1, 2, or 4 motors? There’s a whole bunch of design engineering even with that simple question.
Did a nobody learn about the above from the Palmer and Stevens PNAS article?
Re #345 Al Bundy said AB: OK, I’ll translate “stupid” for you: Drunk as a Skunk.
Nice mirror you’ve got there. I do typically respond here late at night, and I find the old thing about men in their fifties being sleepyheads to be unhappily true. I’ve had sleep apnea for years, but in the last year anytime sleepiness hs become absurdly common. Sleepiness comes and goes at all sorts of hours of the day, but is, of course, worse late at night when one is up longer than one should be… responding to idiots.
But, hey, if my son were not 12 years old, being a drunk might be a great way to ride out the apocalypse.
Or, maybe I was using my phone to post here… a true nightmare.
Re #327 Engineer-Poet said And Killian reasons in a circle @299:
Bullshit. There is ZERO proof, let alone evidence, you can store *anything* safely for 30k years, let alone nuclear, and certainly not for hundreds of thousands of nuclear plants built over tens of thousands of years.
That you think the risk of the ecosystem for something you have zero ability to control for the entirey of its lifetime when there are solutions that have ZERO environmental risk shows how absurd and bizarre your thinking is. It’s not circular, it’s delusional to the point of insanity.
Understand this: You SAYING containment will last longer than radiocativity does not make it so. It is, in fact, unknowable. Buildings and bridges fall. Engineering fails. Humans screw up. Nature does as she damned well pleases.
Only a fool or a crazy person would consider nuclear when safer, more sustainable options exist.
You are a one-issue activist, and that makes you the biggest fool on this site, more dangerous even than the denialists.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/Why-Is-Warren-Buffett-Ditching-His-Coal-Plants.html
Can’t compete on price with renewables in Wyoming. Amazing.
nigelj wrote @353:
I’ve charged my PHEV 3x in one day, and that was only limited by opportunity. There is NO reason not to plug in and charge at EVERY stop, if charging is available. That begs the question: WHY ISN’T CHARGING AVAILABLE? You can park right under a pole with a transformer on it, but it might as well be miles away for all the good it does the driver right now. We have a “last-yard problem”.
There is an excellent GHG rationale for EVs; NG-fired turbines are less carbon-intensive than petroleum, especially with all the emissions from well-drilling through refining and down to dispensing.
Killian @369 — The salt domes east of Carlsbad, NM, have been there for many tens of millions of years and will remain for many tens of millions of years more. These provide ideal storage for so-called nuclear waste.
Engineer-Poet @371, yes I understand your point about charging an EV’s lithium batteries frequently. I understand its best to charge them before they get below about 50% because it prolongs life? My Electrolux stick vaccum cleaner sits permanently on a charger cradle.
However you missed my point, which was that AB was complaining about the so called inconvenience of charging an EV (or PHEV) everyday, and I simply mentioned that you dont have to charge everday if you dont want to, once a week, or every few days, would be ok for most people if they arent too worried about battery life.
Good comment about NG turbines.
#369 “There is ZERO proof, let alone evidence, you can store *anything* safely for 30k years, let alone nuclear, and certainly not for hundreds of thousands of nuclear plants built over tens of thousands of years.”
Sure. It’s a very long bow to expect that’s possible or sensible.
While there already exists ample evidence that VHTG Nuclear reactors can quite adequately (using present level technologies) process (burn up/reprocess) all existing nuclear waste products incl weapons grade waste back down to either a reusable Nuclear fuel for safe GenIV reactors or to an inert form where less than 100 years of long term storage might still be advisable.
This could be done right now. Unfortunately there is no global consensus to adapt such an approach nor an agreement on how best to fund the infrastructure required to make it economically viable and fair to all.
iow all nuclear actors (and the UN too I expect) need to be involved and agree to a streamlined process for the long term benefit of all. Who what where and when and then where to store the excess waste products and who pays for that.
While there is no global ban on nuclear weapons or an enforcement process to have the existing stockpiles destroyed completely (by collective military force if necessary) it really doesn’t matter that much what is done with all the nuclear waste for the time being.
AB @359 & 362: “Batteries die (but may go on to a second life) in about 10 years so it is idiotic to build vehicles that will need new batteries before the grid allows EVs to beat hybrids, with the metric NOT being at-end-of-life but averaged-throughout-life. When it comes to building cars today who the ef cares about the grid of 20+ years from now?…..Remember, it ain’t about making the coolest and bestest but about dropping CO2 emissions. 20 hybrids NUKE a single EV and NOBODY here can say diddly to refute that. E-P is right. Do the friggin math instead of clinging to emotion.”
20 hybrids nuke a single EV? I’m not seeing it, so YOU need to do the maths and prove it. I’m assuming you mean a conventional hybrid that has actually been built and runs on petrol, not biofuels.
But I do accept EV’s have fairly minimal value in reducing emissions if run off coal fired power. The efficiency of the engine probably counts for something but not much and gets offset by the manufacturing of those large batteries.
But none of that was my point. If we wait until the grid is zero carbon and then start making electric cars it will be years, decades before enough cars are made in quantity because it takes ages to ramp up construction. Thats lost time. You want to make them now so manufacturing plant is built, and there are plenty ready when the grid is zero carbon or getting towards it. And so that problems are ironed out earlier rather than later. You are thinking one dimensionally.
In addition EV’s make some sense if run off gas fired power.
And EV’s they are cheaper to run than petrol countries with cheap power, although I know you were referring just to the emissions issue. But that cost alone is a temptation for some people. Taxi drivers love hybrids because they are quiet and cheap to run.
Thank’s for the comments on the size of engines and all that. I hear where you are coming from. ICE engines are not my thing, but intuitively it looks like theres “room for improvement”.
David Benson: “The salt domes east of Carlsbad, NM, have been there for many tens of millions of years and will remain for many tens of millions of years more. These provide ideal storage for so-called nuclear waste.”
Well, if you don’t count the brine in those salt deposits, which is attracted by the heat from nuclear waste and will make short work of the casks containing it. For long term storage, intact granite bedrock is a much better option.
AB 354: an accident in the 1970s says just about nothing about future nuke safety.
BPL: It says that particular accident won’t happen again, but it points out that unexpected ways to fail keep popping up. E-P and his pals assume that everything has been worked out, so there will never be a Brown’s Ferry, an Enrico Fermi, a Three-Mile Island, a Chernobyl, or a Fukushima Daiichi again. But I see a pattern of humans failing to cope with an immensely complicated and dangerous system. I assume people will continue to make mistakes; the nuke freaks discount that possibility.
Al Bundy wrote @354:
PHEV outsources the storage problem to the grid (stationary). Stationary storage is VASTLY easier and cheaper than mobile storage. This is why it is IMPERATIVE to push transport-related storage issues out to the grid; better for everything. Seriously, compare the cost of a kWh-worth of molten “solar salt” to a kWh of Li-ion battery; vastly cheaper and far smaller problems with cycling wear.
Sez who? If I finished and installed my 240 V charger kit, I’d be able to fully charge my car in about 80 minutes despite having only half the current draw (16 A) of a full EV. Your typical EV like a Leaf would get a full charge in a few hours. That’s plenty fast if you have anything else to do in the meantime; just takes planning.
The grid is the grid; there is no reason for home charging to be much slower than anything except fast DC chargers for highway driving (which is only a small fraction of total driving). My own home electric service more than saturates the max charging power of my car; it would saturate it even if my car could charge at 32 amps. This is not a home-based problem.
Wanna fix a real-world problem? Find out what to do with waste polyvinyl chloride. There’s way too much of it in things like packaging. I have worked out a stoichiometric result of breaking it down but I have no idea if that’s what would happen IRL.
Tom Herrera writes @356: (BTW, good show on doing the linkage)
Not on the CO2, but the energy requirements. You’ve got to get enough energy to not merely displace the carbon from fossil fuels, but (for the next few decades) also have enough surplus to pull atmospheric CO2 down by as much as 100 ppm. This is an eye-popping number, but ultimately manageable.
You’re NOT going to do it by reducing CO2 to hydrocarbons and pumping them back in the ground. That is at least 10x as hard as capturing it as carbonates; IOW, ain’t gonna happen. I would love to know how much energy it would take to get rid of that CO2 via “enhanced weathering”; that is very likely the easiest (lowest-energy, thus fastest and cheapest) path to atmospheric remediation.
And Killian goes off the rails @369:
If you say this you are TOTALLY ignorant of the natural nuclear reactors at Oklo some 2 billion years ago. We know EXACTLY where the fission products were “stored”. They endangered NOTHING.
30k years is NOTHING, and we only need 500 years. We’ve got this.
#361 Al Bundy,
“Never completely wrong.”
AB, I know it isn’t your area of expertise, but it should be obvious to you that when someone says that
1. “capacitors don’t store energy”…
2. “capacitors store trivial amounts of energy”…
and then talks about ultracapacitors that might be used in automobiles…
clearly doesn’t know what he is talking about, or has cognitive issues, or is otherwise impaired.
He had his chance at #173, and he failed the test.
As I said to Mal, I’m trying to provide people with the correct science on this, in ways that can be understood. EP is not at all different from the Denialists who keep repeating the same memes no matter how often they are debunked.
Picture Worth ….,
I just referenced my #173 responding to AB, and if you go through some of these images you will see all the missed opportunities:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/27/upshot/america-from-above.html
How much CO2 could be saved building those communities with proper orientation, solar panels, geothermal slabs, R30-50 insulation, and a local DC grid, and some small batteries…
And what would you have to give up? Some extra ugly design features, or granite countertops, or gold-plated toilets? That stuff can be retrofitted if you have the money sometime in the future, much of which you will accumulate through savings/profits on energy.
#371, E-P–
Yes. I’ve noticed that the emissions footprint of petroleum distribution tends to ‘hide in plain sight’: even though we all see those tanker trucks from time to time parked at our corner service station; even though we occasionally pass by refineries; and even though we know perfectly well that the raw materials have been (at best) pipelined hundreds or thousands of miles, or (at worst) shipped halfway around the planet, to get to the refineries in the first place; nevertheless, we tend to forget that all of that gives the gas/petrol a significant embedded emissions cost before ever we pump it into our tanks and drive away.
Throwing away somewhere between 3/5ths and 4/5s of the chemical energy as we do–because that’s the thermal efficiency level of contemporary ICEs:
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/18919/toyota-develops-worlds-most-thermally-efficient-2-0-liter-engine
(Which is reason to wish Al godspeed in his endeavors to improve that number drastically. But it also highlights that, yes, most analyses find a considerable GHG warrant for BEVs–and one that ‘automatically’ improves as we continue to clean up the grid–which, yes, we actually are doing across the developed world.)
Killian: “I’ve had sleep apnea for years, but in the last year anytime sleepiness hs become absurdly common.”
You have my sympathy, and I hope the next year is better for you and for all of us.
E-P: NG-fired turbines are less carbon-intensive than petroleum, especially with all the emissions from well-drilling through refining and down to dispensing.
AB: I suppose that depends on fugitive natural gas emissions. I’ve read comparisons of CH4 and coal. For example, some guy named E-P was talking about how little has to escape to make natural gas a loser.
And yeah, I’m amazed at how little care seems to have gone into preventing the escape of volatiles when filling a vehicle.
E-P: If you aren’t able to do your own calculations, you are not competent to have an opinion.
AB: Which is why managers never have opinions about their engineers’ projects. Why audiophiles never have an opinion about stereo equipment unless they design stereos. Really, ‘How efficient are ultracapacitors?’ brings bile? What happened to ‘I’m here to educate and inform’?
________
zebra: What about all the clutches? And all the separate engineering teams fighting with each other? And so on?
AB: Only one clutch, for the cruising engine. The smaller engine is just a generator to feed the battery. Of course, the cruising engine can instead be built as a generator, which gets rid of the clutch, eliminates the direct link between the cruising engine and the world outside the engine box, and eliminates the need to finesse the motors’ output when engaging the cruising engine. However, it reduces efficiency. In this case I’d suggest three or four generators of different sizes so the car can dial in a precise power output by selecting which generators are engaged. This eliminates the need to alter combustion characteristics as torque requirements change.
No transmission. No radiator (pre-compression cylinders function as oil coolers and since the engine box is held at a constant temperature any cooling can be handled to perfection by fins). No muffler to speak of. No spark. No throttle. No EGRecirculation. No scavanging. No valve overlap. No variable valves. Minimal exhaust treatment.
The flywheel(s) or ultracapacitor targets a storage level inversely proportional to vehicle speed, so at rest it’s at full charge and at top speed it’s empty.
The electric drivetrain is essentially the same as any old EV. (I prefer two motors, one for each front wheel.)
______
Killian: Bullshit. There is ZERO proof, let alone evidence, you can store *anything* safely for 30k years, let alone nuclear, and certainly not for hundreds of thousands of nuclear plants built over tens of thousands of years.
AB: E-P gave a detailed plan, with short half-life stuff allowed to decay or be used for whatnot and long half-life stuff either used for fuel or scattered into the ocean or stored in designed-to-be-indestructible casks, with various options for storing said casks. It was pretty comprehensive, included examples, and gave reasons for various options. It’s too bad you missed it. Probably the comment-hiding bug in RC’s system.
And my posting point stands. When tossing an insult (as opposed to a normal post) check your post carefully or you’ll look like a doofus. Even more so if you make not two but three errors in a short comment and then post a correction for only one of them.
Disposal of nuclear waste controversy. Its fair comment that you can never 100% guarantee that a storage site wont have an accidental leak, but Chernobyl was a pretty good example of a spectacular accident, and potential ecological damage, but even the most polluted 10kms exclusion zone bounced back fairly fast ecologically.
And accidents at storage sites can be minimised, and would be fairly rare so I’m not sure its a huge issue. Ecosystems are threatened by all sorts of things including natural forces that can wipe out areas for quite long periods of time.
However the other side of the argument is the fact that the world cant seem to get its act together on a proper system of long term storage for nuclear waste. This is quite perplexing, and doesn’t inspire confidence. Its certainly kicking the can down the road pun not intended. And the stainless steel sarcophagus over Chernoblyl is already rusting….
Sorry I’m talking nonsense about the stainless steel Chernobyl Sarcophagus rusting. Bit of a typo. The old concrete and steel sarcophagus was pretty rough and rusted and is being replaced by a stainless steel sarcophagus as below:
https://phys.org/news/2016-04-tomb-chernobyl-site-safe-years.html
Keep on digging that hole for yourself Zebra. Must be pretty deep by now. Take a break and google “Dunning Kruger” :) Mr Nuclear Man was right about capacitors and transformers in the context at the time.
zebra,
I had to smile at “klugemobile”. My primary focus has been to eliminate all the kluges in current engine design. They add weight and expense while reducing efficiency. There’s no wiggle room above 60% at the shaft.
I call the all-generator design a digital engine. Since the generators’ output affects supply as opposed to load there’s no need to be concerned about precision or response time. As long as the battery’s drain or charge rate never gets above its comfort zone everything’s good. And the battery is protected by that super-powerful ultracapacitor or flywheel. Interesting how “simple and bulletproof” can be seen as “klugemobile”.
That said, the first configuration I mentioned grabbed an extra 10-20mpg in highway mode via what could be considered a kluge. So your point is well taken. A mechanically connected cruising engine is probably a concept car thing.
nigelj: 20 hybrids nuke a single EV? I’m not seeing it, so YOU need to do the maths and prove it.
AB: I’ve posted it here before. It’s simple. Use whatever numbers you prefer, but for example:
You are going to build 20 vehicles next year. You have enough batteries to build one EV or ten hybrids and ten PHEVs. Regular petrol cars get 35MPG. Hybrids get 55MPG. PHEVs get 75MPGe. EVs get 10,000MPGe (to give EVs a chance). All vehicles go 10,000 miles.
So, choose a fleet to build:
Fleet 1: 19 petrols at 35MPG = 5429 gallons + 1 for EV = 5430 gallons.
Fleet 2: 10 hybrids at 55MPG = 1818 gallons + 10 PHEVs at 75MPG = 1333 gallons for a total of 3151 gallons.
Given a baseline of 5714 gallons for 20 petrols, fleet one saves 284 gallons and fleet two saves 2563 gallons. 10:1 is way beyond skunked. “Nuked” is appropriate.
nigelj: If we wait until the grid is zero carbon and then start making electric cars it will be years, decades before
AB: You forget that the same technology for EVs applies to hybrids, too. It is the opposite of waiting. Call it training wheels or final solution. Whatever. It means that every vehicle built will have electrification technology aboard. A small rebate for hybrids would let them cream pure petrols into extinction quite rapidly. A large rebate for EVs just gives the rich toys to play with while they hog all the batteries.
Re: CO2 drawdown via olivine weathering
http://innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/olivineagainstclimatechange23.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Oliver_Tickell/publication/48321940_Enhanced_weathering_of_olivine_to_capture_CO2/links/5694e75a08ae820ff0747619/Enhanced-weathering-of-olivine-to-capture-CO2.pdf
sidd
Ray Ladbury @376 — The salt domes are completely dry but even so the radioactive waste is enclosed in ceramics called glass logs. These will last more than long enough.
Granite, on the other hand, can support cracks through which water can flow. Salt is self-sealing.
Al Bundy #391, good answer. I must admit its hard to understand why Hybrids have not caught on more, given the fuel economy alone and even at the normal (unsubsidised) price. One reason may be that the body styling the Toyota Prius may have put a lot of people off hybrids. Humans are ultra fashion conscious.
The Apple Iphone was probably a hit partly because of the slick body styling, compared to the clunky Nokia Communicator. Humans are just monkeys who like shiny nice looking things.
Al, #390—
The logic holds if batteries are a hard constraint on what you can build. But, obviously, if you can build 20 EVs, then it is everything else that gets ‘nuked’ mileage-wise.
To be fair, batteries are indeed a constraint–now. But the evidence suggests that that is a matter of capacity-building, not what I called a ‘hard constraint’.
nigelj wrote @375:
(deleted redundant response to AB’s 1 EV/20 hybrids, he got it in 390)
I recall reading an anecdote of an expat in Singapore who bought a Tesla and was hit with a carbon-tax penalty because Singapore’s electricity is overwhelmingly from coal. At 380 Wh/mile and ~1000 g/kWh, a Model S charged on coal-fired power emits roughly 380 gCO2/mile. If we assume that gasoline produces about 9 kg CO2/gallon this is equivalent to 23.7 MPG fuel consumption.
This changes immensely with the type of power plant. If charged from a CCGT emitting 330 gCO2/kWh, the effective fuel economy of the Tesla leaps to almost 72 MPG. And of course methane leakage complicates it again….
This is true, and why I consider the PHEV to be in the current “sweet spot”. It bags immediate fuel savings, provides far greater energy flexibility and does not incur the weight and other penalties of a pure BEV. We should be pushing for almost every LDV sold to be PHEV.
BPL wrote @377:
Yes, there were screwups. Chernobyl was the ONLY one with measurable health consequences, and those consequences were vastly smaller than the every-day impacts of burning coal (or any other carbon-based fuel) to generate replacement power.
The biggest mistake is calling people “nuke freaks” when they’ve got the only time-tested means of saving the planet from an anthropogenic climactic mass extinction event, possibly to include ourselves.
zebra bloviates @381:
Sez the clown who either has not read this on-line tutorial about real and reactive power, or was unable to understand a word of it.
I’ll give you a hint: power-factor correction capacitors are rated in microfarads. Energy-storage ultracaps are rated in KILOfarads. I have a portable generator which was broken when I bought it; the engine ran but there was no electric output. It turned out there was a 12 μF 400 V capacitor in it which had failed. Replacing it made it produce juice. A 12 μF capacitor stores just 0.96 joules when fully charged at 400 volts. It is NOT an energy-storage device; it is generating reactive power to counter inductance.
You understand nothing. You have nothing to contribute.
sidd @391: Thanks for that, more reading to do. The €10/tCO2 figure in the first paper is an early eye-opener.
#397 Engineer-Poet,
In my world, “understanding” means being able to explain things in one’s own words. Sometimes, getting a student to that point can take a while.
I asked you originally “what is the capacitor doing if it is not storing energy?”. Now you say that it is “generating reactive power”.
But here’s my problem:
I thought that you and I were actually in agreement that capacitors were used to eliminate reactive power… just a few comments ago, right?
This is very confusing.
And we were likewise in agreement that reactive power heated up lengths of wire, no?
This is also very confusing (or perhaps a wonderful breakthrough). If a capacitor can generate power, which can be used to heat a length of wire, we wouldn’t need either solar panels or nukes, would we?
But I just don’t think that’s the case; it sounds, as I said about your pre-heating plan, a bit like perpetual motion.
So we are back to the question: If the capacitor isn’t storing energy, what is it doing?
Kevin McKinney writes @394:
“If”. Tesla hasn’t even finished Gigafactory 1 yet. When complete it’s supposed to be able to manufacture 30 GWh/yr of cells and 50 GWh/yr of completed battery packs. This would do for half a million vehicles at 100 kWh each.
The USA buys about 17.5 million new LDVs per year. If each one was a Tesla-class BEV, it would require 35 Gigafactories to build their batteries. It would take considerable time to build that much manufacturing capacity.
Hybrids and PHEVs can use much smaller batteries with less energy-dense electrode chemistries like LiFePO4 which use mostly abundant materials. 17.5 million PHEVs @ 10 kWh/ea. would require the output of just 3.5 Gigafactories, less than twice what Tesla is already planning to build. We could make every new LDV a PHEV within 5 years; no way could we do that with BEVs. It’s nigh-trivial to achieve a 2/3 cut in liquid fuel consumption with a PHEV, and not overly difficult to get 75-80%.
Multiple supply chains are involved, and some of the most commonly-used electrode chemistries depend on scarce, expensive stuff like cobalt. Even if the lithium, cobalt, nickel etc. deposits exist, mining is an environmentally damaging affair and much of the world’s cobalt lies in what is and is likely to remain a war zone.
IBM’s announcement of a battery made from seawater (magnesium, calcium or sodium ion?) is tantalizing but without any hard facts it’s possible that it’s somebody’s mistake. Could IBM be the next EEStor?
Zebra @398 asks EP “So we are back to the question: If the capacitor isn’t storing energy, what is it doing?”
For goodness sake how many times does Zebra have to be told something before he gets it? I don’t agree with EP on everything, but EP seems to me to have given reasonable answers regarding the functions of capacitors and transformers.
I checked out of curiosity with a simple google search as below, which confirms that 1) capacitors do a whole lot of things in addition to storing energy and 2) this list is consistent with EPs discussion about reactive power and similar matters. The worst you could accuse EP of is not being crystal clear.
https://electronics.fandom.com/wiki/Capacitor
“It’s (The Capacitors) function is to store the electrical energy and give this energy again to the circuit when necessary. In other words, it charges and discharges the electric charge stored in it. Besides this, the functions of a capacitor are as follows:
It blocks the flow of DC and permits the flow of AC.
It is used for coupling of the two sections.
It bypasses (grounds) the unwanted frequencies.
It feeds the desired signal to any section.
It is used for phase shifting.
It is also used for creating a delay in time.
It is also used for filtration,especially in removing ripples from rectified waveform.
It is used to get tuned frequency.
It is used as a motor starter.
It is also used in conjunction with a resistor to filter ripples in a rectifier circuit.”
And from another source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applications_of_capacitors
“In electric power distribution, capacitors are used for power factor correction. Such capacitors often come as three capacitors connected as a three phase Electrical load. Usually, the values of these capacitors are given not in farads but rather as a reactive power in volt-amperes reactive (VAr). The purpose is to counteract inductive loading from devices like Induction motor,electric motors and transmission lines to make the load appear to be mostly resistive. Individual motor or lamp loads may have capacitors for power factor correction, or larger sets of capacitors (usually with automatic switching devices) may be installed at a load center within a building or in a large utility electrical substation. In high-voltage direct current transmission systems, power factor correction capacitors may have tuning inductors to suppress harmonic currents that would otherwise be injected into the AC power system.”
I’m not qualified in these areas, and so my understanding is limited, but its obvious this is close to what Engineer Poet said!