OT: Energy=Horsepower-Hours ???

On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:06:29 -0300, John Popelish wrote: ...

I fantasize about adapting one of these:

to run backwards - i.e., some high-pressure (like steam, or maybe freon vapor) working fluid goes into the "discharge side" and does its work by turning the vanes, and cool(er) exhaust just wafts out the "intake" side.

Then, of course, while thinking steam boiler and all that concomitant crapola, I thought, "hell, why not a little fuel/air injector, and make the high-pressure side a sort of variable combustion chamber in its own right?

i.e., (assuming you're still looking at the sexy diagram at

), you'd feed a slightly pressurized fuel-air mixture from the bottom, upstream on the "discharge side" arrow, and there'd be a spark plug of some kind, hidden behind the rotors in the illustration. The fuel burns, expands, turns the rotors, and exhaust comes out of the top.

I have this gnawing feeling that by making the rotor assembly very "greedy" - i.e., just by the design, it wants to extract all of the energy it can - in expanding through the rotors, the exhaust gas would cool, somewhat, and work would be done. :-)

I wonder what it would cost to lash up an experiment? ;-)

Thanks, Rich

[snip]

I think, economics-wise, that variable-USE of cylinders is more practical.

[snip]

Why is it you think varying ignition timing is inelegant? Timing is run advanced, just shy of pinging. What do you think the ping detector is for?

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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...and that is considering *only* the inefficent IC burning. Then add in the eco-loads from fertilizer for the corn, the gass guzzling eaqupment tending the corn, etc... Lotza pollution...

The way corn is grown in the U.S. at the moment - as discussed in Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dillemma",ISBN 1-59420-082-3 - every bushel of industrial corn takes between a quarter and a third of a gallon of oil to grow it, depending on whether the farmer rotates the crop with a nitrogen fixing legume or uses ammonium nitrate fertiser synthesised with energy derived from oil or natural gas. You didn't mentioned the pesticides used to stop weeds from competing with the corn and insects from eating the corn before we can, which are also synthesised with oil-derived energy.

This makes nonsense of the claim that ethanol fermented from U.S. corn is carbon-neutral. Ethanol could be a carbon neutral fuel, but the agricultural infra-structure would then have to get its energy from renewable sources, which is possible, even though very few people work that way these days.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I assume you mean a "electric-inlet" or charging jack.

Do you know any vulture capitalists? I sit in a machine shop where they know how to do exotic materials to 0.0001" tolerances, and next door are some performance shop and "Blower Drive Service"

; with enough capital, we could build anything!

Or maybe we should contact Al, and ask for a research grant to build the next generation of low-emission motors. :-)

Hey, if we've both thought of this, that smacks of synchronicity to me - we only need 98 more monkeys to latch onto the idea, and we'll be rich beyond our wildest dreams!

Cheers! Rich

So, we should run our cars on termite shit? Kewl! ;-)

Cheers! Rich

"Rich Grise, Plainclothes Hippie" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@doubleclick.net...

I'd like to see a practical design for methanol from wood waste.

ISTM that the US should start buying sugar waste alcohol from Mexico, thus encouraging the Mexicans to stay on their farms and following the Brazilian model.

Except that the US sugar lobby absolutely and positively guarantees that this cannot possibly happen under any circumstances.

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And for obvious reasons, it's *this* kind of fuel being marketed as "biodiesel" or by similar names by the big oil companies. Also the biotech industry sees "bio" fuels as a lever to introduce genetically manipulated corn, rapeseed or soy into the European market which so far has been pretty resistant to their attempts.

In the development of alternative fuels made from biomass, the main focus should be on using waste byproducts of agriculture or plants that grow fast without requiring much care. Of course there's no established big industry behind such concepts, which is why we don't hear much from them.

Already today people in Brazil (and other places) suffer from hunger and malnutrition while at the same time their country exports huge amounts of prime crop that we feed to pigs so we can enjoy cheap meat three times a day. When people start starving because the crops of their soil are used to run our cars, the situation becomes even more precarious ethically (even though, technically, it's a local problem that shouldn't concern us). robert

They've been using "genetically manipulated" corn, beans, and whatnot for decades.

Ever heard of a "hybrid"?

Thanks, Rich

Why? If (eventually) the whole growing process is ethanol powered, the only thing wasted by growing the grain is sunlight. Everything else is recycled by 100%. And some day the whole process is less cumbersome than getting oil.

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Even assuming that were true (The laws of thermodynamics say it isn't), replacing our oil consumption with ethanol would take more prime arable land than the US currently uses for food production.

Hydrogen, ethanol, and biodiesel are not the answer. They aren't even good stopgap measures. The answer is a non carbon based form of energy production that exceeds the energy we now produce from carbon by many times.

Anything less just won't do.

-Chuck

If it takes 1.1 gallons of ethanol to make 1 gallon (when all those energy intensive parts of the process are powered by the output of the process), how do you ever get any ethanol left over to use for anything else? Right now, ethanol production in the US is using more than a gallon of oil for each gallon of ethanol it produces. Without huge government infusions of money, they would go out of business today. I'm not saying that the efficiency of the process can't be greatly improved, but that there is little incentive to invest in the improvements as things stand.

I think we've failed to consider obvious things... like a mini-nuclear reactor in your car; and in your home. But the leftist weenies will be against it ;-)

These new spherical "rods" are interesting... no possibility of melt-down.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
         America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

The technology we need most likely hasn't been invented yet. I would rather see the money we spend on fixing a non existent CO2 based global warming problem spent on finding new sources of high quality energy.

-Chuck

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Isn't that what they said about Three Mile Island?