I'm really very interested in alt fuels, etc, here is my take on a couple of your questions.
Black_Dog wrote:
1. Ethanol – Gets 25% worse gas mileage than gasoline which is about 25% worse than Diesel. Brazil is held up as a model society that has adapted to using ethanol fuel on a widespread basis. Never mind that they have significantly cut into the South American rain forests in order to get enough farm land to produce the sugar cane required to distil into the fuel. Never mind huge quantities of fertilizer and pesticides that are used in said farming. What would happen in the US? The Gulf of Mexico is already brown and hideous algae washed up all over Texas beaches from fertilizer (nitrogen) runoff that has drained into the from the Mississippi river – you can see the effect from space. Aren’t environmentalists supposed to be against all of this?
Ethanol does get 25% less, in engines built for normal gasoline. You can refine ethanol so that it has a higher octane rating that gas (105-110), which means you can run the cylinders at higher pressure which makes a more efficient engine! The only problem is, you have to rebuild the engine to accomplish it. Also, burning Ethanol puts out 36-40% less CO2 emmissions than gasoline, as well as a lot less of the other pollutants.
Ethanol doesn't have to be made using sugar cane- a great opportunity is being used by farmers who grow corn- they turn the corn into ethanol, and then make cattle feed out of the byproducts.
Black_Dog wrote:
2. Electric – Let’s not even go into the technological hurdles of developing an all electric car.
I'm not big on electric cars... I like the rumble of a good V-8 :-p On the other hand, we have the technology to make it, we are just at a curious point in history when we aren't limited by WHAT we know, but by how expensive what we can make is!
Black_Dog wrote:
4. Fuel Cell – Ah, pollution free cars at last – only byproduct is good old water. One minor problem though. Where in can you get free hydrogen? Oh, we’ll strip it off of long hydrocarbon chains that comprise natural gas. Okay, but you still have leftover carbon (bad) and you are still dependent on a fossil fuel. Also any method of separating hydrogen any proposed donor molecules, whether they are hydrocarbon, water or anything else, takes a great deal of energy. Where does this energy come from? Probably from another fossil fuel or nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, solar… HEAVEN HELP US!
Hydrogen can be broken down using other methods- we haven't even begun to use solar energy because of the expense, which is slowly coming down as the technology becomes more available. Hydrogen has allready been used in ICE engines- BMW has the H speed record at over 200 mph on Hydrogen.
In theory, I'm not opposed to nuke plants, especially breeder reactors which reuse their contaminants and do not make much waste. Unfortunately, the catostrophic results of terrorist attacks or a screw up are a little daunting to say the least!
Black_Dog wrote:
For now I think the best thing that we can do for the environment and economy is make our gasoline and diesel engines as efficient as possible. Personally, I am impressed by the new generation of diesels and wish more were available in the US. We certainly would be in a much better position if all vehicles got 25% better economy.
We've got all the technology we need to make efficient cars, we just need the money to do it!! I'm a huge fan of the new diesels as well! Biodiesel is a really neat fuel as well- I work on a milatary base right now, and most of our vehicle fleet is disel and we use biodiesel in all of our vehicles. Much cleaner than normal diesel out of a renewable source!
Some innovative things that I've seen:
The whole hydraulic brake thing in Hybrids- that is a smart idea! So much energy is thrown away when you use brakes! The ability to even gain part of it back and use it for acceleration is really neat.
Hydrogen augmentation: Done correctly, you can produce enough hydrogen through electrolysis to make a difference in internal combustion engines. The tech is just getting started, and it needs a lot of refinement, but it looks promissing.
I'd LOVE to toss a new generation diesel into my renegade, run it on biodisel, and integrate some of these ideas into a full system. Like I said earlier though- we have the technology, but we are limited by the funding!