"Martin Gregorie" wrote in message
...
Bill Daniels wrote:
If you want to look at alternative liguid fuels for the existing fleet
consider Butanol (Butyl alcohol). It has about the same energy content
as gasolene, burns at the same air-fuel mixture and has an octane rating
of 94. It can be made from biomass at better net energy yeld than
ethanol. Since you can mix it with gasolene at any ratio with no changes
needed in the engines, it looks better to me than ethanol.

Butanol sounds like a good idea. I've seen puffs for methanol and ethanol
but no mention of butanol. I wonder why.

I mentioned solar or nuke driven industrial sources for any such fuel (and
quoted ethyl as an example) because I think that biofuel is too limited by
the availability of both arable land and water to replace oil-based fuels.

Possibly irrelevant, but I remember seeing a Scientific American article
back in the late 60s/early 70s on this topic. I forget what triggered it
(possibly a comment on a back to nature movement) but it pointed out that
even then it would be impossible to replace America's oil-powered
transport systems with horses because there wasn't the farm land in the
USA to feed the horses, let alone produce anything else. OK, horses are
not exactly efficient energy sources. Replace them with something more
efficient (biodiesel powered engines?) and factor in the increased energy
consumption after 40 years of economic growth and I think the argument
still holds.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org

I actually think that GM has a good idea in the "Volt". It's an electric
car with a bay into which you (or GM) can install an electricity source like
a genset (diesel or spark), a fuel cell stack or even more batteries. The
flexibility is the value added.

Pure electric vehicles are slowly emerging as quite possibly the final
answer. There has been rapid fire announcements of lithium ion battery
technology advancements in the key areas of energy density and charge time.
Toshiba and others have Lithium Polymer cells that can be fully charged in
less than 5 minutes and still last 20,000 recharge cycles. Charge time is
just as important as driving range with electrics with one offsetting the
other. If the vehicle can be recharged in 5 minutes at convienient
locations, who cares if it only goes 150 miles between charges. For serious
"off grid" driving, the Volt approach looks good.

The so called "hydrogen economy" is just bafflegab from the Bush
administration to delay any action. Hydrogen is not likely to be part of
the solution. An "electric economy" however is easy to imagine.
Electricity is extremely flexible. An electric vehicle can be slowly
recharged overnight at home or quickly at a charging station. The
electricity can come from almost any source.

My original thought is that even an electric could tow a glider trailer if
the trailer itself supplied some of the power. Imagine side boxes ahead and
behind each trailer wheel containing batteries and wheels containing
electric motors. The trailer then powers itself and the "tow" vehicle just
guides it.

Bill Daniels