Super Jumbo Takes Off Using 'Green' Fuel

On the particular moment of Mon, 4 Feb 2008 20:02:22 +0100 in relation
to Mary's disappointingly immaculate rumpy pumpy, "John of Aix"
put forth:

A small correction to the Sky story, only one of the four engines used
'green fuel', all four on a test flight being considered somewhat
risky..

I think the interest of the thing is perhaps less the cost of the fuel
but rather more the independence it gives, no more relying on unstable
oil-producing countries and constantly fluctuating prices.

The notion of 'green fuel' is ridiculous. It's like saying low tar
cigarettes are healthy.
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DFM - http://www.deepfriedmars.com
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On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:48:26 +0100, Dusty Furtile Morrocan
wrote:

On the particular moment of Mon, 4 Feb 2008 20:02:22 +0100 in relation
to Mary's disappointingly immaculate rumpy pumpy, "John of Aix"
put forth:

A small correction to the Sky story, only one of the four engines used
'green fuel', all four on a test flight being considered somewhat
risky..

I think the interest of the thing is perhaps less the cost of the fuel
but rather more the independence it gives, no more relying on unstable
oil-producing countries and constantly fluctuating prices.

The notion of 'green fuel' is ridiculous. It's like saying low tar
cigarettes are healthy.

Depends. For example, ethanol produced from crops is at
least renewable. There are shades of grey here, not all
black and white.


Cheers, Alan, Australia
--
http://loraltravel.blogspot.com/
latest: Slovenia

On the particular moment of Tue, 5 Feb 2008 09:16:13 -0600 in relation
to Mary's disappointingly immaculate rumpy pumpy, "TMOliver"
put forth:

schnip

Well said, and that's exactly what I was getting at.

In my view the best strategy is technology. We need:

- Dirt cheap solar panels that are versatile
- Much better ways of storing electricity

Solve those two, and things start looking up.

Why people get so excited about hybrid cars and all the rest of that
expensive fashionable crap is beyond me. While hybrid cars are
trickling out, Indians and Chinese are buying cars by the thousands.
An absolutely pointless strategy.
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DFM - http://www.deepfriedmars.com
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"Dusty Furtile Morrocan" wrote in
message ...
- Dirt cheap solar panels that are versatile
- Much better ways of storing electricity

Solve those two, and things start looking up.

Why people get so excited about hybrid cars and all the rest of that
expensive fashionable crap is beyond me.

Right now, it's because hybrid technology is the best means
of addressing your second point. Gasoline or some other
liquid fuel is for now the best way to "store electricity"
(actually, to store energy in a limited volume/mass) that we
have available. And hybrids mean development of the rest
of the electric powertrain, for relatively easy adaption later
on to other sources of electricity (fuel cells, "super-batteries,"
whatever).

"Dirt cheap solar panels" are only part of the power
generation solution at best; it is not so much the cost of the
panels (after all, they SHOULD have a fairly long service
life over which that cost will be amortized), but rather their
efficiency and the limited amount of power that is available
through that means in the first place. The average available
incident solar energy, over the surface of the Earth and
over a 24 hour period, works out to well under 200 watts
per square meter. At 40 deg. latitude, and over an 8-hour
summer day, you can collect the equivalent of about 0.13
gallons of gasoline per square meter, IF you could convert
the incoming solar energy at 100% efficiency (which, of
course, you can't). If you figure on maybe 50% efficiency
of conversion (still pretty optimistic), and some magic
vehicle design that could give you the equivalent of 100 MPG
while still providing a practical load capacity and range,
then you would still need over 30 square meters (an area
just over 5.5 meters, or about 18 feet, on a side) just to
produce enough energy to drive that vehicle 200 miles.
(In comparison, my 650cc motorcycle gets about half that gas
mileage, carrying just me and a reasonable amount of commuter
gear, while carrying enough gas for at most 200 miles
of range.)

Now, there were, in 2001, about 191 million "household"
vehicles in the U.S.. Assuming that all of them could be
converted to the sort of vehicle we hypothesize above, and
operated on the above schedule (200 miles per day max.),
we would need to have over 5.7 billion square meters of
solar panels operating as assumed above, just to be able
to feed them all. This is equivalent to a bit over 2,200
square miles, or an area the size of the state of Delaware.
And these figures ignore efficiency losses in distribution and
storage, and again are using very optimistic figures for
conversion efficiency and assumed "gas mileage." It further
assumes that ALL of the vehicles in the above total could be
replaced by this type, which is clearly untrue, and ignores
other users of electrical power. A more realistic area figure
would probably be at least 10-20X this value to cover
private vehicle needs alone, so we wind up with the need to
cover, say, the entire state of Ohio with solar panels for
a solar-driven fleet of vehicles to be supported.

Somehow...I don't think so.

Bob M.

Meanwhile, why in the world we seem to ignore the potential of nuclear power
plants (or so burden their develop with added costs) continues to amaze me.

TMO

have you moved to Windscale yet ?

On Tue, 5 Feb 2008 09:16:13 -0600, "TMOliver"
wrote:


"Alan S" wrote...



Depends. For example, ethanol produced from crops is at
least renewable. There are shades of grey here, not all
black and white.



Grey? Any greyer and ethanol would be midnight black!

First, the fertilizer used for most of the crops used to produce ethanol
comes from, you guessed it, traditional petrochemical processes....

From combines in the cornrows to the trucks hauling the corn to the elevator
and on to the ethanol plant, the fuel burned may have a little ethanol
added, no more than 15%, but the rest comes from the well head.

Then there's the matter of the distillation of ethanol...Fossil Fuels, mate!

As for jet fuel from "gas", that's pretty easy (although expensive as Hell!)
from natural gas, but NG is hardly "Green". simply less of a polluter. The
WWII era German processes for producing high octane AVGAS from coal remain
for those who putter about college labs, simply too expensive, even for
compounds useful for jet fuel, to contemplate (and vast energy hogs to
produce).

You've obviously bought the whole ethanol conjob, not seeing that the
"profit", most of which goes to extremely large corporations like ADM and
Cargill, comes for tax breaks, and meanwhile throughout countries like
Mexico, where corn is "The Staff of Life", families go hungry as corn (and
tortilla) prices soar.

Then there's Brazil using sugar cane. You do understand that along with
needing fertilizer from fossil fuels, sugar cane can only be grown on the
same "patch" for a near finite number of crops? The only way Brazil will
keep up with its fuel needs is by cutting down more rainforests to plant
more cane/sorghums.

Well, there's always restaurant grease to fuel the Jack in the Box Airline's
Airbus 380s hauling starving families from Mexico to Oz after we finish
building the fence, likely to be even less effective that Australian fencing
projects.

TMO

You read a lot more into my comment than was said. I haven't
"bought" anything.

And, while I am not part of the sugar industry, I live next
to canefields that have been monocultures for well over a
century in rich flood-plains, as are most of this country's
canefields.

You seem to have a rather large bee in your bonnet. As a
matter of interest, what solution are you proposing to fuel
the A380 and it's successors? Solar panels? Wind turbines?
Yeah, right.


Cheers, Alan, Australia
--
http://loraltravel.blogspot.com/
latest: Slovenia

On Tue, 5 Feb 2008 13:51:02 -0600, "TMOliver"
wrote:


Meanwhile, why in the world we seem to ignore the potential of nuclear power
plants (or so burden their develop with added costs) continues to amaze me.

TMO

On that we agree; however, I doubt it will ever fuel an
aircraft.

Cheers, Alan, Australia
--
http://loraltravel.blogspot.com/
latest: Slovenia

"TMOliver" wrote in message
...

Meanwhile, why in the world we seem to ignore the potential of nuclear
power plants (or so burden their develop with added costs) continues to
amaze me.

I notice Her Majesty's Government has decided that nuclear power is a 'good
thing' once again and the UK will start building new nuclear power stations
in the not too distant future.

France, of course, was always keen on them.

India wants to build loads but wants nuclear weapons as well, and so isn't
allowed to buy them.

--
William Black


I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Barbeques on fire by the chalets past the castle headland
I watched the gift shops glitter in the darkness off the Newborough gate
All these moments will be lost in time, like icecream on the beach
Time for tea.

On the particular moment of Tue, 5 Feb 2008 13:51:02 -0600 in relation
to Mary's disappointingly immaculate rumpy pumpy, "TMOliver"
put forth:

I had to laugh loudly at "Dusty's" cheap panels. I see nobody has bothered
to acquaint him with the harsher side of reality, that even most of today's
expensive solar panels actually produce electricity at a rare sufficient
enough to recover costs of purchase and installation in most environments.

What on earth are you on about?
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DFM - http://www.deepfriedmars.com
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TMOliver wrote:


Well, there's always restaurant grease to fuel the Jack in the Box Airline's
Airbus 380s hauling starving families from Mexico to Oz after we finish
building the fence, likely to be even less effective that Australian fencing
projects.

Well, rabbits are a bit hard to keep fenced in.
At least the fence helped those nice children find their way home.