Wasting Energy, Killing Independence
Stan Meyers was an inventor that went to work after the 1970's crude oil embargo to find an alternative fuel source that is plentiful and cheap. He created a device which splits water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen which is then burned in an internal combustion engine. He installed the device onto a sand rail which he calculated could travel from Los Angeles to New York on roughly one 22 gallon tank of water. That's right, water. The device is compact enough to fit on a sand rail and efficient enough to convert the water to fuel on the fly. Here is a video of a News report introducing the technology to the United States' public. Since then, numerous other inventors around the world have presented the same type of technology.
Gory refuse, from a Butterball Turkey plant In Carthage, Missouri, will no longer go to waste.. Each day 200 tons of turkey offal will be carted to the first industrial-scale thermal depolymerIzatIon plant, recently completed In an adjacent lot, and be transformed Into various useful products, including 600 barrels of light oil.
Another technology that is getting little attention is thermal solar power converting solar heat to steam powering a steam driven electricity generator on a scale large enough (covering an area about 1 square mile) to power a city. (500 megawatt to 1 gigawatt) With all the attention paid to solar voltaic panels, the much more efficient thermal solar power is being overlooked. This article on Technology Review explains the benefits and available technology capable of meeting the demand in Arizona. The one pictured in this video is a 40 megawatt capable facility.Non-Toxic Batteries
How about a battery that is made of non-toxic materials and holds a much better charge and only requires about five minutes plugged in to reach a full charge. These are the claims of a company called EEStor of Cedar Park, Texas.
Waste to Energy
Using ordinary garbage in incinerators to produce the heat necessary to run steam turbines is known as waste to energy programs. WTE plants were among the major emitters of mercury and dioxins in the United States, Themelis says: “We did not know enough and were not using adequate controls on the emissions of high-temperature resources.” That has changed in recent years. Following the incorporation of scrubbers and filters into the plants, dioxin emissions from U.S. plants dropped 99.7 percent and mercury was reduced 98 percent. Still, the perception remains that WTE plants “are not a clean, good thing,” says Joe Bryson of EPA. In 2001 Mayor Bloomberg of New York City was dealing with the closure of the last land fill in New York state. He was presented with this technology as a viable option for dealing with the city's massive waste output but crumbled under pressure from environmentalists to barge it out of New York. Not only are they not burning it for fuel, they are suffering huge expenditures to have it transported hundreds of miles away to be buried in an out of state landfill.
Cellulosic Ethanol
Unlike corn based ethanol, cellulosic ethanol is produced from the chaff and other fibrous waste of grain production as well as grass clippings, tree shreddiings, and anything plant based. While it is more difficult to convert this material than grain products the final cost should amount to an average of about one dollar per gallon. We would not have to convert food to oil which is driving up the cost of a loaf of bread.
I have posted on a related article a couple of months ago, but these deal with proven systems that we simply are not using or advancing fast enough. There is no excuse for our oil dependency other than tax revenue. Last year one oil company paid taxes to the U.S. government equivalent to 2/3 the personal income taxes paid by the entire U.S. citizenry. Its time to end this madness and employ systems already available. I am for nuclear power plant construction and subsidizing overunity research and development. Anything to stop funding radical Islamic invasion and soft jihad much less radical Islamic technological research into weapons of mass destruction.
Comments
Keep the scope and scale of the problem in mind. Gasoline consumption is reported in millions of barrels. Multiply that by 40 to see how many gallons are involved. Multiply that by 160,000 to see how many BTU are involved.
Alcohol, hydrogen and other so called alternative fuels have a much lower energy density than gasoline. It takes more of them to go the same distance.
In any case, we are not going to defund Islam by substitution. Any petroleum we don't purchase will be taken up by the growing economies of China & India.
In the short term, there are no solutions. In the mid term, the solution involves increased domestic production and refining capacity. That involves lead time. Had we commenced developing in ANWAR and off shore 20 years ago, we might not be in this bind now. We did not, and we will not, because our elected leaders are anal orfices.
If we get off of imported oil, at least we can say we did not fund our own demise and would likely give us a little breathing room to get Islam under control.
The elected orafices proved themselves again this past week by defeating legislation that would have allowed our oil companies to drill offshore between 50-150 miles (way beyond the horizon) as China is drilling 60 miles from our shores!
One of the few conspiracies I believe in is the connection between the government's revenue and the oil companies. Last year in the first quarter, 1 oil company paid taxes to the government equivalent to 1/2 of all personal income tax. Take away oil revenues and how does the government pay for all those pork barrel projects not to mention in order of the size of each expense, Social Security, Education, military, and the myriad of agencies like Dept. of Education which yield zero to negative results.
We have a cleaner environment today than we've had in 100 years and it improves every year. If you're referring to urban sprawl, you haven't taken a flight from the coast to the Mississippi. There are thousands of linear miles with nothing but country roads if that. I've often flown between Oklahoma and California and I can vouch, there is very little between the cities and the cities are very, very lightly. East of the Mississippi they're a bit closer together but still lightly peppered over the land. There is so much wild land still in the U.S. it is unbelievable that anybody can be concerned that we are destroying the planet.
Whooops!