Text 7994, 80 rader
Skriven 2005-01-25 06:20:23 av John Hull (1:379/1.99)
   Kommentar till text 7960 av Darryl Perry (1:106/324)
Ärende: Alternate fuels
=======================
24 Jan 05 22:43, Darryl Perry wrote to Ross Cassell:

 DP> On 01-24-05, Ross Cassell said...

 RC>> Hello Darryl!
 RC>> 
 RC>> 24 Jan 05 17:30, you wrote to me:
 RC>> 
 RC>>  RC>  DP>> petroleum?  GWB's adminstration is cutting funding on
 RC>>  RC>  DP>> projects that do just that.
 RC>>  RC>>
 RC>>  RC>> You mean like we havent built any new Nuke power plants 
 RC>>  RC>> since when, 3 mile island????
 RC>> 
 RC>>  DP> I was speaking about a renewable energy form to replace 
 RC>>  DP> petroleum distilates that are currently used in our cars.
 RC>> 
 RC>> Something like this isnt gonna occur over night.

 DP> No, of course not.  But it has to start sometime.

 RC>> The best hope appears to be them hybrids. (Toyota Prius et al)
 RC>> 
 RC>> You have a nation whose infrastructure and vehicles are centered 
 RC>> around th existing technology, hybrids can fit in with that, but 
 RC>> alternative combust fuels, you do realize that that will require 
 RC>> retrofitting existing cars if replacements? Who is gonna pay to 
 RC>> retrofit my car?

 DP> I once had a car that took only regular gas.  Not unleaded.  As a 
 DP> matter of fact, at that time almost all the cars on the road took regular,
 DP> not unleaded.  Now there is no such thing as unleaded gas in this 
 DP> country.  The point is, they can do like they always do... mandate that 
 DP> all cars sold in this country by xx/yy/zz must be able to use ABCXYZ type 
 DP> of fuel.

There are huge problems associated with mandating different fuels, not the
least of which is adequate production levels.  The environmental whackos have
stopped the construction of new refineries in this country for the last 30
years.  As a result, we have a serious shortage of refinery capacity.  That
means that when the government mandates XYZ, we don't have the capacity to
produce enough of it to make the transition in a timely manner, and making it
at all takes away from our ability to meet every day needs with the current
fuels being produced.  That causes prices to be much higher than otherwise
would be the case.  The EPA currently mandates something like 40 different
blends of gas depending on where you are and what time of year it is.  The
result is very high pump prices, and spot shortages in many places.  Many
experts say that eliminating all but three or four of those different blends
would save us billions in fuel cost and be far less wasteful of the oil we do
import.

 RC>> Hybrids still have a ways to go before it gains wider acceptance, 
 RC>> having driven a golf cart before, I could appreciate the smooth 
 RC>> acceleration a hy motor provides, but there is still a power thing 
 RC>> to improve on.

 DP> There are states where 95% ethanol is sold; and I'm told that cars 
 DP> today can
 DP> burn ethanol the same as they do any other varieties of gas.  Why 
 DP> is it that
 DP> the use of ethanol isn't more wide-spread in this country?  Using 
 DP> such a
 DP> fuel will go a long way to reducing our need for oil.

Illinois is the biggest producer of ethanol for fuel.  Running almost pure
ethanol is not as easy as you might think for mechanical reasons, and to
provide enough fuel for everybody we would have to turn most if not all of our
grain into ethanol and still wouldn't have enough.  There are also problems
relating to the amount of energy in ethanol.  You get less work from a gallon
of ethanol than you do from a gallon of gas because it is not as efficient,
therefore you have to use MORE to produce the same amount of work.  Not really
a viable answer to the problem.

John 

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