The best replacment for gasoline is ?

They have relief valves to let out some of the pressure if it builds up to high.

 

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The natural gas tank must hold considerable internal pressure. - Flat would very heavy and at exactly the wrong part of the car to resist roll over. One reason why consumer union found the tesla, the best road handling car, not just the best electric car, was the multitude of small batteries are sitting on a sheet of metal lower than the center of the wheels! The axial still sets the road clearance, but not by much.

I'm just guessing but flat container for natural gas that would not rupture sitting in the sun all day during a hot summer day would need to be steel and weigh several times more than the gas it contained. That is why plastic cylinder, with fiber glass tape (which is just covered with thin non-stress bearing outer layer that prevents small sharp thrown rock from cutting the glass fibers) wrapped around it, and in the car's own shade, is used. Its weight is less than a third that of the gas it holds (again a guess) and it lowers the center of gravity - not raises it more than a foot.

 

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Based on 2007 data. And assumes fertilizer is used. If it is not, then the 18 grams of CO2 would drop to about 10, I think as making fertilizer is energy intensive.*
All activity at the fermentation / distillation plant uses self created power, with surplus electric energy feed into the grid - about 4% of Brazil's annual total.
This power is made mainly in the fall when rain fall is least - a perfect match to hydro-power (~85% of Brazil's total) as lets more water remain behind the dams.

*Not only do you need to make it, but need you to get it to warehouse near field and then spread it in the field. Don't use chemical fertilizer. Get EROEI of about 15.**

** I advocate small scale, labor intensive (manual planting & cane cutting) for new cane based alcohol in Africa with soy bean grown as nitrogen supply. See post 11.

BTW, Mozambique speaks Portuguese, like Brazil, and has been shown how to do five fold better than the other two yellow bar / sugar cane to alcohol growers.

 

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Actually they can use aluminum which is very strong and lightweight as compared to steel. They actually could incorporate the flat tank into the roof thereby having a layer of insulation between it and the steel roof. It would look like almost a part of the roof but the roof would be fatter and higher somewhat depending upon how much gas was put into the tank. I'd suggest anywhere but the underside for there are far to many holes, rocks and other stuff that affects the underneath part of any vehicle. As for roll overs that tank would add rigidity to the top of the car making it stronger in a roll over.

 

Yes, all such tanks do. But frequent releases of natural gas are not a very safe scenario, nor do you want to rely on a $5 valve to prevent a rupture. So you have to design them to not reach a dangerous pressure even when in direct sunlight in summer - resulting in less capacity. (However, that reduced capacity may still be plenty for the taxi or bus.)

 

About 5 decades ago, when I lived in Baltimore Gas & Electric's service area, BG&E offered me small (1% ?) discount if they could switch off my electrically heated hot water tank, when the wanted to. I agree but never noticed they had. Some coded signal went thru my phone line, to do this. I never noticed it either - may have been frequency slightly above my audio range. I owned BG&E's stock at the time - was neutral to any rate increases, but benefited two way by this peak load shaving.

 

If you assume natural gas tank is factory new car installed, you can do better than that. - A cylinder with hemispherical ends under the seldom used back seat PLUS tubular strength car frame instead of steel I - bars. Also have only one door on the driver's side, not two, and the volume the door normally had could be set of parallel tube tanks. Possibly a tiny change of the center of gravity but hard to guess which way.

Not sure I like any tanks of natural gas in the car in case of crashes. - Might make "Crash and burn" or "Crash and explode" a too real possibility. Also still emitting 65/82 = 80% of the CO2 gasoline car does - not much help with global warming, and that is my main concern (for my grand children, not me). By post 23 data.
Especially as the methane leaking from natural gas wells is not insignificant, even years after they are "sealed" - US's main CH4 "hot spot" is now in the SW (four corners area) where years ago natural gas was extracted.

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figure caption was:
"Four Corners area (red) is the major U.S. hot spot for methane emissions in this map showing how much emissions varied from average background concentrations from 2003-2009 (dark colors are lower than average; lighter colors are higher."

BTW
Aluminum alloy may be stronger per Kg than steel but it sure ain't cheaper - cars are a very price competitive market. Aluminum production is very energy intensive.

 

Yes, if we ever reach a point where Solar becomes a significant fraction of the grid. I don't see that happening for several decades at least.

It would be an interesting and tricky problem to use car batteries for grid leveling.....but then Elon wants to sell you a battery pack for your house anyway.

 

I'm expecting solar to skyrocket this decade. Prices for panels are way down; Elon's got a battery to make it great for houses and industry, so we just need an adequate force of trained electricians to do the installs. It might replace natural oil in 30 years or less if it keeps going as I anticipate.

 

I think Elon is viewing the home/ office market only as out let for gigafactory's surplus production if the electic cars are not the demand he hoped they will be. Some new (and at least one old nickel iron battery invented by Edison in 1902, is now being made again* as is cheap and last for more than 30 years) are cheaper per KWH of storage capacity and with many more deep discharge cycle before 10% of capacity is lost compared to Li/ion. It is the clear chemistry choice for mobile applications, but not for load leveling.

See heavy battery alternatives discussed here:http://www.sciforums.com/threads/new-technology.141149/#post-3292242

PS to WLW: I just went there and know you made the next post (have seen that link already) but I'll answer your question made there here: Yes, there is plenty of land, not well used economically, for supplying all the sugar cane based alcohol all the world's cars can use - just in Africa. Brazil's fertile land is better economically employed growing higher value per acre crops with modern high tech farm equipment (Armies of machines guided by GPS marching in V formations towards the horizon, as in the US's fertile mid west).- So will some day import alcohol too.

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Not the V-shaped set of 15 big machines harvesting a field, I have seen and looked for, but gives the idea of how high tech / GPS guided/ farming has become.

* Two USA manufacturers of Nickel Iron Batteries now exist.

1/ http://www.zappworks.com/ USA manufacturer and supplier of NiFe batteries in Montana
2/ http://IronEdison.com USA Supplier of NiFe battery systems, Resource for historical information ... Other manufacturers are appearing worldwide including a new one in India (working on a dry cell design) and Australia.

Nickel Iron cells have no lead content and produce no heavy metal pollution at all. They also last in heavy use for 30 years and more. Peter Demar, a USA researcher, has rejuvenated 80 year old cells using Edison's instructions from 1930. The potential severe lead acid pollution that can occur in developing countries if they use lead acid cells for backup of renewable energy is now proven. The most extensive study is shown below in a study released form a USA University research project. A study by Chris Cherry, assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering U of Tennessee, found that solar power heavily reliant on lead batteries has the potential to release more than 2.4 million tons of lead pollution in China and India!

More by searching or at: http://www.fieldlines.com/index.php?topic=146519.0 from where the above was copied.

 

Agreed. There is at least one large wholesaler selling PV now at 65 cents a watt, and forecasts are 42 cents a watt within 6 months. At those costs, a 10kW array (enough to power a home almost anywhere in the US) is $4200. Of course you also need an inverter and BoS components (racking, wiring, conduit, disconnect) but those are all very amenable to cost reduction through volume manufacturing.

One thing I am excited about is that this will also greatly ease the pain of blackouts. At least one manufacturer now offers cheap grid tie inverters (no battery) that will provide you with 1500 watts during the day when the sun is out - enough to run refrigerators, sump pumps, cellphone chargers, radios etc during the day. And for a few hundred dollars more you can get a 1500 watt computer UPS that will run those things at night as well. I can think of a lot of people during Hurricane Sandy who would have loved to have that.

 

But there shouldn't be any "frequent" discharges of the gas because it should not get that high in pressure .

 

Could use a fuel cell made for NG.

 

I remain quite concerned that this growing trend may be able to crash US electric systems. Say once every 5 to 10 years the whole east coast of the US has a week of clouds and rain. All those who rarely pay much for electric power, some even getting paid most of the time by "running the meter backwards" now expect the power company to have peak load capacity to service their needs.

A very large fraction of your electric bill is paying the loans that built it and tiny part for the fuel that is converted into energy - perhaps only 15 % of the bill is the fuel cost. This was OK, but not really fair to the non solar cell homes when they were the vast majority - they could cover the cost of your free "power company back up battery" but soon those with no solar cells will be a minority and the average power sold will keep dropping as will the utilization of installed capacity.

This is just backwards: Cheap and secure power needs to have high utilization of the installed generation and distribution capital. With low utilization the rate per KWH must climb. What will happen on the once in seven or so years when 2/3 or 3/4 of the electric company's customers want 800% more than their average electric energy supplied for three days?

I'll tell you, the power will not be there, and worse the electric company, may not be able to come back up with all the line connected motors not generating "back EMF" all the not glowing lights turned on,(connected to the power line) etc. Trying to come up in what is much like a "dead short" load may not be possible. They will need to physically disconnect most regions they serve and add them back one at time in small increments. I.e. men going to >95% of all the grid's substation, twice.

Even if, and it probably is possible in a few days to re-energizing the grid, the financial failure will be exposed for all to see - that adds to their borrowing cost.
Your free "power company back up battery" may now seem like a "free lunch" but it ain't - You will pay dearly for it some day. Spoiled food at the grcery store and in your frig, discharged EV vehicles, hospital generator out of fuel, etc.

 

How does that prevent fire or explosion if natural gas tank inside the car (even just under insulation and the real roof as you suggested), is ruptured (or pipe from it to motor or fuel cell is broken) when there is scraping metal, sparks, or even just a dropped lighted cigarette in crash?

Note liquid gasoline does not burn - its vapor does and will it not explode unless the vapor is confined. In contrast the leaking natural gas is all "vapor" - does not slowly become vapor with heat applied.

I definitely don't recommend you trying to do it, and very dangerous to try, but you can put a burning candle out by "quenching it" with liquid gasoline.
Very hard to do as the gasoline must be very cold to have low vapor pressure and a mass* of it be quickly dropped on the candle flame from some height above it.
* The falling mass must be relatively large compared to the candle and with nearly flat leading edge at contact with the flame.

 

You are saying that 20 gallons of gasoline in a tank at the read of a car is not as likely to explode than a fuel cell in the roof?

 

Yes. They almost never do - and are outside the car's interior. But again: the fuel cell is not the problem - it is the "vapor filled" fuel tank inside the car that is

 

Yep. And many more will be paying less to have interruptible loads, and yet more will be paying less by having a V2G system or a battery energy storage system ready to help the grid sustain the load.

They will rely on the systems they have installed to provide for those loads. Others will make a lot of money supplying power. Others will pay a lot using power.

"I cannot imagine how the power will be there" != "the power will not be there."

There are plenty of people who will tell you you can't run cars on sugar canes. Should their fears be heeded as well?

Back EMF from rotating machines has not been needed for years to stabilize the grid.

They have been starting up into such loads for over 100 years.

Or cheaper energy, backup energy for when the grid goes down, and opportunities to make more money.

 

Exactly. Starting pressures will be lower (= less NG stored at room temperature) so that even at the higher "roof" temperatures, the pressure limits of the vessel will not be exceeded.

 

But it has safety devices on it and if it ever leaked it would be released within seconds. Compare a tank of gas which catches fire, it continues to burn for a very long time.