The solution to our energy problem: Natural Gas!

Very good article Electric. This is old technology. I drove non dedicated vehicles that were modified in the aftermarket, and they were great! If you run low on natural gas, just switch to gasoline. It just amazes me that we have not done this eariler and still I hear no one talking about it as a solution.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Yea.. please leave all of you.. I stay here.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Well the main reason few talk about it is that it simply not a viable alternative, gas will peak with or soon after oil. Unless your a country like Iran large scale natural gas cars are simply not a option.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

How do you figure this?

Charge temperatures are lower on LNG engines because the fuel goes through a phase change during cylinder filling. The piston tops and exhaust valves don't see temps as high as in a gasoline engine that burns on the lean side, and the risk of detonation is greatly reduced versus a gasoline engine with 80,000+ miles on the odometer and tons of carbon deposits in the cylinder head.

How is LNG necessarily more destructive to an engine's internals?

 

How about capturing methane from domesticated animals?

 

The Air Car caused a huge stir when we reported last year that Tata Motors would begin producing it in India. Now the little gas-free ride that could is headed Stateside in a big-time way.

Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) confirmed to PopularMechanics.com on Thursday that it expects to produce the world’s first air-powered car for the United States by late 2009 or early 2010. As the U.S. licensee for Luxembourg-based MDI, which developed the Air Car as a compression-based alternative to the internal combustion engine, ZPM has attained rights to build the first of several modular plants, which are likely to begin manufacturing in the Northeast and grow for regional production around the country, at a clip of up to 10,000 Air Cars per year.

And while ZPM is also licensed to build MDI’s two-seater OneCAT economy model (the one headed for India) and three-seat MiniCAT (like a SmartForTwo without the gas), the New Paltz, N.Y., startup is aiming bigger: Company officials want to make the first air-powered car to hit U.S. roads a $17,800, 75-hp equivalent, six-seat modified version of MDI’s CityCAT (pictured above) that, thanks to an even more radical engine, is said to travel as far as 1000 miles at up to 96 mph with each tiny fill-up.


http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4251491.html

 

Smart move, they already do that in some places, it provide a good profit, but it can only replace a small percentage of our gas needs, next your going to also need to methanize garbage, and gasify biomass "energy crops" if you want to replace a significants percentage of natural gas production with sustainable sources.

I would think garbage plasmification is another smart move, but again only in concert with other alternatives can it put a big dent in fossil fuel usage.

 

and remember everyone, gas blows up real well

 

They already have household methane systems in India, which can use both food waste and animal dung. Apparently just one kilo of sugar can produce as much methane as forty kilos of sacred cow dung!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGSl72xZHNk

 

BTW, we should probably be saving as much NG as possible for fertilizer production, the price of which is getting out of control for farmers.

Gas reserves decline much faster than oil after peaking.

 

Natural gas Burns between 10-15% air ratio, that pretty good, you could leave your stove leaking for a whole hour and light a match and nothing would happen.

Hydrogen is different it burns between 5%-95% air ration

 

...begs to light a cigar in a hydrogen car...

 

I'd like to see a comparison of BTU output from a kilo of white sugar...as ethanol and methane.

I suspect methane would give more net energy because it doesnt require distillation.

 

There is definitely enough gas available considering the number of refuse (landfill) sites available. The main problem is that the gas doesn't come off as pure methane (CH[sub]4[/sub]) which means that gas has to undergo a process to clean it of all extra potentially hazardous gases like H[sub]2[/sub]S, as well as when used in domestic pipelining a "odour" is also added to help with the detection of leaks.

Obviously the "refining" cost's money to do if you intend to use it for domestic uses.

Landfills can continue producing gas for decades after their closures, however depending on how the landfill was constructed (with it's underlayer and pipelining) decides on how much gas you can gain from a site, along with other factors like how deep the site is and the Geographic location (Weather is an important factor too).

To this day landfills have been either Venting the gas or flaring the gas. Flaring isn't just a waste of the gas, but for the most part the sites use static flare systems that have been made for an optimal flow and since the gas in a site tends to wane in regards to weather conditions (and how well the leachate systems are functioning) it can actually cause higher levels of pollution than just venting Methane.

However there are a number of people out there trying out different methods of "Gas Repower Generation" which can range from turbines being placed on the site to generate electrical power to much the same level as a couple of windmills (depending on site size) to powering nearby factory equipment.

One Example is actually near Augusta in Georgia, US where a Biofuel processing plant is actually powered by a nearby landfill.

 

that not "natural gas" that biogas. Natural gas is a fossil fuel, limited by geography, biogas is a renewable limited by us. We can also directly methogenize or plasmify garbage into usable gas as well as put it into a land fill and let it slowly convert.

 

Did we supposedly reach the half way point on the oil in our ground? What the ***k are we going to do after that!?

 

Adapt or die.

 

If we do run out of oil, I imagine it would return to something like the way it was before white men came to America... a returning to the old ways... or perhaps, we will learn to harvest the energy of a sun more effectively?

One idea: What if we sent a space ship out really close to the sun, in order to SUPER heat some water, to spin a turbine, to then split water into hydrogen and oxygen, stored in tanks. What would make something like that work, is if we could somehow find a source of water in space, so we wouldn't have to burn rocket fuel in order to get it to my envisioned: Outer Space Solar Power Plant... HHHmmmm

The sun has a damn lot of energy, and if we were to get closer to it we could better utilize that. Another curious idea, would it be possible to split water into hydrogen and oxygen at a location much closer to the sun than we are now, burn that hydrogen and oxygen, it turns back into water, using the sun keep a steam turbine flowing to keep the splitting of H2O... Perhaps we should then be more concerned about developing battery technology to the point that the energy created on the solar space station could be somehow transported back to earth.... maybe with big parachutes? hahaha just an idea

Then again... maybe that would be a waste of resources no matter how much research was done on it....