Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Yes, every region needs to pursue different strategies to end its addiction to oil. We wabbits all need to be cured though. I like the idea of every home having solar panels and windmills. It will take a while, but putting them all up will create a lot of jobs. I like big solar energy plants too, although your point is good about reliability of local sources. Imagine a windmill at your house generating electricity for your electric plug-in car. It may need to be a hybrid now, in case there's no outlet to plug into where you drive, way out in the sticks. I imagine you carry some gasoline with you in a portable gas can. But eventually, nobody will be using gasoline at all. We'll be carrying on-board generators instead for emergencies. We might as well begin the shift.

What? Do you really think that on board generators create energy for a car?

Originally Posted by Vandal-72

What? Do you really think that on board generators create energy for a car?

Of course he does.

Also, small point of order: if those white spinny things are producing electricity, they are called wind turbines. A mill is something that grinds.

Pet peeve.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Of course he does.

Maybe just taking along vandal's hot air would spin some turbines too......

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Maybe just taking along vandal's hot air would spin some turbines too......

What exactly would an "on board generator" that replaced the need for gasoline actually be? Or are you just spewing more pretend knowledge?

Originally Posted by Vandal-72

What exactly would an "on board generator" that replaced the need for gasoline actually be?

I assumed it would be an elf on a treadmill or something along those lines.

I believe Eric may be talking about fuel cells. Of course those don't remove the need for fuel, but they do remove the need for fossil fuels.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I believe Eric may be talking about fuel cells. Of course those don't remove the need for fuel, but they do remove the need for fossil fuels.

A fuel cell is a battery, not a generator. While it's certainly possible that Eric is that confused, I really have a hard time thinking quite that little of him.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

A fuel cell is a battery, not a generator.

Not exactly. A fuel cell is a chemical reactor, as is a gas turbine. Like the turbine it doesn't simply dissipate all of the enthalpy of reaction as heat, but rather converts a portion into more useful energy, electricity in the case of the fuel cell, mechanical work for the turbine.

A battery is a one kind of electrochemical reactor that contains a fixed quantity of reactants and so can only deliver a fixed amount of energy per charge.

Unlike a battery, a fuel cell can produce electricity indefinitely, as long as it is supplied with fuel. Reactants (fuel) are fed into the fuel cell, reacted with atmospheric oxygen (i.e. burned), producing the reaction products along with electricity and heat. So a fuel cell is much like a turbine with generator, in that fuel goes in, reacts with oxygen to produce combustion products along with electricity and heat.

Correct. A fuel cell is a generator in the sense that it employs a chemical reaction to generate electricity. It's not a conventional turbine generator but the word is broader in meaning than that. If the fuel used is pure hydrogen, a fuel-cell engine is non-polluting and non-greenhouse. The technology already exists and needs just a few more developments to make it economically viable (mostly involving the materials that have to be used, which are very expensive). Fix that problem and you have the automotive tech of the future. I'm guessing that's probably what Eric was talking about, although if so he certainly wasn't clear and anyone can be forgiven for misunderstanding.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Correct. A fuel cell is a generator in the sense that it employs a chemical reaction to generate electricity. It's not a conventional turbine generator but the word is broader in meaning than that. If the fuel used is pure hydrogen, a fuel-cell engine is non-polluting and non-greenhouse. The technology already exists and needs just a few more developments to make it economically viable (mostly involving the materials that have to be used, which are very expensive). Fix that problem and you have the automotive tech of the future. I'm guessing that's probably what Eric was talking about, although if so he certainly wasn't clear and anyone can be forgiven for misunderstanding.

Why in the world would you ever give Eric the benefit of the doubt? When has he ever earned such a thing?

Dr. Michael Mann: The report is simply an exclamation mark on what we already knew: Climate change is real and it continues unabated, the primary cause is fossil fuel burning, and if we don’t do something to reduce carbon emissions we can expect far more dangerous and potentially irreversible impacts on us and our environment in the decades to come.


New IPCC Report: Climatologists More Certain Global Warming Is Caused By Humans, Impacts Are Speeding Up


The Fifth — and hopefully final — Assessment Report (AR5) from the UN Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) is due next month. The leaks are already here:

Drafts seen by Reuters of the study by the UN panel of experts, due to be published next month, say it is at least 95 percent likely that human activities – chiefly the burning of fossil fuels – are the main cause of warming since the 1950s.

That is up from at least 90 percent in the last report in 2007, 66 percent in 2001, and just over 50 in 1995, steadily squeezing out the arguments by a small minority of scientists that natural variations in the climate might be to blame.

In conclusion:

I very much doubt the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report will move the needle on climate action because of its inadequacies; because the media has scaled back climate coverage and let go of its best climate reporters; and because the fossil fuel funded disinformation campaign will try to exploit those first two problems to make it seem like this report gives us less to worry about, when it simply underscores what we have known for a quarter-century. Continued inaction on climate change risks the end of modern civilization as we know it.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...s-speeding-up/

Originally Posted by Vandal-72

Why in the world would you ever give Eric the benefit of the doubt? When has he ever earned such a thing?

That's an irrelevant question. I explain what he probably meant not for his sake, but to prevent those addressing them from revealing themselves as idiots. Of course, if you prefer not to take advantage of that opportunity, I take no responsibility.

edit...

I heard of on board chargers that might someday be used for emergencies in rural areas; that's what I was referring to in my answer to Grey.

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/39..._electric.html

https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/b...pdf?sequence=1

Meanwhile, another solution for an all-EV owner is to join AAA, which will soon have emergency service for electric cars that run out of juice, giving you enough power to get to a charging station if there's one nearby.

(quote)

The concept actually dates back to 2011, when AAA announced that its contribution to a cure for EV range anxiety would be to offer a roadside quick-charging service, exactly like the emergency gasoline service it has routinely offered to generations of inattentive drivers.

AAA already has mobile charging trucks on the road in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. Next on the list after Washington are Tampa Bay, Florida and Knoxville, Tennessee.


Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/03/30/...l4RhmGVm4tY.99

Originally Posted by Justin '77

I assumed it would be an elf on a treadmill or something along those lines.

It's time the enslavement and exploitation of elves was ended.

Free the elves.

The elves in this case are the oil workers and coal miners like those who died in the April 2010 explosion..... we need to be free of fossil fuels..... totally free, asaP....

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

edit...

I heard of on board chargers that might someday be used for emergencies in rural areas; that's what I was referring to in my answer to Grey.

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/39..._electric.html

https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/b...pdf?sequence=1

Meanwhile, another solution for an all-EV owner is to join AAA, which will soon have emergency service for electric cars that run out of juice, giving you enough power to get to a charging station if there's one nearby.

(quote)

The concept actually dates back to 2011, when AAA announced that its contribution to a cure for EV range anxiety would be to offer a roadside quick-charging service, exactly like the emergency gasoline service it has routinely offered to generations of inattentive drivers.

AAA already has mobile charging trucks on the road in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. Next on the list after Washington are Tampa Bay, Florida and Knoxville, Tennessee.


Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/03/30/...l4RhmGVm4tY.99

Your on board chargers require access to the power grid. How exactly is that useful for rural areas as you originally claimed?

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Correct. A fuel cell is a generator in the sense that it employs a chemical reaction to generate electricity. It's not a conventional turbine generator but the word is broader in meaning than that. If the fuel used is pure hydrogen, a fuel-cell engine is non-polluting and non-greenhouse. The technology already exists and needs just a few more developments to make it economically viable (mostly involving the materials that have to be used, which are very expensive). Fix that problem and you have the automotive tech of the future. I'm guessing that's probably what Eric was talking about, although if so he certainly wasn't clear and anyone can be forgiven for misunderstanding.

This is not quite right either. A generator is a device that converts work into electricity. A heat engine is device that converts heat into work. A chemical reactor is a device in which a controlled chemical reaction takes place in which reactants are converted into products with the evolution of the heat of reaction (which can be positive or negative).

One way to use these devices to make electricity is to do each operation in its own piece of equipment. A coal plant works this way. The chemical reactor is the boiler which converts coal and oxygen into CO2 and water plus heat. The heat (in the form of hot steam) is transferred to the heat engine (a steam turbine) where some of its heat is converted into mechanical work. This mechanical work is used to operate a generator that converts work to electricity. This same scheme is used in a nuclear plant except the chemical reactor (boiler) is replaced with a nuclear reactor.

Boilers have been used since antiquity. Heat engines were first developed in the 18th century. In the 19th century German engineers developed combination chemical reactor+ heat engine, which are called internal combustion (IC) engines. A Otto engine, for example is fed gasoline and air and produces hot exhaust, mechanical work and excess heat. These nifty IC engines were way smaller that the combination boiler + heat engines used to propel railroad locomotives, and could be used to produce self-propelled vehicles for personal use (cars). A gas turbine is one of these IC engine that uses natural gas to produce work. Natural gas electric plants used gas turbines hooked to generators to produce electric power.

A fuel cell is another one of these nifty two-in-one devices. In this case the chemical reactor is a special kind of reactor, an electrochemical reactor. In this sort of reactor, reactants are converted to products with the evolution of heat and electricity. For the purpose of propelling a car, the fuel cell would be connected to an electric motor (a device that converts electricity into work). But for the purpose of generating electricity this single device does the job of reactor+engine+generator in a coal or nuke plant or a IC engine+generator in a gas plant.

You can see why folks were so excited about fuel cells back in the day. The first practical cell carried out the combustion of hydrogen to produce electricity at pretty good efficiencies. Problems were that you need platinum to make the reactors and the amount of platinum need per kw of generating capacity was large, making them too expensive. Also they used hydrogen as fuel, which itself was expensive. Back in the sixties work was conducted on cells that would use hydrocarbons as fuel. I don't think this ever worked out (I certainly have not heard of any natural gas fuel cells). And much work on reducing the amount and cost of electrode materials/catalysts has been done over the years. I haven't followed the field but my impression is progress has been made.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

A generator is a device that converts work into electricity.

As the language continues to evolve, I suspect this definition is in the process of being replaced. The common-sense intent of the use of the word is "something that produces electricity from some other source of power." Defining it in terms of "work" creates a distinction which is meaningful for physicists but meaningless for users. Someone who has a fuel-cell for the purpose of producing electricity is likely to call it a "generator." In fact, I strongly suspect they already do. The meaning of words is what the words are used to mean.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

As the language continues to evolve, I suspect this definition is in the process of being replaced. The common-sense intent of the use of the word is "something that produces electricity from some other source of power." Defining it in terms of "work" creates a distinction which is meaningful for physicists but meaningless for users. Someone who has a fuel-cell for the purpose of producing electricity is likely to call it a "generator." In fact, I strongly suspect they already do. The meaning of words is what the words are used to mean.

Except that Mike's right, and a generator creates energy by the movement of macro parts. I'll grant him that 'reactor' is probably the ideal word for what a fuel cell is, although I'm not totally clear how the definition of 'reactor' meaningfully excludes batteries from being considered them, too. Is it just the fact that for a battery no fuel is added or waste products removed? Because the cathode-anode transfer is also a controlled chemical reaction...

Not that I'm saying Mike's wrong (actually talking like a real chemical engineer gets him the cred that simply naming himself one wouldn't)... I just want the benefit of his background for my own understanding.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

I'll grant him that 'reactor' is probably the ideal word for what a fuel cell is, although I'm not totally clear how the definition of 'reactor' meaningfully excludes batteries from being considered them, too.

It isn’t. I addressed this in my first post. Both a fuel cell and battery are electrochemical reactors. A fuel cell is a continuous reactor like an industrial boiler or gas turbine, fuel is fed continuously or semi-continuously.

A battery is a batch electrochemical reactor with a single fixed charge of reactants. It is, in effect, a disposable reactor. A rechargeable battery can be “reused” by pumping back into it a quantity of electricity greater than what was discharged in order to convert the products back into reactants, which sort of defeats the purpose of making the electricity in the first place. After all we don’t “unburn” the coal, gas or petroleum we use to generate useful forms of energy.

Batteries are not used for electric power generator per se, but for electric power generation in special situations where other kinds of generators are not present. That is, they are electrical energy storage devices and are not analogous to electrical power generating plants that also convert chemical energy into electricity.

Fuel cells are analogous to electrical power generating plants (as I described in my previous post), which is why your equation of fuel cells with batteries was incorrect, even though at a fundamental level they perform the same process.

Consider an old fashioned zinc D battery. At 10 cents a kwh it will produce 0.05 cents worth of power. Clearly its cost is hundreds of times the value of the power that can be obtained from it. It has not value as a power generator per se. It has value as source of a small amount of electrical energy at locations where a generated power is unavailable. That is, it is useful for it ability to store electricity is a readily portable form.

At the same 10 cents per kwh, one kw of power over year is worth about $875. In 2002 fuel cell costs were at $275. Although still very expensive, it is far cheaper than a battery. Now back in the sixties when fuel cells cost many thousands of dollars per kw, they were more like batteries and so only useful for special purposes like spaceflight.

"Batch" as versus "continuous" reactor. That makes good sense.

As always, thanks for the clarification.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Someone who has a fuel-cell for the purpose of producing electricity is likely to call it a "generator." In fact, I strongly suspect they already do.

They could, but I suspect they would call it a fuel cell. After all the term generator would confuse it with a diesel generator.

The difference between a fuel cell and a battery, and the similarity between a fuel cell and a generator, is that a battery is a temporary energy storage device and both a generator and a fuel cell are permanent, fuel-driven producers or transformers of power. Of course, if you're talking about rechargeable batteries, that difference disappears, too. What Eric was saying in his confused way is that there are relatively non-polluting and completely non-greenhouse ways of powering cars. He's right.

Originally Posted by Deb C

Considering Germany is on track to totally get rid of nuclear energy by 2022, I'd say they're far ahead of us in making the world environment a safer place to live. Meanwhile, Americans are being fed a line about *clean* coal. Germany is at least telling the truth about nuclear energy and making giant strides toward better resources of energy. Plus, to make up for the phased out nuclear electricity, Germany plans intensive expansions of energy efficiency, as well as renewable alternative sources, like wind and solar, for which it is already a world leader.

Germany to phase out nuclear power by 2022!


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/wo...many.html?_r=0

Missed this.

Going back to my original questin: how does an end to nuclear energy help anything, if it is replaced by much-worse coal? Coal is always bad all the time.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Missed this.

Going back to my original questin: how does an end to nuclear energy help anything, if it is replaced by much-worse coal? Coal is always bad all the time.

It doesn't. Shift away from both coal and nuclear.

A friend of mine (who is more tech-oriented than me) recommends Thorium instead of Uranium plants. He says they existed but were suppressed by the uranium lobby. They are safer, he says. Worth checking into?

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013...-china-thorium