WHAT? Bio-ethanol and other biofuels NOT CO2 free?

[Sailor Steve]

I'm confused with all this talk about CO2. CO (Carbon Monoxide) is a deadly poison emitted by gasoline engines. CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) is what we humans and all other mammals exhale with every breath. CO2 isn't deadly, or dangerous, at all. You can't live on it, so if it's all you breathe you'll suffocate, but it's not poisonous. In fact, it's what plants breathe to live.

Yes, internal combustion engines do give of CO2, but isn't it CO that's the real danger?

I know I sounded factual, but actually I'm still just confused.

[Trex]

Most of what the man on the street calls ‘chemicals’ are made up of carbon (C), hydrogen (H), oxygen (O) and nitrogen (N), plus a bunch of other elements - C, H, O and N are the biggies. Depending on the chemical reaction and the way the various elements are combined, different things are produced.

If there is insufficient oxygen for complete combustion, one typically gets carbon monoxide (CO) as one of the products. This is Bad as it interferes with blood oxygen transport.

A typical product of even complete combustion (including animals’ breathing) is carbon dioxide or CO2. This is present in the natural air we breath, but at a very low level, say 0.05%. If that level rises to a given level, animals find it poisonous. Top tolerable limit (without dying, ie) is somewhere around 5% but effects are felt well below that and safety standards, depending on where you are, call for something on the order of 0.5% maximum. CO2 is happy juice for plants, which breath it and release pure oxygen (O2) – it’s a good relationship between plants and animals, ie.

CO2 is, significantly, a greenhouse gas, directly tied to global warming.

It might also be noted that while pure nitrogen (N2) comprises something like ¾ of the air we breath and is quite harmless, combustion products containing nitrogen are often Bad and contribute directly to the pollution we can smell and even see in smog.

This is why I am so impressed with the potential of hydrogen power. Burn pure hydrogen in the presence of pure oxygen and you get pure water, totally nonpolluting. As noted by Seafarer, there are problems in the way we make hydrogen at present, but the potential is there. Hypothetically, we could use sunlight as the power to break down water (H2O) into its components of hydrogen and oxygen. It’s not quite that simple as the infrastructure is going to be a pain, but it is possible.

But he’s right – TNSTAFL still reigns.

[seafarer]

I think one thing that we'll have to see in the future is more diversity in energy sources, and more regional variation.

Take Iceland for example - plenty of reliable geothermal power for the entire country's needs, and being a small island nation, that also makes hydrogen a great source of energy for mobile needs (vehicles, but also coastal craft, running fuel cells).

Here in the USA, there are regions that could be well served by wind power, others by solar, some by tidal, and so forth. If there was clean electrical energy, then battery powered cars and such become very viable in dense urban areas where travel is over short distances. In more rural areas, something will need to replace petroleum, but there could be hydrogen, or ethanol, or some such option.

I think we need to stop searching for one all-encompassing solution to replace petroleum. We can't plow under the entire planets forests to grow agrofuel crops, nor can we divert our entire agricultural production to ethanol crops. But we can implement those things on more a more selective basis.

The only all encompassing thing I see is a continued global demand for electricity - that's the one constant in energy that I see. But the days when a large utility can function on an erector set of identical plants all using the same source fuel is going. Electricity may be the constant, but the means to generate it are going to become ever more varied.

Unfortunately, a lot of people want a single, simple replacement for petroleum fuels - especially the politicians who simply can't handle things when you begin your assessment by saying that things are going to have to be more complicated then that (I swear, you tell a politician that they need to simultaneously think of two or more solutions to the same problem, and they just go slack jawed and blank, iike a 404-error just popped up on their forehead).

[Trex]

Seafarer - That's the most succinct and sensible note on the subject I've ever seen. Ever thought of running for office?

[August]

All carbon reducing efforts are going to fail, as long as we continue to ignore the out of control human population explosion.

6 Billion people on the planet and rising. There's your global warming cause right there...

[Etienne]

Originally Posted by August

All carbon reducing efforts are going to fail, as long as we continue to ignore the out of control human population explosion.

6 Billion people on the planet and rising. There's your global warming cause right there...

So what do we do? Same as the Chinese?

[peterloo]

Originally Posted by Etienne

So what do we do? Same as the Chinese?

Actually family planning counts

With only 2 babies allowed, we're sure that the population does not grow in size

As all you know, this policy has already been in force in China for more than 2 decades, and we predict that, the Chinese population will reach the apex of 1.5 to 1.6 billions, than fall.

India can follow suit. It might be hard for their government to pursade people to have less baby, since having more baby means more blessings in their culture (same as that of Chinese)

I can assure that India population will fall soon if the government enforce this throughoutly

The only problem that I can imagine, is that the elderly takes more proportion of the population, who needs lots of resources to take care of.

[JetSnake]

Originally Posted by Etienne

So what do we do? Same as the Chinese?

Are you fishing for an answer that would get someone banned?

[August]

Originally Posted by Etienne

So what do we do? Same as the Chinese?

We have to do something. The Chinese solution of limiting couples to two children seems like the least draconian.

[donut]

Originally Posted by Trex

Seafarer - That's the most succinct and sensible note on the subject I've ever seen. Ever thought of running for office?

Why are not engines useing water ? Tech exists to seperate the two,& Oxygen would help the Hydrogen burn clean. Dangers ?

[bookworm_020]

They are using the methane from landfill here in Australia as a power source

There is also a interesting project going on at a coal power station that has some potential

http://www.macgen.com.au/News/2006Ne...ectUpdate.aspx

There is some good work on solar power happening here in Australia that would help overcome some of the biggest problems with solar power (what happens at night!)

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1698520.htm

[Herr_Pete]

why dont we just do what brazilians do and run our cars of the sugar cane plant! which causes zero polution. Im pretty sure america and other countrys can use up the vast amounts of land to grow it! problem solved! the food prices will come down, all sorts of other prices will come down. Wae hey!

[Trex]

Originally Posted by donut

Why are not engines useing water ? Tech exists to seperate the two,& Oxygen would help the Hydrogen burn clean. Dangers ?

Well, asides from the obvious (Hindenberg) dangers of carrying hydrogen gas around, there are not many - if it is properly managed.

It again goes back to TNSTAFL; the energy has to come from somewhere. To break water into its components of gaseous oxygen and gaseous hydrogen requires energy - more than you get burning the two and winding up with water again. The energy has to enter the loop at another place. (The same thing happens with automotive fuel, remember. Your car cannot burn the black goo that comes from the wells. A great deal of effort and energy must be expended in advance before you pull up to the pump. As a simpler analogy, you can get a lot of energy out of rocks rolling down a hill, but somebody has to expend energy getting those rocks to the top in the first place.) So burning straight water (absent a major and unforeseen leap in technology) is a non-starter.

Too many proposals to use hydrogen have been based on fresh water (an increasingly scarce commodity) being broken down using electricity produced by, eg. coal-fired plants. That's no improvement. Using sewage or seawater as a water source would be an improvement (not a perfect solution), but the key is where the water-splitting energy comes from. There are some suggestions, eg solar power, which would not carry a carbon bill. Right now, they look like the best answer. Ultimately, with the exceptions of nuclear and geothermal power, every other power source here on Earth is based on energy coming from (or which came from) the sun. The amount of energy released by old Sol is incredible and costs nothing beyond the method of capturing it (which is of course the rub as we have not been all that efficient at that to date).

One of the major barriers to changing from the petrol-based internal combustion engine to something else is the infrastructure. In the case of hydrogen, we are talking about massive cracking plants and equally big power generation stations to make it economically viable on a large scale, not to mention the problems associated with transporting the fuel. Then there is the distribution problem - even the most remote places these days have gas stations. If we did a radical switch to ... Fuel X... we would need to make sure that vehicles using that could be refuelled on a reasonably convenient basis.

The bottom line is that there are no simple solutions, just intelligent decisions.

[seafarer]

Originally Posted by Trex

Seafarer - That's the most succinct and sensible note on the subject I've ever seen. Ever thought of running for office?

:p Well, as you might imagine from my post, I think I'd have a hard time keeping a civil tongue when talking with fellow elected officials, so probably not a good idea for me.

Plus, I've already had a heart attack, so I don't need the stress of that kind of daily grind :rotfl: