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Study Notes 001:
By
William E. Steinman
Introduction:
I have finished with my campaign for governor nonsense. For anyone who cares, I believe I have made my point. That is, we have the kind of government we have because of the kind of voters we have. Now, I am ready to engage in a different mission. My new mission is one over which I can expect to have reasonable control. Of course, in politics, no one has any control. Our entire government is out of control because the voters have abdicated their responsibility to think about what they are doing. In my new mission, I will not be dependent on the behavior of the rabble.
I have
set myself the task of trying to solve the problems involving our oil
dependencies. I know of two key problems. Most important of these is the
greenhouse or global warming problem. Only politicians and other fools continue
to deny that problem. For our scientific community and other thoughtful people,
the problem is undeniable and the threat is imminent.
The other
problem is that too many of our oil sources are in the hands of our enemies.
These are people who truly hate us and want to destroy Western Civilization.
Regardless of the rhetoric of our government, we have no friends in the
As to the problems, I see several phases or approaches to finding solutions. We can break the problems down into parts or steps, each of which may have independent solutions. For global warming, a good first step would be to reduce or entirely contain the harmful emissions from automobiles. Of course, the obvious way to do this would be to eliminate the gasoline engine as a motive force in the automobile. That would still leave us with diesel engines and they would also have to be eliminated.
A less dramatic approach would be to look at the chemistry of the automobile engine and devise methods for eliminating or containing the harmful emissions. I can hear people shouting now. They are saying, “You fool! What do you think the auto industry has been doing for the last 3 decades?” My reply is, “Not much!” Haven’t you noticed, an engine engineer is like any other engineer? By the time he gets his degree, he is so nailed into his engineer’s box that he cannot get outside it to save his life. For example, an automotive engineer knows how an automobile works. He learned all about it in school. That is his going in mindset. With that mindset, it is impossible for him to think that a car could work any other way. That is why automobiles have not essentially changed in 80 years. I do not claim I will do any better, but I will try. To do that, I must understand the complete chemistry of auto exhaust.
Another approach is the approach General Motors is trying to
take. That is to replace the gasoline engine with fuel cell technology. I would
like to see them do it, but, regardless of their claims, they have not produced
a viable fuel cell product. I think they should have a product in the showroom
before they try to steal the march. The car they showed at
Even with the elimination of all harmful emissions, the entire problem would not be solved. We still use one heck of a lot of oil and our appetite is not declining. Quite the contrary, it is going up almost exponentially. We are still highly dependent on the importation of oil. As I have said many times, I do not believe in hunkering down. Hence, conservation, the way most people think of it, is not a viable answer. However, viewed properly, using less oil can be an answer.
On way would be to make less oil do more work. This brings us back to the automobile and fuel efficiency. Yes, you say, but the auto industry has been working on that for decades. I won’t bother to reiterate my statements about engineers. I believe it is possible to double the fuel mileage of the automobile with no decline in performance. It simply requires a new approach to engine chemistry.
Now, a doubling of fuel efficiency will eventually not be good enough, but it is a step. The next step is to eliminate the heat engine as the method of converting gasoline into mechanical energy. The gasoline engine is, at best, 60% efficient. That is only when it runs at constant speed. In the automobile as a variable speed device, it is much worse than that. On the other hand, a DC electric motor is inherently a variable speed device.
I believe it is possible to convert gasoline directly into electricity and use electric motors to directly drive the wheels of the automobile. That is a much more satisfying answer than the hydrogen fuel cell. We already have a massive creation and delivery system in place for gasoline. We have no such system for hydrogen. So, gasoline conversion is another area of investigation for me.
Okay, if we do that, we will have reduced our oil need by a great deal. But, wait a minute. The conversion unit I just describe could be used to power a home or a small factory. Oh, oh! Does that mean we may need more oil? You bet. That is the down side. The up side is we would eliminate all of those coal driven electric power plants with their smokestacks and all. We would also eliminate our obsolete power grid and make us less vulnerable to enemy attacks. We would have a widely deployed power system that would require an army to disable. The way it is now, a handful of determined guerrillas could disable it.
Okay, no matter how we slice it, we will probably need more,
not less oil. However, there really is no shortage of oil for the short term.
There is a craphouse full of oil in
So what is the final solution? Eventually we will have to
find another source of energy. Oil will not do for the long haul. At this time,
I believe the final solution will be nuclear fusion. That must be another area
of investigation for me, which will require a great deal of study. I will
continue this in the next posting.
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