Your ideas, hopes and links for green travel. - Page 7

Do you feel weak and small?

Did you vote Republican thinking you were a real American patriot, only to discover the Tea Party think your a commie?

Well now you can regain your confidence and feel better than everyone else who's "different", all over again...

Feel the power...be the power...crush the scum- http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/09/g...er-to-us-road/

But that's not true.

Lives have been saved, arms, legs and faces have been saved…not as many people die from diseases caused by air pollution and auto makers still have the choice to design better fuel efficient cars. Blame the auto makers, blame the consumer, but don't blame cleaner air and safety, that's just silly.

"Electric cars and electric hybrid cars already make use of brake energy to power a generator that charges the batteries. However, according to Per Tunestål, a researcher in Combustion Engines at Lund University in Sweden, air hybrids, or pneumatic hybrids as they are also known, would be much cheaper to manufacture.

"The technology is fully realistic. I was recently contacted by a vehicle manufacturer in India which wanted to start making air hybrids," he says.

The technology is particularly attractive for jerky and slow driving, for example for buses in urban traffic.

"My simulations show that buses in cities could reduce their fuel consumption by 60%," says Sasa Trajkovic, a doctoral student in Combustion Engines at Lund University who recently defended a thesis on the subject.

Trajkovic also calculated that 48% of the brake energy, which is compressed and saved in a small air tank connected to the engine, could be reused later. This means that the degree of reuse for air hybrids could match that of today's electric hybrids. The engine does not require any expensive materials and is therefore cheap to manufacture. It also takes up much less space than an electric hybrid engine. The method works with petrol, natural gas and diesel.

The idea of air hybrids was initially hit upon by Ford in the 1990s, but the American car company quickly shelved the plans because it lacked the necessary technology to move forward with the project. Today, research on air hybrids is conducted at ETH in Switzerland, Orléans in France and Lund University in Sweden. One company that intends to invest in engines with air hybrid technology is the American Scuderi. However, their only results so far have been from simulations, not from experiments.

"This is the first time anyone has done experiments in an actual engine," says Trajkovic. "The research so far has only been theoretical. In addition, we have used data that means we get credible driving cycle results, for example data from the driving patterns of buses in New York."

The researchers in Lund hope that the next step will be to convert their research results from a single cylinder to a complete, multi-cylinder engine. They would thus be able to move the concept one step closer to a real vehicle."
~ http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...ectric-cheaper

"I know we can go 300 mph on compressed air," he says. "I'm sure of it."
~ http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars...neville-record

"With gasoline prices projected to hit $5.00 a gallon in 2011, this car is great news.

The* Air Car, dubbed the “MiniCAT” could cost around $8 thousand in India and would have a range of close to 200 miles between refuels.

The cost of a refill would be only two dollars.

The MiniCAT which is a simple, light urban car, with a tubular chassis that is glued, not welded, and a body of fiberglass powered by compressed air.* Micro-controllers are used in every device in the car, so one tiny radio transmitter sends instructions to the lights, indicators, etc.

There are no keys—just* an access card which can be read by the car from your* pocket.* According to the designers, it costs less than a tenth to operate compared to a car running on gasoline.* Its mileage is about double that of even the most advanced electric car, a factor which makes a perfect choice in cities where 80% of motorists drive less than 40 miles per day.* The MiniCAT has a top speed of 65 miles per hour.

Refilling the car will, once the market develops, take place at adapted petrol stations to administer compressed air.* In two or three minutes, and at a cost of approximately two dollars, the car will be ready to go another 200 miles.

Due to the absence of combustion and, consequently, of residues, changing the oil (1 quart of vegetable oil) is necessary only every 30 thousand miles.

Since the temperature of the clean air expelled by the exhaust pipe is between 0-15 degrees below zero, it can be used to air condition the MiniCAT with no loss of power or mileage."

~ http://johnharding.com/2011/01/26/mi...r-powered-car/

God evolves-

"Car engines could soon be fired by lasers instead of spark plugs, researchers say.

A team at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics will report on 1 May that they have designed lasers that could ignite the fuel/air mixture in combustion engines.

The approach would increase efficiency of engines, and reduce their pollution, by igniting more of the mixture.

The team is in discussions with a spark plug manufacturer.

The idea of replacing spark plugs - a technology that has changed little since their invention 150 years ago - with lasers is not a new one.

Spark plugs only ignite the fuel mixture near the spark gap, reducing the combustion efficiency, and the metal that makes them up is slowly eroded as they age.

"In the past, lasers that could meet those requirements were limited to basic research because they were big, inefficient, and unstable," said Takunori Taira of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences in Okazaki, said.

The team has been developing a new approach to the problem: lasers made of ceramic powders that are pressed into spark-plug sized cylinders.

These ceramic devices are lasers in their own right, gathering energy from compact, lower-power lasers that are sent in via optical fibre and releasing it in pulses just 800 trillionths of a second long.

Unlike the delicate crystals typically used in high-power lasers, the ceramics are more robust and can better handle the heat within combustion engines.

The team is in discussions to commercialise the technology with Denso, a major automobile component manufacturer."
~ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13160950

The quicker these trains are 100% powered by clean energy the better.

1,000 km/h trains, eeek- thats 621 mph, as fast as a plane!

"Researchers at the*Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) reportedly are preparing a record-shattering 1,000 kilometer per hour train,*according to*the*Beijing Times.**


After the prototype, the group plans to implement a smaller train capable of speeds of as much as 1,000 kph.**Shen Zhiyun, a member of the research team,*comments, "The speed can be reached by making vacuum pipelines for maglev trains to run through, with no air resistance."

Daryl Oster, who owns the U.S. patent on evacuated tube (vacuum) rail, now works at the CAE.* Along with Zhiyun and another researcher, Zhang Yaoping, he is leading efforts to deploy the technology.* The team hopes to begin laying ETT rail lines within the next ten years."
~ http://www.dailytech.com/China+Plans...ticle19268.htm

Where I live, Scotland, the energy policy is to have 100% of its electricity from clean energy (wind, solar and tidal) by 2020. China's going to be far, far, far ahead of the US too.

This article is a must read-

"On the same day that Senate Republicans filibustered a vote for renewable energy in the USA, by contrast China has just published an astoundingly ambitious and exciting renewable energy plan for the next ten years.

Chinas plan is to get a total of 500 Gigawatts of renewable energy on the grid by 2020. It explodes wind power from a mere 25 GW on the grid now, to a staggering 150 GW, a six-fold increase on the previous already ambitious plan.

Liquid fuels would get a boost. The ten year plan would grow ethanol production from 2 million tons to 10 million tons, to expand biodiesel from 0.05 million tons to 2 million tons, biomass pellets for heating, from under a million tons to 50 million tons, and biogas and biomass gasification from 8 billion cubic meters to 44 billion cubic meters.

China is already the world leader in solar thermal hot water heaters for rooftops. The solar hot water goal is to have 300 million square meters of solar hot water collectors, up from 100 million in 2006.

Electric power would come from adding 100 GW to make 300 GW of hydro power, adding 125 GW to have 150 GW of wind power, adding 28 GW to have 30 GW of biopower, and going from a half Gigawatt to 20 GW of solar. Giant steps.

To put that in perspective: the US will have added 16 GW of all renewable energy combined once the Obama administration Recovery Act funds are allocated which, while a fabulous change for us, because it doubles the entire last thirty years of renewables on the grid pales by comparison with 500 GW.

And even that 16 GW is only if the last of the Recovery Funds can be protected from our loyal opposition. That doesnt look likely. The GOP filibustered a vote to extend Recovery Act support for renewable energy.

China has no filibuster. I never thought I would live to see the advantages of a political process other than democracy, but living in one that seems to have devolved into a plutocracy (run for and by the fossil fuel industry, the richest industry on the planet) is changing my mind.

There actually are some big advantages with one-party rule. Clarity of purpose is one. Having a domestic enemy, sworn to make your side lose, at any cost to the country, is not helping America compete in creating the new clean energy economy. Because they dont have an opposition party filibuster in China, their climate plan can actually be implemented.

But wipe those tears away. Think globally.

If there is one country we climate hawks should be happy is not run like America, it is China. Because China is the worlds factory. And carbon emissions from the worlds factory are about to get lower. And that is a good thing."
~ http://cleantechnica.com/2010/12/04/...power-by-2020/

2020 is only 8 years and 8 months away. Scotland found it's plan to hit 80% renewables by 2020 was on track so upped it's game to 100%. We'll be exporting a fair bit after that too.

Chinas building lots of new coal stations for sure, so it'll be interesting to see how these massive new amounts of renewables will effect that.

"In the last few months, the biggest oil companies made about $4 billion in profits each week, Mr. Obama said. And yet, they get $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies each year. Four billion dollars at a time when Americans can barely fill up their tanks. Four billion dollars at a time when were trying to reduce our deficit."
~ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/us...s.html?_r=1&hp

There's also a cheap technology being developed that can be added to existing solar panels that harvest between 90% to 95% of the suns rays to convert to energy instead of the 20% that most are now at-

"Efficiency is a problem with today's solar panels; they only collect about 20 percent of available light. Now, a University of Missouri engineer has developed a flexible solar sheet that captures more than 90 percent of available light, and he plans to make prototypes available to consumers within the next five years."
~ http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-...nt-energy.html

The UK yesterday commited in law to the biggest cuts of any developed nation of CO2. In the report they argue that green tech will be cheaper than coal, oil and gas in the years to come-


"The UK is to put in place the most ambitious targets on greenhouse gases of any developed country, by halving carbon dioxide emissions by 2025, after a tumultuous week of cabinet rifts on the issue.

Agreeing the targets took weeks of wrangling among ministers, but late on Tuesday afternoon the energy and climate secretary, Chris Huhne, announced to parliament that the "carbon budget" – a 50% emissions cut averaged across the years 2023 to 2027, compared with 1990 levels – would be enshrined in law.

David Kennedy, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, the government advisory body that proposed the target, said: "This is going to deliver higher [economic] growth for the UK. It could well give us lower electricity prices in the future than our competitors."
~ http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...rbon-emissions

This is going to be popular-

"Due on sale in the UK by spring 2012, the Ampera is the first "range-extended EV", using technology that turns the principle of the Toyota Prius's hybrid engine on its head. Where the hybrid ran an internal combustion engine (ICE) and backed it up with electricity from a battery, the Ampera runs an electric motor from a battery and backs it up with an ICE. On battery power alone, the car has a range of 50 miles; after that the ICE kicks in and powers the electric motor, which gives the car a further range of about 310 miles.

Critics have pointed out that, at a rough estimate, this means that after the battery is depleted, the combustion engineis only managing a poor 35-40 miles per gallon. Vauxhall admit that this may be the case, but point out when you combine this with the electric engine, under Europe's rules which look at the average use of a car, you reach a much more eco-friendly 175mpg. The carbon emissions are similarly impressive, at 40g CO2 per km , compared to the UK's new car average of 149.5g in 2009. "In reality though," admits Vauxhall's Ian Allen, "it depends completely on the driver and how you plan to use the car.""
~ http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...auxhaul-ampera

50 miles isn't much but you won't come to a grinding hault when the battery runs out. A lot of trips are well within that 50 miles.

I wonder whether it might be possible to have wireless charging roads at some point?

Wireless charging for electric vehicles-

"When it comes to technology, the old adage of "bigger is better" died a long time ago, so it's not a surprise to see "smaller is smarter" thinking apply to products and prototypes across the board. Today's (relatively) tiny wonder is Evatran's Plugless Power electric vehicle charging system: now smaller, more efficient, and primed for its first trial phase. The last time we saw Plugless Power, the system's wireless charging "station block" stretched nearly the length of a full vehicle and charged at 80 percent efficiency. Today the charge block is only slightly larger than an average hubcap, boasts a 97 percent charging efficiency, and is less picky about your car missing the wireless charger's "sweet spot." Evatran is now working on launching a test fleet of up to 12 Chevy Volts to put the system through its paces, and hopes to expand the tests to as many as 30 vehicles by January. Ready to ditch pumps and plugs forever? Start saving: a complete Plugless Power system (including vehicle retrofitting) will set you back as much as $5000 after production starts sometime in 2012."
~ http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/01/e...smaller-consc/

"It is one of the mysteries of Japan's ongoing nuclear crisis: How much damage did the 11 March earthquake inflict on the Fukushima Daiichi reactors before the tsunami hit?

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) and Japan's government are hardly reliable adjudicators in this controversy. "There has been no meltdown," government spokesman Yukio Edano repeated in the days after 11 March. "It was an unforeseeable disaster," Tepco's then president Masataka Shimizu famously and improbably said later. Five months since the disaster, we now know that meltdown was already occurring as Mr Edano spoke. And far from being unforeseeable, the disaster had been repeatedly forewarned by industry critics.

But what if recirculation pipes and cooling pipes burst after the earthquake before the tidal wave reached the facilities; before the electricity went out? This would surprise few people familiar with the 40-year-old reactor one, the grandfather of the nuclear reactors still operating in Japan.

"This means that assurances from the industry in Japan and overseas that the reactors were robust is now blown apart," said Shaun Burnie, an independent nuclear waste consultant who works with Greenpeace. "It raises fundamental questions on all reactors in high seismic risk areas."
~ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...n-2338819.html

These power stations of destruction shouldn't be powering our electric future.

The obnoxious, lazy and undeniably lethal motorcycle, finally grows up and it's green- http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=YQgTne7TAGY

It's a whole lot safer than an old vulnerable motorcycle though. Those things are a death wish. Maybe this tech will become compulsory like seat belts have in cars.

Not when hit like in the demo either. Is it at all surprising that the motorcycle industry ignores safety when even regular riders don't know what they're up against?

The fact is in the US nearly 5,000 people die each year on motorcycles on average (5,312 in 2008). They have barely any protection and they wobble insanely quickly for a multitude of reasons, like gravel, bumps and minor collisions etc, and that's at speed too.

I wouldn't want to make it compulsary if it destroyed the reasons for wanting to ride. Perhaps the tech will develop so it becomes more integrated with a regular bike experience. Then I might not be against the idea.