With the orchestrated violence and intimidation against the overwhelmingly peaceful people protesting for regime change in Egypt we can see similarities to the methods used by Thaksin Shiniwatra to increase discord and promote his agenda in Thailand.

First gangs of uneducated youths are paid to converge on mass and attack the peaceful protestors with rudimentary weapons i.e. sticks and stones or in the case of Egypt camels and horses. Forcing the protestors to send their own armies of disgruntled citizens to arms as defense against the violent youths. Add in gun battles in the middle of the night, exploding grenades and Molotov’s and you have the ingredients for widespread discord.

What does this process achieve?

Firstly it makes the protestors scared, stressed and agressive which tends to cause mistakes in judgement. This is important as a way of manipulating the negotiation process enabling the more sinister elements to get away with things that would not be possible in calmer situations. Otherwise known as the “Fog of War”. Extreme decisions and options become possible in these situations. The Cuban missile crisis is an example of the Fog of war in action. Kennedy was seriously considering the use of Nuclear weapons to wipe out Cuba and Castro actually encouraged the Russians to ramp up to that level even though he knew it meant instant annihilation.

It is also very useful for scaring investors on the global market. Hence the price of oil going up to $103 today and no doubt it will be at $200 by the end of the month if this mess continues as expected in Egypt. A lot of money can be made by betting against the market in situations like this and there are forces that will happily pay for more violence in order to realise their bets.

The question is who would be so well connected as to be able to put into play all of the required elements to achieve such goals?

Well if we look at the similarities between Egypt and Thailand the answer doesn’t take much effort to realise. A quick search online for companies that have vested interests in both situations at the top most level will reveal all that is needed to see who is most directly responsible for driving the violence (i.e. paying the agitators) in both situations.

The answer shall be left as an exercise for the reader. Suffice to say Mubarak and Thaksin both work for or with this organisation and count among their colleagues some of the nastiest people on the planet. Some might even be tempted to call this organisation “Evil Incorporated”.

Tags: Fundamentals, oil, unrest by Sparky
No Comments »

According to Standford researchers and the WWF it is now possible using modern technology to have a fully sustainable “green” energy supply for the whole world within the next 30 – 40 years. The WWF go so far as to say there will be enough energy to fulfill the needs of the human race at the projected rate of global consumption for the year 2050. Assuming we make some major changes to the way we live, build the infrastructure to allow the energy to be transported and everyone starts using public transport and riding bikes, etc..

The news is that there is no news here.

What is more concerning is the lack of coverage in the mainstream press about the logic that is being used to explain how the sustainable future can be achieved. For example in the WWF report they say it will only cost 1.3 trillion Euros to convert Europe over to a fully sustainable infrastructure. They don’t discuss the fact that to build the new infrastructure they will need to rely on fossil fuels as the energy source for building all the new technology and transporting it, etc…

So what they are effectively pushing is the idea that we should burn up all the remaining fossil fuel as fast as possible to convert it into sustainable energy infrastructure. Ah, Hello!!! Doesn’t anyone else see the pointlessness of going this route? Firstly it will do absolutely nothing to ease global warming in the short term. Secondly it will use up the remaining fossil fuels and thirdly I do believe they are blatantly missing out the issue of peak oil and exponential growth of consumption of said oil which means it is effectively running out already. Certainly in the next 10 years we will see the bottom of the barrel being reached as India and China continue to increase their consumption of the remaining exponentially dwindling reserves.

This means there is a short fall of 20 – 30 years of easily accessible and energy positive fossil fuels left to assist us in achieving the goals that Stanford and the WWF have so kindly set out for us.

Seriously you would think that one simple fact is so obvious that it would be the single most important issue for any credible report to be focused on.

Instead the Establishment choose to completely ignore the problem and look at what would be possible assuming we don’t run out of fossil fuels. This clearly works in their favour as we all know that with an unlimited supply of energy, anything is possible.

Tags: e=mc2, Energy Storage, Fuel, Fundamentals, Magnetics, nuclear, oil by Sparky
No Comments »

What constitutes an ocean?

On earth it will have water in liquid form. On Titan it is methane in liquid form. It is generally accepted that liquid is the basic building block for life. Combined with a heat source and some other base elements we have the ingredients to get physical objects growing and the process of evolution can begin.

The Hubble space telescope has captured many beautiful images of deep space. Many of the most amazing are the various Nebulas. Floating clouds of gas as big as several galaxies and much much much bigger than our own solar system.

This image is a mosaic of the Carina Nebula assembled from 48 frames taken with Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Hubble images were taken in the light of ionized hydrogen. Colour information was added with data taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission.

Now the obvious logical next step is what happens when you have a vast floating cloud of gases whose constituent parts are hydrogen, oxygen, sulfer that are enveloping and contributing to the raging inferno of star birth? We have all heard about the habitable zone or so called “sweet spot” that earth and planets like Gliese 581 c inhabit. How about the possibility that we don’t even need a planet. What if all we need is the right combination of gases with liquid density in the sweet spot.

The mind boggles with the possibility that life really is abundant throughout the universe. After all if we can’t even count how much life there is in the ocean here on Earth then we are surely going to have some trouble with cataloging the abundant life in oceans the size of 5 solar systems feeding off the energy of multiple suns.

Tags: Aliens, e=mc2, Energy Storage, Engine, Fuel, Fundamentals by Sparky
No Comments »

There seems to be a serious gap in the market these days for a Flex Fuel Hybrid Plugin Electric Vehicle (FFHPEV).

Flex Fuel requiring a two tank system with one tank carrying petrol, E10 or E85. The other tank carrying LPG. Throw into the mix a Plugin Electric Vehicle drive train with regenerative breaking and you would have a vehicle with the capacity for approx 1500km without having to recharge and near unlimited capacity if the car was able to recharge the batteries every 300km.

It seems strange that a company like Apple can build a device like the iPhone with all the bells and whistles that were being purposefully left out by the major phone manufacturers for years and effectively force the competition to leap a ten year gap in two years of RnD but the car companies which are significantly more competitive and have significantly more reason to compete on low fuel consumption and flexibility due to the peak oil issue in combination with the exponentially increasing consumption of fossil fuels, are not making that same leap.

Clearly there is demand for a complete Flex Fuel Plugin Hybrid solution. But the major manufacturers are refusing to play ball with the consumers and are instead forcing us to consume all the fossil fuels as quickly as possible. The major governments of the world seem to be completely oblivious to the problem of the exponentially increasing consumption while we have exponentially decreasing reserves of energy positive fuel left to share. It seems that they actually want to end up with no viable energy fuel. In addition there is still no answer to the problem of what we are going to use in place of plastic and fertiliser when the fossil fuels run out.

Unfortunately solar recharging is not viable for the average car. Even the most advanced solar cars are basically lightweight alloy go carts. There is just not enough energy available in a space with the mass and weight of a regular car to make it worth the expense and effort of using solar for a run about vehicle. Sure it has it’s uses as a potential long range single driver vehicle for getting around in sunny climates when the fossil fuels finally do run out. But for most people it will be more convenient to drive a Plugin EV, catch the train/bus, ride a horse, bike or walk.

Solar radiation on a clear day, sun overhead: 500 W/m^2 Conversion efficiency into electric power, say 20%

So each 1 square meter of solar panel will give you 100W of juice for a few hours in the middle of a clear day.

A Watt is a Joule/second, so a 1 square meter panel charging for say 5 hours at peak levels (8 or so overall) will supply you with

100 J/s * 5 * 60 * 60s = 1.8 Mega Joules

Which sounds like alot until you work out it is equivalent to:

56 ml of gasoline
49 ml of diesel
85 ml of ethanol
50 ml of cooking oil

With fuels you burn you don’t have to carry the oxidizer around with you whereas with a battery you do.

Another thing to note is 1 PS (European horsepower) is 500 Watts, so a 100 HP(PS) engine on full throttle puts out 5*10^4 Joules/s. To do this on liquid fuel (heat engine) it consumes around 2.5*10^5 Joules of fuel every second, or your full day of nearly ideal charging would be used up in 7.2 seconds of full throttle operation.

Tags: e=mc2, Energy Storage, Fuel, Fundamentals, oil by Sparky
No Comments »

Make sure you check out this great blog on the amazing potential of Thorium nuclear reactors for greatly reducing the immediate electrical energy needs of the world.

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) are currently being built in China to pave the way for the sustainable energy revolution. America and the rest of the western world has had the ability to utilize this technology for almost 100 years but due to the powerful forces at play in the energy and military sectors they have chosen not to make the most of this amazing resource. Instead they would rather use petrol and coal to maintain their positions in the energy and societal hierarchy.

If the Chinese can pull it off and there is no valid reason that they will not, then they will instantly become the worlds leaders in energy production and supply. Immediately reversing the consumption of carbon based fuels and decreasing their carbon footprint on the planet. It will catapult them far and away into the first position of the global economy and everyone will be playing catchup from then on.

If only the Indians would follow suit. Surely they are not completely sucked into the western dogma of the military industrial complex and are able to take the decisive lead in switching their focus from military weaponization of nuclear fuel to a cleaner greener and totally sustainable approach that is represented by thorium based reactors.

Tags: e=mc2, Fuel, Fundamentals, nuclear by Sparky
No Comments »

The scale of the damage done in the gulf of Mexico disaster is unprecedented. Here’s an overview of what has gone wrong deep underground.

Firstly there are many independently documented and recorded oil fissures erupting in other locations away from the well head. The entire affected area is in vicinity of 400 square kilometers. The measurements that are being made on the pressure inside the well are redundant as the actual pressure is being dissipated across a much larger area.

With the Methane Hydrate feeding into the rock layers, cracks open and pressure makes it’s way to the surface, with more pressure building up in the intermediate rock layers there are a couple of possibilities for the pressure to be released.

1: Cracks develop spewing pressure and oil to equalize the area
2: A massive volcanic explosion

In much the same way that a bridge will collapse or an avalanche will build until it is out of control this is what is happening now in the Gulf. The pressure exterting outwards and will eventually find relief upwards. The odds are high it will blow like a volcano.

Seismic data for the area contains all the latest info on p waves and s waves however it is not being publicly released for independent analysis. This data provides everything we need to solve for the modulus of elasticity to enable us to calculate how strong the pressure is.

The questions we should be asking are:

Where is the geophysical data for independant analysis?
How bad is it really?

This data should be public record as it will require a massive evacuation of the area before it blows.

Methane Hydrate is highly unstable super compressed Methane Gas in solid form. Just like Gun powder.

This page has a biased and jaded overview of the potential for water as a fuel in automobiles and a general overview of some of the more contentious claims that have been made for powering cars on water. Clearly the writer is not impressed with the numerous claims made over the years for cars that run on water or use water as a storage medium for Hydrogen or Browns gas.

However the writer also fails to mention the plasma spark plug, the Geet Plantone fuel system allowing leaned out ratios of 80:20 water:gasoline, the Firestorm sparkplug from Robert Kruiper, the Plasmatron from MIT, ArvinMeritor’s Plasma Fuel Reformer, the potential in using Al-Ga composite from Jerry Woodal at Purdue, solar hydrogen electrolysis and photosynthesis using silica catalysts from MIT or even a general overview of the actual energy potential available in a liter of water in real world numbers and not just abstract (for most readers) chemical algorithms.

Even though there is an indisputable energy loss in freeing hydrogen from it’s watery prison that does not mean it is not possible to use it as a fuel source. The question is how inefficient are we prepared to be when it comes to transportation and energy supply and are there other ways to coax hydrogen out from it’s watery orgy so that we can also use it as an energy source.

Water is fully oxidized hydrogen. Hydrogen itself is a high-energy, flammable substance, but its useful energy is released when water is formed–water will not burn. The process of electrolysis, discussed below, would split water into hydrogen and oxygen, but it takes as much energy to take apart a water molecule as was released when the hydrogen was oxidized to form water. In fact, some energy would be lost in converting water to hydrogen and then burning the hydrogen because some heat would always be produced in the conversions. Releasing chemical energy from water would therefore violate the first and/or second laws of thermodynamics.

Tags: Chronology, Fuel, Fundamentals by Sparky
No Comments »

This has been known about since 1967 but still has not made it to market. Purdue University Professor Jerry Woodal has found a way to use Aluminium and Gallium to split water. No electricity needed!!! Well, except for the energy required to extract the metals from the earth and form them into the composite in the first place… Jerry is most excited about the possibility of using it as a fuel multiplier so in conjunction with a plasma spark plug or plasma fuel reformer the hydrogen could be used to increase the efficiency of the gasoline used in hybrid or standard ICE cars. What’s the delay?

View the lectures below.

THE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF ALUMINUM-GALLIUM ALLOYS AS A MATERIAL FOR ENERGY STORAGE, TRANSPORT AND SPLITTING WATER

THE ALUMINUM ENABLING HYDROGEN FUEL ECONOMY

From 2007 lecture

2,7lbs of Al will produce the same amount of energy in the form of hydrogen as 1lb of gasoline. i.e 19K BTU

It takes 20 gal x 6.5 lbs/gal = 130 lbs gasoline to drive an average car for 350 mi or 350 lbs Al

At $3/gal for gasoline and $0.8/lb for Al the trip costs $60 using gasoline and $280 using Al

If an Al recycler is built next to a nuclear power plant with and on-site power cost of $0.02/KW-hour Al can be recycled from alumina back to Al for 9 kW/hr/lb x 350lbs x $0.02/kW-hr = $63

The cost of 2.7 lbs would be about 49 cents

At $3/gallon, 1lb of gasoline costs 46 cents

Tags: Engine, Fuel, Fundamentals by Sparky
1 Comment »

The question comes to mind of how much energy is stored in water if we are going to use it as a fuel. Looking around there are conflicting amounts provided on the internet.

A litre of water contains the equivalent of 1366 litres of hydrogen – which provides the same energy as 0.4 litres of petrol.

2H20 –> 2H2 + 02
Mr of H20 = 18
No. of moles of H20 = 1000/18 = 55.66666
No. of moles of H2 produced = 55.66666
At room temperature and pressure, the amount of H2 (hydrogen) produced: 55.66666 x 24 = 1333.33 dm^3 where 1 dm^3 is 1 litre of gas = 1000 m^3 of gas

1 liter of water contains (approx) 55.56 moles of water, so 111.11 moles of hydrogen.

Using the ideal gas equation, PV=nRT at 1 atmosphere (sealevel), and room temperature (22C, 295K)

V = 111.11 * 0.08205784 * 295 / 1

Gives 2689.7 liters of hydrogen.

The amount of hydrogen extracted from a gallon of water can be found very easily using the molecular weight of H20 (water), Hydrogen and Oxygen, along with mass conservation. the molecular weight of water is 2 H (molecular weight 1) + 1 Oxygen (Molecular weight 16) for a total of 18. And for every Molecule of water converted, we would get 2 Molecules of Hydrogen.

So, now the question is, how many molecules of water are there in a gallon of water? The density of water is 1g/(cm3) so in 1 gallon of water ( about 3.785 Liters or 3785 cm3) the mass of the water is, 3785g. 1 mole of 6.02×1023 molecules of water is equal has the mass in grams equal to the molecular weight or 18 grams per mole. so 3785 grams corresponds to about 1.265 x 1026 molecules of water.

Now, if every single one of those molecules were converted into Hydrogen we would get twice as much hydrogen as we had of water. or 2.53 x 1026 molecules of hydrogen. however since hydrogen is a diatomic molecule, meaning that the hydrogen that we talk about is H2, we would get 1.265 x 1026 molecules of hydrogen. at 1 atmospheric pressure and 273K, 1 mole of hydrogen fills approximately 22.4L of volume. so 1.265 x 1026 molecules or about 210 moles, would fill 4707 Liters of volume.

It is known that a gram atom is equal to atomic mass of substance; a gram molecule is equal to molecular mass of substance. For example, the gram molecule of hydrogen in the water molecule is equal to two grams; the gram-atom of the oxygen atom is 16 grams. The gram molecule of water is equal to 18 grams. Hydrogen mass in a water molecule is 2 x 100 / 18 = 11.11%; oxygen mass is 16 x 100 / 18 = 88.89 %; this ratio of hydrogen and oxygen is in one liter of water. It means that 111.11 grams of hydrogen and 888.89 grams of oxygen are in 1000 grams of water.

One liter of hydrogen weighs 0.09 g; one liter of oxygen weighs 1.47 g. It means that it is possible to produce 111.11 / 0.09 = 1234.44 liters of hydrogen and 888.89 / 1.47 = 604.69 liters of oxygen from one liter of water. It appears from this that one gram of water contains 1.23 liters of hydrogen. Energy consumption for production of 1000 liters of hydrogen is 4 kWh and for one liter 4 Wh. As it is possible to produce 1.234 liters of hydrogen from one gram of water, 1.234 x 4 = 4.94 Wh is spent for hydrogen production from one gram of water now.

If you mean hydrogen gas, H2, just naturally present in the water, then essentially none.

If you mean how much hydrogen gas could be generated by the electrolysis of 1 gallon of water, that is a stoichiometry problem. The balanced reaction is:
2H2O –> 2H2 + O2
The mass of 1 gallon of water is 3.7854 kilograms, which is 210.3 moles of H2O. From the stoichiometry, there is a 1 to 1 (2 to 2) ratio of water to hydrogen produced, and so 210.3 moles of H2 will be produced. 210.3 moles of H2 weighs 420.6 grams, or just under one pound.

If you mean hydrogen ions, H+, then it depends on the pH of the water. In perfectly pure, neutral water with pH of 7, then the concentration of H+ is 10-7 moles per liter. In one gallon, there are 3.7854 liters. So in one gallon of pure water, there are 3.7854 * 10-7 moles of H+.

Gasoline has around 44 MegaJoules/kg
H2 has around 121 MJ/kg

So, H2 has 2.75x the energy per weight of gasoline

So, if you assume 20 mpg now @ 60 mph, you burn 3 gallons per hr, which is 0.05 gal/min. Gas is about 4 kgs/gal so you burn 0.2 kg/min. Using the energy density difference (2.75) you get 0.073kg of H2 per min. Assuming room pressure and ideal gas law (sadly H2 is not an ideal gas but lets use it anway, i’m lazy) you get 22.7 liters of gas per 2 g of hydrogen. So, after that bunch of math you get 825 liters/min of uncompressed gas.

This amount of gas would be difficult to store, at 2500 psi this is the equalent of 1 gallon of volume, so it would take a big, heavy tank to hold something useful

The other issue with using hydrogen is how to make it in real quantities. The best available methods right now are electrolosis which uses

Theoretically it takes 32.9 kWh/kg of H2 produced

Typical electric costs in the US are $0.15/kwk so it would cost $4.94 per KG to make it using a large commercial system

An actual system is never this efficient, even big systems are 60 kwh per kg, so I’d double that number.

Tags: e=mc2, Fundamentals by Sparky
1 Comment »

Interesting write up on the limitations of energy storage technology when harnessing energy from renewable sources like wind, solar, tidal.

Let’s start with batteries. Today’s lead acid batteries can store about 0.1 mega-joules per kilogram, or about 500 times less than crude oil. Those batteries, of course, could be improved, but any battery based on the standard lead-oxide/sulfuric acid chemistry is limited by foundational thermodynamics to less than 0.7 mega-joules per kilogram.

Due to the theoretical limits of lead-acid batteries, there has been serious work on other approaches such as lithium-ion batteries, which usually involve the oxidation and reduction of carbon and a transition metal such as cobalt. These batteries have already improved upon the energy density of lead-acid batteries by a factor of about 6 to around 0.5 mega-joules per kilogram–a great improvement. But as currently designed, they have a theoretical energy density limit of about 2 mega-joules per kilogram. And if research regarding the substitution of silicon for carbon in the anodes is realized in a practical way, then the theoretical limit on lithium-ion batteries might break 3 mega-joules per kilogram. Therefore, the maximum theoretical potential of advanced lithium-ion batteries that haven’t been demonstrated to work yet is still only about 6 percent of crude oil!

But what about some ultra-advanced lithium battery that uses lighter elements than cobalt and carbon? Without considering the practicality of building such a battery, we can look at the periodic table and pick out the lightest elements with multiple oxidations states that do form compounds. This thought experiment turns up compounds of hydrogen-scandium. Assuming that we could actually make such a battery, its theoretical limit would be around 5 mega-joules per kilogram.

So the best batteries are currently getting 10 percent of a physical upper bound and 25 percent of a demonstrated bound. And given other required materials such as electrolytes, separators, current collectors, and packaging, we’re unlikely to improve the energy density by more than about a factor of 2 within about 20 years. This means hydrocarbons–including both fossil carbon and biofuels–are still a factor of 10 better than the physical upper bound, and they’re likely to be 25 times better than lithium batteries will ever be.

A more promising approach is to use fuel cells with liquid and gaseous fuels. The two obvious choices for such fuels are hydrogen and hydrocarbons; in terms of energy per unit mass, hydrogen beats crude oil and natural gas by a factor of almost 3. Alas, hydrogen is a gas at surface conditions, so its volume density is horrible unless it’s compressed to several hundred atmospheres of pressure. At 700 bars, for example, hydrogen has an energy-volume density of around 6 mega-joules per liter, while gasoline at 1 bar has about 34 mega-joules per liter. Both hydrogen and hydro-carbons can be produced from renewable energy sources, though doing so economically and at a global scale remains a challenge.

Tags: e=mc2, Fundamentals by Sparky
1 Comment »