Re: Casing gas, wood gas, marijuana....Alternative energy


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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [24.32.202.166] on Wednesday, January 02, 2013 at 15:48:57 :

In Reply to: Re: Casing gas, wood gas, marijuana....Alternative energy posted by mannyc [68.165.89.2] on Wednesday, January 02, 2013 at 14:55:33 :

The Stirling engine is always attractive for its simplicity, but it never gets used for anything beyond a demonstration because it's very inefficient. Turbines are great if you can keep them operating at peak power and efficiency all the time, but drop off quickly at light load. A small turbine-powered battery/electric hybrid might work.

Vehicles are a lot tougher than stationary power plants because they need to be light and compact and work efficiently over a wide range of load. That's why we keep coming back to internal combustion piston engines with liquid fuels.

I suspect that's always going to be the optimum design, so when it comes to alternative energy, we need to focus on other ways to make liquid fuels, and if need be modify diesel engines to run on them. That moves all the complexity into the fuel plant, which can be large and heavy and stays in one place, rather than in the vehicle. You want a liquid fuel for ease of handling (thin-walled unpressurized tanks and simple tubing), and ideally you want that fuel to contain as much carbon as possible relative to hydrogen, and no oxygen (i.e. no alcohol), because carbon produces more energy when burned than hydrogen does. So, the heaviest hydrocarbons that can be handled give the best power density. The theoretical best would be acetylene in terms of energy per pound, but it's expensive and hard to handle.



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