Covid - coming out of Lockdown 3 - no politics, less opinion and more facts and information.

[Hobby]

Try telling that to the lot who are plugging it for cars...

[APOLLO]

No free lunches in the energy business.

 

Also in todays press

 

'You can never say zero chance': Grant Shapps admits France and Spain could be back on the red list within weeks and vaccination will be a feature of foreign holidays 'forever more'

 

Covid news gets sillier (in the UK) by the day - double jabbed and free - forget it. This (now a money making scam) will be milking us all for ever.

 

Brit15

[Hobby]

So those who choose not to travel abroad should subsidise those who wish to? Don't think so. As you said about energy, there's no free lunch. You want to travel abroad you have to pay for it, whether that's the flights, the costs of tests, or quarantine. Your choice but not money making as its avoidable, just like speeding tickets. 

[Neil]

2 hours ago, APOLLO said:

.... This (now a money making scam) will be milking us all for ever.

 

Brit15

 

I genuinely can't see how you've come to that conclusion (the scam bit). Care to explain how you came to this point of view?

Edited August 5, 2021 by Neil
To include the bit in brackets for clarity

[Guest]

2 hours ago, APOLLO said:

vaccination will be a feature of foreign holidays 'forever more'

 

It always has been if you plan on going anywhere interesting.

[rocor]

12 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

Hydrogen production is bad for the environment though.  95% of the worlds production is through decarbonisation of methane:

 

CH4 + O2  -->  2 H2 + CO2

 

So you would be producing carbon dioxide in large quantities.

 

The hydrogen economy, that has long been predicted, was based upon the notion that there would be plentiful electricity for producing the hydrogen, this would have been via electrolysis, with the electricity produced by means of the large number of fast breeder reactors that would have been in operation.

 

For various reasons, that vision of the future has now been scuppered.

[alastairq]

To get us about, why not clockwork? Or steam?   Give your passengers summat to do on long journeys?

[Guest]

28 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

The hydrogen economy, that has long been predicted, was based upon the notion that there would be plentiful electricity for producing the hydrogen, this would have been via electrolysis, with the electricity produced by means of the large number of fast breeder reactors that would have been in operation.

 

What we have now in terms of cars at least is a Toyota Mirai that will go 57 miles on a kg of hydrogen. A kg of hydrogen will cost you a tenner. An electric car will easily go over two hundred miles on a tenner.

[Reorte]

13 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

Hydrogen production is bad for the environment though.  95% of the worlds production is through decarbonisation of methane:

 

CH4 + O2  -->  2 H2 + CO2

 

So you would be producing carbon dioxide in large quantities.

Isn't methane an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide?

 

Anyway if we're talking airships it's for buoyancy rather than fuel (although it could be used for fuel too, although there's the question as to whether there are light enough solar panels to power it), so it's not a constant consumption; the amount required to fill a fleet of airships is probably not large in the grand scheme of things. Not that I think this is at all likely, it's just idle speculation.

[boxbrownie]

2 minutes ago, 30801 said:

 

What we have now in terms of cars at least is a Toyota Mirai that will go 57 miles on a kg of hydrogen. A kg of hydrogen will cost you a tenner. An electric car will easily go over two hundred miles on a tenner.

I wonder why they only quote the fact the Mirai has a much greater range than an EV? 

[Reorte]

5 minutes ago, 30801 said:

 

What we have now in terms of cars at least is a Toyota Mirai that will go 57 miles on a kg of hydrogen. A kg of hydrogen will cost you a tenner. An electric car will easily go over two hundred miles on a tenner.

The economies of scale of electricity generation are considerably greater than with hydrogen production at current levels of demand. Hydrogen as a fuel might also be rather easier going on all the resources demanded for battery production, but I don't know.

 

Hydrogen production is also one of the ideas put forward to smooth out the inherent variability in most renewables.

Edited August 5, 2021 by Reorte

[APOLLO]

1 hour ago, Neil said:

 

I genuinely can't see how you've come to that conclusion (the scam bit). Care to explain how you came to this point of view?

 

The % rise, many times above inflation. I can't find a detailed breakdown of quarantine costs - can you ?

 

Brit15

[Dunsignalling]

10 minutes ago, 30801 said:

 

What we have now in terms of cars at least is a Toyota Mirai that will go 57 miles on a kg of hydrogen. A kg of hydrogen will cost you a tenner. An electric car will easily go over two hundred miles on a tenner.

Which reflects three things, a massive imbalance in the amounts invested in developing the two technologies, overwhelming political bias in favour of battery cars, and huge economies of scale.

 

John

 

 

[Nearholmer]

19 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Not that I think this is at all likely, it's just idle speculation.

As was my mildly flippant suggestion that air-ships might be used for holiday travel, which started this diversion!

[Nick C]

19 minutes ago, Reorte said:

although it could be used for fuel too, although there's the question as to whether there are light enough solar panels to power it)

Most of the weight in modern solar panels is in the support and protection structures, which tend to be less necessary is panels that are designed into a structure. You can get lightweight flexible ones too now. You wouldn't have to worry too much about the energy density either, as there's a lot of surface area you can cover!

 

Assuming one could solve the problem of getting enough of the appropriate bouyancy agent (whether that be H or He), Airships have a huge amount of potential for low-carbon travel, albeit at lower speed than aircraft. 

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

Which reflects three things, a massive imbalance in the amounts invested in developing the two technologies, overwhelming political bias in favour of battery cars, and huge economies of scale.

 

And physics.

[rocor]

As an alternative to a global end of international travel, to prevent (or at least slow down) the spread of a future pandemic, an alternative would be to establish a worldwide virus early warning system. This being to identify a threat as soon as possible, and issue the information to allow governments to take the appropriate actions.

 

The weak link in this scheme, are the representatives of the national governments (the politicians). They would be required to make the decision to take drastic immediate action (such as closing a country to all outbound and inbound travel). I fear that many would not have the courage to implement this.

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Anyone done the sums to work out where use of warm air might sit in the “energy efficiency of buoyancy agents stakes”?
 

The ultimate would be to use warm air that is currently wasted, vented to atmosphere while still warm, so maybe we’ll-insulated airships should be tethered to places that waste warm air (swimming pools; London Underground vent shafts; some power stations - Pig shaped airships in that case, etc), being connected to the outlets by big flexible tubes.

 

The innards of the airship could be arranged to top-load warm air, while venting cooling air from the bottom.

 

Direct solar heating of air works fine in things like solar chimneys, again “no-carbon” technology,

 

 

[Nearholmer]

1 minute ago, rocor said:

fear that many would not have the courage to implement this.

Doesn’t the system of alerts exist already, and isn’t some of the China-bashing that goes on about whether they alerted promptly?

 

(nobody seems to be bashing themselves for no reacting promptly when the alert was issued).

[rocor]

5 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Doesn’t the system of alerts exist already, and isn’t some of the China-bashing that goes on about whether they alerted promptly?

 

(nobody seems to be bashing themselves for no reacting promptly when the alert was issued).

 

I would imagine that virus-watch could always be improved upon. As for politicians? I have no idea how to make improvements in quality control there.

[woodenhead]

32 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

Which reflects three things, a massive imbalance in the amounts invested in developing the two technologies, overwhelming political bias in favour of battery cars, and huge economies of scale.

 

John

 

 

I do wonder about the battery revolution, it feels driven by Telsa/Musk to corner a market before alternative technologies can reach potential production.  The battery solution is so far forward that councils have to now consider networks of charging points, electricity networks have to consider millions of cars being connected for charging day and night.  The current model of filling a car with fuel from a network of locations has been broken towards a distributed system of car parks, road side and entertainment based charging points where a car may stand for an hour or so instead of being refueled within 5 minutes.  

 

Once the garages are gone, the distribution networks of tankers will be gone too and the only game in town will be batteries - one monopoly solution replaced by another which actually is less flexible than the predecessor.  

[rocor]

3 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

I do wonder about the battery revolution, it feels driven by Telsa/Musk to corner a market before alternative technologies can reach potential production.  The battery solution is so far forward that councils have to now consider networks of charging points, electricity networks have to consider millions of cars being connected for charging day and night.  The current model of filling a car with fuel from a network of locations has been broken towards a distributed system of car parks, road side and entertainment based charging points where a car may stand for an hour or so instead of being refueled within 5 minutes.  

 

Once the garages are gone, the distribution networks of tankers will be gone too and the only game in town will be batteries - one monopoly solution replaced by another which actually is less flexible than the predecessor.  

 

Possibly the solution will come about when the charge time for a typical car battery pack from 20%  to 80% is reduced to around 10 minutes. The existing petrol stations will become the charging stations (oil companies have been for years promoting themselves as energy companies). So car refuelling  will remain substantially as it is.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, rocor said:

Possibly the solution will come about when the charge time for a typical car battery pack from 20%  to 80% is reduced to around 10 minutes. The existing petrol stations will become the charging stations (oil companies have been for years promoting themselves as energy companies). So car refuelling  will remain substantially as it is.

 

I don't get why people are so keen to cling on to the petrol station experience.

They're miserable places.

[Nick C]

46 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

I do wonder about the battery revolution, it feels driven by Telsa/Musk to corner a market before alternative technologies can reach potential production.  The battery solution is so far forward that councils have to now consider networks of charging points, electricity networks have to consider millions of cars being connected for charging day and night.  The current model of filling a car with fuel from a network of locations has been broken towards a distributed system of car parks, road side and entertainment based charging points where a car may stand for an hour or so instead of being refueled within 5 minutes.  

 

Once the garages are gone, the distribution networks of tankers will be gone too and the only game in town will be batteries - one monopoly solution replaced by another which actually is less flexible than the predecessor.  

 

I'm not sure that's really a problem though - you're replacing a system where you have to go to a specific place to refuel your car, with one where it can be refuelled while you're going about whatever business it was you made the journey for. The proportion of journeys that will involve stopping to refuel mid-journey is actually pretty tiny (the average car journey is under 9 miles) - while there will always be some people who make 200+ mile journeys on a regular basis, most people rarely drive more than 20-30 miles in one go, with only a handful of longer journeys each year.

[alastairq]

54 minutes ago, 30801 said:

 

I don't get why people are so keen to cling on to the petrol station experience.

They're miserable places.

 There levels of miserableness I find pleasing.....Discourages drivers from blocking petrol pumps whilst they enjoy themselves inside the shop.