[QUOTE=Kwikkordead]This is kind of "way out there" but several people claim to have working prototypes. I've posted it before, and most people have been skeptical, but the flip side is the people developing it say that they drove cross country with using any fuel whatsoever. You be the judge.
IMO if this works it's the next "big thing". But it's unreliable at best right now.
http://energy21.freeservers.com/as101.htm[/QUOTE]

interesting... but... i'd have to label myself as a skeptic on that one... "i've been from one end of this universe to the other... seen alot of crazy things.. but i've never seen anything that would lead me to believe there is a "force" that controls everything... no mystical energy field controls my destiny..." (misquoted, but you get the idea...)

 

Actually, according to a recent article in the WSJ it was the Germans in WWII that came up with the method of converting natural gas to diesel fuel. Germany has natural gas, but not much oil and they wanted a way to power their equipment without being dependent on imported oil. See this for an excerpt, but you need to pay to read the entire article http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/wsj/acce...ternative+Fuel

The process is a closely guarded secret among those who use the method, but it involves some sort of catalytic process using cobalt. Basically, Qatar is a country without much oil, but has HUGE natural gas deposits. The problem with natural gas is that it is hard to transport to where it is needed cost effectively without pipe lines, but if they can convert it to diesel fuel they have a much better opportunity of capitalizing on their existing natural resources.

 

Oh yeah.....Horatio....or was that Euric?......anyway....great party animal......didn't say much though.

 

Actually the quote is "Alas poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio....."
That is if you are talking about Shakespere.
Good to see a little culture on the site.

 

That's right....Yorick.......it's been "just a little while"......thanks.

 

why cant we just start drilling for oil in alaska, and stop relying on middle-eastern countries? its a oil-war any way. we have plenty of oil in alaska to fuel everyone for at least 50-60 years. and by that time, everything will run off of air by then, so i say lets just run the good diesel in our trucks and forget about saving the air so much. thats why we hop them up, to see that large plume of black smoke behind you as you pass those riceburners..

 

Yep, it has been a while since I read Shakespeare, thanks for the correction!

Max

 

The Germans may have come up with the idea but it wasn't really practical at that time considering the state of the science.
Any good polymer chemist can tell you how to do it. It just takes making the investment to build a plant. Until recently the price of oil made it an uneconomical investment but current prices have changed that, as they have changed the economics of Bio-Diesel

 

Way out there? "human presence can effect the performance of the cell in a positive or negative way". You had me interested until that line. Sounds more X-files than science.

 

I quote the paper:
"All spark plug leads can be removed and the engine will still run as long as the
ignition coil and distributor remain functional."

HUH??
Then why bother with a distributor? Why are we spinning it? To "distribute" power to what?

Again:
"If the cell is left in the car for a long period, the engine becomes " charged ". From this point, the cell is not required for the motor to run."

Hmmm...
Everything that used a flow of current to work must have a current of some kind connected in order to work. Unless of course we're talking about kinetics. But you STILL need an outside source to start the ball rolling.
Kinetic energy is energy of motion. The kinetic energy of an object is the energy it possesses because of its motion. Potential energy is energy which results from position or configuration. An object may have the capacity for doing work as a result of its position in a gravitational field (gravitational potential energy), an electric field (electric potential energy), or a magnetic field (magnetic potential energy). It may have elastic potential energy as a result of a stretched spring or other elastic deformation.


He also states that the water becomes charged. Well, gee, isn't this how they create hydrogen? Water and electricity are the products of the chemical reaction of oxygen and hydrogen that takes place in the fuel cells. The water must be removed or the cells will become saturated with water, decreasing reaction efficiency. He must be using a trap to catch the vapor.

But... Reactant consumption is directly related to the electrical current produced: if there are no internal or external loads on the fuel cell, no reactants will be used. Is this what he is talking about by not connecting the power? There IS going to be a flow!
Sounds like a catch 22, in both papers.

 

Wrong John, they're called women....

 

i wish you hadn't reminded me of that...!

 

Cornell University and that screwball is wrong. It does burn cleaner and it is more economical if you have the time to process the French fry oil. It works. I was down in Ecuador visiting my inlaws and I paid 99 cents per gallon for my diesel. These oil companys screw us. Diesel is cheap to process. Additionally Uncle Sugar taxes us for the pollution our rigs spew. I apologize for rambling on...

 

The whole point of Cornell's research is probably correct when you think about it. Assuming that there wasn't any regular deisel available, and the farmer burned straight biodeisel in his tractor, herbicides, pesticides and fertilizer were made from biodeisel, and the combine and all other processing equipment burned or used straight biodeisel, including using biodeisel to heat the oil to create more biodeisel, the end result would be...................(drum roll please).......... not enough biodeisel production to be self sustaining. In other words, something would have to be cut out of the process just to break even, and there wouldn't be anything left to make a profit on.

This isn't to say that biodiesel isn't useful to help reduce the use of regular diesel, in particular if biodeisel is made from WVO. But there isn't enough WVO in the world to begin to replace very much regular diesel fuel. We either need to have much more efficient diesels or find more efficient means of converting soybeans from seed into biodeisel to make 100% biodiesel a viable alternative to regular diesel fuel.

 

I saw an interesting episode on bio-diesel on Spike tv on the weekends. I forget if it was the Truck block or what and I thought it was very informative.