I was just thinking guys about all the technology available today were still generating electrical power from the same lead acid batteries Henry Ford Ford used in his automobiles over seventy years ago. Im just amazed we havent advanced much in this aspect off the internal combustion engine. I believe someday we will have enery storage units similar to the CDs we use i our stereos. That would open up a whole new world for electric powered cars. Battery technology is really ancient if you think about it. But maybe for a reason. Oil companies. Maybe wehave this technology out there but its being stopped because off big business. Thoughts guys.

 

i have the same thoughts about drum brakes. they suck and i hate workin on them. i'll be glad when they make the last one. im not talkin about old trucks with drums, just the "fleet" of daily drivers on the road. i wonder how many people have got cancer and died from breathing the brake shoe dust strired up when servicing one. i'll bet most or all of those cheap imported shoes u can buy at any parts store have asbestos in em. they are imported and thats not regulated for asbestos content, read the boxes they almost say they got asbestos in em. not legal to make them here, but "legal" to import them. how many shops have u seen using proper epa methods for drum brake service? anyway i'm not that down on todays batteries, except for the ocassional explosion when one gasses.

 

Small but important point 150ford. Batteries don't generate electrical power. If they did you wouldn't need an alternator or generator.

My thought is that the lead-acid battery is what is available because it is the does the job better than any other option. I just got 10 years of service life out of the battery in my van. Not too shabby.

 

But my reasoning is it makes it the idea off electrical powered cars unfeasible. With different technology it could be very reasonable.

 

i think the answer is dont mess with success

 

There are batteries like the Optima that have dry cell technology, but it is more expensive, and I don't really know on the reliability, as far as I know, they have been doing ok. As stated though, it is only electrical storage, rather than generation, same story on the little A-D cell batteries. The problem on the electric cars is that it takes so much energy to move the car down the road for any length of time, so it takes a heck of a lot of storage to operate. That is the point of the hybrid cars, but they get poor mileage when on the open road, they are great for in town though.

 

What someone needs to do is figure out how to mass produce the Doc's flux capacitor...

 

i believe Doc Browns "mr. fusion" would be more applicable to this thread

 

Lead acid batteries do the job, and cheaply. Why change a good thing? Do you really want to pay for a 12 volt 600 amp nickle codium bat?

Battery operated vehicles were mentioned as well, and I don't buy into them. Batteries hate cold weather for one. I'm sure they are fine in the south where it's warmer, but up here in New England, battery powered vehicles are rare.

Then you plug them in to recharge. Now think about where the power is coming from. Are you driving one because they are no-emmision vehicles? The vehicles may be clean, not releasing any pollutants into the air, but the electricity it takes to charge the batteries are generated from mostly coal burning power plants, which pollute the air more than if you burned gasoline through your cars emmision system.

 

Like my brother always told me - "if it aint broke, don't fix it."
Lead batteries work well, the lead it cheap and it's easily recycled.
OTOH, Honda and Toyota are using Nickle metal hydride batteries in their hybrid vehicles.

On the thin CD like battery, it's already been done... it's even flexible.

http://www.solicore.com/11-09-03-a.html
http://www.solicore.com/tech.html
http://web-japan.org/trends/science/sci060119.html

 

It seems more feasable to me to burn some kind of natural plant produced fuel, like fuel from corn, something our farmers can grow to fuel our machines. The battery operated vehicles don't make much feasable sense to me, unless you hybrid them. With the hybrids, you can recoup some of the kinetic energy that would otherwise be lost from waste heat, but solely battery operated vehicles would only fly with me if they were recharged using a natural energy generating sourse, like a windmill or solar.

 

If you think of it, all energy from fuels that are currently "burned" ultimately came from the sun at one time or another. I forgot who or when I heard it, but someone estimated every gallon of gas came from and has the energy of the equivalent of 2 or 3 tons of plant material. Amazing, ey? Obviously it's not too practical to be hauling around 90tons of corn to drive a few hundred miles :-)

Solar would work, but current technology isn't good enough to capture more than about 15% of the energy available (during daytime only!), and given the amount of energy needed to move a truck around today, it ain't going to be feasible. :-(

Maybe one of you budding BioEngineers will invent some kind of biogenetically engineered plant that excretes the equivalent of gasoline...then everyone can grow some in their backyards!

 

If there is a cost effective way to extract or refine alcohol from corn or some other crop, we can run our machines off of that. Corn oil can run deisel engines for example. Crude oil needs to be refined to create deisel and gas. Sure, there will be refining costs for plants, but I wonder if it can be done cost effectively.

Two or three tons of plant matter for a gallon of gas does sound extraordinary. That's quite a statistic! Hopefully in time we can get that number down to a reasonable level.

 

I think the answer to america's energy crisis is liposuction.

 

Either that or capturing all the methane gas (aka fart gas) from all the cows...

Pretty funny that some years ago, the top of a buried landfill here caught fire from all the gas under it. Apparently it wasn't capped properly and the methane was seeping out to the surface fueling the fire.