Production Of Fuel Cell Motorcycles Begins

Re: Study only applies to methanol

My God, you're thick.

The study only applies to methanol? Well, let's see:

"Turning plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflowers into fuel uses much more energy than the resulting ethanol or biodiesel generates, according to a new Cornell University and University of California-Berkeley study."

Um, I see the words "ethanol" and "BIODIESEL", kpaul, old buddy. Do you see them? Take another look. See if they can penetrate your filter.

"Plus an ecology professor won't have the last word the market will.. "

No sh!t. And it is.

"Right now biodiesel is selling above regular diesel ..."

What, the diesal/bio blend that's about 90% dino and 10% veggie? Well, hell, that's revolutionary. We're saved.

And the Buzzmeister was right, not only will Tier II take out diesels - unless some new tech rolls out fast - think $$$$, VW has already pulled that way interesting Touraeg V-10 oil burner.



Actually I find BioD mildly interesting and I did actually read a lot of the link info supplied by the Kook.



Mostly university stuff spending taxpayer $$ and not exactly market savvy.



Seeing the Kook defer to a market made me spew my java...what a laugh!



If half of the positive stuff on BioD is half right, it will be extremely cool. But I'll neither hold my breath nor start investing just yet..unless I decide to short a BioD pioneer.

To be fair this thing is about emissions, not efficency. They are not the same thing.

Click to expand...

To be fair, it's also important to examine net emissions. Remember that hydrogen produced from electrolyzed water requires a relatively high electrical discharge, which in turn requires some serious power generation. In the USA, the preferred method for generating electricity is the coal plant. Not exactly environmentally friendly.

As far as examining calories goes...it may help to examine where those calories are coming from. Solar calories should be considered 'free', since that radiation is going ot his our atmosphere whether we like it or not. Also, believers in the greenhouse/global warming/fossil fuel theory probably want to embrace biodiesel beyond hybrid gas/electric and hydrogen fuel cells. Hybrids don't solve the problem of atmospheric carbon release, and hydrogen just moves the problem from a tailpipe to a smoke stack, which ultimately doesn't solve anything. Biodiesel does a good job of actually solving the issue of greenhouse gasses. All of the carbon released from burning biodiesel fuel comes from a plant. All of the plants' carbon mass is atmospheric, separated out during photosynthesis. The process of photosynthesis uses air (mostly 02 and C) and with the aid of the sun's radiation, the carbon is metabolized into simple sugars and releases the O2 back into the atmosphere. When the biodiesel fuel oil is burned, the carbon is released back into the air, but because it came from the air in the first place, the net release of carbon into the air is zero.

Remember that the diesel engine was originally designed to for farmers to run them on vegetable oil. The idea was that a certain portion of a farmer's initial crop of the season could be pressed into oil and power his/her tractor for the remainder of the season. From both an ecological and economical efficency standpoint, this may be the way to go...and we still get to keep our internal combustion engines.

An alternative to biodiesel, but along the same lines? Check out the Greasecar. Granted, if everyone had one of these, it would not be as useful or economical, but it has the same zero net Co emissions as biodiesel. I went to college with the guys who developed the Greasecar as part of their undergrad thesis and have a few friends who converted diesel cars to Greasecars. Very cool.