Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

I still think it's a bit of smoke and mirrors. I remember reading that you essentially have to repopulate the entire United States with a specific type of tree to even get an offset for a couple of houses in the United States. Once again cutting emissions is the most important factor because otherwise it's not going to be a net gain.

Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

Amazing, but not very efficient, I have been reading up online, and it has been attempted before, but projects have been canceled due to scientists using predictive research and finding out that it is not an efficient way to create energy.... I am sure that with some further improvements, it will maybe be possible for the machine to be more efficient, but for right now I am sure that it has been tried, and since my car still is running on gasoline, has failed. Good invention, and I am sure that it has great potential. On the other hand, i am sure that when coal was introduced, no one thought that something that you dug out of the ground and looked like a rock would become such a huge energy powerhouse (and environmental destroyer) but it did, amazing, and I hope that improvements can be made....

Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

I've also seen things that run on milk, peanuts, and certain grains. It's all really amazing. One day I plan on toying with these foods/ substitute gasolines.

Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

Your statements are sort of correct for temperate climates, where the slow growth of trees and smaller amounts of total vegetation in forests means they only create small carbon sinks.

However, in tropical areas, forests have a huge impact as carbon sinks. The forests there contain huge amounts of vegetation, trees and plants grow much quicker, and because of all the vegetation in rainforests, the water vapor from all the plants actually leads to the formation of clouds that block the rays of the sun. It's the tropical rainforests we need the most of any forest on this planet, as they have the greatest impact on global warming.

A recent study (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Th...essment_Report) has shown that over the next fifty years, we can mitigate 10-20% of greenhouse gas emissions simply by reforesting unused land that was previously deforested, especially that of rainforests. Another recent study found that it takes only $90 worth of reforested trees in developing, tropical nations to offset the carbon footprint of an average American citizen, making reforesting land one of the cheapest ways to combat global warming.

Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

I don't think it had anything to do with a temperate climate. They essentially picked the best tree so it was a hypothetical forest of a single type of tree (Essentially a hypothetical best case carbon sink) . I was just giving the size to give a scale that is involved.

Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

Of course the scale would be huge, but rainforests in general are much more efficient at eating up carbon dioxide than anything you can plant in most of America. (Except maybe Florida.) Here's links to the two sources I was using in my arguments from my previous post:

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/200...GL024550.shtml (This survey was the one that found that "tropical forestation has a large net cooling effect, because of increased cloudiness and because of high tropical growth and sequestration rates", and that there is "little to no net global cooling from tree planting in temperate climates". This is just an abstract of the study; you would need to find a real copy in a library to read it all.)

http://treesftf.org/resources/pops/G...%20edition.pdf (This was the source that stated it takes as little as $90 to purchase 900 trees to plant in tropical areas, to offset all the carbon emissions from a single American. "The mitigation costs through forestry can be quite modest (US$0.1–US$20 / metric ton carbon dioxide) in some tropical developing countries.... The costs of biological mitigation, therefore, are low compared to those of many other alternative measures.")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_...limate_impacts (I usually don't like using Wikipedia as a primary source, so I back-tracked all the sources there to double check and verify the information. And the result on Wikipedia explains it all quite well.)


Would you happen to have a link to the study you were referring to? What year was it published? (I'd be interested in reading it.)

Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

I doubt that the reason cars still run on gasoline is because a better alternative is not available, I believe there are OTHER reasons for the lack of change, but draw you own conclusions...

Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

What i meant was, they were not successful/effective/affordable enough. Also oil companies have a large say in that, is what I think you are saying..... And I totally agree.

Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

just a random fact but did you know that although the rainforests produce a lot of the earths oxygen, they consume the same amount overall?

Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

Everyone here should read this: http://www.reason.org/commentaries/d...20060719.shtml

It's sad but it kind of makes sense. Though I still won't condone a Hummer, I just realized that this problem is FAR more complicated than it seems.

As I said before, we are the "problem" and the "solution". There are regular cars achieving 40+ mpg and SUV available from the same manufacturer, yet many buy the SUVs. Everyone from every walks of life has to sacrifice a lot to solve this problem.

A balance between the environment and the economy must be achieved. Right now there isn't any. Thus, economy must pay for the environment that it has trashed.

Best thing you can do right now is CONSERVE.

NOTE: I have read some people's view on this article. Right now Hybrids aren't helping the Earth BUT in a few years they will. But the fact still remains conservation is the best course.

Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

Here's where a detailed accounting of life cycle emissions gets interesting.

The energy saved over the lifetime of a CF bulb is relatively large compared to an incandescent bulb. If you choose the incandescent bulb because of concerns over mercury in the environment, you use more electricity. If you account for the fraction of electricity produced by burning coal in the US, on average you end up with more mercury in the environment -- in the air -- from the extra coal smoke than there is in a CF bulb to begin with.

And to throw them out correctly you'd probably want to take them to a recycling facility, where the mercury can be recovered, and thus avoid the "serious problem" completely.

Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

That is exactly what I was talking about. Great article by the way.

Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

That's pretty much what I eat :ahh: I won't claim to be amazing, but I have been called weird.

Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

Hey all, I just joined the forums to post on this topic. I think you all are missing the point of this invention. It does not need to be 100% efficient. Hell, if its 70%, thats awesome.

I am a Power Engineer, recently graduated, and I see a different use for this technology, energy storage. As has been stated earlier, a way to efficiently seperate out the oxygen and hydrogen would be necessary, but that could probably be done using a magnetic field above the salt water tank.

Anyways, if generators on a system could always be run at full capacity and selected banks of Fuel Cells with Salt Water batteries placed strategically around the network (Fuel Cells are Very small and easily place almost anywhere). Excess energy on a system, perhaps at night, could be used to operate these RF generators and store up H2 and O into bins to be later used to power a Fuel Cell during Peak Demand.

Right now, there is No real possibility for Energy storage that does not adversely affect the environment. A similar usage like this is done with Hydro power where they pump water up into a reserve lake and open up the generators during peak load. However, Hydro-Electric lakes are defficient in oxygen and kill the local fish and wildlife. This would not have any such side effects, and the only emissions will be salt and water (seperate of course).

Developing this into a cost effective model could revolutionize the Power Industry and allow for greater stability of the Power grid.

Re: Salt Water Fuel powers a Stirling engine
 

I'm a little lost as to why you would want to use these for power storage. I seems that these RF generators produce power using salt water (if they do). If you used something to create salt water that was then used by the RF during peak hours I could see what the benefit could be. But they are already using hydorgen fuel cells to do this. They use excess power off the grid when usage is down to separate water into H2 and 0 and then turn it back ito electricity during peak usage hours. Of course this isn't geart considering that hydrogen fuel cells are only 50% efficient so a better system could be developed.

In response to another thing. Unlike in a hydrogen fuel cell you don't have a storage state. You aren't turning the electricity into something that can be stored efficiently like chemical energy. It is being turned into thermal energy very directly which through the stirling engine is becoming mechanical. So even if it were 70% efficient (something I find unlikely). The energy it produces can't really be stored as easily as a normal lead acid battery or hydrogen fuel cell.

Back to the discusion above... I don't see why we have to hurt the economy to cause this change to happen. If you look back to a similar situation a few years ago why pollution was a huge problem. Many companies out there didn't want to clean up because they would have to spend money and that would "hurt" the economy. It was the exact same argument for why we needed to keep charging ahead full steam. However the government mandated that these companies had to clean up and instead of a crashed economy we got a new industry becuase somebody had to do the clean up. Yes there are industries that would get hurt but overall it would create more jobs because there would be more work to do.

It will certainly hurt the economy more if we wait for tranportation to get increasingly expensive especially once we hit the brick wall of to oil left although by then the environment will be too far gone for us to help...

I believe they do. Would you spend the extra money to engineer and produce a new engine for a car economy as small as brazil. However even if you did have a flex fuel car, where do you get several gallons of ethanol to put in the car? I haven't driven by a pump lately that has the enthanol option (not to say that it wouldn't be nice and that I shouldn't). That and ethanol isn't really a good solution. You say that we produce much more corn than we use... That doesn't click with me. Why are the farmers growing something they can't sell all of. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of the corn grown anywhere in the world is sold and the farmers that aren't selling it are busy looking for a new line of work.

I agree that everyone has to sacrafice something for the sake of the environment but lead by example. I ride my bike to work whenever I can. The car that I do drive is 9 years old and get pretty good MPG so I'm not encouaging the creation of a new car and I'm not driving the Ford valdes. Most of the lights in my house are CF lights and I still turn them off whenever I leave the room. I'm doing many things to try to limit my carbon foot print but there is always more that I could be doing. I could keep the AC off during the summer since I doubt that I would die of the heat etc...

I still want to know why his hand doesn't light on fire though :D .