Biofuels and Trash: Turning our Garbage into Energy

As scientists, Governments and Industry look for viable replacements to our quickly dwindling supply of fossil fuels, attention has again turned to biofuels and the potential they offer. You’ve all no doubt heard of Ethanol, rapeseed and other popular bio-diesel crops, but it is now possible to turn our quickly growing garbage mountains into biofuels.

Scientists have now discovered some amazingly effective, mutually beneficial, symbiotic processes that could single-handedly solve both imminent problems with the creation of “bio-fuels” and “synthetic fuels” derived directly from our trash and garbage.

Full article is: http://www.oilprice.com/article-biofuel-of-the-future-turning-our-garbage-into-energy.html

62% engine losses = 38% efficiency

The other losses are due to operation of a vehicle.

To compare results of a different “engine” technology you need to compare the same vehicle.

For your description, the gasoline engine would be placed in a series-hybrid vehicle and have the other same system gains you described.

I do not see 80% realistic as the system “downstream” of your engine.

Your moving the goal post. Before we get lost in the minutia of the numbers, what I stated was that it should be posible to run an equivalent vehicle 4 times as many miles per gallon as a standard car today. I’ll try to clarify.

An internal combustion engine only operates at peak efficiency at the rpms of its torque peak. The automatic transmission tries to keep the engine as close to that peak as posible but cannot do so in many conditions such as city driving.

Look at your diagram, you are losing another 17+% for standby/idle which brings their calculation of ICE down to about 20%. Almost a third of that is lost in the drive train before it gets to the wheels.

As far as converting 80% of the electrical energy, electric motors run 90+% efficient, I don’t see why 80% is a stumbling block.

And yes, if you put a gasoline engine into a series hybrid, you could come close to doubling the current mpg’s. In fact, that is what the GM Volt should have been if the engineers were trying to build a rational car instead of a PC green car. Minimal battery storage for brake regeneration and passing gear, otherwise run it like a diesel electric locomotive.

Replacing the gas engine in that series hybrid with a SOFC would get you the other doubling of efficiency, and before you remind me that peak stack efficiency is not twice peak ICE effiency, remember, you don’t have the losses of a mechanical linkage to and heat losses from a generator.

electric motors run 90+% efficient

Note that is at their design point of full speed and fully loaded. When you have to size the motor to handle acceleration of a fully loaded vehicle, then run at less than max speed under relative lightly loaded conditions (after acceleration) the efficiencies go way down. The application of a vehicle result in equipment that normally run far from its maximum design requirements. That is part of the problem.

Engineering was in the doldrums when I was in college, I switched fields to make sure I was in a more financially secure profession.

It is practical development and application of technology like this that really makes me wish I would have stuck with it.

Yes, there are many hurdles to cross but there are also so many opportunities. I wish I could find the article I read a few months ago, solid oxide chemists are coming up with new materials that can reduce the operating temp and push efficiencies up even further. New induction motors are being developed letting a wheel mounted motor move a 747 around the airfield. A new air-zinc cells that are less expensive and more energy dense than lithium are coming. It is going to be a good decade for those that have the skills and the vision.

Well, I’m going to go help the wife with getting dinner together, have a happy Thanksgiving!

Engineering was in the doldrums when I was in college, I switched fields to make sure I was in a more financially secure profession.

I understand. It has not always been secure. I've never gone more than 3 months without work, but sometimes I've taken work across the country to stay employed. Certainly at times I've made choices not easy to keep employed.

Have a Blessed Thanksgiving and thanks for the exchange.

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