Thank Growth Green Machine

Green Machine

Thank Growth It’s Wednesday

Today’s article is brought to you in a sarcastic fashion courtesy of the unimpeded growth the world has experienced in the past several decades. Of course economic growth is good but population growth, energy growth, urbanization, and correspondingly growth in the concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere has also resulted. I did some research on the internet and found a very interesting article issued by the Metropolitan Transport Commission of our State Government regarding Auto Ownership in the San Francisco Bay Area: 1930 – 2010. The article can be found by going to the following web site http://www.mtc.ca.gov/maps_and_data/datamart/forecast/ao/aopaper.htm

Starting with Marin County where we live, the following statistics hold for the growth our county has experienced. In 1930 there were 11,200 registered automobiles or 1.06 per household or 0.26 per person living in the county. By 2010 we anticipate there will be 241,300 automobiles in Marin County or 2.16 per household or 0.89 per person. Wow we have come a long way since 1930 or have we? The statistics for San Francisco County show less growth in the past 80 years. In 1930 in the city by the bay there 152,700 registered automobiles or 0.85 per household or 0.24 per person living in San Francisco. In 2010 it is estimated that there will be 445,000 registered automobiles or 1.3 per household or 0.54 per person living in San Francisco. Interestingly back in 1930 Marin and San Francisco had a similar number of automobiles per inhabitant, but by 2010 we Hot Tub Enthusiasts have almost as many vehicles as people. It can be inferred that the carbon footprints of those living in the fog are lower than us because of the compactness of their city and the availability of public transport.

Before all of us go cry tears to fill our hot tubs, Sonoma County to our north experienced similar growth. Back in 1930 there were 26,500 registered automobiles or 1.46 per household and 0.43 per person living in Sonoma County. By 2010 we anticipate there will be 455,000 in Sonoma County or 2.18 per household and 0.84 per person. In 2010 there will be more automobiles registered in Sonoma County than in San Francisco County. Now we know why Highway 101 through Marin is choked. Other counties in the bay area such as Santa Clara, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Alameda, Solano, and Napa have all experienced massive growth in vehicles and population in the past 80 years. The following are the frightening statistics for the entire Bay Area. In 1930 there were 461,800 registered automobiles or 1.04 per household and 0.29 per person. It is expected that in 2010 there will be 5,577,300 registered automobiles or 2.03 per household and 0.75 per person. That is three cars for every four people. It is frightening that Sonoma County today has as many registered vehicles as the entire Bay Area had in 1930. While Marin has somewhat limited population growth over the past 80 years we hot tubers have the highest number of vehicles per person at 89 per 100, a statistic that should scare us into immediate action

Thank Gas

Thank Gas It’s Wednesday

Today’s article is brought to you courtesy of that state of nature referred to as the gaseous state. Gases have interested scientists for many thousands of years and it took more than three thousand years to develop the kinetic theory of gases. Heron a Greek who lived in the first century invented a steam engine, long before a couple of Brits named Savery and Watt harnessed the power of steam and are wrongly remembered as the inventors of the steam engine.

Three are all sorts of laws covering the physical behaviour of gases. These include Graham, Boyle, Charles, and even a French scientist and politician named Gay-Lussac. My favorite is the Ideal Gas Law. A gas is ideal if its pressure increases in perfect proportion to the absolute temperature. If the increase in pressure is not in perfect proportion to the absolute temperature then the gas behaves imperfectly and has a fugacity coefficient that is not unity. It seems like political candidates of the male species repeatedly behave imperfectly and hence have the audacity to deny to the popular press that they did not exhibit some fugacity. Of course French politicians are allowed to openly display an enormous amount of fugacity.

CNN is now carrying news of a Compressed Air Car that will propel the world with little fuel. Actually, I hosted the California promoter of this contraption at my home in Tiburon about five years ago. I took a quick look at the proposed vehicles and told the promoter it simply would not win any major share of the vehicle market. The inventor of the Air Car is a Frenchman named Guy Negre who wants to be the next Gay-Lussac and have a gas law named after him. Negre has further developed his compressed air car to now use fuel to increase the range and speed of his car. Actually he now has a car that is gasoline or diesel car that is augmented by compressed air, sounds like a turbocharger to me so why compress air into a scuba tank and waste the wonderful form of energy called electricity in what turns out to be an inefficient, bulky and Rube Goldberg like contraption.

If one already has electricity, it is a lot more efficient and simple to store this electricity in batteries on board a vehicle. Now the inventor of the pure air car realises he has to obey the gas laws, he has abandoned the pure air car for the hot air car. Just today CNN online aired the story of 106 miles per gallon for a six seater air car. Yes it is 106 miles per gallon without including the electricity used in compressing the air and therefore the fuel that was used to generate the electricity. Perhaps the 106 miles per gallon was also achieved travelling down hill so that the added mass of the scuba tanks and compressed air contributed to gravity’s pull on the contraption. One can store about 100 watt hours of energy in a kilogram of compressed air at 200 atmospheres pressure. By comparison a 3 fluid ounce double shot glass full of diesel has 1,000 watt hours of stored chemical energy or about ten times as much. Also for its storage diesel does not need a scuba tank that is also much heavier than a diesel tank. Please do not use your double shot glasses to drink diesel even though it is truly fire water.

Thank Gears

TGIW - Thank Gears It’s Wednesday

Today we will learn about gears and how they play a vital role in improving the energy efficiency of vehicles. Not many of us can remember stick shifts that were on the steering column. Most vehicles in the 1940s had three forward gears and a reverse gear. The gear change lever was on the steering column. First gear is called the low gear because it has the lowest gearing ration between the engine and the drive wheel or wheels. The low gearing ratio is needed to commence the acceleration of the vehicle and allow the engine to enjoy the greatest “mechanical advantage”. Mechanical advantage is also used in pulleys and cranes to lift heavy items with the least amount of force. Likewise in a vehicle a low gearing ratio is used to allow the horsepower and torque of the engine to commence the acceleration of the vehicle. As the vehicle gains velocity the gearing ratio can be increased and the engine speed can be lowered to continue to propel the vehicle at a certain speed.

If you watch bicyclists who are climbing a hill, they pedal pretty fast and the bicycle is hardly moving. This is because they have engaged their lowest gear ratio between the sprocket on their pedals and the sprocket on the rear wheel. When the bike is on the flat or downhill the pedals do not have to be turned rapidly for the bicycle to move fast, this is because the chain now engages the smallest sprocket on the rear wheel and the largest sprocket on the pedals and allows one revolution of the pedals to drive multiple revolutions of the rear wheel. The cyclist would not be able to climb a hill while engaged in this high gearing ratio as the mechanical advantage has in fact become mechanical disadvantage and the cyclist is simply not powerful enough to exert sufficie nt force to climb a hill.

A human riding a bicycle has the power of about 50 watts or about one fifteenth of a horse. A Porche has over 300 horsepower so it needs many more forward gears than a 1940s vintage car. During the sixties it was common to have “four on the floor” meaning cars got four speed forward gearboxes and the gear shift lever was moved from the steering column to between the drivers seats. This is also because the front seats changed from being bench seats to two bucket seat. During the seventies and through the end of the last millennium five speed gearboxes were the most common for manual shift vehicles. Now six speed manual gearboxes are common on Porches and other high performance cars.

Automatic gearboxes were widely adopted in the 1960s. They were two speed gearing at first and then for many years were three speed. In the 1990s four and five speed automatic transmissions became available and in this decade more six and seven speed automatic transmissions have been engineered. This allows for a much higher final gearing ratio as well as a much smoother transition through the gears which in turn allows the vehicle to achieve much improved fuel efficiency. Nissan has developed a continuously or infinitely variable (CVT) transmission that does not have a discrete number of gearing ratios but rather has a system that allows the gearing ration to change in minute increments and hence is the ultimate in the smooth transition from low gear to high gear. We can thank gears for the smooth ride of modern vehicles and also for the improvement in fuel efficiency and more rapid acceleration. Nissan claims a 10% improvement in fuel efficiency for a vehicle equipped with CVT over a 4 speed transmission. Only a few of us will thankfully have the experience of “three on the column” where cars shuddered while accelerating and engines whined to gain moderate speed.

Thank Gore It's Wednesday

Thank Gore It’s Wednesday

Yes our old friend has raised his head out of the alfalfa patch and has provided his green vision of the energy policy that our next president and congress should adopt. Is it realistic to think we can replace all of our electric power generation with renewable energy within a decade? The department of energy reported that the US used 4.065 billion megawatt hours of electricity in 2006. The peak installed capacity is approximately 906,155 megawatts. Dividing the 4.065 billion megawatt hours by 8760 hours in a year the average load is some 464,041 megawatts or some 48.2% of peak power.

The following are the fractions of the electricity generated in 2006 by the various sources of fuel: Coal 49.0%; Petroleum 1.6%; Nuclear 19.4%; Natural Gas 20.0%; Other Gases 0.7%; Hydroelectric 7.0%; and Other Renewable 2.4%. Hence 73% of all electric power generated in 2006 had associated carbon emissions as the fuel contained carbon. Coal and nuclear are baseload plants which means they run all the time. Replacing coal fired power generation station with renewable sources such as wind or solar cannot be done simply by replacing one megawatt of coal capacity with one megawatt of wind capacity, as the wind is intermittent and is at best available one quarter of the hours in every year. Therefore we will have to have massive energy storage capability to remove the=2 0baseload coal fired plants.

Assuming we can install wind turbines for a cost of $2,000,000 per megawatt, if one does all the tedious mathematics to replace the 73 % of the US generation capacity that is carbon based with wind power would cost. $1.32 trillion. However we would need twice as much wind generation facilities to replace baseload carbon fired plants and the cost of the wind generators will equal $2.64 trillion. To store the wind energy so it can be dispatched when it is needed will cost a similar amount, so we are talking about an investment of $5.28 trillion before we add in the cost of the transmission lines that are needed. Let’s assume the transmission system together with the controls needed for dispatching all this wind generated energy cost $0.72 trillion we have a cool $6 trillion needed to be spent over the next decade. This would be significantly higher if PV cells were used instead of wind turbines. Therefore using a mix of wind and PV as well as tidal, r un of the river, solar thermal, and geothermal we may need to invest $10 trillion for the carbon free electric generation replacement system.

We import a total of 12 million barrels a day of crude oil and refined petroleum that costs us $130 per barrel or approximately $570 billion per year. Assuming the world has a savings rate and banking system to allow the US to divert $10 trillion of investment into the alternate electric energy sector, this investment without interest or profit equals 17.5 years of oil imports at present rates and present prices. As I am neither a magician nor the chief economic advisor of the next president, I cannot forecast the price of oil or the level of imports over the next two decades. However, I do believe that the level of imports will drop and the price of oil is presently unaffordable and possibly unsustainable. This being said it will take 20 years or more to recoup the dollars we ship overseas for oil for the total replacement of carbon based electric power generation.

It is not completely infeasible that the system could be replaced, but it will simply place a major economic burden and will also substantially increase the cost of electricity to the consumer. My vote goes to the proposition to replace one quarter of the carbon fired power generation with renewables, as well as reducing our electricity consumption by a total of 10% in ten years time through demand side management and deployment of more efficient technologies. We certainly should spend a couple of trillion dollars over the next decade on alternative energy. This amount matches the total of the lowered home values and subprime mortgages losses we are experiencing and it is not going to divert all of global savings and investment to renewable energy but will leave some money for, social security, schools, hospitals, high-tech, biotech and of course old Al who makes millions on his speaking engagements that he flies to in his private jet.

Thank Gravity It's Wednesday

Yes gravity is a gift of nature when it comes to renewable energy. Hydroelectric and tidal power are the result of the pull of gravity on bodies of water. The Hoover Dam also known as the Boulder Dam is an engineering marvel and is capable of generating 2,080 megawatts of electric power thanks to the depth of the turbines below the surface of the dam. It is actually Lake Mead that is the lake behind the dam that provides the electric power thanks to the pull of gravity on the water inside the lake. Construction of the Hoover dam was completed in 1935 and at that time it was the largest hydroelectric facility in the world. Presently, the Hoover Dam is only the 34th largest hydroelectric generation station in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam

In order to produce one megawatt hour of power approximately one million gallons of water have to flow through a turbine if the water has approximately three hundred feet of water above it. The Hoover Dam is 726 feet tall so for this dam to produce 2080 megawatts approximately 860 million gallons of water have to flow each hour if the dam is full. As the dam is not full due to the drought, the turbines are not capable of producing their full nameplate capacity of electric power.

The Hoover Dam is a awesome structure but it really only provides a minute fraction of the power consumed in the USA. Also if we were all to buy Tesla Electric Motor Cars we could not charge too many of these cars simultaneously. The Tesla Roadster has a battery storage capacity of 54 kilowatt hours and charges in 3 hours. This means the Tesla draws 18 kilowatts of power. With a capacity of 2080 megawatts or 2,080,000 kilowatts the Hoover Dam could simultaneously charge 115,555 Tesla Roadsters. The charging is accomplished in 3 hours and the Tesla is good to go for 4 days if you drive 50 miles a day. Performing the requisite math in the 4 days you could charge 32 times 115,555 vehicles or 3.698 million cars provided it takes no time to hook-up the next series of vehicles to their chargers. Unfortunately, this is fewer vehicles than we have in the Bay Area, therefore the entire output of the Hoover Dam would not be sufficient to power all the vehicles on the road in the Bay Area even if they were Tesla Roadsters with state of the art batteries and power control systems. http://www.teslamotors.com/



One cannot fault gravity for the limit of how many vehicles the Hoover Dam can power. Rather we should fault ourselves for driving vehicles that weigh 15 times what we weigh and that we drive all over the place to work, shop, or enjoy some entertainment. Even if we moved to Jupiter, a planet that experiences 2.54 times the gravity on earth, we would still not be able to propel many more vehicles from the power generated by a Lake Mead on the surface of Jupiter. Yes we would generate 5,283 MW from the same lake on Jupiter but alas our cars and our bodies would also be 2,54 times as heavy. The power required to propel a car does have some relationship to the mass but is mostly related to the energy required to overcome air (atmospheric) resistance. No one has been able to measure the atmospheric pressure of Jupiter so I cannot tell you the range a Tesla Roadster would have on that planet. I can tell you it would be better to go to Mars with our Tesla Roadster and our Lake Mead. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is only 1% that of earth so atmospheric resistance will be negligible. Gravity on Mars is 38% that of gravity on earth. Our Lake Mead would only generate 790 megawatts but we would all weigh 62% less on Mars. Hummers would be fuel efficient on Mars due to the low gravity and very low atmospheric resistance. I will call the CEO of GM tomorrow and advise him where he can sell all of his spare Hummers. As for his spare Saturns I have no idea what he can do with those. http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_kids/AskKids/mars_gravity.shtml
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/LaurenMikulski.shtml

Thank Garbage

TGIW – Thank Garbage It’s Wednesday

Today we thank the trash we throw out for its energy content and value. The USA is the world’s greatest waster of materials. Over 251 million tons a year of municipal solid waste was generated in these United States in 2006. We consume and discard vast amounts of paper, food, plastic, cans, bottles, and other consumer goods. I had this thought what if we could turn this waste into energy or other useful material. Well I have to admit others have beaten me in the race to recycle.

The cities of San Francisco and Oakland are now recycling food scraps from restaurants and making composted material for fertilizing the vineyards in Napa and Sonoma. Yes some 300 tons a day of organic material that can be composted is hauled to a Vacaville where a facility run by Jepson Prairie Organics turns this waste into useful fertilizer. Composting is an aerobic process, meaning air is added to the pile of waste to help decompose the material. http://www.jepsonprairieorganics.com/ What is not reported is that the gas emitted from a compost heap is carbon dioxide. However had the waste been placed in a landfill it would be more likely that an anaerobic (without air) breakdown of the trash would emit methane gas. Pound for pound methane gas has over twenty times the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide.

Another way to reuse the food scraps is what the Mount nelson Hotel in Capetown South Africa is doing. This stately hotel with five acres of gardens is feeding food scraps to its worm farms. These worms breakdown the food scraps into a liquid fertilizer as well as a nutrient rich mulch. Also the worms grow at a prolific rate and are a source of protein for birds and poultry. http://biophile.co.za/recycling/worms-at-the-mount-nelson

It is amazing to me that we here in the USA have a recycle rate for aluminum cans that is less than half. If you consider that the amount of energy needed to fabricate an aluminum can will power a 32” LCD TV for three hours, this is perhaps the most wasteful item in our trash. The good news on the recycling front is that we recycle over 99.0% of the lead acid batteries we have for our vehicles and data centers. The following recycle rates have been reported by the US EPA for various materials for the year 2006: Steel Cans 62.9%; Yard Trimmings 62%; Paper and Cardboard 51.6%; Aluminum Cans 45.1%; 34.9%; Plastic Milk Bottles 31.0%; Plastic Water Bottle 30.9% and Glass Containers 25.3%. http://www.epa.gov/garbage/facts.htm

One may ask why do recycle more steel cans than aluminum cans even though aluminum is more valuable pound for pound? My educated answer is that steel is magnetic and it is much easier to extract steel from a pile or garbage by simply running the garbage over a magnetic separator. The recycle rates for aluminum cans and plastic bottles are higher in states that have enforced a deposit law and hence placed a greater value of the container. Many states do not have deposit laws or cash redemption values for beverage containers. The California Refund Value (CRV) is 5 cents for containers less than 24 ounces and 10 cents for containers greater than 24 ounces. The Golden State has a combined recycle rate for all aluminum, plastic, glass, and steel beverage containers of over 70% (14.7 billion out of 21.9 billion in 2007). This proves one man’s trash is another’s treasure.
http://www.conservation.ca.gov/DOR/Pages/Index.aspx

Thank Galaxies

TGIT - Thank Galaxies It's Thursday


I was watching a TV show about the universe on the History Channel. Scientists have, since the time of Newton, used mathematics to model the physical world. Much of the modeling has been to describe motion and gravity. Einstein developed the notion of Space-time surfaces that warp in the presence mass. Einstein did not subscribe to the notion of an expanding universe even though his math supported this phenomenon. In order for the big bang theory to hold, there has to be this initial state where all the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear forces, and weak nuclear forces) were all combined in a single force. When the big bang occurred the gravitational force was the first to split and break away from the other three forces. Soon thereafter the three other forces also split apart. An observation that led to the unified force theory and the initial inflation after the big bang is that most of the outer universe has the same temperature. This can only be explained in that the initial inflation (Guth's theory) occurred at a speed faster than the speed of light. This is very scary stuff and makes my head spin. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/mysteries/html/guth_1.html

All this physics is fine, but we still have the basic inflation problem of high energy prices on planet earth billions of years after the big bang. Physicists and chemists are trying to develop nano-systems to store more electrical energy so we can use less gasoline and deploy plug in hybrids. This company in Texas (EEstor) claims to have an ultra-capacitor that can store enough electricity to allow an automobile to travel 500 miles. All of this energy is claimed to be placed into the ultra capacitor in five minutes. The rate the electricity is transferred exceeds 1 Mega Watt, so don't rush to buy one of these gizmos as you will need 10,000 amp service in your home at 110 volts. The typical home has 100 to 200 amps of service. If the ultra capacitor short circuits we could reenact the Big Bang right here in planet earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EEStor

A much more likely technology for hybrids and plug in hybrids will be lithium batteries that recharge in three to four hours and let you travel a distance of approximately 100 miles. The recharge rate will be limited by the electrical service that PG&E has connected to your home. I am now doing an hour long radio show on Wednesdays at noon on blog talk radio. Last week I opined on the technical possibilities of the lithium batteries and how they may be the winner of the $300 million prize John McCain has proposed to leapfrog current automotive technology to gain increased fuel efficiency. The show can be heard either by calling on the phone at 347 838 8999 or using your computer to go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/AlternativeEnergyCom

One final word, our neighboring town of Mill Valley, California recently hired a sustainability consultant to guide the city on green policy. The consultant will be paid $30,000 a year. I say Tiburon – Belvedere where I live should leapfrog Mill Valley and let me consult to our town councils and make 94920 the greenest Zip Code in the nation. Maybe I could even run for mayor and my campaign slogan will be “Be Green Vote Leveen”.