By ADC | Published:
March 9, 2010
Introducing the Car-puccino
Imagine stopping at a gas station for coffee and walking out with a cup for yourself and a bag of grounds for your car. Sharing your love of java with your car is exactly what the people at ‘Bang Goes the Theory’ (a British TV show) had in mind when they designed the Car-puccino. This Java Jalopy (lame, I know, but I can’t pass by an opportunity for alliteration) can travel at a maximum speed of 60 miles per hour with a slightly disappointing mileage of 56 espressos per mile (which translates into 1.4 miles of travel per pound of coffee grounds). To make the Car-puccino designers retrofitted a 1988 VW Scirocco (chosen because of its resemblance to the Delorean used in Back to the Future) with a charcoal burner that heats the coffee grounds to 700°C to release a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide (also known as syngas) which is then burned in the motor.
Although the concept makes for great TV and publicity when the creators drive it 210 miles from London to Manchester, the car is just that: a novelty. The Daily Mail article (which also has a diagram describing how the car works) about the car-puccino cites the excessive cost of powering the car with coffee (about 25 to 50 times the cost of gasoline, depending on the cost of the coffee), although the car can be powered with grounds that have already been brewed. In addition, drivers must stop frequently both to add grounds to the burner (as it requires about 1 pound of grounds to travel a mile) and to clean out the filter which prevents tar and soot from the burning coffee entering the motor. By now you may have realized that this car doesn’t have to run on coffee, but can run on nearly any organic waste such as wood chips, peanut shells, or the mythical switchgrass. And perhaps you could design a better filter that would require less frequent cleaning (currently it must be cleared after every 60 miles of travel). Nonetheless, the energy balance of this car will still be negative. Burning charcoal to make the syngas the car then burns to operate raises the question: why not just use the burning charcoal to power your car? The procedure for producing syngas in this car essentially wastes the energy of the charcoal by only using the syngas to operate the vehicle.
Though this is just a fun TV show project, I think it illustrates the difficulty we have encountered time and again in developing a mobile energy source for cars. The energy density and physical characteristics of petroleum based fuels has yet to be equaled by an economically viable sustainable fuel. Not even venti coffees, which propel thousands of college students through treacherous degree paths each year, can provide sufficient energy to power your car from your house to the grocery store. Now that gets me thinking about what gasoline could do for me… shot of premium unleaded, anyone?
Bottom Line: The car-puccino is a fun and slightly functional experiment in alternative energy, but don’t expect to be sharing your morning coffee with your ride any time soon.
By AKB | Published:
March 3, 2010
“I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion.” – Al Gore. Me too buddy. I wish that I could wake up tomorrow and the facts were different. I wish climate change was a lie.
Unfortunately, it’s not. “The overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged.”
“Companies whose business plans are dependent on unrestrained pollution…are ferociously fighting against the mildest regulation — just as tobacco companies blocked constraints on the marketing of cigarettes for four decades after science confirmed the link of cigarettes to diseases of the lung and the heart.” About 20% of American’s still smoke even though they know it will kill them eventually.
I guess that’s progress though. Pretty much everyone knows that smoking is bad for them now. Only a few decades ago no one thought it was bad for you. I wonder how long it will take to reach a point where most people understand that 1) climate change is happening 2) that it’s a big deal (say bye bye to the coral reefs, the polar bears, and 50% of the rest of mammalian biodiversity) 3) that humans are causing it and 4) that we have the power to do something about it? I wonder if it can happen before we’ve done too much damage?
Winston Churchill said: “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes, you must do what is required.” Winston old boy, don’t look now – because we’re not doing anything at all.
Source: NYTimes
By AKB | Published:
March 1, 2010
“We are more dependent on foreign oil today than after 9/11. That is political malpractice, and every member of Congress is responsible” says Lindsey Graham (Republican Senator, South Carolina) in a recent NYTimes article: How the GOP goes green. “We can’t be a nation that always tries and fails,” Graham concludes. “We have to eventually get some hard problem right.”
Now we’re talking. Graham might be the honorable phoenix that emerges from the ashes of the dying Republican party.
By ADC | Published:
February 5, 2010
Honda's solar hydrogen fueling station is small enough to fit in your garage.
I just saw this news story, and while I don’t have time to issue commentary on it today, I think it is a neat news item. Honda just opened a solar hydrogen fueling station in California. This design is small enough to fit in a person’s garage, which helps alleviate the problem of finding a station to supply your hydrogen car with fuel. Read the full story on the NYTimes.
One issue this brief article doesn’t address is the hydrogen production method used by the fueling station and more details about the technology. I may have to dig around the internet a little more for answers to those questions…
Bottom line: Honda has a new solar hydrogen fueling station. Neat!
By ADC | Published:
January 27, 2010
If this guy has it his way, we'll be fueling our cars with this stuff in the near future. But is it as green as it looks?
I read an article just recently that really impressed me. Many articles about renewable energy sources tend to gloss over the downsides of a particular technology and present a very simplified view of the overall environmental merit of the ‘renewable’ energy source. Perhaps simplifying the science behind new technology is the point of science review articles, but I also feel that this approach is dangerous, particularly when we make policy based on these rosy assesments. The article I’m writing about today addresses both the shortcomings of algal biofuels production and then suggests modifications that would make algae a more environmentally friendly biofuel source.
The NYTimes Green Inc. blog recently reviewed a journal article published in Environmental Science and Technology that quantifies the costs and benefits of algae production. It turns out that algae, regarded as the most promising of all biofuel feedstocks because it doesn’t interfere with food production, may actually do more harm than good in terms of its contributions to climate change. The problem is that algae need nutrients to grow, which are delivered by dissolving synthetic fertilizers in the algae water. Nitrogen from these fertilizers volatizes to produce nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas with 310 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. Crops such as corn and switchgrass, though, would have lower nitrous oxide emissions because they are able to absorb nutrients from the soil and require less fertilizer application. Identifying synthetic fertilizers as the culprit in making algae production environmentally unfriendly allows researchers and the public to reconsider conventional methods of algae production. The authors of the algae journal article suggest growing algae in municipal wastewater, which contains plenty of nitrogen and phosphorus that hungry algae need to grow and would decrease the required fertilizer input (and thus nitrous oxide emissions). This article and NYTimes review comes on the heels of a government pledge to spend $80 million of stimulus funds on biofuels research. What better timing than now to publish a work crucial to the development of algae mass production? Kudos to the paper’s authors, Andres F. Clarens, Eleazer P. Resurreccion, Mark A. White and Lisa M. Colosi, and also to the NYTimes Green Inc. Blog for summarizing this work in a single page story that sets the stage for a broader discussion of the environmental merits of algal biofuels.
Bottom Line: Taking a critical look at renewable energy sources and providing constructive commentary is great for ensuring that new energy technology provides the intended environmental benefits. So please, media outlets, spare us the simplified adulation of ‘green’ energy sources.
![[Digg]](http://worldenergyblog.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://worldenergyblog.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Reddit]](http://worldenergyblog.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/reddit.png)
![[Twitter]](http://worldenergyblog.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)