Jay Leno Builds 3MPG Biodiesel car, MI Gov. says End of Internal Combustion Engine

MICHIGAN GOVERNOR PREDICTS END OF INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE

Yes, it is true. Governor Jennifer Granholm (D.- MI) said she could "see the end of the internal combustion engine" in the near future and the end of that era in the mighty Michigan manufacturing machine. Detroit, the "motor city" she said was designed for about 2 million people and now contains a lot of "empty space" because the population has shrunk to only about 1 million. However, as dire as that sounds initially she is actually very upbeat about the future of her state. She also says, in the video of her interview by Time Magazine, that the people who "bent steel" for auto bodies can be bending steel to make wind turbines in the future, and that even though the gas guzzling muscle cars of the past will be gone, the vehicle makers will continue to thrive there making hybrids and electric powered automobiles and trucks.









Governor Granholm also wants to "land bank" a lot of the now unused areas of the city to be able to redevelop them both for green zone uses and community park spaces, for infill of industrial development, but also "urban farming" including a partnership with "Neighborhood Food Movers" who sell fruits and vegetables from the kind of fresh produce vehicles that used to exist in American cities around the turn of the prior century as well. She jokes that their worker re-education program will not pay for people to obtain degrees in French or Political Science (the degrees the Governor herself holds), but they will pay for 2 years of post-secondary education in areas where there is a need for more workers, like healthcare and engineers (although Governor Granholm claims that there are more engineers in Michigan than in any other state).

Are these Mechanics Popular?

Popular Mechanics magazine´s website has a survey of news on "green driving" that starts (at least as of today´s survey) with a novel item about the elaborate effort involving Jay Leno, General Motors, and numerous other collaborators to build a jet car that can (and does) run on B100 biodiesel (although it starts and shuts down running "Jet A" to keeping the fuel controls from "gumming up"). It´s disappointing because it consumes ridiculous amounts of fuel, some 59 gallons per hour. Even at 150 miles per hour that would be less than 3 miles per gallon, so the "green" kind of disappears from this story despite the B100 fuel. However they do discuss some interesting items, some of which are also rather disappointing as well. Popular Mechanics reports that Buick plans on having a plug-in hybrid available in 2010, but it is an SUV and it is going to use the same dual-mode power train from the now defunct Saturn Vue Greenline. I suppose it is a good thing that they aren´t just scrapping this rather promising technology altogether, and the addition of the plug-in capability is a definite step in the right direction. Frankly, I would rather that they had pirated the Pontiac/Saturn sports runabout two-seater and dropped in the plug-in hybrid drive train instead. But does the soon to be upon us Chevy Volt ACTUALLY get the EPA estimated 230 MPG ?

Well, hardly. GM says the actual mileage on the gasoline motor that supplies electricity to the electric drive train (once the 16 kWh battery hits the "cut off" point of being half-way discharge to 8 kWh – a measure that prolongs the life of the battery in terms of the number of recharge cycles it can endure) is about 50 MPG. But the EPA, bless their little political/government minds they devised a test for plug-in hybrids that involves driving a circuit 51 miles in length (actually made up of loops that are 11 miles long – don´t ask me how they get to 51 miles from that) then they take the gas that has been used, divide by the number of trials, and that´s the rating they give it. The "magic" number of 230 MPG therefore comes from the fact that the Volt has a range on a fully charged set of batteries of about 40 miles, so 80% or more of each 51 mile trial is entirely on battery power. Then they drive about 11 miles on gasoline and take it back to be charged up again, based on the fact that most people´s daily commute is something less than 40 miles a day.

Now, I said, political and government minds because it just so happens that one of the major competitive foreign plug-in hybrids is designed around an electric only range of 20 miles, so they drive 31 miles of each circuit on gasoline, and therefore end up looking less than stellar performers compared to that "magic" number for the GM Volt vehicle. (I decided not to put a link to the Popular Mechanics article on the upcoming Toyota Prius PHEV because there is so much mis-information from readers in the comments that they distort the picture rather than enlighten.) Do they (GM) really think this is going to cause a stampede to buy the "230 MPG" car? Well, there´s a famous saying that has several versions, one of which goes like this: "No one ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American consumer."

ALGAE Production Numbers

In the course of my reading (which, as you can tell from the links and citations this week included some several items from Popular Mechanics) I found a couple of interesting "production" numbers being quoted. For instance at the Spring Grove, Virginia farm of Jes Sprouse there is a 2000 square foot, rubber lined raceway in which he grows algae. Now, his method is a little different than most who are growing algae, partly at least, because he isn´t trying to produce liquid fuel. Jes makes a "drop-in coal replacement" biofuel from dried and water-repellant algae pellets that he cooks from his daily harvest of 25 pounds of (dry) algae. (Just exactly how "dry" his version of "dry" may be is not specified in the article) Just for "thumbnail" calculations, 2000 sq. ft. is about 200 sq. meters, so he´s getting roughly 2 ounces or 56 grams of dry weight algae per square meter of raceway per day (and just for reference, the raceway appears to be about 1 meter deep judging from the picture of Mr. Sprouse standing next to the above ground structure). That would be about 43 pounds per square meter per year (assuming a 345 production day year).

Similarly, Seambiotic, the well known (in fact "top 5") algae firm from Israel (who recently partnered with NASA for fuel development), has a facility of approximately 1000 square meters of raceways. "Its 1000-square-meter facility produces roughly 23,000 grams of algae per day—three tons of algal biomass would yield around 100 to 200 gallons of biofuel," says yet another Popular Science magazine article. Their production rate, therefore is only about half of Mr. Sprouse, or about 23 grams of algae per square meter per day. No mention is made of supplemental carbon dioxide in Mr. Sprouse´s operations, but it does say that he uses two tanks of nutrients to feed his algae, one of urea/ammonia and the other of diluted pig manure (also, presumably rich in urea/ammonia as well). Mr. Sprouse´s algae are not as high in lipid content as some growers who are sharply aimed at the liquid biofuels market, and the use of local species minimizes "contamination" issues in his open raceways because, after all, that´s where his strain(s) came from. The local strains are more resistant to colony collapse. It certainly looks like both Seambiotic and Mr. Sprouse have considerable to LEARN from EACH OTHER.

Speed-of-Light Shanghai Express

Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu, speaking at a Whitehouse conference recently described China´s plans for an 800 kilovolt transmission line from Western China to carry renewable energy from there to the population centers of Eastern China. This is an EXTREMELY high voltage DC transmission method, and the plan calls for a transmission loss of power of no more than 5% over a distance of 1900 kilometers (about 1200 miles). Secretary Chu pointed out that in the USA, we lose this amount to the inefficiency of transmission methods we use here in a matter of "a few hundred miles". Dr. Chu´s point was not to point to superior technology in China, but rather just that they have already made the plans and the commitment to construct this kind of high efficiency transmission system for huge amounts of renewable power while Americans are still "discussing" the "IF" of smart grid, high voltage DC transmission. That is not to say that creating a Smart Grid, that monitors demand and routes power far more efficiently is in any doubt, but just that China´s central government announces a policy and the policy is carried out, unlike in North America where invariably conflicting interests insist on adding layer upon layer of discussion, counter proposals and protests before we can get anything done. At this rate, we are fairly certain to lag behind even if we get the wheels in motion immediately.

One of the public questions to Governor Granholm (not in the same session, but in the Time.com interview) was about using the government´s power of "eminent domain" to assemble land for redevelopment (in Detroit). Not entirely surprisingly, eminent domain was a topic in the public questions for Secretaries Locke and Chu as well. This one was extremely perceptive, in my opinion, because it proposed that the use of eminent domain (the government´s right to appropriate property for public use, with fair compensation to the property owner) for Smart Grid transmission corridors could also provide the nation with new corridors for high speed passenger transport. Wouldn´t that be possible? Wouldn´t that be "smart" especially in light of the fact that almost all high speed rail is essentially electrically powered?

I know that smells like Haliburton to many people who at first glance fear that such a huge "government undertaking" would end up with more of a train wreck than a functioning train system, but in spite of the historical precedents of Robber Barons building the nation´s first railroads. That´s probably especially obvious in the history of the making of trans-national railroads, and the massive beyond-all-reason land grants that came with the privilege of doing so on the nation´s behalf. However doesn´t it just make sense to put the electric powered trains where the electric power is or rather "will be" when the new Smart Grid power lines are completed (in the spaces between populations centers in particular). Doesn´t it make sense to put those two important environmental issues on a single "track" that virtually eliminates fossil fuels for long distance travel by making a new transportation medium that competes with the high speed of airlines without the use of liquid fuels? (Assuming, of course, a strong switch to renewables as the dominant form of electric generation.)

Now the whole "eminent domain" method of route selection is not an instant cure-all and not always fair. I remember many decades ago when my father was involved in trying to get a new airport built in Canada. In that instance just a few hold-out residents were refusing to give up possession of a small plot of land, delaying the whole airport project for months if not years and millions of dollars in inflationary delays. Similarly, though at the opposite end of the scale there was the New England town that appropriated several residences in order to allow a commercial developer to build a shopping center for no other reason than it would increase the tax revenue to the town (and the US Supreme Court ruled this a legal use of eminent domain). But part of the point is that like the urgency required in response to the US declaration of war in WWII and the resulting amazingly rapid adaptation of the auto industry (and others, of course) to military production, the dual purpose of improved transportation (rapid rail) and energy (smart grid) and an appropriate sense of urgency with respect to responding to climate change is needed to get some of this flow through the various levels of government and the judiciary to make it practical. Smart grid routing alone could end up stalled in a thousand places if it does not have this full sense of urgency and momentum, both in the public´s mind as well as that of the local levels of government and the judiciary as well, I fear.

Web Resources for Clean Energy

Web resources are sometimes a mixed blessing. I am enthused to have found something that looks to be very useful. Unfortunately the information it contains is actually a little discouraging at the moment. I am referring in this case to "CNG Now". If you want to know where, in your area, you can find outlets (in many if not most cases "commercial outlets" not open on Sundays) for Compressed Natural Gas (better known as CNG) for your just freshly ecologically converted car, truck or van, this is a GREAT site. Unfortunately in my area it reports a very sparse number of resources. Indeed in all of metro Phoenix, there are only a very few places one can buy CNG, and three of them are at the Skyways Airport. Not surprising is the fact that the site, which also conveniently shows pricing information, shows that you can buy CNG for $1.60 at the Washington Public School District yard, but cross town in Scottsdale (the wealthier part of metro-Phoenix) it will run you $2.35. The site itself is really a quick and convenient way to find fuel with an interactive ZOOMing map of the USA and North America. Strictly speaking it covers the world, with the map tool from Bing to bring this information to your attention, but although it shows some 186 CNG stations in California, with high double digit totals in NY, OK, and Utah, I could not find even 1 in Brazil ("THE" alternative vehicle fuel state in the world) and without even one in Europe there´s a lot of territory on the board that is as yet, tabula rasa.

Somewhat closely related is the HGenerators web page. These folks also provide "on-board" hydrogen booster generators which split water into hydrogen as a supplement to the liquid fuel already burning in your car´s engine, or they can supply you with more exotic configurations if you like, including various systems that convert your vehicle to CNG, or to propane gas, or methane, or solid-state metal hydride hydrogen storage bottles, or even wind turbines. These guys are SERIOUSLY into alternative energy.

Unmoving Movie

Fond though I am of Academy Award winning Hilary Swank, I am equally tired of Richard Gere´s bad habit of "phoned-in" performances. Reviews have been poor, my wife tells me, but I went without much bias, not having read anybody else´s reviews, expecting to be bored with the Amelia Earhart story portrayed in Amelia. I didn´t fall asleep. Ms. Swank´s transitions from farm-fresh to cosmopolitan sophisticate was interesting enough to hold my attention. Directing, by Mira Nair was even handed but less than inspiring.

Happy Thoughts

I must have read it 40 times yesterday as I watched the headlines crawl across the bottom of CNN or HNN news. Senate Heathcare Bill WILL have a "public option" (of some sort, though we don´t yet know what that means) which some speculate there may be a "state by state" run plan with opt-in or opt-out provisions, or other trigger options. IF Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can really keep it in there, despite Republican attempts to remove it, and Blue Dogs´ attempt to weave into it enough twists and turns so as to neutralize it before it gets off the floor then I think we´ll all have to take a large swallow of "energy drink" and start all over again to get some meaningful form of reform from the law.

Love and warm wishes,

Sincerely,

Stafford "Doc" Williamson

http://daochienergy.com