I will just start at the top with your replies.
1. That may be so but you just missed the point of my entire post. We cant because of certain groups causing over regulation. So it makes this car at this point no better then what we have. Until were actually using alternatives the volt is a over priced piece of junk. If you dont pay out the butt for gas you will pay out the butt when you plug it in.
2. lithium-ion batteries are down cycled and cannot be reused. ... Additional lithium must be obtained before another battery can be produced.
A vehicle battery requires 100 times as much lithium carbonate as its laptop equivalent.
But there is simply nowhere near enough currently mined to fuel the world's 900 million cars. To make just 60 million plug-in hybrid vehicles a year containing a small lithium-ion battery would require 420,000 tons of lithium carbonate - or six times the current global production annually. Ya I dont see lithium being affordable any time soon Were going Flintstones backwards.
3. Their are quite a few scientists that would disagree with you about oil not being renewable.
The abiogenic hypothesis argues that petroleum was formed from deep carbon deposits, perhaps dating to the formation of the Earth. The presence of methane on Saturn's moon Titan is cited as evidence supporting the formation of hydrocarbons without biology. Supporters of the abiogenic hypothesis suggest that a great deal more petroleum exists on Earth than commonly thought, and that petroleum may originate from carbon-bearing fluids that migrate upward from the mantle.
4. That may or may not be true. But either way they have made near impossible to build more plants of either kind without making it extremely expensive for companies. And by law all coal plants are equipped with scrubbers and nothing more then steam comes out of them. If thats true about making nuke batteries and making the clean up of nuclear waste cleaner then that the direction we should be going. Not lithium.
5. Yes ive heard Obamas speech about building more nuclear power plants. Like everything else that comes out of that mans mouth is just a lie. Again its because of activists that more have not been built.
6. Thousands of large windmills, each the height of a 20-story building, would be needed to substitute for a single conventional power plant. There would be serious environmental effects, including noise and interference with birds. But most important, there is the very sticky question of what to do when the wind isn't blowing. Using batteries to store the electricity is far too expensive. That says INEFFEICENT TO ME!
7. I will just skip your comments on the volt and continue to say its a government piece of junk that makes no sense to make.
8.Nuclear power plants generate steam to generate electricity. How can you use them to make hydrogen??
Here is how and this should be our future.
Nuclear power already produces electricity as a major energy carrier. It is well-placed to produce hydrogen if this becomes a major energy carrier also.
The evolution of nuclear energy's role in hydrogen production over perhaps three decades is seen to be:
•electrolysis of water, using off-peak capacity;
•use of nuclear heat to assist steam reforming of natural gas up to 900 degrees C;
•high-temperature electrolysis of steam, using heat and electricity from nuclear reactors; then
•high-temperature thermochemical production using nuclear heat.
The first three are essentially cogeneration.
Efficiency of the whole process (from primary heat to hydrogen) then moves from about 25% with today's reactors driving electrolysis (33% for reactor x 75% for cell) to 36% with more efficient reactors doing so, to 45% for high-temperature electrolysis of steam, to about 50% or more with direct thermochemical production. From hydrogen to electric drive is only 30-40% efficient at this stage, giving 15-20% overall primary heat to wheels, compared with 25-30% for PHEV.
Low-temperature electrolysis using nuclear electricity is undertaken on a fairly small scale today, but the cost of hydrogen from it is higher (one source says $4-6 per kg, compared with $1.00-1.50 from natural gas, while another source says cost will be comparable to electricity at 4c/kWh when natural gas is US$ 9.50/GJ—cf $7 in July 2005).
High-temperature electrolysis (at 800°C or more) has been demonstrated, and shows considerable promise. US research is taking place at the Idaho National Laboratory in conjunction with Ceramatec.
Hydrogen from nuclear heat
Several direct thermochemical processes are being developed for producing hydrogen from water. For economic production, high temperatures are required to ensure rapid throughput and high conversion efficiencies.
In each of the leading thermochemical processes, the high-temperature (800-1000°C), low-pressure endothermic (heat absorbing) decomposition of sulfuric acid produces oxygen and sulfur dioxide:
H2SO4 ==> H2O + SO2 + 1/2O2
There are then several possibilities. In the iodine-sulfur (IS) process, iodine combines with the SO2 and water to produce hydrogen iodide which then dissociates to hydrogen and iodine. This is the Bunsen reaction and is exothermic, occurring at low temperature (120°C):
I2 + SO2 + 2H2O ==> 2HI + H2SO4
The HI then dissociates to hydrogen and iodine at about 350°C, endothermically:
2HI ==> H2 + I2
This can deliver hydrogen at high pressure.
The net reaction is then:
H2O ==> H2 + 1/2O2
All the reagents other than water are recycled; there are no effluents.
The Japan Atomic Energy Authority (JAEA) has demonstrated laboratory-scale and bench-scale hydrogen production with the IS process, up to 30 liters/hr.
The Sandia National Laboratory in the USA and the French CEA are also developing the IS process with a view to using high-temperature reactors for it.
General Atomics' preliminary laboratory work on thermochemical production should be complete by 2006. A 10MW pilot hydrogen plant using fossil heat would then be built, followed by nuclear thermochemical production by 2015.
The economics of hydrogen production depend on the efficiency of the method used. The IS cycle coupled with a modular high temperature reactor is expected to produce hydrogen at $1.50 to $2.00 per kg. The oxygen by-product also has value.
For thermochemical processes, an overall efficiency of greater than 50% is projected. Combined cycle plants producing both H2 and electricity may reach efficiencies of 60%.
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Hydrogen_production_from_nuclear_power
9. Well G.M. had a deal going with a large supplier of gasoline (which I cant remember right now.) to put hydrogen refuel stations at every station they owned throughout the country. The the government stepped in and canceled all plans for the G.M. hydrogen car that WORKED much better then any electric. And produced the 40 mile range Volt.
---------- Post added at 06:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:12 AM ----------
lol ... the comical thing is, the Chinese are slowly going ahead of everyone in terms of ecological and renewable energy: They discovered that sunlight and wind are free and that ecological technology is a major money-maker!
That was how the Green party was successful in influencing the establishment in Germany in the 1980ies: After everyone realized that ecological technology creates new markets, and hence, makes a lot of money, companies taking advantage of that popped up like mushrooms!
The thinking in the US (at least from corporations) is simply too conservative still ... and while the rest of the world is already decades ahead, the US is still in its Winter sleep.
TV programmes in the US contribute to keeping the population misinformed. Discovery Channel and National Geographic often portray stuff that already exists as "future technology", keeping their demographic, college students, misinformed, at least those who are not studying those fields.
Renewable power like wind, solar, and geothermic, are not "future technology", they've been used for decades. Same goes with biofuels, and other things, like recycling for instance.
I still remember people saying things like "recycling plastics is useless b/c you can only make park benches from the granulate", while companies were already making billions reselling cold-recycled plastic granulates of various kinds that got reused for making plastics.
China is building 2 new coal plants EVERY week. I dont think they are depending on wind and solar to much. They have the third largest coal deposits in the world and they are using it.
