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#626 2022-07-01 14:11:06

tahanson43206
Moderator
Registered: 2018-04-27
Posts: 17,169

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

For kbd512 re #625

Bookmark:kbd512 on synthetic fuel

This post, and the discussion of which it is a part, seems (to me at least) worth study when time becomes available.

It seems to me that you and Calliban have the heft to define a future in which energy is abundant and it flows freely among the human population.

What you do NOT have are the skills of politicians, who (for better or worse) are able to influence millions of people.

And, to achieve the futures the two of you share (they are obviously not the same), you need ** billions ** of people to buy into the project, because it is going to take coordinated efforts by millions, and avoidance of disruption by billions, to reach the goal.

(th)

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#627 2022-07-01 18:04:31

kbd512
Administrator
Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,431

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

tahanson43206,

Nobody will need convincing when there's no food, water, medical care, electricity, or transportation.  Everyone will either figure it out or they'll cease to exist in relatively short order.  Stupid may be infinite, but merely surviving while also being stupid has hard limits.  I'm not trying to get other countries to buy into this project.  What other countries choose to do is not my concern.  I only care about what we do in this country.  I don't live or vote in any other countries, so I have zero influence there and zero knowledge of how they want to run things.  The people who think they're going to "save the world" are universally naive, self-absorbed, and fixated on things that have little bearing on reality.  There's no reaching those people and trying is a fool's errand.  They're imprisoned within their three-pound universe.

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#628 2022-07-01 20:35:43

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,882

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

It is great when you can ask a search engine a question "fuel made from sea water energy requirement to quantity produced" and it gives you back an answer of

carbon dioxide concentration in seawater is about 100 milligrams per liter. That’s 140 times greater than that of air, but still not very much in real terms. One report calculates that you’d have to process close to nine million cubic meters of water to make 100,000 gallons of fuel, and that’s assuming 100 percent efficiency.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovati … 180953623/

The energy requirement is part of the conversion equation but so is the fuel type wanted out of the system.

The scientists say they can pull about 97 percent of the dissolved carbon dioxide from the water and convert about 60 percent of the extracted gases into hydrocarbons that can be made into fuel at the cost of approximately $3 to $6 per gallon.

https://www.watercalculator.org/footpri … of-energy/

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#629 2022-07-01 20:48:54

tahanson43206
Moderator
Registered: 2018-04-27
Posts: 17,169

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

For SpaceNut re #628

Congratulations on your success in working with the search engine!

It seems to me that if the processes you found were combined with harvesting all the valuable materials from an inflow of sea water, you'd really have something.

The water itself is valuable and it could be sold to the highest bidder.  I'm not sure how to translate the nine million cubic meters of water into acre feet for Phoenix, but it sure ** looks ** as though pulling CO2 out of the water would allow for an income stream for that segment.

All the other materials have value if collected and processed for sale.

Nice work!

(th)

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#630 2022-07-01 21:52:43

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,882

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Here are the topics that this might have been talked about within.
Synthetic Fuel Produced using Solar Power
Synthetic Fuel Produced using Nuclear Power

Prometheus Fuels Lower Cost Than Fossil Fuels

So far, we are at par for cost versus what we are paying for the stuff at the pump.

Sea water is corrosive on the electrolysis units from the quick read but there must be another high temperature method that could be used?

How much carbon dioxide is produced from a gallon of gasoline?

When one gallon of gasoline (~2850g) is combusted in your car or truck, how many liters of gaseous CO2 are produced at a temperature of 20.5OC and pressure of 757mm Hg(l) (average daily temperature and pressure for Chico, California)?

gas_stoichiometry_problem.png

Gasoline is about 87% carbon and 13% hydrogen by weight. So, the carbon in a gallon of gasoline (weighing 6.3 pounds) weighs 5.5 pounds (.87 x 6.3 pounds = 5.5 pounds).

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#631 2022-07-02 00:10:07

kbd512
Administrator
Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,431

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

SpaceNut,

One thing not mentioned about seawater is all the carbonates dissolved into it.  You still have to process a lot of seawater to get the requisite Carbon, but in order for these "battery bananas" people to obtain enough Lithium to make their techno-gadgets viable at a global scale, we'll have to start processing seawater.  We'll capture the salt as well, because that can be used to make another type of battery that's likely to supplant some Lithium in the future.  We sure as hell won't be storing grid energy using Lithium batteries.

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#632 2022-07-02 05:38:13

Mars_B4_Moon
Member
Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 9,267

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Back to the unrest crime thing mentioned earlier

Thieves modifying trucks to steal thousands of dollars worth of gas, police say
https://abc7.com/gas-theft-las-vegas-tr … /11939871/

Oakland woman chases suspects who used drill to break into husband's gas tank
https://abc7news.com/oakland-woman-gas- … /11997646/
"It shows that times are tough, but it's still no excuse to do something like that."

High gas prices or not, Pannell believes they took about half a tank of gas and says that is just wrong.

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#633 2022-07-02 11:15:08

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,882

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Seawater is not the same as we journey across them or to others for concentration of any dissolved chemicals. Breaking down the various types of co2 compounds will be challenging even after evaporating the water from a tank of seawater.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater

https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/files/dic … p17-40.pdf
The carbon dioxide system in seawater: equilibrium chemistry and measurements

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#634 2022-07-02 16:24:22

kbd512
Administrator
Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,431

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Mars_B4_Moon,

Things are only going to get worse.  I guess they're going to "unelect" themselves, sort of like President Trump did with his tweeting.  The next President, who will be a Republican if the Democrats continue their insanity, needs to dismiss every last one of them on Day 1 in office.

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#635 2022-07-05 15:50:39

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,882

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

So the big lie to raise up the costs were just that not being driven by supply demands at all U.S. oil just tumbled below $100 a barrel — What that says about recession fears and tight crude supplies

It comes down to what do you need more
250x200.jpg

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#636 2022-07-05 16:15:34

Calliban
Member
From: Northern England, UK
Registered: 2019-08-18
Posts: 3,429

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

SpaceNut, the yield curve has inverted.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/crude … llar-surge

In the past, this has been a dead ringer for an imminent recession.  All commidities are taking a hammering because investors know what is coming.  Unfortunately, global oil supplies are now so tight that a large sustained drop in oil prices may not be possible.  Even the COVID pandemic, which deliberately restrained oil product consumption, couod only keep prices down for a few months.  And that drop in price did devastating things to supply.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-07-05 16:17:41)


"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."

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#637 2022-07-14 19:54:02

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,882

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

The last few days the price of a gallon has dropped by at least 20 cents at about all NH locations for $4.63 a gallon. I also noticed that Maine was selling even 20 cents lower than that.

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#638 2022-07-19 19:13:16

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,882

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Price of gas as well as diesel has continued to drop and sits today at 4.39 a gallon for gasoline and diesel is 10 cents cheaper.


So, the oil must have dropped quite a bit for that change?

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#639 2022-07-19 19:51:15

Void
Member
Registered: 2011-12-29
Posts: 7,106

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

This is what I use:  https://www.cnn.com/business/markets/premarkets/

Go down the page to something like this:
Quote:

COMMODITIES

It does not seem like a lower price to me, but I only look at occasionally.

Why gas is dropping a bit, I don't know.

Done.


Done.

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#640 2022-07-27 06:03:57

Mars_B4_Moon
Member
Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 9,267

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Gasoline will also increase?

Russia has been cutting flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany, with it now operating at less than a fifth of its normal capacity.
Germany imports 55% of its gas from Russia and most of it comes through Nord Stream 1 - with the rest coming from land-based pipelines.

Gas prices soar as Russia cuts German supply
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62318376

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#641 2022-07-31 18:51:21

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,882

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

The price has dropped to $4.21 a gallon most recently.

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#642 2022-08-01 09:20:52

Mars_B4_Moon
Member
Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 9,267

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Russia to cut Nord Stream 1 gas to 20% of capacity, escalating energy tensions over Ukraine war

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russ … -rcna39866

Oil prices will trade above $100 in 2023 unless there's a deepening recession or easing of Russia's war in Ukraine, BofA says

https://ca.style.yahoo.com/oil-prices-t … 00570.html

Against Russia, Ukraine will lose a war of attrition

https://www.foxbangor.com/national-news … attrition/

The Hawaiian islands’ coal shipments are ending.

https://gcaptain.com/the-last-coal-ship … l-problem/

The bulker carrying the state’s final coal shipment will leave this week after refueling the state’s last coal-fired power plant. That plant is scheduled to close in September forcing the state’s energy providers to compete with the US Navy for oil tankers. AES Hawaii, operator of the largest power plant on Oahu, received 15,000 tons of Indonesian coal from the Liberian flag bulker MV Flying Tiger. The 180-megawatt plant is the biggest source of the island’s electricity and provided 13% of the state’s overall power in 2018.

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#643 2022-08-02 04:48:44

Mars_B4_Moon
Member
Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 9,267

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Europe’s looming coal crisis

https://www.politico.eu/article/europe- … -reserves/

Presidents don’t control gas prices, but they influence them

https://www.thegazette.com/staff-column … ence-them/

Putin Signals Gas Pipeline Will Restart as Clock Ticks Down

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/putin-si … 56026.html

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#644 2022-08-02 20:10:14

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,882

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

What has been the outcome of sending propane to Europe on our price? Do we have anything on that in the news?

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#645 2022-08-03 04:43:52

Calliban
Member
From: Northern England, UK
Registered: 2019-08-18
Posts: 3,429

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Forget about electric cars.  The most sensible long-term solution to our fuel crisis is car-free cities.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carfree_city

Essentially, car-free cities are pedestrian dominated.  This concept works best if cities are densely populated, rather like Venice or Amsterdam, with densities of up to 100,000 per square mile.  Medieval cities embody this idea quite well, because urban development was typically hemmed into the enclosure of city walls.  Cars weren't around back then, but over the short distances within city walls, they weren't needed.  In a modern pedestrian city, longer distance human transportation between cities and goods transportation to local distribution nodes, would be accomplished by rail.  The car would have a far more niche application.  It would be something you would probably hire if you wanted to travel into the country side.

The idea of purpose built pedestrian cities would work very well on Mars.  There, urban volume is pressurised and relatively expensive.  A densely populated city, containing 100,000 people within a 1-mile circular footprint will not need cars and would have no space for them.  On Earth, our urban areas are already built, so adapting to car-free life will be more difficult.  However, for countries that cannot access oil in the future, this would appear to be the best development model.  It makes it much easier for electric railways to fulfil the role of workhorse for long-distance human and freight transportation.  In such a dense urban core, district heating using stored heat can provide most domestic space and water heating requirements.  Again, this is not possible in a spread-out suburban living pattern.  Compact, pedestrian cities allow for lower energy use overall and for the remainder to be dominated by nuclear and renewable electricity.  This will not be feasible so long as we maintain living arrangements and transportation patterns that evolved during the fossil fuel era. 

The solution to our problem is not therefore to find battery electric alternative power sources for cars.  We need to redefine our cities to obviate the need for cars altogether.  With fossil fuels rapidly depleting and globalisation breaking down, the energy basis for industrial urbanisation is disappearing.  The type of living arrangements that make sense when your primary energy sources are nuclear power stations and wind turbines, are different to what they are when you have abundant and cheap fossil fuels.

The transition to post-fossil fuel, car-free cities would appear to offer a lot of side benefits.  With modern sewage and rail based transportation, cities will be clean places.  Streets will be entirely for people, making the city a much more comfortable place to live.  No traffic noise.  No pollution.  Streets become social places that are full of people instead of machines.  Small scale retail and business can be be dispersed throughout the city and will spill out onto the pedestrian streets.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-08-03 05:01:05)


"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."

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#646 2022-08-03 16:12:35

kbd512
Administrator
Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,431

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Calliban,

Chicago has rail-based transportation, large sidewalks for pedestrian traffic, and a functional sewage system.  Chicago is not what I think of when I think of the word "clean".  Chicago is filthy, because the people who live there have made it so.  I love subways because I despise driving in traffic.  Here in Texas, we've been promised light rail for decades.  I'll probably be dead before we actually get it.  There will always be noise inside a city if there is light rail.  The trains in Chicago are deafening, even louder than the numerous diesel powered trucks that deliver goods.  The only thing louder and more obnoxious than the trains are the idiots on motorcycles gunning their engines.  The notion that you could even have a modern city without trucks and cabs is downright silly.

I don't actually mind the noise, though, as it's a sign that the city is alive and well.  If there's no noise, then something is very wrong.  Anyway, Chicago has a better people-to-machine ratio than other cities.  Whether that's more or less desirable is a matter of perspective.  If the machines are useful and contribute to the economy, then they should stay.  If they detract from the economy or seriously detract from quality of life, then we need a better solution.  In general, I like trains and I like the large open-air walkways of Chicago and New York.  However, putting millions of people inside a few square miles creates serious challenges.

I still prefer my "actually quiet" suburban home, where the most noise you typically hear comes from mowers or weed whackers or delivery trucks.  I could care less about whether or not I lived in the home or inside a large office-type building, though.  A house is a house.  The only "good house" is the one you're not paying for.

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#647 2022-08-03 18:33:47

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,882

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

The size of how much area a city covers is less of the issues to how much is the density. We have the same issue even in the somewhat small cities of concord, Nashua, Manchester ect by comparison but as these higher dense areas end up horrid and quite filthy.

We talked about the walkability factor of distance and even with mass transit if it's at more than a few miles distance it's not going to get the use it should as it's just too far for most to travel. So sure, the E-bikes help dramatically in pedal assist or in EV mode as they can get 20 to 30 mph along the roads with about the safety of a motorcycle. The low-end cost is about $700 all the way to $4,000 depending on many features but to say that this is affordable to all would not be for all that might be in need.

Tonight, gasoline cost has gone down 2 more cents.

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#648 2022-08-03 22:19:04

kbd512
Administrator
Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,431

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

SpaceNut,

A walkable city is mostly a fantasy.  It's a quaint idea, but wildly impractical at the scale of human civilization.  None are actually built that way.  Try walking across Chicago or New York or San Francisco.  Austin or Dallas or Houston?  Good luck with that.  It's not doable in any practical sense.  I think what people actually mean is that their place of work, their home, the grocery store, and the school their children go to is all contained within a few square miles at most.  That's reasonably doable for some people, even with cities built as they are instead of how we would like them to be, but reliable and readily available transportation faster than walking is still required.

People buy cars because they make transportation convenient and available, on-demand.  For anyone who has a family, transportation isn't practical with scooters or mopeds, and riding them is more dangerous than driving a car.  The same applied to riding horses.  The horse did get the job done, but it certainly wasn't something you'd do without considerable knowledge and practice, and it was every bit as dangerous as any motorcycle.  The horse was the original "AI-enabled" transport of the future.  It was sometimes unpredictable and prone to tossing riders for reasons that were difficult for most people to ascertain.  Anyone looking to "change the world" will figure out how to make 4-wheeled vehicles more economical to own and operate.  Thus far, EV-anything (available in the western world) fails miserably at doing that.  The existing gasoline-powered vehicles seem to fail when their electronics fail.  Since the EVs have vastly more electronics in them, it's inevitable that the failures will be more costly.

If Taiwan is invaded or simply bombed back into the Stone Age by the communist Chinese, you won't have to worry about getting electronic-anything for the next 10 to 20 years since that's where about 90% of it comes from.  That'll put a bit of a damper on everyone's green dreams.  At this point, I think you have to be asleep to believe it.  All I see are the coming piles of non-recyclable and non-repairable electronic and battery trash that will set fire to the junkyards and landfills of our future.

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#649 2022-08-04 04:00:53

Calliban
Member
From: Northern England, UK
Registered: 2019-08-18
Posts: 3,429

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Walkable cities are not a fantasy.  In fact, every city that was built before the motor car was largely pedestrian.  It is probably difficult for Americans to even imagine, because practically all of the urban development of the USA took place after 1900 and there appears to have been very little urban planning.  Which is why your cities look the way they do.  That doesn't mean that it isn't possible to build cities without the automobile.  Europe has plenty of cities that were built before the motorcar and even before the industrial revolution.  And they look very different to Los Angeles and Chicago.  Venice is probably the best surviving example of a pre-industrial city.  It is a place where introduction of the car was impossible.  At it's height, roughly 170,000 people were living on a set of islands that measure about 3 square miles.  It is one of the worlds most popular destinations.

Virtually all Italian towns are walkable.  If cars disappeared from the world tomorrow, these people would be OK.  York in northern England was built within city walls and is small enough to be entirely walkable.  When I lived in Brussels in Belgium, I walked practically everywhere for over a year.  For longer distances, I used the trams.  I think it is difficult for Americans to even imagine that.  And that is part of the problem.  You simply have no precedent for life without cars and you stuck with a century of legacy infrastructure that won't work without cars.  But believe it or not, the rest of the world got along just fine without the automobile and most of Europe could do again.  In many ways life could be better.

Freight transportation is a different issue.  Before the industrial revolution, most large settlements were either coastal or were on rivers.  Canals linked a lot of towns in England, the Netherlands and Germany.  Freight tended to arrive by boat and was then distributed over shorter distances by horse or hand cart.  That sort of thing works when stuff only has to be transported short distances from a hub.  It is one of the limitations that tended to keep cities small before motorisation.  In a modern pedestrian city, we don't need to entirely dispense with trucks.  And we have rail as well.  Small electric trucks work well for short distances.  They just aren't suitable for transporting freight over hundreds of miles.  But they don't need to be.  If you want something that can transport a tonne of goods from a rail depot to a shop or house over a distance of a few miles, at a speed of 20mph, electric can do that fine.  So can compressed air.  So can hydrogen stored in a gas bag.  Electric transport is looking impossible from a resource perspective because people are trying to build electric cars and trucks that do everything that petroleum powered vehicles do.  Most green types seem incapable of imagining a world in which things work differently.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-08-04 07:53:27)


"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."

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#650 2022-08-05 09:49:55

kbd512
Administrator
Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,431

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Calliban,

When I think about what a city is, it typically involves at least a million people.  170,000 people is a medium-sized town, and the infrastructure and lifestyle supporting that is very different there than it is in a city, thus why we have the suburbs of today.  However, these towns are not the sort of cities that would change the viability of walkable-cities.  We would have to completely destroy and rebuild virtually every western city of any notable size to make this concept viable.

If merely re-powering the cities we already have, using something other than oil and gas wells, whether nuclear reactors or farms of photovoltaics and wind turbines, is too challenging and too costly, then what makes you think this is viable?

It's a beautiful idea, but not the least bit practical to do with the labor shortage, supply chain shortages, and energy shortages.  For better or worse, we're mostly stuck with what we already have because there's not enough young people to fundamentally change anything and the existing infrastructure is highly resistant to any major changes.

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