Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

kbd512 · 2022-05-15 13:47:38

Calliban,

That's why we need to develop synthetic fuels. Synthetic fuel prices can be guaranteed over the long term when the material inputs are fixed and the energy input is provided by the Sun, whereas natural resource extraction that depends upon progressively depleted natural resources cannot, even with new technology development. At some point, the energy / equipment / labor inputs must increase to extract lower and lower concentration of a natural resource, whether we're talking about a metal ore resource like Lithium Carbonate or fossil oil.

SpaceNut · 2022-05-16 19:01:01

The price at the pump tonight is $4.65 a gallon of gasoline....

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-16 21:19:20

For SpaceNut .... this is a duplicate of a post in the Prometheus topic ...

I am hoping to reach a wider audience with this concept ... Ideas of Calliban, combined with ideas of kbd512, seem to have come together (If I understand everything which is not guaranteed) to show how a traditional gas turbine power plant might be converted to a "green" power plant, with no fossil fuel input at all.

The idea would be to recycle the initial charge of methane and oxygen, using solar power to enable the methane and oxygen to serve as a chemical battery for the power plant.

This concept ** should ** be agreeable to stockholders of existing power plants, because it allows existing plants to continue operation with very little change, but without producing pollution or having to buy more methane from outside suppliers.

tahanson43206 wrote:

For the record ....
In another topic, Calliban suggested using CO2 as a diluent gas to protect existing gas turbine equipment from excessive heat that would be caused by use of oxygen without a diluent.
His proposal is to cool air using solar power, remove the nitrogen and save the oxygen.
Feed the liquid oxygen into an existing gas turbine power plant (or coal plant if that is the customer type), cooling the exhaust to liquefy the CO2
***
A completely "green" solution would use solar power to make methane using CO2 and water produced by a gas turbine power plant.
Once a cycle of materials is in place, there would be little need to add more material.
Solar energy would be used to make methane and liquid oxygen.
The cost of additional water (for hydrogen) would be optimized depending upon the circumstances.
Assuming there are losses in the system, a small amount of additional methane might be required.
Thus, the methane and oxygen would serve as a chemical battery for a traditional, well-understood gas turbine powr plant.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-17 06:47:06

For SpaceNut ...

Understand that your Prius is an older model...

It ** must ** have a battery to operate without the motor running ...

You've indicated the battery cannot be charged at home.

However, it ** must ** be possible to hook a battery in parallel with the battery in the car.

What voltage is the battery supplying? I'm guess 48 Volts, but really have no idea, other than it would not be 5 VDC or 12 VDC.

How hard would it be for you to install a similar battery in the trunk and charge ** that ** at home?

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-17 18:40:55

Here's a related report on diesel...

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/runa … 12112.html

Fortune
Runaway diesel prices threaten to do a lot more than make inflation worse—American infrastructure is at stake
Tristan Bove
Tue, May 17, 2022, 12:58 PM
High gasoline prices are hitting Americans hard, with the national gas price average sitting at $4.48 per gallon on Monday, up nearly $1.50 from a year ago.
But it’s even worse for drivers who rely on diesel fuel.
The national U.S. average price for diesel is now $5.56, its highest on record. In the U.K. diesel prices are now over £1.80 a liter, a record high for that country.
The average driver in the U.S. doesn’t rely on diesel, as it’s commonly used by truck drivers and heavy farming vehicles. But sky-high diesel prices could not only aggravate an inflation problem that is already hurting U.S. consumers—they could have dire implications for U.S. infrastructure, and the fate of the global supply chain.
Inflation in the U.S. is currently running 8.3% higher than last year, and diesel costs staying high might make prices stay high for even longer.
That’s because diesel is a vital fuel source for much of America’s transportation infrastructure, as it’s used in most long-haul trucks and freight trains. With the current high diesel prices, it’s becoming more and more likely that distribution companies will begin shifting expenses over to consumers.
Diesel has a much higher energy density compared to gasoline, and the fuel is powerful enough to haul heavy payloads that gas cannot handle. This makes diesel a favorite for the U.S. long-haul trucking sector, and the fuel effectively props up many aspects of the U.S. supply chain infrastructure.
Everything from trucks and trains to farming and construction equipment tend to rely on diesel rather than regular gasoline. Around 75% of all commercial vehicles registered in the U.S. are powered by diesel, as are the vast majority of both large and medium-sized long-haul trucks.
These are the same trucks that carry food and most other products around the U.S., and as diesel prices surge everywhere, signs are emerging that this infrastructure is beginning to break down.
“After fuel charges and driver pay, you’ve got nothing. It’s just like community service,” one truck driver in Florida told local news station WJXT last week.
The price surges are so high in some states that truck drivers have to pay out of pocket to fill up, and many are being more selective about the trips they take. Some smaller trucking companies are struggling to make payroll and considering reducing or even closing down operations due to high costs.
High diesel prices are also creating a headache for U.S. trucking companies, and that’s already translating to higher transportation and operating costs.
“These fuel costs are the biggest thing we’re facing right now,” Jake Phipps, chief executive of building materials manufacturer Phipps & Co., told the Wall Street Journal last week. Transportation costs for the company have gone up as much as 20% this year, leaving Phipps & Co. little choice but to raise prices.
“We’re trying to use rail as much as we can, which saves a little bit. But that isn’t always possible. Otherwise all we can do is pass the cost along to our customers,” Phipps said.
Global consequences
The U.S. supply chain infrastructure is heavily reliant on diesel, and high prices for the fuel are starting to wear it down as trucking companies struggle to deal with the expenses.
But it’s not just the U.S.—the diesel price surge is a global problem, and right now, there simply isn’t enough to go around.
While the diesel problem is hitting U.S. truck drivers hard, Europe is bearing the brunt of the price surge, as almost half of European passenger cars run on diesel, as well as all trucks and freight trains.
Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe imported roughly two-thirds of all its external crude oil, which is refined to make diesel, from Russia. These imports are beginning to be drawn down, and European countries are turning to higher imports from the U.S. to satisfy the supply gap.
The U.S. is shipping more diesel to Europe than it has in years, fuel which would have otherwise gone to resupply truck stops.
The dearth of available diesel is pushing U.S. oil refiners to ramp up diesel production this year, as rising domestic demand and the supply gap in Europe is making diesel more profitable than gasoline for the first time.
"The U.S. is now acting as the barrel of last resort for an Atlantic Basin that scrambles to find alternatives to shunned Russian crude oil and petroleum products," Citibank analysts said in April.
Helping Europe minimize the impact of its diesel shortage is crucial to bringing global prices down, but shipping more of the fuel abroad means that U.S. truck operators are in for a shortage of their own.
And they will likely have to wait until domestic production ramps up even more for operating costs to go down.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-17 18:45:58

For SpaceNut re Prius...

This evening's local Linux User Group meeting was attended (online) by a couple present or past Prius owners ... I asked about the battery situation in Prius 1st generation, which (you have reported) does not provide for at-home charging.

I asked about hooking a battery in parallel ... one gent warned that the onboard computer might be confused if the battery it is working with is larger than it was designed to handle. That might (or it might not) be a problem.

However, the gent who made ** that ** observation ** also ** said that hooking another battery in parallel to the onboard battery might allow for charging of the onboard battery until the two batteries are in equilibrium. I assume that would be half charge, but still better than nothing.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-05-17 20:10:01

The normal 200v plus traction battery which is used for the electrical motor drive even when the display shows empty has a 60% charge still on it. With used seen on ebay for about $500 and up to new with core turn in around $2,000 ish.
http://www.eaa-phev.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius_Battery_Specs

There is some size increasing that may be possible but need to research what I have versus what can be used in the traction power source. Yes an increase in total kwhr's would mean the capability to use it more with low speeds longer.

The 12v small starter battery is for the gasoline engine.

The real issue for battery drive is that the user has no means to control it staying in the electrical powered mode. It is possible to let the electrical cause motion from a stop and then add in a little pedal acceleration but the gas engine will start if its sensing drive wheel torque or current battery draw forcing the engine to start to charge the traction battery.

It might be possible to do some sort of roof top solar panel charging when the car is parked but it would need to be taken offline before using the car, same as a EV charging would need to do.

Calliban · 2022-05-19 05:13:32

This article summarises Tim Morgan's work on the modelling of the economy as an energy system.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpres … ect-storm/

Well worth reading if you have the time. The essence of energy economics can be summed up in just a few observations.

1. The economy is an energy system and is governed by the laws of thermodynamics. Everything that humans call a 'good' including services, are the result of energy acting and transforming matter. The economy is the sum of millions of individual transactions of goods and services. It is therefore entirely dependant upon energy supply being sufficient to drive these functions.

2. It follows from this observation that economic development is irrevocably dependant upon increasing energy supply. Increasing the output of goods and services requires either expansion of energy supply or increased efficiency of energy utilisation, which clearly has physical limitations. There can be no decoupling of rising prosperity from increasing energy consumption.

3. When energy is extracted or harnessed for human use, a proportion of this energy will always be consumed in the processes needed to access it. This is the energy cost of the infrastructure needed to extract and deliver energy. The energy that powers the economy, is therefore surplus energy, after the energy cost of accessing the energy (ECoE) have been paid.

4. Over the past several decades, the energy cost of energy (ECoE) has gradually increased. This has happened as high grade fossil fuel resources were either depleted or maxed out and lower grade resources were relied upon for sustaining and growing supply. The great recessions of the 1970s were a direct result of shortfalls in OECD oil production that only abated when new technology allowed offshore drilling to boost supply. Since the early 2000s, rising ECoE in global oil production has imposed increasing drag on economic prosperity, especially in energy intensive western economies. In most OECD countries, the average person has been gradually getting poorer since the turn of the century. Total global prosperity has continued to increase, as aggregate energy production has risen faster than ECoE, allowing rising surplus energy overall.

5. We are now entering an era of absolute shortages in fossil fuels relative to demand. This is primarily driven by depletion of high grade fossil fuels, but has been aggrevated by political interference in the development of new resources. It is clearly a more severe problem than the slow rise in ECoE that we have experienced to date. When absolute volumes of production decline, the systems that depend upon these energy sources begin to fail. The problem coukd become very difficult to mitigate, because investment in new energy sources always requires that some energy and resources are spared direct consumption and invested for the sake of tomorrow. If energy supply is shrinking, it becomes progressively more difficult to spare the resources neccesary to invest in future production. This suggests some very hard times ahead.

6. Our ability to reverse the problems resulting from fossil fuel depletion, depend entirely upon our ability to develop high EROI (and low ECoE) replacements for fossil fuels. Intermittent renewable energy sources lack the power density to achieve this. At best, they may cushion the decline in surplus energy, so long as legacy conventional fossil fuel power plants remain available to back up supply. The heavy material budgets of these energy sources may in fact make them counterproductive in halting the rise in ECoE. This tends to suggest that the solution to our problems must lay somewhere else entirely.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-05-19 05:27:25)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-19 06:27:05

For SpaceNut re Prius charging: Thanks for this update and clarification, in Post #508.

It occurs to me to wonder if Toyota might have thought about the needs of their Generation 1 customers, and developed documentation of actions you can take to connect charging systems to the drive battery in such a way as to NOT upset the onboard computer. The Prius you have may well last for over 100,000 miles with a modest maintenance investment. That service life is not unusual for Toyota, with normal prescribed service. What I am trying to address is the cost of gasoline, which you have been reporting.

For Calliban re Post #509 .... Thank you for this concise summary of the concept of an economy as an energy system.

SearchTerm:Economy as an energy system - post by Calliban plus link to article

For Calliban re proposal to build nuclear fuel production facility .... While I am disappointed you would prefer NOT to take the lead in attempting to create such a facility, I must admit (upon reflection) this position is consistent with your position with regard to asteroid mining or any of the other ambitious visions you've offered to the NewMars audience over time. Creating visions that might inspire others is a useful activity in itself, and the risks of publishing in ** this ** environment are low, while the rewards are modest but generally reliable.

As I have said before, and will no doubt say again many times, most of the challenges discussed in this forum are NOT technical in nature. They are almost entirely social. It takes cooperation on the part of many human beings to bring about major positive change (or negative change as Putin has shown).

A brilliant visionary will remain isolated from potential futures by inertia of the rest of human kind.

The risks of change are well understood by most of us, and we are understandably reluctant to take risks of losing what little we still have, on some venture whose outcome is uncertain.

It is truly miraculous that a very small number of humans are able to confront risk on a scale large enough to move the needle.

The idea of building a nuclear fission enterprise to make long-chain hydrocarbon fuels will remain just a vision, in the form of a few posts in an Internet forum.

***
The idea of converting existing gas turbine power plants to closed loop systems supported by solar power is another example of a powerful vision that is likely to remain just a flicker of light in an Internet forum, that fades out quickly as other ideas or arguments come along to take their place.

Meanwhile, the forces of decay enumerated by Calliban in numerous posts are hard at work, undeterred by the foibles and weaknesses of human beings.

(th)

Calliban · 2022-05-19 06:50:12

tahanson43206 wrote:

For Calliban re proposal to build nuclear fuel production facility .... While I am disappointed you would prefer NOT to take the lead in attempting to create such a facility, I must admit (upon reflection) this position is consistent with your position with regard to asteroid mining or any of the other ambitious visions you've offered to the NewMars audience over time. Creating visions that might inspire others is a useful activity in itself, and the risks of publishing in ** this ** environment are low, while the rewards are modest but generally reliable.
(th)

TH: Like others here, I can talk about such a facility and maybe even develop some of the technical details in how such a project can be executed.

But you need to understand that I am not in any position to step up and lead a development project with sunk capital costs of hundreds of billions of dollars. Such a project needs to be a cooperative effort between governments and major industrial corporations. I am a middle management engineer, with some useful technical skills, but my resources are woefully inadequate to the task of taking this on. Elon Musk took on the job of building mass market electric cars. Musk could do that because his financial resources were vast to begin with. I on the other hand, am an average guy with a good but far from remarkable technical education. My financial resources are very modest and I have no freinds in high places. Me stepping up and leading a global energy transition would be rather like a plankton trying to lead a group of whales.

The best we can really do here is develop ideas on an open forum that hopefully someone with influence and money will take notice of. It isn't a completely wasted effort, but you do need to be realistic about how far and how fast we can take things here. This board is primarily a hobby for people with enough technical knowledge to discuss concepts. You could call it a Think Tank. People working for SpaceX say, are bound to traul the internet for information on projects they are working on. What we discuss here may influence their decisions and background knowledge. That is what this forum is good for and it is what its founders would have intended. Just don't expect anyone here to jump up and take on major industrial projects that change the world.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-05-19 06:58:39)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-19 07:11:14

For Calliban re #510

A great teacher can inspire a willing student.

Elon Musk started with absolutely NOTHING, except supportive parents and an environment that encouraged risk taking.

He has achieved prominence because of his astonishing ambition, and his intellect, but above all, because of his good judgement of human beings.

I am confident the world has more such individuals.

This forum is open to the entire internet, although advertising is limited, so it's potential is unrealized.

It takes people who don't know how difficult it would be to try to build a gigantic enterprise to actually accomplish it.

Fortunately (if that is the right word) humanity has boxed itself into a period of sustained stress that will (I am hoping) yield young people with the equivalent of Elon Musk talent for the needs to be addressed.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-19 07:17:52

For Calliban ...

It is possible you have the ability to inspire young people to great achievement ...

If you have time, and would like to explore the nuclear fission fuel synthesis concept a bit more, you have a suitable topic already in place. You can (if it were helpful) refer to the topic I have created to follow the appropriate section of "Beyond Oil and Gas".

You could (for example) find a suitable location for a global scale enterprise ...

I have tried to offer suggestions for locations, but it would take more time than I have to find them.

The location needs to be uninhabited, stable and not volcanic or subject to earth quakes, preferably not subject to extreme weather events, and above all, owned/managed/supervised by a stable global political power.

Such a global power needs to provide military protection for such a valuable asset.

(th)

Calliban · 2022-05-19 12:16:15

As my Scots ancestors would say, Ock, you 'cannae' fix stupid!

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News … House.html

Having done their utmost to undermine fossil fuel production in the US, the Democrat side are now punishing companies for profitting from high prices. High prices that are a result of shortage, which would in ordinary times, inspire more efforts to drill. But price volatility over past couple of decades, the high cost of unconventional oil production and the fact that Democrats keep calling them 'baby killers', etc, are contributing to a muted response. So now they are punished for profitting from the very conditions the Dems helped create.

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-19 12:39:20

This is primarily for SpaceNut (all others welcome, of course)...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/fuel-alaska- … 00242.html

Toward the bottom of this article, there is mention of solar energy ...

Anchorage Daily News, Alaska
Fuel in the Alaska village of Noatak was $16 a gallon. The costs are more than just money.
Zachariah Hughes, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska
Thu, May 19, 2022, 9:47 AM
May 19—Wanda Sue Page had a problem.
"My Honda is empty right now for a couple days," said Page, 59, a member of the Tribal Council in Noatak, a community of just under 600 mostly Inupiaq residents midway between Kotzebue and Kivalina in the Northwest Arctic Borough.
Someone had siphoned off the last bit of gasoline in the four-wheeler she uses to get around town. That is more than an inconvenience in a community where the price of fuel hit $15.99 a gallon, several times the national average and dramatically more than even in neighboring communities. Stove oil costs the same. After a 6% sales tax, it adds up to $16.47 a gallon.
The prices for gasoline and stove oil in Noatak were already staggering because of longstanding issues with how the town imports its fuel, hovering for years around $9 or $10 a gallon. Several global factors are exacerbating the costs, and not just in Noatak. Other villages in the region are seeing upward of $10 and $12 a gallon for the first time. And the conditions that have caused Noatak's gas prices to spike are soon going to hit more rural Alaska communities, according to energy experts, as global instability in energy markets and climate change continue.
The hefty fuel costs made for a difficult few months in Noatak, which had an exceptionally cold winter this year.
"I helped my mom all year with fuel, even (though) I'm not working myself," Page said.
All over town, she said, people tried to stay warm when they did not have enough money for stove oil. Several times in the middle of the night she brought wood to her 96-year-old mother's house. A nephew stayed with her when he had no fuel at all and couldn't keep warm at his home. Some younger men collected cardboard from the store to burn.
"Lotta guys who will get wood and sell wood, which is a lot cheaper than buying stove oil," Page said. It costs in the neighborhood of $180 for enough logs to heat a home for a little more than a week.
"It's good wood from the country," Page said.
But even to get out a ways and haul back logs, she said, you need a snowmachine, sled, chain saw and enough gas to power the whole operation.
The same is true for the small number of residents who occasionally travel 22 miles from the community along a snowmachine trail to the road that connects Red Dog Mine with its port terminal on the Chukchi Sea coast. The mine does limited sales of 55-gallon drums priced in line with their much less expensive bulk fuel order. But again, Page said, like paying for an Amazon Prime or Costco membership, you need to have some money in order to save some money, and many people have no choice but to spend $16 at the pump.
"They still buy it. We have to eat, we have to eat our foods from the land or the river," Page said. "Lotta people struggle."
'It's a double whammy for the villages'
One big reason Noatak's fuel costs were already among the most expensive in the state is because all of it has to be flown in. By 1992, changes in the Noatak River made the channel depth too shallow for barge access, which is how almost all coastal and river communities in Western Alaska get fuel delivered during the brief windows in the ice-free season.
Now, Noatak is one of a few rural towns in Alaska that have to bring in all their fuel by plane instead of barge. Though the communities leapfrog each other for the most expensive fuel prices, the gallons sold for much of this winter for $15.99 at the Noatak store were very likely the highest in Alaska, according to data provided by the Alaska Housing Finance Corp.'s Research and Rural Development Department, which twice a year gathers local fuel prices from 300 communities across the state.
Residents got a slight break recently: Fuel prices went down to $12.99 late last week.
Energy costs are already much higher in rural Alaska than along the Railbelt, but when changes in river structure or coastlines affect the infrastructure for fuel delivery, prices skyrocket.
"It's a natural process. Rivers in Alaska are pretty flat and tend to meander. There's not a lot you can do," said Ingemar Mathiasson, energy manager for the Northwest Arctic Borough. "If a village is stuck, it's stuck."
Mathiasson lives in Ambler, along the Kobuk River on the other side of the borough. In recent years, variable water levels in the river have meant barges cannot make their fuel deliveries in the summer, forcing Ambler and a neighboring community to fly in their fuel just like Noatak. In Ambler, a gallon of gasoline costs $12.36 a gallon.
According to Mathiasson, the channel recently shifted alongside the nearby town of Shungnak, ruining its barge access for the foreseeable future.
Toward the end of last year, storms across Western Alaska, outbreaks of COVID among airline staff, and logistical challenges arising from backlogged flights caused Noatak to scramble for an alternative air carrier as fuel supplies ran out. A smaller carrier than the normally used service made it work, but it made the price per gallon rise by $4. The recent decline reflects a return to deliveries by the town's regular carrier.
Global oil prices had been rising before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the war has created chaos in international energy systems, spiking gas prices. Those costs are amplified further in rural Alaska because a lack of infrastructure like pipelines adds additional logistical steps that further swell the price.
"Every crisis out there in the world escalates the prices," Mathiasson said. "The plane that brings the fuel in also runs on the same fuel. So the cost of moving the fuel, if the fuel doubles, it doubles the logistics. It's a double whammy for the villages that have to move in fuel."
Mathiasson expects a sustained conflict in Ukraine could contribute to oil reaching as high as $150 a barrel, something that village energy cooperatives and utility companies in Bush towns will be nervously watching as they plan their bulk fuel orders later this year.
The extra costs of high fuel
"It was pretty tough this winter," said Noatak's Hilda Booth, who saw people trying to heat their homes with paper, cardboard and even scrubby little willows from the tundra.
The town was already having issues with low levels in its water tank, but with gas and electric bills bulging, people cut back on things like heat trace systems along pipes, causing more bursts and freeze-ups. Frustrated by losing water service, Booth said some people who were able snowmachined to Kotzebue to wash laundry.
"Every home, those that are on low income, they were the ones that were hurting the most waiting for the state to send energy assistance, so that they can get some fuel. It wasn't that much as before, but it helped out a little bit," Booth said of financial aid from the state of Alaska.
Help has come from other entities, too. Maniilaq, the regional nonprofit in the Northwest Arctic, offered every family in Ambler $500 worth of gasoline or stove fuel, and another $300 that can go toward food.
"You can buy ammo for people that's hunting for you," said 84-year-old Don Williams from his home in Ambler. "I get that gas and then I save it for when my grandkids go hunting."
As Williams chatted on a recent May afternoon, he said there were caribou in the area. Hunters who had cached gas, traded for it, or bit the bullet to pay $12 a gallon were on their way out into the country looking for them.
At his age, Williams has had to retire from many subsistence activities, and was looking forward to his wife's return from a trip into Anchorage for a grandchild's graduation.
"My grandson came in the other day with a big fat goose he had shot and cleaned, and boy did that look good," Williams said. "So I got that goose sitting in the freezer waiting for them to come back."
He said he worries that with prices the way they are, many young people won't have gas money to put into their boat engines by the time the river opens back up and subsistence harvesting gets into full swing in late summer and fall.
"Got me one caribou, I was surviving off that," said elder Minnie Wood, 63, further up the river in Kobuk. "My one, I shared with a few families for a meal. But yeah, they shared me also, 'cause I can't go out."
Wood said energy assistance from the state helped, but came late for many in her town. Like most people in Kobuk, which has just a handful of paying jobs, she isn't working and depends on an elder support network for her heating fuel.
"Hopefully the prices will come down," Wood said.
Two roads
There are very few options available that will bring down fuel costs in the short term for the communities acutely affected by them in the Northwest Arctic.
One that will make a dent are ongoing renewable projects going up, like a recently installed solar farm in Shungnak. In 2019, the borough's Village Improvement Fund invested in heat pumps and solar panels in 70 homes in Ambler to help reduce fuel expenses. A solar array and battery system is planned to come online in Noatak in 2023, the bulk of which is supported through a federal grant, and which could save an estimated 18,840 gallons of diesel fuel a year.
According to Mathiasson, even though those projects will reduce the total energy loads in those communities by 10% to 30%, high fuel costs will remain a burden.
"We're still gonna need the fuel for heating and transport," Mathiasson said. "Until we can produce electricity lower than what we're doing today, at a much higher scale than what we can do today, we're still gonna need fuel for transport."
The other option, for Noatak at least, is a road connecting the community to Delong Mountain Transportation System, the 52-mile network of all-weather roads used to move ore and supplies from Red Dog Mine to an export terminal on the Chukchi Sea coast. That would give the community easier access to mine's cheaper fuel.
The borough and other stakeholders have experimented with a wintertime road as a way of opening a seasonal connection with fewer environmental impacts and regulatory red-tape, but it has so far been unsuccessful.
Most of the paths proposed for such a road would cross over a portion of the Cape Krusenstern National Monument, managed by the National Park Service.
"We're really empathetic to their needs," said Abby Wines, the interim superintendent of Western Arctic National Parklands, which includes the Krusenstern National Monument near Noatak. "At this point we don't have a formal application from there."
Any land transfer or easement, she cautioned, would take a while to evaluate.
"We're talking with them and we'll review a proposal when we get something," Wines added.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-05-20 17:25:12

We have seen a 2 cent drop but the Prius has allowed for the price swing to stay in the limits of affordable due to the efficiency change to that of the escape...

When I for got the car I was only getting 30 ish for mileage but now after some practice and many miles I am now achieving 40 mpg. The electrical dash shows the trip to work usually saves with regenerative breaking 100 to 150 most times with the return home nearly doubling it.

SpaceNut · 2022-05-20 18:08:51

The Alaska village of Noatak is quite north of the artic circle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noatak,_Alaska

https://www.maniilaq.org/northwest-alaska/noatak/

https://www.nwabor.org/village/noatak/

This is mostly an isolated old school way of life in living off the land. Sure there is some modern activity but for the most part its hard work. It has abundant resources but little in equipment due to how remote it is. Solar with a large concentrating system is possible for part of the year in PV or in thermal salt buried for later use also could be done. There does appear to be a river near by for hydro power for part of the year until frozen again to be converted into store able forms. It does look like wind power is possible in the winter as another source to make use of.

It is in the wilderness for sure and not for the faint of heart...

edit todays kbd512 posts 112 covers some of what must be done along with the follow up

SpaceNut · 2022-05-21 17:31:15

ouch today same station now listing gasoline at $4.75 a gallon.

Decided it was past time to do the oil change and filters to see how it may help performance and keep the vehicle running problem free.

Calliban · 2022-05-21 18:35:34

Interesting option for synthetic fuel.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_carbonate

We have discussed before ammonia as a synthetic fuel. Unfortunately, it is a gas at room temperature and liquid vapour pressure is 8.6bar. That means it must be stored in pressure cylinders. Also, it is both toxic and irritant.

Ammonium carbonate can be manufactured by dissolving ammonia into water containing dissolved CO2. Two ammonia molecules combine with one CO2 and one water molecule. The result is a stable white solid, highly soluble in water. Upon heating to 58°C, it decomposes into CO2, water (which stays in solution) and ammonia. The gases can be fed into a diesel engine or gas turbine.

Ammonium carbonate has an energy density of 6.5MJ/kg, or 10MJ/litre. This is much lower than diesel. However, this chemical can be stored in a rail truck as a powder and shoveled into a tank of hot water, rather like coal is shovelled into a steam engine boiler. The tank could carry up to 200 tonnes of carbonate, along with a few tonnes of water. Waste heat from the engine woukd drive decomposition. The same powder could be used to fuel ships. It has less than 30% of the volume energy density of diesel and only 1/7th the mass energy density. So a lot more volume would be taken up by fuel. However, ammonia gas could be burned far more efficiently that diesel, by feeding it into a solid oxide fuel cell, which exhausts into a gas turbine.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-05-21 18:44:21)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-21 18:55:13

For Calliban re #518

Thanks for this report on Ammonium carbonate...

Because I've been thinking about kbd512's ideas recently, your post reminds me of the option of collecting exhaust from existing fossil fuel plants.

That would be a convenient place to collect CO2, and the plant operators/owners would (presumably) appreciate the help with pollution, so they might be willing to let the exhaust go to a good home for a low price, or perhaps even at no charge.

If you are in the mood to pursue this idea a bit further, and if you have time, which I recognize you may not, is it possible to imagine what a down-stream ammonia-carbonate factory might look like?

If we are talking about a site near a body of water, then CO2 and water would be available, and the atmosphere is a handy/convenient source of Nitrogen.

Actually, the exhaust from a fossil fuel plant would contain plenty of nitrogen, as well as water produced by the combustion process.

Is this a better solution (ie, more energy efficient) than production of methane?

The volume difference might be a show stopper for automobiles, but it might be workable for trucks, ships and even railroad engines.

(th)

Calliban · 2022-05-21 19:03:51

A direct ammonium carbonate fuel cell with an anion exchange membrane
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/article … c3ra44057e

Ammonia Carbonate Fuel Cells Based on a Mixed NH4+/H+ Ion Conducting Electrolyte
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio … lectrolyte

Direct ammonia fuel cells
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a … 5119303216

Last edited by Calliban (2022-05-21 19:09:58)

SpaceNut · 2022-05-21 19:21:52

Ammonium carbonate | (NH4)2CO3 used in smelling salts, baking powder, fire extinguishers
Method for preparing ammonium carbonate using carbon-dioxide

https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/ … 1%20TR.pdf
Safety data sheet

AMMONIUM CARBONATE decomposes when heated to give gaseous ammonia and gaseous carbon dioxide

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

Not sure that we are gaining anything at this point.

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-21 20:11:02

For SpaceNut ... re "not sure" .... The work (or at least some of the work) Calliban cited was in 2014.

From then to now is plenty of time for the idea to have eared some recognition, if it were competitive.

I'm still hoping Calliban can help with a comparison of system costs in terms of energy.

In the Prometheus topic, contributors are talking about using methane or daughter compounds to carry energy.

We humans have the infrastructure already in place for methane and for longer chain hydrocarbons.

A switch to ammonia would require major investments.

On the other hand, if someone is designing a new system from scratch, as might be the case in a third world country that wants to start over by making a technical leap over everyone else, the Ammonia idea might seem attractive.

PS ... is there any reason you can't make gasoline at home?

is there some reason you need a huge plant?

I doubt it very much.

This topic is as good a place as any to look into home scale manufacture of gasoline.

You need Carbon dioxide, Water, some catalysts and electricity.

What equipment do you need to make a gallon of high quality gasoline a day?

I use about a gallon a day, averaged over refills. You may use more because of the daily commute.

If you made your own gasoline, you would not have to pay taxes (until the number of people making their own came to the attention of government agencies.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-05-21 20:49:54

Sure but the safety to design and create starts with heat sources to cook the ingredients into an ethanol which can start with sugars as in a moonshine still. https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Synthetic-Gasoline

https://www.survivopedia.com/replacing- … -for-fuel/

https://www.bosch.com/stories/synthetic-fuels/

Present studies suggest that the fuel itself (excluding any excise duties) could cost between 1.00 and 1.40 euros a liter in the long run.

1 liter is 0.264 gallon (a little more than a quart), and 4 liters is 1.06 gallons.

Scientists Found a Way to Make Synthetic Gasoline Out of Thin Air, Day-to-night temperature changes could reclaim CO2 into synthetic fuels.

Methanol (the poisonous form of our good friend ethanol or "common booze") can be turned into petrol whether it's made out of moonshine or cracked out of the air on a molecular level. One of the problems with trying to make methanol from hydrogenating CO2 out of the air is that it requires ludicrously high temperatures—between about 400-500 degrees Fahrenheit—and that takes a lot of energy, making it harder to get to that coveted carbon-neutral or even negative state.
There's some extremely clever stuff involved, using 2D nanoplates made of layered perovskite bismuth tungstate so this isn't the sort of thing you can do in your kitchen. But it is something that harnesses a thing that just happens anyway (the cycle of changing temperatures between the day and night time) and which will generate methanol between a range from 60 to 160 degrees.
There aren't that many places on earth that get up to 160 degrees Fahrenheit and have a conveniently abundant water supply for cracking into synthetic fuel, but almost everywhere else is covered somewhere in that range.
"The methanol yield can be as high as 55.0 μmol⋅g−1 after experiencing 20 cycles of temperature-variation."

Make Your Own Fuel! Alcohol Fuel Basics you can make your own fuel by fermenting appropriate feed stocks into 96 proof alcohol.

You can produce your own ethanol for an ongoing cost of less than $2 per gallon. If you grow your own corn, you can distill more than 300 gallons of ethanol from 1 acre of corn. If you drive less than 10,000 miles per year, you could produce all your own fuel from 2 acres of corn — and, granted, a lot of labor.
Recognizing the difference between beverage and fuel spirits, the Department of the Treasury came up with a simplified application for an Alcohol Fuel Producer permit (Form 5110.74), which designates a small producer as one who can make up to 10,000 proof-gallons of fuel per year. (A proof gallon is one liquid gallon of spirits that is 50 percent alcohol at 60 degrees Fahrenheit.)
That’s enough to manufacture 5,263 gallons of 190-proof ethanol fuel. Each state has its own permit requirements, generally modeled after the federal rules. You’ll need to research taxes and any applicable state and local regulations. In any case, the fuel alcohol must be “denatured,” or rendered unfit to drink, by the addition of at least 2 percent by volume kerosene or unleaded gasoline.
fuel from your own crops. From an acre of corn, you could produce 300 gallons of ethanol.

How to Make 4 Alternative Fuels at Home EFuel100 MicroFueler home-brews ethanol by fermenting a mix of table sugar and nutrient-treated yeast in the system's 250-gal, It takes 10 to 14 pounds of sugar to produce 1 gal. of ethanol

Powered by a 120-volt outlet, the FuelMeister II mixes used vegetable oil with lye and methanol to produce biodiesel. The process takes about 7 hours from start to finish--but only 1 hour involves hands-on work, such as connecting hoses, pumping methanol and testing the final product. The fuel meets ASTM biodiesel standards and, unlike straight vegetable oil, can be burned in regular diesel engines.

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-22 10:04:26

For SpaceNut re recent Internet searches ....

Your discovery of multiple ways to make high quality hydrocarbons at the consumer level is encouraging! Thanks for taking the time, and for posting your results.

I was particularly taken by an image of a machine that does the entire job without the owner/operator having to know anything.

Some investor, or an investor group, that that machine was worth the gamble of their resources.

Among the collection of articles you provided, I noted a writer warning that making hydrocarbon fuel at the consumer level might be more expensive than buying gasoline at the pump.

Another writer pointed out the danger of making energy packed, flammable and even explosive materials at home.

There are some situations where Division of Labor and Specialization ** really ** IS the right answer.

This may be one of those cases.

Never-the-less, if you have time and the interest to investigate further, I'd be interested in seeing more about the company that offers that stand alone fuel making machine.

If the cost of fuel it produces is greater than what is available at the pump, what are the costs that feed into that result.

Ma Nature provides ** everything ** for free. if something costs more than you want to pay, it is because one or more other human beings are involved. Everyone wants a cut.

Fortunately, competition between human beings often leads to reduced prices. Collusion between providers obviously prevents price reduction, but in the ideal situation, producers set their prices to make a fair return on their investment, and you get to choose between them based upon multiple factors that you optimize for your situation.

In your post #523, you mentioned sugar....

Sugar comes from sugar producing regions on Earth.

It is possible that entrepreneurs in such regions are already making fuel from sugar.

I recall (vaguely) seeing reports that Brazil has a robust (or had) synthetic fuel industry.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-05-22 13:49:24

Seems carbon is the energy gathering issue
Synthetic fuels (Methanol to gasoline)

Conversion of Methanol to Gasoline

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#501 2022-05-15 13:47:38

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#502 2022-05-16 19:01:01

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#503 2022-05-16 21:19:20

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#504 2022-05-17 06:47:06

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#505 2022-05-17 18:40:55

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#506 2022-05-17 18:45:58

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#507 2022-05-17 20:10:01

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#508 2022-05-19 05:13:32

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#509 2022-05-19 06:27:05

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#510 2022-05-19 06:50:12

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#511 2022-05-19 07:11:14

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#512 2022-05-19 07:17:52

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#513 2022-05-19 12:16:15

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#514 2022-05-19 12:39:20

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#515 2022-05-20 17:25:12

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#516 2022-05-20 18:08:51

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#517 2022-05-21 17:31:15

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#518 2022-05-21 18:35:34

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#519 2022-05-21 18:55:13

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#520 2022-05-21 19:03:51

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#521 2022-05-21 19:21:52

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#522 2022-05-21 20:11:02

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#523 2022-05-21 20:49:54

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#524 2022-05-22 10:04:26

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#525 2022-05-22 13:49:24

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Board footer