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Race Engine Technology Magazine

A Reality-Based Rant on Energy Efficiency and Greening

INTRODUCTORY NOTE:

Science doesn't care WHAT YOU BELIEVE or WHAT YOU FEEL.

There is virtually no disagreement that it is a worthwhile goal to improve the relativly poor (30%-ish) thermal efficiency of the contemporary spark-ignition Internal Combustion engine that powers the vast majority of vehicles on this planet, and further, to seek more efficient powerplants and "renewable" energy sources such as jet fuel produced from bacterial activity.

The emerging PC emphasis on "green" racing provides an excellent opportunity to develop new ways to increase the thermal efficiency of piston engines. One such system (currently used in Formula-1 racing) is the use of a second turbine in the exhaust stream (downstream of the turbocharger) to extract otherwise wasted thermal energy from the exhaust stream and store that energy in a number of different ways, including a KERS-like flywheel, or, as in Internal Combustion-electric hybrid vehicles, to run a generator which charges the battery system.

Those systems have enabled the F-1 engine developers to achieve over 50% real thermal efficiency, a phenomenal accomplishment, given the thermodynamics of the IC process.

That type of recapture system increases the overall thermal efficiency of the powerplant in a REAL sense, as opposed to the imbecilic notions that:

1. Electric cars which recharge by plugging into wall sockets somehow get their energy for free, and
2. That the wall-socket-recharging process is somehow "GREEN", despite the fact that almost ALL the electricity in the US is generated by the combustion of fossil fuels, and nearly 50% of that amount comes from burning COAL, and
3. That the overall recharging-from-wall-socket process is an efficient use of energy.

The self-proclaimed "scientists" who promote such nonsense conveniently overlook the combined effect of the following serial inefficiencies:

1. The thermal inefficiencies of burning fossil fuels to drive the generators,
2. The thermal and mechanical inefficiencies of the turbines that drive the generators,
3. The electrical and mechanical inefficiencies of the generators themselves,
4. The step-up and step-down transformer-conversion losses,
5. The transmission losses from the source (generator) to the destinations (wall sockets),
6. Battery recharging losses,
7. Battery discharge losses to drive the vehicle motors,
8. The losses from converting electrical energy into kinetic energy through the vehicle motor-and-transmission systems.

These heavy-thinkers also conveniently overlook the fact that that a huge percentage of available electric energy in the developed world comes from the combustion of hydrocarbon and coal-based fuels, producing huge amounts of the carbon dioxide with which they are so obsessed.

AND IF, in fact, there was a wholesale transition to electric cars, the existing electric supply system would collapse. The supply system would be completely incapable of serving that drastic increase in demand, and therefore would produce widespread blackouts and brownouts (already being experienced in various science-and-reality-challenged areas such as California).

By the way, carbon dioxide was, until recently, known by the educated population to be a gas that is essential to life. Now, however, in classical, mindless "progressive" doublespeak, CO2 has been reclassified as a "pollutant". These same progressives conveniently ignore the well-established scientific fact that the MAJOR greenhouse gas is......ready?.......WATER VAPOR, and the effect of water vapor dwarfs the miniscule effect of CO2.

Taking the lunacy another step forward, many of the PC-Save-the-Planet types are working to destroy one of the absolute-greenest, most-efficient sources of elecricity ever devised --- hydroelectric. They actively block approval of any new hydroelectric dam construction, and are working diligently to have several of the currently-active and highly cost effective dams torn down.

And regardless of the advances made in nuclear energy and waste storage (as well as progress in the development of a reactor that can run on radioactive WASTE), these self-appointed-but-massively-ignorant-"authorities" continue to block nuclear energy, which IMHO (and as mentioned in a recorded statement by the founder of the Sierra Club), is the real source of the world's future energy needs.

In fact, the German government has been diligently decommissioning and dismantling their nuclear powerplants, with the complete decommissioning targeted for completion in 2022. It will be very interesting to see how many Germans freeze to death in the following winters.

So, at the same time these "thinkers" are diligently promoting the switch to electrical vehicles (cars, trucks, airplanes) they are at the same time working to eliminate all the efficient and productive means of producing electrical energy.

These are the same kneejerk self-anointed cognoscenti (St. Greta of Thunberg, et al) who are in favor of absurd alternative sources that provide part time power at random times during a day, which at best satisfiy only a small fraction of the nearly-constant demand. Such random sources include windmills and solar farms, which, BTW, are economically unjustifiable, therefore require massive government subsidies.

While on the subject of "greenery", it is interesting to note that, in addition to blatant and wholesale manipulation of the basis-data with which they support the religion of "Anthropogenic Global Warming", coupled with widespread demonizing and extortion (both financial and professional) of "non-conforming" scientists, the worshippers at the altar of AGW have apparently missed the basic scientific fact that complete combustion of ANY hydrocarbon (Yes, Saint-Greta, Ethanol, C2-H5-OH, is a hydrocarbon) produces carbon dioxide and water.

And yet, ethanol has been decreed to be enviro-friendly, thereby justifying immense subsidies from the government-delusionals to enable the production of ethanol from corn. Those subsidies persist, in the face of undeniable evidence that the net energy balance of corn-sourced ethanol is a BIG NEGATIVE.

It is mathematically demonstrable that the net energy extracted from ethanol by an IC engine is substantially LESS than the sum of the energy required to:

1. plant, cultivate, grow, and harvest the corn,
2. Transport the harvested corn to the conversion site,
3. Convert the corn into ethanol (which is, incidentally, a HUGE drain on the water resources available), and
4. Transport the ethanol to the fuel blending site.

Further, there is also no mention of the huge economic impact on the nation's food supply that the diversion of corn crops into ethanol production is having. And then, they conveniently ignore the huge impact that the production of ethanol from corn is having on the entire water table in the nation's midwest, a major source of our food.

If the government-braintrust was actually SERIOUS about effectively using ethanol to be an efficient biofuel, they would abandon corn-sourced ethanol and allow / encourage the production of ethanol from sugar cane, a policy being followed in Brazil with great effectiveness, but outlawed in the US because of massive political corruption and massive bribery by the sugar industry.

If you are TRULY interested in factual material about this left-wing-manufactured "climate crisis", take a look at some real science such as is clearly presented and thoroughly documented and referenced in Gregory Wrightstone's book INCONVENIENT FACTS.

For further informative, logical, scientific reading, I recommend CLIMATE CHANGE - THE FACTS by Alan Moran, and UNSTOPPABLE GLOBAL WARMING by Fred Singer and Dennis Avery.

 

The following is an excerpt from an article by Jim Rickards:

Why EVs Will Never Take Off in The U.S.

There has been a flood of articles recently pointing out the scam of electric vehicles, windmills, and solar modules as solutions to the so-called climate alarm and CO2 panic gripping the world.

There are specific, technical answers to most of the hysterical claims of climate scammers. .......The best answer of all is that there is no problem to begin with.

The whole climate alarm industry is a lie, starting with flawed models, rigged data, and hysterical repetition of the same baseless claims that have been floating around for twenty years. Climate change is real and has been for hundreds of millions of years based on evidence from ice cores and other hard data. Ice Ages have been followed by shorter warming periods. Even within the warming periods, some periods are cooler (such as the Little Ice Age from about 1350 to 1850 AD).

These changes are caused by solar cycles, volcanoes, ocean currents including subduction where warm flows are pulled under colder surface water to produce rapid cooling in certain regions. None of this has anything to do with CO2, which is a trace gas with little or no effect on the climate. 

None of this is man-made, although humans have shown great adaptability during past periods of climate change, such as the end of the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago. After the last Ice Age, sea levels rose 400 feet. Today, the alarmists faint that sea levels are rising about 7 inches every 100 years (and have been since before the invention of automobiles).

If there’s no real man-made climate problem, why the hysteria about internal combustion engines and the need to push electric vehicles (EVs)?  THIS ARTICLE reports that the financial burden on citizens of EV subsidies goes well beyond the government subsidy per vehicle (about $50,000 per vehicle).

It seems that EVs also get government subsidies on fuel emission standards that cost taxpayers $27,881 per vehicle. The rise of EVs is causing electricity prices to rise because of all the charging stations. That puts another $11,833 per vehicle over 10 years of costs on the taxpayer’s back.

What’s worse is that EVs don’t even reduce emissions. Since EVs are charged with electricity, which comes from coal and natural gas fired plants, total CO2 emissions actually go up. That’s not to mention the amount of electricity and water that are needed to mine the lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and other rare earths that are needed to build the car batteries.

Then after the batteries are used up (after about eight years), those poisonous chemicals have to be disposed of, and no one has worked out a practical disposal plan.

Few know that the first electric vehicle was invented in the 1830s. Practical models were first produced in the 1880s and 1890s. The period of 1900 to 1910 was the golden age of electric vehicles in the U.S.

Why did it not last? Why did the electric vehicle die out? The answers then are the same as today – lack of battery chargers, limited range, and high price. The best path for EVs today is the same one the industry took in 1910: eliminate subsidies, shut down the industry, and go to improved internal combustion engines.

Unfortunately, we should not expect that to happen soon. It will take ten years or more to shut down the scammers, grifters, and con men behind the EV industry.