Time to ruthlessly berate coffee! My favorite.
Worldwide, coffee consumes a heck of a lot of acreage. How much? According so Statista.com, the top five coffee producing countries alone are home to over 13 million acres of coffee, or 20,671 square miles. Although still only 1/4 the size of Kansas, that's pretty significant considering I have never met even one person who can tell me what kind of a plant coffee grows on, whether it's a nut or a seed, what color the fruit is, or how many beans per fruit there are. For something that's consumed in millions of gallons almost daily, you'd think anyone would know what it is.
Let's say, instead of being addicted to dirt water and the tame legal buzz it gives you, you all got reasonable amount of sleep, you got paid reasonably for work you found amenable, and you stopped drinking it.
Considering coffee grows in semi-tropical regions, let's figure out how much of that space would have to be solar panels to power the whole United States. Why not.
According to NREL.gov, in a Louisiana climate, 6 kilowatt/hours per square meter per day is typical, and Louisiana is further north than is accurate for coffee growing, so I fudged the number slightly high because our exaalted government's energy commissions don't offer maps for the whole world. So anyway, let's convert square meters to miles: 20,671 square miles comes to 53,500,000,000 square meters, rounded down pretty violently.
We can now multiply those figures by 1.05 (6kWhr, 17% efficient) and figure that our array is good for about 56 terawatt/hours per day, or about 5 times what the United States uses. (I will definitely not say "need" in the context of American electricity usage. I know you left the kitchen light on all night an average of six days a week for the last four years.)
Assuming our usage went up enough to consume this, and the feds sold it at a dime a kWhr (Not bad, average residential is 12 cents per kWhr, industrial is about 7. We'll say highway kilowatts are taxed to make that a more reasonable average), this array would make about 5.6 million dollars a day, or about two billion a year, enough to pay it off in only 4,500 years. (Still more economically viable than the F-35 that costs as much as a $600,000 house for every single homeless person in the US.)
Solar arrays are generally measured in peak output, regardless of how much energy they actually spit out on a daily/yearly basis, meaning ours would be about 9.40 terawatts peak. Now let's say that the $290 billion dollars that Americans alone have put into coffee in the last 10 years went towards this array, we'd be 32% of the way there, and we could spend it on research and manufactory of a federal, or federally contracted, solar factory, pursing greater price advantages, and providing stable federal jobs for scientists and workers alike.
But I digress. Look at me, talking about jobs like some kind of politician, everyone knows the solution is less people, not more jobs.
Not hugely viable but just some perspective on your coffee habits. I'm sick of writing.
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Labor vs Diesel
My town has a population of 40,000 people, 3% of which, or 1,200 people, are unemployed.
My town employs a vast fleet of diesel powered vehicles to remove snow from it's many delightful streets, and a smaller private fleet that maintains driveways by commission.
Research on the internet (typical) has led me to believe that a truck with a plow costs roughly $30 a job for a simple snow-shoving operation that takes perhaps 10 minutes, and involves only a few passes.
If I offered $10 an hour to three people, I bet I could do a more thorough and precise job, even offer individual car cleaning, all the while offering an excellent exercise program, and a starting wage that's well above minimum.
Assuming they do the work in half an hour, I can pay them $15 an hour, and spend the extra $8 per job on supplying them with protein-rich local organic snacks.
As a worker in this profession, your only equipment concern is your shovel, as opposed the the investment in time and money to own a truck, the initial payment of thousands of dollars, the inexorable upkeep, the insurance.
It wouldn't be a living, because you'd only have work during the months of snowfall, but at that wage, and with in mind that there are very few requirements for such work, you could certainly amass some spare cash while helping displace some of our misplaced dependence on extremely cheap energy.
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Solar Powered Trains
I had the "bright" idea one day that trains could perhaps just power themselves on solar equipment, so I ran some viability tests.
Average CSX train, employing a GE AC4400CW diesel-electric locomotive, employs 4,400 horsepower supplied via a single exceedingly large diesel engine and multiple electric traction motors.
This setup can comfortably carry around 2000 tons, or 20 fully-laden 100 ton coal cars, while consuming around 200 gallons of diesel fuel per hour at cruising speed. Presuming non highway-taxed diesel is about $2 a gallon, that's $400 an hour of operating expenses.
Now let's say instead of 100 tons, you had a passenger car weighing only 40 tons, and you carried only 20 of them. The load on the engine is down to 800 tons, and I'm going to presume that means half the horsepower is required.
The footprint of a standard boxcar is 55' 5" x 10' 7". I'll simplify this to 10.5*55.5 square feet of area, or about 580 square feet per car. Presuming that is entirely filled with today's economical solar cells, which are typically around 17% efficient, in full bright sunlight that would output around 16 watts per square foot. Let's go with 10. Cloudy days, and nights, will obviously not work.
With our example 20-car train, the total power output of the cars is 116,000 watts, which translates to 155 horsepower. Pathetic, but considering our theoretical engine is only using half of its' power because of the lessened weight restrictions, that's roughly 7% of the energy for free.
7% of the supposed fuel consumption of $200 an hour comes to $14 an hour in savings. For a 116,000 watt installation, that would likely cost about $1/watt of panel, that would take over 8,200 hours, or 341 days of constant operation, to pay itself back.
If, instead, we went with a 5-foot wide strip of solar panels that went down the edge of the track and transferred energy via overhead wires or a third-rail setup, each train would require 6.2 miles of solar to power it's full 2200 horsepower requirement. Considering most trains, especially long-haul passenger trains, frequently operate more than three miles apart, that sounds viable to me. The installations would cost $264,000 a mile, and represent savings of much less than that.
I'm really tired actually and this isn't very viable so I'm pretty done, thanks for reading. I want solar powered trains. Put sails on them too, why not.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
How Much Energy Does My Shower Take?
Alright, so showers use an immense amount of energy, but everyone knows that... Right? Maybe? Alright so maybe you didn't realize. Here's a calculator you can enter your preferred temperature, flow rate, and duration, and get back how much of various fuels you can use, and at what cost. I couldn't fit my sass in the allotted 250px, so they stick out a little bit. HTML isn't my first love.
So, there it is. Imagine a world with no petroleum, which fuel would you use? Could you afford to keep up your shower habits?
As usual, information was referenced from all over the web, and I forgot to write down the list.
Many prices are thanks to eia.gov and similar non-profit consumer fuel price trackers. Most fuel prices are based between 2012-2014, but I've left the option to enter your own if you have updated information.
As usual, information was referenced from all over the web, and I forgot to write down the list.
Many prices are thanks to eia.gov and similar non-profit consumer fuel price trackers. Most fuel prices are based between 2012-2014, but I've left the option to enter your own if you have updated information.
Friday, February 20, 2015
Actual Hourly Wage
Something I've always noticed about commuters is none of them take into account the cost and time taken BY THEIR COMMUTING. For example, if you make $10 an hour for eight hours, that's $80 a day, but if you take two hours a day to drive, you're actually making $80 in ten hours, or $8 an hour. Furthermore if you spend $10 a day on a vehicle, fuel, and insurance, you're making $70 in ten hours, which is below minimum wage. You'd be better off walking to a $7.50/hour job, and you wouldn't have to worry about car ownership complications.
I wrote what I consider a rather nifty calculator so you can calculate your actual wage! I play-tested it for about ten minutes, so it may not take every conceivable variable, so if you manage to break it, let me know. It also assumes that your car is used only for commuting, which is reasonable for two-car families, or poor people who don't go Sunday driving.
The functions to calculate are all rather simple, and this doesn't include yearly car expenses, such as oil changes, new tires, or other repairs. If you'd like, for accuracy, you can add your best guess for total vehicle maintenance cost (and yearly registration, for that matter) into the entire vehicle cost.
As I'm a strong proprietor of public transit, it's worth mentioning that transit doesn't necessarily save time in the long run, but the time you have is responsibility-free, so you can sleep, eat, work, or Skype your children while you travel, and if you do choose a bus or train, you're anywhere from 16 to 30 times more likely to survive the trip, and as stated here you can achieve the equivalent to hundreds of miles to the gallon.
I wrote what I consider a rather nifty calculator so you can calculate your actual wage! I play-tested it for about ten minutes, so it may not take every conceivable variable, so if you manage to break it, let me know. It also assumes that your car is used only for commuting, which is reasonable for two-car families, or poor people who don't go Sunday driving.
The functions to calculate are all rather simple, and this doesn't include yearly car expenses, such as oil changes, new tires, or other repairs. If you'd like, for accuracy, you can add your best guess for total vehicle maintenance cost (and yearly registration, for that matter) into the entire vehicle cost.
As I'm a strong proprietor of public transit, it's worth mentioning that transit doesn't necessarily save time in the long run, but the time you have is responsibility-free, so you can sleep, eat, work, or Skype your children while you travel, and if you do choose a bus or train, you're anywhere from 16 to 30 times more likely to survive the trip, and as stated here you can achieve the equivalent to hundreds of miles to the gallon.
Happy Commuting!
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Efficiency of Vehicles with More Than Basic Fuel Consumption Taken into Consideration
Something that I've noticed about all of this "Fuel Economy" hubub is that almost NOBODY mentions that the ACTUAL efficiency varies drastically depending on how much work you get done with the vehicle.
For example, if I were to ask you, "Are Hummers as efficient as mopeds?" you would most likely say that they are less so, but taken into consideration that a Hummer can comfortably carry five adults and significant luggage, and to do that on mopeds you would likely need five mopeds, the Hummer uses more fuel, but carries them at greater speed, safety, cargo capacity, so your call, 20 or so MPG on five mopeds, or 16 in a Hummer?
With that in mind, the following table should be easy to understand. Let's define the columns:
Vehicle name, simple enough.
MPG of entire vehicle, Or as regular folks call it, "MPG"
Weight of vehicle, in pounds.
MPG per ton. This is a measure of actual efficiency, for example, a vehicle that weighs one ton and gets 30MPG is equivalent to a two-ton vehicle getting 15MPG. Again, per work done, same efficiency.
Seating capacity. This is a measure of how many people the car can actually carry. This is important to efficiency obviously because given two cars with the same MPG rating, the car that can carry twice the people does twice the work, meaning twice the efficiency, but only if you fill all your seats.
MPG per passenger. One person in a 15MPG car needs a gallon to go 15 miles, two people in the same car need half a gallon each to go the same distance. Same fuel, twice the work, twice the efficiency.
Tons per passenger. This is more a measurement of how efficiently built the vehicle is to accommodate passengers. Ideally, you'd have infinite passengers in a vehicle that weighs nothing, but more realistically, you'd have one fool driving an SUV that weighs three tons.
For example, if I were to ask you, "Are Hummers as efficient as mopeds?" you would most likely say that they are less so, but taken into consideration that a Hummer can comfortably carry five adults and significant luggage, and to do that on mopeds you would likely need five mopeds, the Hummer uses more fuel, but carries them at greater speed, safety, cargo capacity, so your call, 20 or so MPG on five mopeds, or 16 in a Hummer?
Vehicle name, simple enough.
MPG of entire vehicle, Or as regular folks call it, "MPG"
Weight of vehicle, in pounds.
MPG per ton. This is a measure of actual efficiency, for example, a vehicle that weighs one ton and gets 30MPG is equivalent to a two-ton vehicle getting 15MPG. Again, per work done, same efficiency.
Seating capacity. This is a measure of how many people the car can actually carry. This is important to efficiency obviously because given two cars with the same MPG rating, the car that can carry twice the people does twice the work, meaning twice the efficiency, but only if you fill all your seats.
MPG per passenger. One person in a 15MPG car needs a gallon to go 15 miles, two people in the same car need half a gallon each to go the same distance. Same fuel, twice the work, twice the efficiency.
Tons per passenger. This is more a measurement of how efficiently built the vehicle is to accommodate passengers. Ideally, you'd have infinite passengers in a vehicle that weighs nothing, but more realistically, you'd have one fool driving an SUV that weighs three tons.
| Vehicle | MPG | Weight (lb) | MPG/Ton | Seats | MPG/Pass | Ton/Pass |
| "Chainsaw Bicycle" | 120 | 85 | 4.63 | 1 | 120.00 | 0.04 |
| 2014 Honda 50cc Moped | 105 | 209 | 9.96 | 1 | 105.00 | 0.09 |
| 2014 Honda 250cc Motorcycle | 80 | 306 | 11.11 | 2 | 160.00 | 0.07 |
| 1974 Volkswagen Beetle | 20 | 1850 | 16.79 | 4 | 80.00 | 0.21 |
| 2014 Mitsubishi Mirage | 44 | 1973 | 39.39 | 5 | 220.00 | 0.18 |
| 1988 Dodge Colt (my baby) | 35 | 2200 | 34.94 | 5 | 175.00 | 0.20 |
| 2000 Beetle TDI (Diesel) | 45 | 3000 | 61.25 | 4 | 180.00 | 0.34 |
| 2015 Toyota Prius | 48 | 3072 | 66.90 | 5 | 240.00 | 0.28 |
| 1967 Chevy Impala | 18 | 3425 | 27.97 | 5 | 90.00 | 0.31 |
| 2014 Mustang GT | 24 | 3618 | 39.40 | 2 | 48.00 | 0.82 |
| 2014 F-150, V6 | 16 | 4154 | 30.16 | 2 | 32.00 | 0.94 |
| 2014 Chevy Suburban | 17 | 5700 | 43.97 | 8 | 136.00 | 0.32 |
| 2014 IC-CE School Bus | 8 | 30000 | 108.89 | 77 | 616.00 | 0.18 |
| 2010 Van Hool 925 (Megabus) | 4 | 62000 | 112.52 | 81 | 324.00 | 0.35 |
| LZ-129 Hindenburg Airship | 0.433 | 511500 | 100.47 | 72 | 31.17 | 3.22 |
| 2008 Cat 797F | 0.300 | 2175000 | 296.05 | 1 | 0.30 | 986.84 |
| 1981 New York Ferry, Barberi Class | 0.05 | 6670000 | 151.32 | 6000 | 300.00 | 0.50 |
| CSX Laden Coal Train | 0.075 | 17600000 | 598.91 | 4 | 0.30 | 1996.37 |
| 1912 RMS Titanic (lb/coal) | 0.0003 | 59760000 | 8.13 | 3547 | 1.06 | 7.64 |
| 2006 Sovereign-Class Cruise Ship | 0.0250 | 162965964 | 1848.53 | 3577 | 89.43 | 20.67 |
| 2006 Emma Mearsk | 0.0081 | 376429976 | 1383.43 | 400 | 3.24 | 426.99 |
Some vehicle notes:
A "Chainsaw Bicycle" is a term for a two-stroke chainsaw engine attached to a standard bicycle. Miserable emissions, but some of the highest MPGs of any cheap vehicle, thanks to negligible weight.
1988 Dodge Colt was included because it's my car, and also surprisingly efficient, check the figures. Some trims were even made with seven seats.
2000 Beetle TDI is one of very few small diesel cars currently available in the US. Being German, it is, however, enormously heavy.
2010 Van Hool 925 is a standard double-decker long distance transit bus, used by Megabus among others.
The LZ129 is, in fact, an airship. The MPG/Passenger is not bad considering each got a bed, running water, full meals, and music from an on-board grand piano. Furthermore, there were 40 additional crew members accommodated, for an actual MPG/passenger of about 40, so, competitive with a Prius, if a Prius had a bedroom, cooked meals, a grand piano, and the capacity to go 82 MPH for days on end.
The LZ129 is, in fact, an airship. The MPG/Passenger is not bad considering each got a bed, running water, full meals, and music from an on-board grand piano. Furthermore, there were 40 additional crew members accommodated, for an actual MPG/passenger of about 40, so, competitive with a Prius, if a Prius had a bedroom, cooked meals, a grand piano, and the capacity to go 82 MPH for days on end.
Cat 797F is one of the largest dump trucks in the world. Passenger ratings are rubbish because it only seats one operator. If filling the bucket with 4,000 200lb corpses counted, it would get an astonishing 1,200 MPG/"passenger".
CSX Laden Coal Train is based on estimates of four 200-ton locomotives pulling eighty 100-ton laden cars, consuming 800 gallons per hour. Presuming the same weight that's a corpse load of 48,000, for a phenomenal MPG/corpse of over 3,600!
1912 RMS Titanic, as noted, the milage ratings are in pounds of coal, not gallons. By energy, a gallon of gasoline has the energy of 12lb of coal, so for rough gallon estimates, multiply MPG stats by 12.
2006 Emma Mearsk is a large cargo ship which employs one of the most thermodynamically efficient engines currently in operation of the world, and the total efficiency (of the engine alone) exceeds 50% (which is a lot. "Efficient" cars are around 20%).
More importantly, notice that each person in a Suburban gets 136 MPG, and every person in a megabus gets over 300 MPG. These numbers are ridiculous if you are violently opposed to sharing your hour-a-day commute with EVEN ONE person, and will never be achieved by any level of technology or amount of money, but hundreds of miles to the gallon has been easily and economically available in trains since the 1940's.
The problem is not big cars, or small cars, or inefficient cars, the problem is that we don't comprehend any problem with driving thousands of miles a year, completely alone.
Alternately, with Hitler:
Gasoline Perspective
For starters, let's clarify that 95% of American gasoline is used in "Light Duty" vehicles, meaning passenger or light cargo automobiles. Large commercial trucks, boats, trains, everything for which cost and practicality is taken into account, uses diesel for it's greater efficiency and superior engine durability.
According to eia.gov, the United States used 134.5 billion gallons of gasoline in the year 2013 (This is down by 6% from 142.35 billion in 2007, so pat yourselves on the back)
Compared with the US census of about 310 million people that year, that's 433 gallons for every adult, child, and senior citizen. Have you used your allotted quota? How many other people's gasoline have you taken?
Back to our use as a whole, 134.5 billion gallons a year means 368.5 million gallons a day, 15.35 million gallons an hour, 255,900 gallons a minute, 4,265 gallons a second. Let's visualize 4,265 gallons as a cube:
At this point you may, in fact, begin to realize that the United States uses quite a bit of petroleum, and this doesn't even include what we "need" (aka food, energy, heat, which comes from diesel, coal, and natural gas), this is ONLY in our cars that we use to live further from our work or family, or just for personal enjoyment.
At this point you may, in fact, begin to realize that the United States uses quite a bit of petroleum, and this doesn't even include what we "need" (aka food, energy, heat, which comes from diesel, coal, and natural gas), this is ONLY in our cars that we use to live further from our work or family, or just for personal enjoyment.
Now for the stupid part:
What if it was all consumed in one, enormous, engine?
Because I'm familiar with it, I'm going to use the 1.5-liter inline-4 engine from my own car, a 1988 Japanese-built Dodge Colt.
Typically, my car cruising down the highway at 60 MPH will be consuming a gallon of fuel every half hour or so, for a respectable 30 miles to the gallon. My four pistons each measure 75.5mm in diameter, and travel 82mm vertically every time the engine fires.
Remember the cube above? My car's personal gasoline per second cube measures about 1/2 inch to a side, or .00007416 cubic feet, 1/7,682,346th of the 569.72 cubic feet of the above cube.
This means that, presuming fuel consumption is directly relative to engine displacement, in order for my car's engine to consume all of the gasoline in the U.S., the pistons would have to measure roughly 48.5 feet across, and travel 54.7 feet vertically every cycle.
It's safe to assume this immense engine would run slower than the 50 rotations per second my car does, so let's take a stab in the dark and say that, flat-out, it runs at one rotation per second, or 60 RPM.
With this in mind, in order to fire one cylinder one time, it would require 2133 gallons of gasoline, or about five peoples' yearly consumption.
Your average gallon of gasoline produces roughly 158.75 cubic feet of CO2, which represents a relatively significant increase in volume. With this in mind, we're burning 4,265 gallons per second, which would come out to 677,068 cubic feet of exhaust, per second.
Divided by, say, a 20 foot exhaust pipe, the exhaust would blast out at a leisurely 2,155 feet per second, or 1.94 times the speed of sound. Remember, this is 24/7, 365, with no end in sight.
So, "What can weeEEeee do we're just peopllleee" you're all undoubtedly asking (Or maybe you just honestly don't care).
You can stop driving for fun, you can stop taking a car to the store just to get two things, or getting your mail at the end of your driveway in your SUV, you can put honest effort into living closer to where you work, or even work from home, through the internet that takes almost no energy.
You can tolerate going ONLY a mile a minute (60mph) instead of 80 on the freeway, you can tolerate having a car that can't do 0-60 in 9 seconds (which is, I'll note, a Toyota Camry. Even our economy cars are incredibly over powered).
Perhaps the most important change you can make is just to realize the imbalance petroleum has put on our society, and that we all assume we have a RIGHT to be able to travel hundreds of miles a day if we so choose. Ask if you deserve instead of if you can afford, ask yourself where the energy would come from without petroleum.
Perhaps the most important change you can make is just to realize the imbalance petroleum has put on our society, and that we all assume we have a RIGHT to be able to travel hundreds of miles a day if we so choose. Ask if you deserve instead of if you can afford, ask yourself where the energy would come from without petroleum.
Thanks for reading, tell your friends.
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