Hydrogen cars: A new approach

Okay so everyone's on about hydrogen power, but it is not without it's impracticallities.

"Here's the tank of lies"

No, you can't make a car run on water by electrolysis with the battery of the car that's powered by the engine that's powered by the hydrogen that's powered by... No such thing as free lunch. Stop wasting time and money please.

Toyota Mirai - Courtesy of Toyota

Currently, the Toyota Mirai is pretty much the only mass-market hydrogen car. It's extremely expensive because they opted for an electrical drive system, powered by a fuel cell, which converts hydrogen and oxygen (from the air)
directly into voltage. It has a reasonable 300-mile or so range, but the hydrogen is stored in carbon fiber tanks at 10,000 psi. In the event of a major accident, this would definitely be problematic, and the fueling system isn't really a walk in the park either.

Hydrogen can be burnt in conventional combustion engines, with practically no modification. This is appealing to many automobile manufacturers because they just don't "like" changing anything, ever. It's not as efficient as the Mirai's fuel cell/electric hybrid system, but definitely cheaper.

The clear advantage to hydrogen fuel is that it's renewable. The ONLY resources needed to create it are any source of water, clean or otherwise, and electricity. Alternately, it can be steam-cracked from natural gas, which, in the event of fossil fuel's eminent demise, can be derived of feces from our artificially inflated subsidized corn driven murderous meat industry.

A REAL hydrogen electrolysis rig - http://www.extremetech.com

Either way, a fuel shortage is practically impossible, as demand rises, technology can rise to the challenge and make the process more efficient, eventually reaching an equilibrium. Hydropower also stands out, because it's cheap, easy, and inherently has water nearby. If a significant quantity of our automotive fuel came from solar, we would eventually actually cool down the earth as well, by converting sun heat into our cars moving around instead of warming stuff up.

BUT HOLD ON, these 10,000 PSI storage tanks are conceptually PRETTY FAR OUT, dangerous, and also expensive. IF ONLY there were a more dense way to store hydrogen! Wait, what about water?
Here comes my plan: Water, at no pressure, will be used to store hydrogen on-board the vehicle, and a completely unrelated compound will be used as energy storage, to extract the valuable gas from the water. I recommend: Calcium.

Pure Metallic Calcium

Calcium is generally thought of as some white crunchy garbage, or milk, or bones. In actuality, these are all calcium compounds, and the pure element is a chemically reactive metal, which happens to catalyze the separation of water's elements, becoming calcium hydroxide, and leaving a spare hydrogen for your trouble. Time for math:

Let's say your (inexplicably large) car has a 20 gallon tank (weighing 57kg, or 126 pounds). The energy content of that much gasoline (how much actually potential WORK there is, regardless of how heavy/large/whatever) is just about 2,600 MILLION joules. A joule is just a nice little packet of energy used in chemistry and physics, it's actual definition matters little right now, as I'm just using it as an intermediary.

To get that much energy from hydrogen gas, you would need about 18.5 kilograms of hydrogen. In gaseous form, uncompressed, this quantity of gas would be enormous, about 200 cubic meters, or over 50,000 gallons. However, water, by weight, is about 12% hydrogen, so the same gas stored in water (and extracted by calcium) would be about 88 gallons. BUT WAIT! You can recycle your water, because after your engine burns it, it's exactly the same as it started. Therefor you'd likely only need a few gallons of water at any given time.

Now, the calcium to extract all the hydrogen you'd need for your 2.6 GIGAJOULE energy needs would have to weigh.... 1,630 pounds, or about 4 full-sized drums of the stuff.

Now hold up, recent research indicates the Mirai, Toyota's hydrogen car, only has a 5kg tank of hydrogen. If that's enough for 300 miles, then we could get by with only a barrel and a half!

That's still a no, then. Okay.

Viability of a personal air conditioning coat

I'm wicked hot and it's cramping my stay-clean-with-only-one-shower-a-week game, so time to complain and make up solutions involving too much tech. AIR CONDITIONING COATS!

Okay first off: The human body is, on average, about 65% water for a typical adult male. Less for women because they've got fat everywhere, less for dehydrated sons of guns like myself, but this has to be marketable to normal people. Let's say our clientele is 150 pound dudes, at 65% water, that's 97.5 pounds of water, or 44.25 kilos, thus, 44.25 liters.

Humans are, generally speaking, 37 degrees C (No I'm not converting that to F, deal with it United States), so I'm going to estimate how much energy it would take to lower all of the water in our bodies by, say, one degree. Math o'clock.

Water takes on average about 4.2 joules to heat one gram (or CC) of it by one degree, so I'm going to assume we're going to use about that much energy to cool it. For our 44,250 grams of water, that'll be 186,000 joules. This is already looking super inviable, but let's carry on.

A joule can be expressed as a watt second, so 1 volt at 1 amp for 1 second, that's a joule of energy. Assuming we want to be cooled down in, say, 20 minutes, that's 1200 seconds, so we'd need... 155 watts. Not half bad. An 18 cubic foot refrigerator generally requires about twice that, while running, but they don't run all the time, because they're super insulated and only need to run when it gets too warm.

Now, in actuality, much more energy will be needed because refrigeration isn't very efficient. For every watt of cooling, you have to spend several more on motor friction, heat loss, other stuff. Since this is going to be a magic jacket, I'm going to presume Peltier cooling, which is a solid-state plate which has the advantage of lasting a very long time, having no moving parts, and no hazardous refrigerants. They are a miserable 10% efficient, so, the power we need is actually ten times what was listed.

Holy crap, that's 1,550 watts. This is intolerable. Where are we going to get that kind of energy? This is just ridiculous. If we use 24 volts, that's like fifty amps. The wire alone for that kind of current would weigh a ton, not to mention that most cheap peltiers are only 60w, so we'd need 26 of them.

Batteries: I went on an RC plane website and found a LiFePo4 battery that could handle 8.4 amp hours at 6.6 volts. Say we use four of them for the voltage requirements, that would still only run it for 20 minutes. Total weight of the project would have to be about 8 pounds, and there'd be losses for any kind of circulation pump, jesus. What a terrible idea.

Why I dislike coffee (besides the dirt flavor)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Showers per Week:
Minutes per Shower:
Flow Rate:	I Dunno, I've always just considered water a god-granted right. Oh man, I got this old showerhead from the 80's, it really blasts out I'm sorry, I feel really bad, it's just like a dribble I swear
Shower Temperature:	Like, normal? I've never even considered any of this There needs to be steam and pain I said I'm sorry, it's like lukewarm, forgive me
Shower Fuel:	Cubic feet natural gas(via storage tank burner, 65% efficient) Pounds of coal(via electrical grid, 39% efficient) Gallons of oil(via storage tank burner, 55% efficient) Solar, square feet of water heating panels(75% efficient) Solar, square feet of electric panels(17% efficient) Bananas, consumed by one infinitely powerful man on bicycle(25% efficient) (Multiple)Dudes on bicycles, $8/hr Pounds of Feces, AKA natural gas(via storage tank burner, 65% efficient)) Pounds of peanuts(100% efficient because magic) Pounds of kal(100% efficient) Bouncy balls(burnt in a furnace, 50% efficient) 1-lb kittens(burnt in a furnace, 50% efficient) Uranium, in MILLIGRAMS (Via Grid, 45% Efficient)
Watt/hr Per Fuel Unit:
Cost Per Fuel Unit:
Energy Per Shower(KW/Hrs):
Per Year:
Peak Power(KW):
Fuel Per Shower:
Per Year:
Fuel Cost:
Per Year:

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.

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.

Days per Week:
Hours per Day:
Hourly Wage:
Vehicle Cost:
Vehicle Life Expectancy(Years):
Vehicle MPG:
Commute Miles per Day:
Commute Time(Minutes per Day):
Gasoline Price:
No car, I ride a:
Other Daily Commute Expenses (Tolls, Fares):
Auto Insurance per Month:
Transit Cost per Day:
Your Actual Hourly Wage:
% of Your Life in Transit:
Cubic Feet of CO2 per Year:

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!