Continuing the discussion from Interest in Liquid nitrogen maker, or using LN2?:
Thought this was interesting, in a nostalgic, “nothing new under the sun” sort of way…
In fact, the only wear on it was about four one-hundredths of an inch…not enough to cause any serious loss of power.
And here I am with just over .004 piston-wall clearance and that’s well into the high end even for my heavily turbocharged motor. #tolerance
1 Like
For something a little more “science-y” and a little more current…
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2249
Regrettably, the reference materials appear to be unavailable from what I’ve found so far. Maybe better luck googlefishing tomorrow…
Off topic, but interesting and similar vein…
1 Like
My F-250 6.7 liter diesel burns less coal than any Tesla!
How big is 6.7 in cubic inches?
Ask the Beach Boys… Gitty up, Gitty up 409
2 Likes
Do you really believe that?
There is a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is that if you are just asking about CO2, the electric vehicle, even from the dirtiest of U.S. coal plants, is still cleaner than a traditional internal-combustion vehicle.
My response was to the title of the post about diesel not CO2. I’m not trying to start a never ending debate.
Putting aside CO2 emissions, because even the worst case puts all the cars and light trucks in the world at 16% of global emissions, there is still the argument that manufacturing is dirtier for BEVs than conventional ICE vehicles.
However more literally, a Tesla is responsible for the consumption of some non-zero amount of coal during its daily use. An F-250 does not burn coal, only diesel fuel.
Are you including the total cost to manufacture or just emissions per mile?
I’m just tired of hearing people spew the tired meme that “EV’s are worse polluters than internal combustion engine cars”.
Even if most of the electricity in the US came from coal (it doesn’t), it still wouldn’t be true. According to eia.gov in 2016, natural gas provided 34% of the power, coal 30%, nuclear 20%, renewables 15%, and petroleum the remaining 1%. Renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, etc) made up more than 60% of NEW power generation facilities in the US for each of the last 3 years.
The electricity used to crack a gallon of gas from crude will push an EV down the road about the same distance as that gallon of gas will push an average car… and you still have the oil. It takes somewhere between 6 and 12 kWh of energy to produce a gallon of gas (and other associated petroleum products) from crude oil. We don’t know the exact numbers because the oil companies do not report in detail. If we take the average EV, 6 kWh will take you about 20 miles, and average car will go 24 miles on the gallon of gas produced with that same 6 kWh. If you use the 12 kWh figure, then the EV will go about 40 miles vs the gas car at 24 miles.
3 Likes
I have yet to see any hard sources on that little factoid.
1 Like
All of the manufacturing pollution that applies to a conventional car applies to an EV. EVs add the production and shipping of an alkali metal battery to the mix. It’s not like a Model S uses any less aluminum, steel, plastic, rubber, glass, or trucking to make and sell than its contemporaries. But none of the contemporaries need lithium, nickel, or cobalt in any mass quantity, and the amount of copper is also much greater in an EV. Materials diversity increases manufacturing emissions and non-carbon pollution. And it’s not like their factory (a former Toyota plant) or shipping are much cleaner than the rest of the industry to offset that. I don’t think there’s any argument that building Teslas is friendlier to the environment than building any other aluminum-bodied car. Operating, maybe, but building there’s no chance.
As tired as you are of people touting that EVs are dirty, I’m tired of people proclaiming they’re salvation. It’s all marketing wank, on both sides. Cars aren’t what’s going to ruin the Earth, it’s heavy manufacturing that already has.
1 Like
And even in areas where a lot of power comes from coal, it moves the point source
away from the cities Texas is mostly natural gas and we are heading to 20 % wind winting 2-3 years
5
Why do some major human rights violations get so little attention? Blood diamonds became headlines and a cause for activism but blood boron would be so boring.
1 Like
That is a bullshit headline. Cobalt is primarily used for high heat, magnetic, wear-resistant and high-strength alloys. After those uses comes batteries (including Lithium, NiCd, NiMH, etc.) Those child miners are in a hell on earth, not because of electric cars, but because of despots that control those countries.
3 Likes
Odd there is nothing about just how dirty it is to burn micron-sized coal particles. The worst health risk associated with coal, what has poor chinese folk wearing filter masks, seems to be particulates from coal burning. However, if the coal started out as micron size, particles after burning would have to be even smaller, wouldn’t they?
As long as we are speaking of alternative carbon-based fuels, does anyone know much about wood gas?
I place my clean energy hopes entirely on next-generation nuclear (I mean fission, not fusion, which is pure boondoggle). The really nasty problems associated with “old” nuclear fission are so inherently fixable, yet a surprising number of even technologically knowledgeable people in the US seem unaware of the possibilities.
2 Likes
Not necessarily. Immediately after the combustion, sure, but clumping can happen in the moments afterward.
Lived in China for 5+ years. It is nasty, coats everything. Worse now than when I was there.
According to the Cobalt Institute, around 50% of global cobalt production goes to batteries:
https://www.cobaltinstitute.org/rechargeable-batteries.html
And with Tesla alone projecting their 2020 battery production capacity exceeding the combined global production capacity in 2013, I foresee the number of child miners digging to give us batteries will grow at a disturbing rate.
(https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/gigafactory.pdf <- citing my sources)
Elon Musk has often stated that he wants as much of the raw materials sourced locally as possible… also, since he is from South Africa, I suspect he is very familiar with the problems in the DRC and surrounding countries.