Here's a good place to continue the discussion on alternative fuel, and I thought we could add alternative propulsion techniques too. How else are we going to be able to visit these places we see in the telescope? And maybe we'll get more posters and insight instead of keeping this buried in a PlanetX thread.

Here's a link to the last page of the original discussion:
http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/vi...m=10&start=100

Personally, I was disappointed by the testing failure of the Tilley car this weekend. I don't know if it was a bad coincidence, or the continuation of a hoax, and I guess we'll have to wait until the next test.
http://www.tilleyfoundation.com/validation.htm

The only way we'll ever start on the road to world peace is to get rid of our dependance on foreign gasoline.

If you want to learn the "physics" behind those self-recharging batteries, read it at http://www.cheniere.org/techpapers/Bedini.pdf, that's Tom Bearden's take on the matter, straight from the horse's mouth. If you believe the "over-unity" stuff, you should use the quality brand of it.

I wonder what would happen if you could get one of them self-rechargin' batteries runnin' a Newman Energy Machine. Would the Earth explode in a chain reaction of wanton and unbridled energy?

Alternative propulsion is one thing; proposals that break the laws of thermodynamics are another. It's much more helpful to discuss building fuel cells (and proliferating them) than it is to talk about the possibility of building a car that runs off of batteries that it recharges.

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PC load letter? What the @%$# does that mean?

It's been shown someplace that extracting energy from quantum vacuum by the means of Casimir force does not "break the laws of thermodynamics". I don't remember where exactly that was; a simple search by keywords must produce it. So, fortunately or unfortunately, a perpetuum mobile of sorts can be.

So I'm not sure what the consensus is. Is the Tilley car and its "invention" a hoax, scam, or possibly legit? Can it legitimately become an alternative to gasoline? What are the possibilities of its use outside of automobiles (ie space)? I'm leaving the question up to the geniuses around here, because this is new to me...

Hopefully we'll find out in October when he rents the super speedway again and makes another attempt. He's also said that he hopes to convert an SUV and use it too. Actually, I'm honestly thinking that I may take a bit of time off work and head out there. It's not too terribly far away from me. About 15 miles or so I believe. Heck, I'll even bring my own multimeter with me.

I will confess that I DO hope that it's true though. If it is, it could have major world changing implications. According to one writeup, security people DID say they had received threat calls. If that's true then SOMEONE must believe in it.

If you read their website, they claim to have had their facility running on a different device that has been generating some or all of their power for several months now. Again, I can only hope their claim is true, though I'll reserve judgement until I see some tangible proof with my own eyes.

Pardon my skepticism, but I would need more than just seeing it. I know that I am not sufficiently qualified to catch any possible hoax. Nor will I accept anybody elses word that they saw it, for the same reason. The only acceptable proof (to me, anyway) is a write-up in a peer revued journal explaining exactly how they violated the currently known laws of physics. Winning the Randi prize might nudge me in their direction.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

The only veritable proof is within the experiment that can be replicated. No peer-reviewed publication is possible that goes strongly against existing theories. No academic institution dares funding replication of experiments based on non-conventional considerations.
That said, I consider free energy devices ultimately possible, just very improbable to devise in a garage. That ultimate possibility delivers an overwhelming number of charlatans in the "free-energy".

AgoraBasta -

Scientific journals welcome experimental results that go against existing theories. Even counter-theories can be entertained when they explain all that the mainstream theory does plus makes some predictions re the results of further research.

What is NOT welcome is a counter theory that -
1. Is more or less fully developed, without the input of the scientific community. Ya need to let the scientific community in on your ideas before ya come up with the complete theory. Real scientists value colaboration - and they are suspicious of those who keep everything secret until they come out and claim to know more than everybody else.

2. Is presented to the popular media before it is presented to the scientific community.

3. Made with exagerated claims - eg "cold fusion" rather than "possible anomalous heat effect".

4. Does a poor job of explaining well-understood phenomena. A new theory not only has to explain currently unexplained things - it has to do at least as good a job then current theory at explaining what we think we know about already.

5. The creator is not willing to abandon if it is disproven. People know from experience that certain 'scientists' will not abandon their claims if they are tested and found wanting. This makes doing research on the basis of their theories pretty pointless. Usualy, kooks will not provide enough info to make proper test anyway.

Yes, the scientific community can be to narrow minded at times. Especially regarding issues of historical science, etc. But make no mistake about it, mainstream scientists have changed their minds on many issues, many times, because of new data and better theories. Most of the time when they are closed minded about a new idea - it is because experience has shown the proposed idea to be not likely to have anything to it. Ya want to spend your time and money on the best bets.

That's the way it appears to the majority of scientists and to the general public. Most scientists do not need to consider alternatives since they have enough fun working within the mainstream. That's perfectly normal, science is as much of hard work and as little of dreaming as any other decent activity.
The problems start when experimental data come out totally outlandish. There's no basis in modern science for understanding of certain very real effects. Let me name just one - low-energy transmutation of elements associated with radiation of apparent magnetic monopoles as described here. Those were the results of no weirdos but of quite serious group of experimenters working in the most academic research institution of Russia. A few days ago I heard them live talking on the matter, they still stand by their results. Their results have been being replicated by only one other team in Russia, quite successfully and consistently. When they approach theoreticians, 95% of those refuse to discuss the matter, 3% try to find an experimental error, 2% talk about how it cannot be because no can be. That's been 13 years already, and still nobody needs those stinky monopoles or, God forbid, transmutations, period!

So please, don't you tell me of integrity of modern science; the theoretical science has turned into a stalled religious dogma and is more of an obstacle on our path to knowledge than it's a vehicle on that path.

Perhaps this is true in Russia and Europe, but I've found the U.S. to be more receptive to new ideas. U.S. has an overwhelming love of money, so if you can make a buck off of a new idea, people will listen.

US is the worst here. In Europe/Russia there's a lot of scientists who work essentially for free. When they don't fight for funding, they have less stimulus to comply with the mainstream.

While on this topic on the old thread, I brought up Ballard Power Systems. There was some questions concerning hydrogen bromide and how fuel cells work. The hydrogen bromide salt was a non-flammable fuel source that was being considered. Water added to the hydrogen bromide salt caused a chemical reaction which freed hydrogen gas into the system. Air from the outside provided the oxygen for the reaction which produces electricity which in turn powers the engine.

This does not violate the rules of thermodynamics as it is an open system and requires the addition of fuel. The waste products of water (zero emissions, zero detrimental evironmental impact) and bromide salt (non-toxic but something that should not be vented to the outside due to environmental concerns) are a lot less impactful to humans and environment than current hydrocarbon engines.

http://www.ballard.com/tD.asp?pgid=20&dbid=0

They are optimistic about having a passenger car powered by fuel cells in production by 2005. They are supplying 30 power cells for an European transit bus service for 2002. In addition, the ZEBus pilot in California ended in September, 2001. This phase 4 cell showed improved reliability with no harmful emissions. It also competed in the alternative fuel demonstration rally in which it carried part of the international press contingent from Los Angeles, CA to Las Vegas, NV. (440+km) It has power, accelleration, comfort, and speed of it's diesel counterparts with none of the harmful emissions and a great reduction in noise.

http://www.ballard.com/tD.asp?pgid=31&dbid=0

They are also working on power generation. So far they have two prototypes 1 kW and 250 kW generators.

They seem to be going away from the hydrogen bromide salt and focusing towards hydrogen gas (in an accident, it escapes and reduces the chance of explosion), natural gas, methanol, and clean petroleum products for a hydrogen fuel source.

Automakers are really looking forward to these cells as it significantly reduces their fuel efficiency burden. How that works is that the fuel efficiency burden is an average across an entire fleet of vehicles. For every gas hungry SUV, they have to have a fuel effiecient vehicle. With fuel cells, SUV's could be powered by the fuel cells which increases safety (causal relationship shown between survivability of an accident and weight of vehicle assuming same restraint devices) and provides the power, accelleration, and comfort that current drivers crave.

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Valiant Dancer

As to the integrity of science - I was speaking in generalities. I am sure there are specific instances of new ideas that are not given the reception they deserve. But the overwhelming majority of things mainstream science rejects are rejected for good reasons - scientists have neither the time nor the money to dig into the reject pile very often. There are a virtualy unlimmited available unanswered questions and lines of research in mainstream science - and research in these areas is far more likely to bear fruit.

Good point the idea of sources of funding restricting scientists freedom and range of thought, though. This does need some looking into.

As to the hydrogen fuel cell car - there is one problem. You don't drill for hydrogen, you must make it. And by the law of conservation of energy, you must spend more energy to make it as you get from it (in practice - ALLOT more). This is ok - it is an unnavoidable fact of using energy - gas engines waste allot also. You would need a massive increase in base load electrical generating capacity to make enough H2. Solar and wind are not dependable or economical enough yet and might never be - and they are probably not scalable to the required degree. Worse yet - the environmental effects of large scale solar and wind use are not yet known. If ya used coal, you would create allot of new polution.

There are two main options of generating the power to make Hydrogen.

1. Natural gass turbines. These are pretty expensive compared to coal and nuclear power. There are CO2 emissions and possible long term supply problems. You can also make Hydrogen directly from natural gas, gasoline or oil for a smaller energy penalty(as you point out, we could even do this in the cars themselves). This is the route we will probably take in the short term. Yet if you want to MASSIVELY increase generating capacity, there is only one long term option...

2. Increased use of nuclear power with reprocessing of spent fuel("waste"). Look up what Russ and I have said regarding nuclear power in previous threads. This is the ultimate power source- it emits no more polution than solar and wind. It is much safer, more dependable, and economical then any source we know of. At least for base loads. And we will need it if we want hydrogen or electric cars to dominate the roads.

Usualy when we discuss pseudoscience it is in areas of academic curiosity, eg. Nubiru. Pseudoscience fanning fears of nuclear power has actualy hurt people - think of how many lives could have been saved if every power plant that now uses coal or gas used nuclear instead. You'd see allot less polution caused lung cancer, nobody blows up in natural gass accidents, "Black Lung" disease in the coal mines would be a thing of the past, power would be allot cheaper for the poor and the elderly...the list goes on and on.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Cloudy on 2002-09-18 01:49 ]</font>

I agree that getting completely away from other power supplies in favor of a single power supply is specious. I do not dispute that manufacturing H2 would not expend more energy than what it produces. (perpetual motion machine fallacy) The points in question was the dependance on fossil fuels for transportation and power generation.

I am also cognazant of the Three Mile Island debacle being solely the fault of the engineers in charge of the plant who continually misdiagnosed the problem and did things counter productive to the situation. Likewise, Chernobyl was a design defect. What I am also cognazant of that many are not is that a nuclear test facility in Colorado run by the NRC was specifically put into a runaway mode and let to its own devices. The redundant systems shut the reactor down before any real pressure built up. Nuclear power is a safe alternative to fossil fuels. Just the way we are storing nuclear waste leaves a lot to be desired. The current waste disposal lot sits near a major fault. The other proposed site is in the middle of the Nevada desert which is swelling due to a magma upwelling. This site could go caldera. There's got to be a better place. Reprocessing could definately reduce the amount of that waste and I am in favor of it.

The generators that Ballard is producing for power generation are for emergency power generation, not mainline production. I'm all for a low/non polluting energy source. The current hydroelectric plants coupled with additional nuclear sites could adequately provide mainline electricity generation to be used to produce H2 in bulk for transportation and emergency generation needs.

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Valiant Dancer

The issue here is that hydrocarbons currently burned as fuel have a much higher value as raw materials for the chemical industries that produce useful polymers (plastics etc).
In those applications, the reserves would fulfill our needs virtually in perpetuity.

Solar, wind, tidal and wave power generation schemes are high cost, low output approaches that may deal with peak demand but have limited application to transportation, unless they are used to hydrolyze water as a source of hydrogen for technologies like the Ballard PEM fuel cell.

I'm with the pro nukes on this. We should embark on a program to replace ALL fossil fuel power generation with nukes and whatever renewable sources are reasonably competitive. A strategy to use surplus generation capacity during the off-peak to produce hydrogen by hydrolysis seems to be a sustainable strategy for the long term. The resources currently invested in pollution control at fossil fired plants could then be turned to dealing with spent reactor waste.

Over its 25 plus years of life, a nuke is about the cheapest way there is to produce electricity. The fuel cost per megawatt is vanishingly small, particularly in natural uranium fueled reactors - and because they can also burn spent fuel from enriched uranium reactors, (and weapons grade plutonium), the fuel cost can be a negative number. As has been demonstrated, Chernobyl notwithstanding, nukes have a tiny, and very local, negative environmental impact. Couple that with a hydrogen based transportation infrastructure, and we will be able to fuel our industrializing world for a long, long time without the specter of global warming and all the other bad things that arise from burning hydrocarbons.

Valiant Dancer said "The generators that Ballard is producing for power generation are for emergency power generation, not mainline production."

In fact, Ballard has systems operating in urban buses, a thrust that the company sees as its real future market. Transportation has always been the main end goal for the Ballard PEM fuel cell, although it can indeed be used as a fixed power generation source. I agree with you that as a contributor to base load demand, it is probably impractical.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DaveC on 2002-09-18 12:40 ]</font>

Valient Dancer -
I agree regarding reprocessing. there is no need to store nuclear waste. It can be reprocessed and used again - untill virtually all the energy in it is gone. By that time the danger is gone also. What's left (and there isn't much) does not remain nearly as radioactive nearly as long.

Nuclear "waste" is dangerous but it is not as dangerous as many other forms of other polution. It can and has been stored saftly. I would not hesitate to live next to the Nevada site - not because I know much about it myself but because it was designed by experts and is promoted by people with a huge political and economic interest in making it safe.

These same experts often call nuclear waste a "political, not a scientific, problem". This is a nice way of saying that the nuclear waste problem is not real - it is just the creation of an irrational and fear-driven public.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Cloudy on 2002-10-15 01:09 ]</font>