So why aren't we doing this?
OK I give up...
- Thread starter Sheldon
- Start date
toreskha
Titles are un-American.
Not very accurate at all.
Synthetic fuel was used in WW II by the Germans, and has been used in South Africa for a while. However, it's still pretty expensive to produce, although there is a Dept. of Energy tax credit in place that makes it a bit more affordable. Mostly this is the "coal to oil" process that we've been hearing about lately, but it can include other things, including turning biomass into oil. We're sort of doing this with corn-to-ethanol...and, well...you can see how that's working out.
The problem is, oil has to be pretty expensive to make these alternatives economical to pursue. Now that it is, there's work being done on it but patience is required. It took a while to learn how to properly refine oil into gasoline, but the people who remember that are probably all dead now.
People have the mistaken impression that if oil is so expensive, alternatives (synth fuel, oil shale, H cells, electricity) should just start showing up at gas stations. That's wrong. Fuel technology is very research and logistically intensive, and it doesn't change overnight. This isn't your average consumer good that just gets slapped together at a plant somewhere, thrown onto a truck and shows up at Walmart a week later.
It's not a silver bullet for all of our problems by any measure. At best, it could be used as a stopgap measure to hold us over while we develop something better. We have enough coal to last a long time, but currently we're not using it very fast. If we started using it as gasoline, that would significantly diminish the lifespan of our reserves.
toreskha
Titles are un-American.
Yep. You can turn a lot of different types of plant material into biodiesel right in your own backyard. They've been doing this for decades in third-world countries and it works just fine. If you get the batch big enough and have a steady supply of raw material, you can do it for $1/gallon and under. Your mileage might not be quite as good as with regular diesel, but it's still a lot cheaper.
This is a real, honest, proven thing rather than those "cars that run on water" or the "GM EV1 conspiracy" that make such great fodder for Coast-to-Coast AM. Why haven't we been using biodiesel already? It's not because the government or Big Oil was tamping a lid on it. It's because it just didn't make sense in the US to make for $0.90/gallon what you could (up until a few years ago) get for about $2/gallon. That's a lot of trouble for not much return.
Since prices have gone up, they haven't been able to make those veg oil kits for diesels fast enough. I know a guy who bought a 1980s Jetta and fitted it with one of those contraptions and it runs no different than when it's burning regular fuel. It does smell like a fry basket when it's idling though - but it's free.
does it put a big smile on your face when your cruising.
Ruger Lady
New member
toreskha, you sound very knowledgeable on this subject. What I'd like to know, is it true that it would be almost as expensive to start drilling for our shale oil as what oil is that we get from overseas? Everyone says start drilling in this country but our oil comes from shale not sand and it's harder to drill, so I've heard it would be just as expensive.
toreskha
Titles are un-American.
Oil shale is basically a type of sedimentary rock (not actually shale) that contains hydrocarbons and can be converted into a usable petroleum product. The process for doing this is rather expensive but would probably be viable in current market conditions. It's hard to say what the real price for doing this on an industrial scale would be, because we're not doing a lot of it. Maybe it would get cheaper if we did more of it.
Bitumen sand (oil sand) is already widely used for oil production, particularly in Canada. It's the disgusting stuff that we've used since the dawn of time on a small scale for petroleum products. Also expensive to do, but viable in the current situation.
As I understand it, most of what's in the Gulf and ANWR is good old crude oil. No sand or any complicated stuff, and it requires no extra processing just to get the oil out of whatever it's in. That's why it's so attractive to drill for.
Doing any or all of this would bring prices down as supply would increase. But, that's in the short term. The Chinese and Indians are beginning to get cars and motorcycles on a large scale. We have 300 million people, and we see our demand now. Chindia has a combined 2 billion people - that's 6-7 times our demand. They're going to be a black hole for resources. We just don't have the oil available, in any form, to feed that kind of demand for more than a decade or two.
So, my thinking is that we shouldn't drive prices down to the point where we encourage developing countries to get even more vehicles that use gasoline. Otherwise we're going to be kicking ourselves in 2040.
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Actually about two weeks ago when the oil prices took a slight drip China had just announced that they were going to increase the cost of fuel and drill for oil, can you imagine what would happen to the oil futures market if they were to hit a big oil deposit and become independent of outside sources? One thing for sure though they will look and drill every where including red square.
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toreskha
Titles are un-American.
It can and is being refined into gasoline right now. Maybe it will become more affordable as refining techniques advance.
As their supply increases, the demand will quickly increase to compensate, because they have so much pent-up demand. It's almost certain that they have far more people than oil.
True, long-term "energy independence" based on oil isn't realistic unless you have truly massive deposits, a relatively small population, and consume all you want before exporting it as a fungible commodity. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, (formerly) Iraq, etc fall into this category - they don't have that many people using cars but they do have a lot of oil. Even in that case, it doesn't last longer than a few decades.
toreskha
Titles are un-American.
Suddenly, the food service industry would pick up too.
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