Electric cars

Cowabunga

Member
Location
Ceredigion,Wales
Ok, but what I’m trying to say is we’ve no fix for radiation contamination. If we had a Chernobyl size accident in the UK, and the wind blew radioactive material inland, then a large part of the country could be rendered uninhabitable. Hydrogen, by comparison is a pussycat.
Yes we have. Time.
That is why it is a good idea to site stations in relatively remote areas, design them well, and run them exceptionally well. On the whole, Western European and American reactors have a remarkably good record.
 
There is a danger we get too hung-up on “efficiency”, whereas the important issue is one of benign sustainability.

I’m not overly convinced by the fuel cell, which appears as the weak link in your schematic.
Surely though “sustainability” ;) requires a measure of efficiency too?

Is it even possible to be inefficiently sustainable?

By the way confused about your last comment re fuel cells? What are you not convinced about - their worth as an energy conversion device or their depiction in the diagram? Please clarify.
 

renewablejohn

Member
Location
lancs
Yes we have. Time.
That is why it is a good idea to site stations in relatively remote areas, design them well, and run them exceptionally well. On the whole, Western European and American reactors have a remarkably good record.

Where is this remarkably good record. Think you need to have a hard look at the French Nuclear reactors held together with sticky plasters with forced outages on a daily basis. Its only the fact that the fleet is ultimately owned by the french government that its not in the press every day but even the government cannot hide the problems there having with there new builds. ie poor quality, over budget, long delays.
 

robs1

Member
Where is this remarkably good record. Think you need to have a hard look at the French Nuclear reactors held together with sticky plasters with forced outages on a daily basis. Its only the fact that the fleet is ultimately owned by the french government that its not in the press every day but even the government cannot hide the problems there having with there new builds. ie poor quality, over budget, long delays.
It only takes one accident to make large areas uninhabitable, I'm a supporter of nuke power but it does have its dangers, why we don't rely more on river and tidal power is beyond me, of it might be there isn't enough money to be made by big corporations
 

renewablejohn

Member
Location
lancs
While nuclear power has its disadvantages, lessons have been learned, and lots of them have been run without problem for a long time.
Do I personally think anything is ever fully safe, the only answer to that is no, but do we need them. . . I think we do.
Because we need something to produce the base load that supports our national grid in the uk.
If there was something safer and had less risk I would go that way, but we need at least one thing that can run when the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing, that doesn’t require fossil fuels, if not nuclear what?

It’s a factor of needs must, rather than wanting them. Even with endless storage you still need some form of base power generation.
Don’t forget, if we want to have green fuel in our aircraft and other things like C02 capture we need lots of power, and I mean lots!
Any nuclear power station built is guaranteed to be run as much as is possible, but at a safe flat load. No powering up and down to cope with power demands.
I will add I think we should build and own it, if we do build new ones.

What your forgetting is that we all generate methane every day its just normally out of sight out of mind.

The technology exists to process our waste and directly inject into the gas grid as at Minworth below.


Obviously farm AD plants can do the same so you get a baseline of renewable methane. This can be enhanced by excess power producing Hydrogen and injected into the gas grid with the methane upto 50% would equate with the old coal gas limits. Finally synthetic gas can be made from the CO2 capture at the gas generating plants. The existing gas grid is the energy storage facility for renewables which is currently capable of 15 days supply without any wind or solar. This really needs to be increased to 6 weeks but whilst supplies from Norway are relied on I cannotsee that happening.
 

renewablejohn

Member
Location
lancs
It only takes one accident to make large areas uninhabitable, I'm a supporter of nuke power but it does have its dangers, why we don't rely more on river and tidal power is beyond me, of it might be there isn't enough money to be made by big corporations

Totally agree with river and tidal but its the EA which stops river projects and government with tidal. Maybe with Mays declaration tidal might be back on the agenda.
 

Pond digger

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
Location
East Yorkshire
Surely though “sustainability” ;) requires a measure of efficiency too?

Is it even possible to be inefficiently sustainable?

By the way confused about your last comment re fuel cells? What are you not convinced about - their worth as an energy conversion device or their depiction in the diagram? Please clarify.

As an example; the human body is reckoned to be only about as “efficient” as an internal combustion engine, but being part of the carbon cycle it doesn’t matter, as it all works out in the end. The Hydrogen cycle could potentially be similar.

Re the fuel cell; perhaps I’m not understanding the schematic, but aren’t the percentage figures relating to efficiency/losses. Perhaps there’s a better way of utilising Hydrogen.
 

Pond digger

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
Location
East Yorkshire
And just think, by electrolysing sea water we’d be combating rising sea levels, and all that water generated by burning the hydrogen could be used to irrigate the deserts. It’s a win win:ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
 

manhill

Member
It doesn’t matter how complex/advanced petrol or Diesel engines get, they are still burning fossil fuels, and are far more complex than electric cars. So They have far more moving parts and produce point of use pollution.
Throw in the top three cars world wide for safety standards, are not ICE cars either and are made by one of the youngest car companies, That are mass producing cars.
I can see why the big companies are scared of the new competition, electric will win out not because they are green but because they are just better technology.
10 years will see a big shift in the publics opinion as they see and try these new electric cars and forth and fifth generations cars hit the roads.
With some of the early problems, all new tech have, get ironed out.
It helps when people people are honest what types of mileage they do on a daily basis. And realise the newer electric cars are starting to get 400 mile ranges on a single charge and are designed to do a million miles.
Gone will be the days people will think cars with 200k mileage on them are worn out.

Engines don't have to burn fossil fuel, Can't they can burn renewable fuel at the cost of being less efficient?
 

renewablejohn

Member
Location
lancs
Engines don't have to burn fossil fuel, Can't they can burn renewable fuel at the cost of being less efficient?

They do have to burn fossil fuel for road use unless the government give an exemption. Have been over 7 years trying to get a renewable fuel licenced for road use but the government by persuasion I presume from the oil companies intend to keep a lid on it despite increasing the efficiency of the engine and reducing NOx emissions to virtually zero.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,292
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
Top