On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 08:42:58 -0500, Gig 601XL Builder wrote:


"Sylvain" wrote in message
...
Gig 601XL Builder wrote:

The problem is if you use a gallon of Ethanol to produce 0.99 gallons of
Ethanol all of the fuel produced will go into production and you are
going to have to add .01 petro just to break even.

then could it still have a practical use as a means of storing
energy instead? I mean, producing ethanol using the output of
say nuclear plants (ok, replace that with wind mills or whatever
takes your fancy if 'nuclear' is against your religion); it was
my (probably mistaken) understanding that the output of a nuclear
plant could not easily be throttled up or down...

any recommendation about some good reading on the subject of
alternative fuel technologies?

--Sylvain

That is still not an efficient way to store energy. But how about this? We
get rid of the of some of the unneeded regulations around Nuclear plants and
move to a point where all electrical production is created with nuclear
power and only use petro based fuel where they are the most effecient form
of energy storage. i.e. cars, trucks, and airplanes.

Nuclear is feared because the first thing it was used for was blowing up two
cities in Japan. If the first use of electricity had been for the electric
chair we'd have people out there chanting "No more watts."

Thankfully Edison failed at his attempts!

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/pet/topsy.html

Edison was out to provide bad PR for Tesla (Westinghouse) new A/C form of
electricity generation of power delivery. Edison thought if the showed
the "horrors of A/C power compared to D/C" (paraphrasing), no one would
use it.

On a side note, many speculate that a fair number of Edison's inventions
actually originated on Tesla's drawing board. When they parted ways,
Edison did pretty much everything he could do to cause financial and
personal woe on Telsa. Sadly, Edison was greatly successful in his
attempts. Mysteriously, Tesla's lab burned down from unknown causes at
the height on Edison's ire for Tesla. Seems Edison wasn't such a nice guy
after all.

Greg