Another thread made me think of this question:
Are there replacement products that would work (ie battery powered cars, peanut oils) in place of the crude oil we currently get from the ground for every application (gasoline, lubrication, etc)? Are there some products made from crude oil that simply have no replacement?
I’m reasonably certain there are alternatives and/or synthetics to crude oil for nearly any application you can think of. The ‘problem’ is that oil is far cheaper than any other alternative. Heck…oil is cheaper than water which seems odd considering oil needs to be mined, often shipped halfway around the world and refined whereas water needs to only be filtered.
Once the oil runs out as it has to eventually (when is open to debate but it is a finite resource) alternatives will start taking its place. Till then petroleum will reign supreme.
That’s pretty much what I figured, that the expense is what keeps synthetics out of the competition. Still, even if we had to double or triple what we spend on oil products to replace it with something better at least we’d have the ability to continue on.
Before that would ever happen, we would start collecting our own oil, rather than rely on foreign supply.
I think you can safely assume civilization won’t come to a screeching halt when the oil runs out although it will mean some considerable changes. Triple the cost of gas? That will have an enormous impact on the cost of items. Travel? Much more rare. Just about everything we are used to toady is impacted in some fashion by oil (if only indirectly). You can kiss your SUV goodbye…
[sub]Sorry about them Eagles.[/sub]
It is possible to convert present day engines to use 100% ethanol(rather than the 10% blend you get at a lot of gas stations).
I also know it is possible to process soy to use as a motor oil.
Both are more expensive than our present options, and if they were used in any signifigant amount it would increase our food costs.
How much corn would you need to grow to switch the nation’s vehicles over to ethanol?
According to this quite a bit
If all the automobiles in the United States were fueled with 100 percent ethanol, a total of about 97 percent of U.S. land area would be needed to grow the corn feedstock. Corn would cover nearly the total land area of the United States
In fact I don’t think a trippled gasoline price would make much of a difference. Here in Europe we’re used to paynig about a Euro (> USD1) per litre [sub](or liter)[/sub] of petrol [sub](or gas)[/sub]. It’s true that we have smaller and more efficient cars, but the way of life isn’t that drastically different. (SUVs are actually becoming more and more common!)
Think about it! How much of your paycheck goes directly to gas? For me it’s about 0.5% of the post-tax income, but then I don’t drive much.
I know that I’m here completely ignoring any indirect contribution to the petrochemical industry, but I don’t think it amounts to much more.
Outlaw cars, make everything in walking distance.
The most compelling alternative I’ve heard thus far involves “hybrid” cars using a very small jet turbine to power an on board generator which can top your car’s battery packs.
Apparently Volvo make one of these little suckers - the jet turbine that is. It spins at 120,000 rpm and it’s about the size of a really huge watermelon. And it’s really quiet too I’ve read.
The thinking goes like this - the turbine can run on methane. Apparently, to use up methane is a good thing. It’s a major contributor to green house gases and you can get heaps of it, believe it or not, just from cow pattys alone.
Obviously, you couldn’t get enough to fuel the US from cow pattys, but it’s one of many sources. The nature of ongoing sunlight onto our land creates many natural sources for methane even before you start looking at other sources of hydrocarbons like Australia’s bountiful supplies of Liquid Petroleum Gas.
I’m told that a small jet turbine running at optimum thrust and rpm is amazingly clean in terms of it’s exhaust output - almost totally H2O and Carbon Dioxide.
The thinking goes that your car would always have battery supply to drive your wheels, and that your turbine would top up the battery supply, and or overall demands, as needed.
This, in turn, would result in much cleaner city smog problems as well.
I’ve already seen examples of these hybrid cars being demonstrated as working units.
It’s a great idea, so long as the battery packs can be developed which are necessary.
The other option - albeit a dangerous one of Hindenburg proportions - is to use solar energy to create hydrogen from water. Now this one is a great idea because it’s 100% replenishable. In theory, the Australian Outback could be converted to huge solar panels to achieve such a goal. Nuclear power plants could also be used to provide the energy or water pumping as well.
And man, let me tell ya, nothing provides bang for buck like hydrogen. It’s even more powerful than your most potent av-gas.
We’ve got lot’s of water - oodles of it. And we’ve got lots of sunlight and or nuclear power to do the extraction. It’s then a question of building hydrogen fuel cells which won’t do a Hindenburg on you.
BMW are real close I’m told. Real close. They’re actually using hydrogen to fuel a reciprocating internal combustion engine. Internal combustion engines really aren’t very efficient in the grand scheme of things - only 32 - 38% of fuel is actually converted to mechanical energy, but man, hydrogen creates some horsepower nonetheless. You need to watch out for heating problems though.
What do you mean? Everything is in walking distance.
This guy has a motorcycle that runs on soybean oil.
Now that’s good stuff. Conspiracy theorists insist that all attempts to create alternative fuel cars are covered up, but I really think its more of a pratical problem. I’d just love to see some of that technology become available in 10 years.
For me it’s about 7.25% of my monthly post-tax income. I took a long trip in a moving van that got 7 to 10 mpg, and that pushed it up to about 15% last month. This month I took an identically long trip, but in my own vehicle. I keep asking the boss for a remote office since I can do my job from anywhere as long as I have a computer and a modem (and I can get more done without the many interruptions I have every day in my office), but he’s not buying it. I think we may see more widespread use of remote offices if we “run out of oil”, but I don’t think it will be in my lifetime.
Plastics use petroleum, and so are many other products. What can be used to replace petoleum in those?
I assume you mean the Volvo ECC. (Enviromental Concept Car). As the name suggests it was just a concept car made in 1992. It had a diesel turbine running at 50’000 to 90’000 rpm.
It turned out to be very heavy, expensive and not very reliable. (You can’t just turn a turbine like that on or off…)
As you say, it is a pretty idea, and I’m sure we will have something along those lines in the future. But I think it will take quite a few years till they become common.
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That depends on how you define ‘bang for buck’. If you mean ‘energy per dollar’, I’m sure you will find that at least today petrol is a whole lot cheaper. (Consider that hydrogen is made from water, using electrcity, and that electricity is relatively expensive.) If, on the other hand you mean ‘energy per weight’ I think you’re right. (As long as we limit the discussion to straight chemical combustion in an oxygen-rich environment - you can get out more energy by fission or fusion). There are still problems with storage of hydrogen. Either under preassure, liquified or in a metal hydride. There is a lot of research going on, and I’m positive that we’ll see some results within a decade.
Originally posted by Boo Boo Foo
No, no, no. Water is a non-renewable resource. We cannot just make more whenever we want to (well, we can, but not cheaply and not in great quantities). There is only a finite amount here on this planet - switching to water from oil is just switching from one non-renewable resource to another. Granted, there’s a lot of water 'round these parts, but please do keep in mind that it’s not renewable either.
Snicks
I think in the case of the engines being discussed here it is a renewable resource. Someone has to break apart water to make hydrogen for use in the engine but the engine itself creates water out of the hydrogen used to run it. That water would dribble out the back of your car and essentially return to the biosphere for use again.
I don’t know if the conversion/re-conversion rates are identical but at the least it mitigates the overall loss of water.
Before someone nitpicks me on this I know hydrogen is not ‘made’ but extracted from water.