August 2006 - www.promci.qc.ca/pureinvention/oqapa/Alternatives.html  
Energy Technology:
Why Humanity Needs Alternatives

By Lloyd Helferty, Engineering Technologist   oqapa@promci.qc.ca 

 (Adapted from an original article by Gilles Saint-Hilaire) 

 "A man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds." - Mark Twain

   New ideas very often have harsh opponents, but those who oppose alternative ideas miss the point because they are ignoring the most modern human societal problem:

We use too much energy, too fast.

   One day, we will be forced to accept that we must use much less energy than we do today.  As a society we will simply be unable to produce energy at the rate we do today.

  We will either have to consciously adapt to less or be forced to do so by circumstance.

   High-technology solutions simply will not be a long-term solution for society because many of these technologies, like Hydrogen Fuel Cells, simply require too much energy to operate and maintain. If humanity is going into a period of declining energy supplies, as all indications seem to be showing us they are, adopting technologies that require MORE energy to both produce and maintain is a wrong-headed solution.

   We need technologies that are simply more efficient – meaning that they produce the same amount or even more work as the machines of today, but with significantly less energy inputs.

   Man has been using internal combustion engines for about 150 years, ever since Nikolaus Otto, working with Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach, developed a practical four-stroke cycle (Otto cycle) internal combustion piston engine back in 1876.

   This engine has been serving us well up until recently, but now we are finding ourselves in the unprecedented position of accelerating global population growth while also being on the verge of a decline in the rate at which we can extract useful energy for use in these engines.

   This means that as the rate of energy production declines, we must become more efficient, but becoming more complex and energy intensive is NOT the solution!  We must not only reduce the amount of energy we use in our machines, we must also reduce the amount of energy required to produce the machines!

   There are many energy sources we can use to convert energy into useful work for us, such as electric batteries, solar energy, nuclear energy, water (gravity energy storage), and human power, but because we know internal combustion engines so well, it will remain as one of the primary types of energy conversion devices used by man for many, many decades to come.

   In order to facilitate becoming more efficient, the simplest solution we can do would be to start to build smaller.  This can be seen already in some of the smaller and more fuel-efficient vehicles from Europe and Japan, but the technology is essentially the same – internal combustion piston engines.

   Research will continue into other solutions with an eye to better efficiency of the final product, but in order to truly grasp the advantages of any particular design, one must consider the entire life-cycle of what is being produced.

   Building an extremely efficient hydrogen powered Fuel-Cell vehicle may seem (by the user) as if less energy is being used, but if one considers the technologies that are used to make these machines (for instance, if the fuel cell in a hybrid vehicle requires a certain quantity of precious metals to produce), the total energy used to both manufacture and use the vehicle will not be less than a traditional vehicle of today!

   This is why small internal combustion engines will continue to dominate, and why a significantly superior engine design to the Otto Cycle Piston Engine is badly needed.

 A 1/2 HP engine would truly be enough for most people to actually be able to get around quickly and safely in most places.  This is all that is actually required to reach reasonable speeds within cities.

   There will be room for all sorts of solutions, but hopefully, the outrageous waste of energy that humanity has become accustomed to been will not last too much longer.

  Instead of blaming alternative energy solutions for their weakness, we must instead start to fight the present nonsense of energy opulence, and start to talk about the weakness of this parasitic crude oil society.  300 HP gas piston engines were not normal in the distant past, and will not be normal in the not-too-distant future.

   Petroleum and other hydrocarbons are only a “net energy source” to those who think it is OK to continue pumping or digging it from the planet’s underground “reserves”.

  If one considers the long term, fossil hydrocarbons are not energy sources, they are “energy carriers” just like every other type of fuel – whether batteries or hydrogen or synthetic fuels.  The only difference is that fossil hydrocarbons store energy from another era!

   Most people, especially those who produce the hydrocarbons, (the “establishment” and governments) would like people to think that there is no problem with expressing the “efficiency” of a design for a machine like a car “from well to wheel", but this is very wrong and incomplete, because it implicitly means that you start efficiency calculations from an existing product – fossil hydrocarbons -- after it has been “stolen” from the (usually foreign) underground reserve.

   Once humans are forced to make synthetic fuels from surface energy sources, a transformation of our activities will result – we will soon discover that compressing and expanding air is as efficient as and far less complicated than making synthetic fuel for mobile applications, and that the size and weight of an air reservoir is quite convenient.

  We must concede that these man-made internal combustion devices that consume fossil fuels are in no way providing us with good efficiencies – not even close to the 10% range (when considering all of the processes that are required before burning the fuel in the engine).

  There are a multitude of reasons why we would want to get get away from using Fossil Hydrocarbons as our primary energy source.  This paper will not outline any of the various reasons why we would want to do this.  This has been done -- and is still being done -- elsewhere, in hundreds of ways by thousands of authors.

  What we now need to do is consider the alternatives.

 What are some of the reasons we need alternatives? 

  Not only are alternatives important for reducing our collective impact on the biosphere, but psychologically they are also particularly important today because people need new goals and a new hope.  Our young people need new inspirational models for them to look up to.  They need examples of ideas that they can feel are a part of their generation -- something new and inspirational, not attached to the old ways of thinking.

  They need to see that these new things are not necessarily for the old generation to develop, but are shining new examples of things that are theirs to develop in their own way.     But, the young people of today also need to see that there are people and technologies that are tenaciously holding out and waiting, abiding their time until the right moment to spring forth and take the world by storm -- to be fully embraced by that newest generation of "explorers" -- engineers, scientists and policymakers who have a new purpose and a new vision about the world they live in and our place in it.

  Once we know that alternatives do exist, we no longer need to feel that we are living in a hopeless world.

  New technologies almost always provide new hope.  They help to suppress hopelessness, inaction and defeatism because they bring new "economic development" -- new jobs and a new societal motivation to make the world a better place.  They can help bring a new type of self-realization and fulfilment to the people in the community who participate in the project of developing them.  There is a general feeling of satisfaction and contentment knowing that their work is contributing positively toward advancing the "human condition" and fulfilling their role in improving humankind's destiny and purpose on this planet.

  Ultimately, a new technology may even hold the hope that we can reverse the current world economic tendencies and give individuals an advantage -- and the chance to prosper in this terrible "war" of competition for innovation that we have been forced to adapt to because of the society we were brought up into. 

   One of the alternatives that may be a promising candidate for changing the way we do things is the Quasiturbine.

  Why is the Quasiturbine important?

  Because not only will it allow us to be more efficient during our transition to the truly “renewable” (surface energy derived) fuels, it may also be a key technology for whatever future energy system we use.  It is flexible enough to be in that position.

   The Quasiturbine could be a good substitute for the 300 HP internal combustion piston car engine – but it could just as well be a terrific solar steam engine or a very efficient power modulated air motor, or an efficient Stirling cogeneration engine, or the very best engine for onboard generators in hybrid vehicles, or an extremely efficient photo-detonation engine.

   Whichever way we choose to build our new energy society, the Quasiturbine is capable of delivering a solution in almost every application!

   Fossil “fuels” are a precious feedstock available to humans for only a very short period of our history, and which have allowed us to make enormous material transformations to our planet, but the absolute worst non-recyclable uses of fossil hydrocarbons are to use them as energy and burn them!

   Remember, the fundamental modern human societal problem is that we use too much energy too fast!  Why is this?

   It is because the “energy density” comparisons of different fuels are distorted unfairly by those who keep stating that gasoline contains 9000 Watt-hours/litre**.

 [** Or, alternately, 44 MJ/kg, 29 MJ/L, or 125,000 BTU/gallon.]

   The truth is that to get such an amount of energy from a full tank of gasoline in a car, one will need to use about 2 tons of oxygen!  What if a car had to carry (onboard) the needed oxygen?  The real “power density” (in weight and volume) would fall to a ridiculously low level!  Most vehicles would hardly reach 9% efficiency form “fuel to wheel” if we were to consider it this way!

   Intriguingly, this efficiency is in the range of many of the most interesting alternatives*.

   What this also tells us is that we need to stop referring to Internal Combustion engines as having a (peak) “30% efficiency” (which is actually far from average when considering actual engine use efficiency).

   Not only do we “steal” the fossil hydrocarbons from the underground reserves, but we also “steal” the oxygen out of the atmosphere** while our vehicles are underway!

  Now let us consider the alternatives. 

 * Batteries, solar cells and compressed air energy storage systems contain all of their energy onboard the vehicles.
 ** The specific energy density of hydrocarbons is zero if you do not have oxygen to combust it.