New propulsion sytems for ships

[StianM]

Annyone sugesting hydrogen as energy should be beaten up seriously and prosecued if surviving
(after reciving negative repitation I wish to modefy this so everyone understand what I actualy mean)
"annyone sugesting hydrogen as energy trying to make profit on it or gain political power should be beaten up seriously and prosecued if surviving"

(giwing neagtive reputation to people anonymous is quite cowardly)

1.Hydrogen is not a energy source.
2.to produce Hydrogen you nead more energy then it will produce.
3.the smal hydrogen atoms are leaking out off almoust anny container.

If you want to use wind power it's great, but the propeler will just casue drag and steel effect from the propulsion if the wind is ahead and if from the stern a sail would be more effciant.

Solar power is great, but you will have biger payoff by running it directly to a electric propulsion engine than making stupid hydrogen.

I hydrogen dead and buried now?

[SeaSpark]

Stiam,

Hydrogen is not a energy source

You can argue about this, you can also argue if electricity is an energy source this still does not solve our problems. Finding an efficient way to store energy will solve a major part of the energy problems of our world. In some places energy is abundant in other places it is there but at irregular intervals.

Hydrogen is a promising manner of storing energy for later use or in another place.

[Raggi_Thor]

The problem with hydrogen is how to make it. It's not an energy source, jus an energy carrier. Of course you loose some energy when you make hydrogen, so it's not allways the best solution.

[FAST FRED]

"According to information from the Livermore National Laboratory (USA), actively participating in development of hybrids for cars, specific energy capacitance of graphite super flywheels can reach 545 Wt h/kg, that by far outperforms modern sodium and sulphur batteries..."


The additional delight of flywheels is their ability to accept energy (recharge) at prodigous rates. One of the biggest hassles with batterys is their inability to rapidly recharge.
Last dream sheet I saw was the vehicle would pull over a pad and the pad would energise the flywheel to max rpm using NO mechanical contacts. Just induction.

This would solve the problem of granny "refuling' her Corvette , with out even getting out of the car!

On a boat I'm not sure of the practicaliy of these setups , although the electronics might be usefull.
But then my goals are blue water not brown.

FAST FRED

[Raggi_Thor]

It's promising and interesting, but flywheels can never be a source, just a storage.
Sources can be wind, waves, currents (tidal or other), waterfalls (rain), fossile (oil, coal), organic (wood, grass, etc), the sun, nuclear power (fusion, fision?) Others?

[SheetWise]

Just an observation ...

Wind, waves, waterfalls, sun are all classified as solar energy. The abundance of solar energy that is untapped, and the many inexpensive methods of capturing it, make even inefficient conversions to fuel attractive. Efficiency is not really a part of the equation since since the supply is inexhaustable -- solar energy falls under a simple cost/return rubric.

The prospect of any significant change in energy use is governed by storage, and whatever solution is in our future -- it will be a storage solution.

[StianM]

It's one way to save the world and that is for europe to stop buying cars from japan and us for the americans to stop buying cars from japan and europe ans so on. How mutch fuel is consumed every year by larg car carriers crossing the oceans?
Buy more products from local industry instead off cheap import.
How mutch fuel is burned off by transporting beff from new zealand to japan and europe? how mutch for transporting toys from china and malysia?

More tax on import products would lover the consumption on fuel and pulution off nature. It would have a faar bether effect than hydrogen since it would mean the start off manny coal and nuclear powerplants.

The next 10 years some exsperts asume that the worlds energy demand will increase with 300%

[SheetWise]

StianM --

There are energy costs associated with production inefficiencies as well. It's not that simple.

I live only a mile from my office, and ride my bike over a freeway in town every day -- and every day I marvel at the miles of six lane traffic moving at 20mph. We will eventually rethink transportation, and there are signs we're making progress.

You're right that many obstacles to alternative modes of transportation are legal -- but I strongly disagree that protectionism should be in the arsenal of potential solutions.

[StianM]

Leet me put one exsample. Fish is sendt from norway to chine where they are producing fish sticks. They are sendt back to norway for consumers market. How crasy is that?

Our energy consumption is a serious problem so we have to take a drastic aproatch if we actualy want to change the curent state.

Norway has the worlds 4 largest quantety off natural uran and new tecnolegy is able to convert this into energy with minimum waste, but the Norwegian goverment prefere to focus on gas powerplants and hydrogen. Norway is a oil nation and hydrogen is best exstracted from oil. Sweden has no oil so they focus on bio energy.

Goverment found of railroads would benefitt sine a train can pull large quantety off cargo with a minimal frontal area to cause drag. Also the steel weel's make mutch less friction then a rubber tire.
The US has to consider if they really want to continue building there 50 year old v8's they could be brought down to bether consumption by implementing new tecnolegy, but so far the cadilac north star is the only high tec v8 I can think off. A v6 would consume a litle more since it has fewer bearings and therfor less frictional loss.

We don't nead to rethink the powerplants, but how we manage the energy we have. Do we want to use our energy sources on buying products from the other side off the globe when we can buy one made localy for 1 dollar more?
What will we do with our electric sex toy from bangkok and tv from shanghai when we don't have the power to enjoy it?

[Guillermo]

StianM,
I find your approach to the problem quite simplistic. Go tell the developing countries they have to lose the opportunity of manufacturing goods to be sold to the first world. They will give you a kick in the ass, I'm afraid.
Ship transportation demand is strongly growing nowadays precisely because emerging economies like China's, India's and the like are taking advantages of their cheaper manwork to increase the wealth of their people.
And shipping is the cheapest and most energy efficient way of moving goods.
This trade is a nice way of sharing richness among the earth's populations bringing it from the first world to the developing one.

[StianM]

Originally Posted by Guillermo

StianM,
This trade is a nice way of sharing richness among the earth's populations bringing it from the first world to the developing one.

What capitalistic organisation brainwhas you??

It's not about sharing ritchness, but for us that are ritch being able to save our money by buying cheap stuff.

What hapend now when the sosialisic movement in south america want to make the oil fields goverment property for economical income for the countrys people? Big USA want to give money suport to anny political movement that still want to allow the big capitalistic oil companys from US continue exstracting there oil.

Nothing in trade and politics are about what is best for the people.

And I'm not taking this problem simplistic, but we have to consider seriusly how we want to use our recorses. It's naive to belive that there will pop up some great new energy source.

I think it's on one off moons on the other planets in our solar system that contain big lakes off liquied pertolium gas and maybe some thing we can just stretch a fue line to there, but you can think again

And for those beliving in Hydrogen I wish you the best off luck. Our electric powersuply has to be under quota regulations because alot off it has to be used for Hydrogen production. Exspensive fuel and exspensive electrisety that is. Say good bye to your icecube macine and aircondition unit, you wont aford using it annymore. Even the holywood stars will worry about there electrisety bill.

And for ship to be the moust effician transportation is not necesary true, it depends on geografical locations, a train use alot off energy crossing montains and ship use alot if they have to go around a big pice off land. like the USA west to USA east coast and trains are energy efficiant because air has less refriction then water and unlike ships they can safely be powered by nuclear powerplants.

[SheetWise]

StianM -

You confuse politics with markets. Politics is about unfair advantage, markets are about efficient distribution. Very little about politics is about what's good for the people -- because it's about manipulating markets. Everything about free markets is good for the people.

[sharpii2]

Originally Posted by Guillermo

StianM,
I find your approach to the problem quite simplistic. Go tell the developing countries they have to lose the opportunity of manufacturing goods to be sold to the first world. They will give you a kick in the ass, I'm afraid.
Ship transportation demand is strongly growing nowadays precisely because emerging economies like China's, India's and the like are taking advantages of their cheaper manwork to increase the wealth of their people.
And shipping is the cheapest and most energy efficient way of moving goods.
This trade is a nice way of sharing richness among the earth's populations bringing it from the first world to the developing one.

Dear Guillermo:

I would agree in principle with everything you say. But, in actual working reality, Global free trade (AKA Globalism, or in my words, Global Corporatism) doesn't even work on paper. Not when you start adding up the the likely longterm consequences.

Being an American, I have experienced first hand the consequences of what I call Market Force Determinism and what I have seen is not pretty. I have seen my own standard of living drop precipitously. And I'm not, nor ever was, one of those $70 an hour assembly line workers you may read about in The Wall Street Journal. My highest wage was $11.20 an hour and that didn't last. I now work for $9.00 an hour.

I can imagine that to a lot of you that seems pretty generous. Just remember that we Americans have little or no social safety net. I have no medical insurance and the auto I must drive is so old and often so neglected (there is almost never any money left to maintain it properly) that it is really becoming a road hazzard. And the area I live in (like most of the USA) has no public transportation worthy of the name.

Under the laws of Market Force Determenism, public transportation was ruled out decades ago. Since, back then, just about everyone could afford a car and there was a lot of money to be made by building cars and the roads to drive them on and, at the time, energy was literally dirt cheap, it was an automatic decision to go exclusively with autos and forsake all other means of transportation. Even walking (most newer communities in the USA don't even have side walks).

Now. My Great Country is faced with the dilema of either fighting an imperial war for controlable energy prices or face an economic melt down that could make the 1929 crash look like a dress rehersal. By the rest of the world depending on the American consumer markets, they are putting thier own economies at great risk. If the SS USA ECONOMY goes down, it will take them with it. This is, as far as I can tell, very similar to the very conditons that lead up to World War ll.

China, who has been buying USA government bonds for years, stands to be the most horrific casualty of such an American implosion. Without the USA to sell her stuff in, what will she do for a living? Has she become so dependent on imported food (bought by exported products) that she can not even feed herself? Talk about a double nightmare. Depression in the USA and Famine in China. (Both armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons)

This is, of course, entirely predictable (as it has been for well over a quarter of a century). The trouble with (what I call) Market Force Determinism is that it (from my experience) is entirely incapable of considering the future. It can only deal with the present and always makes long term decisions (like making autos the main and usually the eclusive mode of transportation in the USA) based on short term realities (like the presence of cheap energy at the time most of the imfastructure I now live with was planned).

For this reason (IMHO) it is doomed. It will be replaced with, at best, a new form of democratic capitalism, or, at worst, a new form of absolute despotism (re marxism). There may even be a nuclear war. Not based on communism vs capitalism or even modernism vs jiihadism, but most likely, between desperate nations trying valiantly to feed and house their people in a climate of growing energy scarcity.

The saddest thing about our present dilema is that there are really no decent villans here. Just good people making bad decisions based on the utter refusal (because of an ideology they paid good money to learn) to look at (likely) long term realities.

I know that this may seem to have nothing to do with 'new propulsion systems for ships', but I think it has everything to do with it. People have been plying the oceans for at least the last thousand years. And they, no matter what happens, will be doing so for the next thousand years.

Here, we are at an interesting juncture. Between awsome technology (brought about by at least 10,000 years of learning) and horrific future posibilities. Will we, in the end, be wise enough save ourselves.

Stay tuned.

Bob

[Guillermo]

Dear Bob,
First of all, my respect to you and to your wonderful country.

Maybe I'm a 'born optimist' man and I tend to trust people rather than the contrary, so I do not see future as dark as you see it. I do not see China and the USA coming into a nuclear war: Both of them have much to lose nowadays and in the foreseeable future. My major concern is this dilemma with the 'close' East situation. Probably not really a world war threaten, but a high risk of petroleum reching values as big as to make all economies to slow down or even going back. On the other hand (At last!) these high oil prices are forcing us to much more actively search for, and use, new energies: All for the best.

And maybe what you explain about your situation is a clue to support my way of thinking: Richness is being transferred from the first world to those emerging countries at an incredible rate (Unluckily not so to the third and poorest world, i.e. Africa) Maybe that's why your wages in the USA are going down.....

Maybe you, the USA are the ones condemned to more tragically pay the price of globalization, because till now you've been the biggest and the richest. But all of us, wealthy nations, are already paying a price (And I find this quite fair, attention!). I only have to turn my head round and see how many firms in Spain are closing their premises here and transferring them to those emerging countries, making us somehow poorer. And that's why we are looking frantically for more technological lines of products to be produced here and sharply increasing investments in I+D+i. But this is not an easy ride....

From my point of view this Iran, Irak etc., problem is one of the 'test markers' of the growing weakness of the USA: People out there smelling already the smell of the 'corpse'....and the 'corpse' resisting to be such!

I find this globalization thing a very good one, helping to redistribute richness. Not that the process runs at the same speed for every country and many are still suffering a lot (paradigmatically Africa). But we'll arrive there, sooner or later. Rich countries are prisoners of their own wealthiness in this process, want it or not.

Coming back to this thread's intention, I only support the goodness and convenience of shipping as the cheapest and most practical way of trading and helping in this globalization thing, not burning petroleum oil in those ships forever. That's why I'm trying to learn about more efficient ways of propulsion for ships (understanding the thing from the energy source down to the way of more efficient uses of it).

I'm afraid, StianM, that I still keep on thinking you have a too simplistic way of facing the problem, sorry.

[Raggi_Thor]

I agree with you saying it's too simple, importing small cars from Japan to USA for example will save the oil used for transportation in a few weeks compared to driwing large american cars. On the other hand I agree with Stian, transpoprtation is too cheap. Why is fuel for ships and airplanes so much cheaper than for cars?