New propulsion sytems for ships

[D'ARTOIS]

Biodiesel is a fact, not a fiction. As I have stated before that in smaal appliances biodiesel is feasable, is based on the fact that it is available in quantities that allow refinery plants to produce for consuption purposes, not for use as engine propellant. That requires tremendous large quantities. One single Ha produces about a few 100 litres. Only one ship that burns 10 m3 per hour requires the yearproduction of one plant. Good news to the farmers!

[Guillermo]

Improvements in propulsion are also related to new advances in hulls design. What about this X-bow from Ulstein?

[boltonprofiles]

JohnathanCole - think the nuclear thing is spot on, trouble is no government would back it as they would loose revenue hand over fist.

We are involved with a 700t double skin tanker at the moment which is being built to carry Biodiesel so there must be a fair market there even now.

[sharpii2]

Originally Posted by FAST FRED

"I just don't see unleashing unfettered and unaccountable corporate greed as the likely way to either one of those goals."

No offense but $9.00 an hour is what very unskilled entry level labor gets paid.

As you can put together a sentance (however wrong) perhaps a change of employment will increase your take home.

I would suggest Skool teaching , it starts at $35 an hour and runs over $100. an hour in big cities , counting the 40% fringe package.

"I just don't see unleashing unfettered and unaccountable corporate greed as the likely way to either one of those goals".

You don't understans the modern world , where production & mfg are so competative that the usual large industrial MFG profit markup is about 3%.
Even the Chinese are loosing mfg to "low wage areas" , as the world gets MORE competative by the day.

The middleman always gets the lions share of most profits IKEA does far better than Shell, if you look at capital invested , rate of return ect.

So start a business , rather than be a wage slave.

I "profit" from the competition , even US autos are far better than they would be with out any competiton, better, cheaper , although still far from "World Class"

Sorry you have been sold a political bill of goods that doesn't relate to 2005 , and are not willing to educate yourself on the real world.

FAST FRED

Well FF.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

History will be the ultimate judge and jury on this issue. If the U.S economy is hale and hearty in 2012, I will be the fool.

And I do appreciate your suggestions. I just wish it were that simple. The job you mentioned requires a little thing known as a degree. And it's an expensive little bastard (about as much as a small house).

If I could afford to get one of those, I wouldn't be bitching. I would get it in a heartbeat.

As for the small business thing, I'm working on that. I have tried several times and have failed. I have the debts to prove it. Going further into debt on the hopes of getting a job after a degree seems down right fool hardy at my age.

Especially after what I have been through.

Thanks again for your suggestions.

Happy sails.

Bob

[tom kane]

Cow fuel targets global warming.
Local Environment Correspondent.
A $17 million factory near Montreal started producing "biodiesel" fuel last month from the bones and other animal parts.Rothsay.a unit of Maple Leaf Foods Inc,is also making "biodiesel at a plant by recycling oil from fast food resturants.Biodiesel emits little of the smog of conventional gasoline or diesel fuel and almost none of the heat trapping gasses that most scientists say are driving up temperatures.At full capacity Rothsay will produce 35 million liters of biodiesel a year.A plant in Germany,Rudolf Diesel and a plant in Kentucky also produce biodiesel.Germanys Rudolf Diesel,who built the first diesel engines in the 1890`s designed them to run on peanut oil.Biodiesel is produced by combining natural oils or fats with methanol or ethanol.The process leaves two products,biodiesel and glycerin.My comment.. Just a thought,the many animals used in biodiesel manafacture must have created a lot of heat trapping gasses.Are we going around in circles.

[wet-foot]

The next big thing in ship propulsion is engines built with super conductor wire instead of copper. In a nut shell S/C wire can carry 150 times the same amount of electricity with near 0 resistance. It truly is becoming an electric world. the leading Company doing this is in the US, check it out; http://www.amsuper.com

[FAST FRED]

"If the U.S economy is hale and hearty in 2012, I will be the fool."

With the boffo economy we are now experiencing , mostly due to freeing up capital with tax cuts, the probability is we will have a normal cyclical resession sometime in the next few years.

Depending on the reaction of the Feds ,
the recession will be long and steep (if lots of federal "help" is administered,
or only a quarter or two if the Frds leave the market to sort it SELF out.

Of course that's hard as overextended busineses , that made BAD decisions will be demanding other folks cash to "solve " their problem.

Farmers now collect $175 BILLION in welfare .

The big fun will begin as the Gov stsarts to print money to cover the Socalist Security Pinzi Scheme.

Its broke , and unfortunatly democracys are great at "solving" current problems , but have no way to look foward past the next election.

Bush tried and was shot down , by the current crop of public spenders , all of whom will be retired wnen the *hit hits the fan.

You should check around at the local Publik Skools and see if one or two Education credits will get you a "temp" teaching cert.

Buro-rats love "pending" , so you should be able to begin work and "work" on your pending teaching cert.

Will work in most any big city, check with the union to find out how teaching "jobs" are created.

"If you cant DO , Teach!"

FAST FRED

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by wet-foot

The next big thing in ship propulsion is engines built with super conductor wire instead of copper. In a nut shell S/C wire can carry 150 times the same amount of electricity with near 0 resistance. It truly is becoming an electric world. the leading Company doing this is in the US, check it out; http://www.amsuper.com

American Superconductor Corporation (Nasdaq: AMSC)

Stock prices have just about doubled in the past five days.

[cyclops]

Ok. We are running out of oil. So we start making Bio-fuel as a substitue. Great. What use to be returned back into the food chain ,will now be made into fuel to be burned into nothing. Aren't we going to run out of animals bones and vegetable waste and starve to death? It seems each improvement is worse at the end, then the problem it solved.

[cyclops]

The Chicken Flu epidemic should help balance the books very easy, when a lot of seniors fail to start collecting. I keep hearing when , not, if.

Boat slips, yachts, should be available at a good price. Have to be positive.

[sharpii2]

Originally Posted by tom kane

Cow fuel targets global warming.
Local Environment Correspondent.
A $17 million factory near Montreal started producing "biodiesel" fuel last month from the bones and other animal parts.Rothsay.a unit of Maple Leaf Foods Inc,is also making "biodiesel at a plant by recycling oil from fast food resturants.Biodiesel emits little of the smog of conventional gasoline or diesel fuel and almost none of the heat trapping gasses that most scientists say are driving up temperatures.At full capacity Rothsay will produce 35 million liters of biodiesel a year.A plant in Germany,Rudolf Diesel and a plant in Kentucky also produce biodiesel.Germanys Rudolf Diesel,who built the first diesel engines in the 1890`s designed them to run on peanut oil.Biodiesel is produced by combining natural oils or fats with methanol or ethanol.The process leaves two products,biodiesel and glycerin.My comment.. Just a thought,the many animals used in biodiesel manafacture must have created a lot of heat trapping gasses.Are we going around in circles.

The only fuel that does not create 'heat trapping gases' is pure hydrogen.
All the rest, biodiesel (which is certainly an improvement) included are all hydrocarbons. And the best hydrocarbon is methane. That is because it has four hydrogen atoms for every carbon atom. The proportion drops down from there but should be no worse than two hydrogen atoms for every carbon atom (it's almost always better than that).

Whenever you have any carbon atoms at all in your fuel, they are going to combine with oxygen to make carbon monoxide and/or carbon dioxide when the fuel is burned. If they are telling you any different, they are telling you science fiction.

The key to winning the greenhouse game is to have as many hydrogen atoms and as few carbon atoms in your fuel as possible. Ethanol then would be the theoretical 'perfect' fuel that would stay liquid at room temperature.

This is what I learned in college chemistry (during the few times I managed to stay awake)

Here in the good ole U.S. of A, we are having a problem with natural gas. It is going up in price at a dizzyingly high rate. Some say it's the greed of the suppliers. Others say that it's the simple fact that we are running out. As much as I have sympathy for the first theory, I am leaning toward the second one.

I think that the sad truth is that we are using energy way beyond our ability to replace it (as we always have) and now it is starting to catch up with us.
I won't be surprised if the energy future for those born this decade will be best described in three words. Expensive, Dirty, and Dangerous.

To move toward an alternative energy future will probably mean massive government intervention into market place (the implications of which I am not entirely comfortable with). The 'lead time' for alternative energy investment is well beyond the usual 'quarterly report' and people would grow old waiting for their 'returns'. The usual 'market forces' will demand much quicker returns than that.

So. If you think the crap we are using now is bad, just wait a few years.

In the next twenty years I think sails will return on ships 100m or less in length, not because they are pretty, and certainly not because some over priveleged 'tree hugger' demands it. It will happen because all the other alternatives are either unavailable or just plain too expensive.

Bigger ships will use whatever sludge they can get thier hands on (probably something coal based).

Bob

[JonathanCole]

Oh c'mon you guys, don't be so pessimistic. There's 3 trillion watts in one lightning bolt. We can capture it in superconducting rings where it will remain for a thousand years until we draw it down. http://www.imagesco.com/articles/supercond/08.html

We live in a sea of energy. The primitive age of chemistry will end because we have the knowledge we need to end it.

At the end of the dark ages when the cities in Europe had built up to overpopulation levels, the sewage being dumped into the street was actually overflowing from the gutters back into the houses. Underground sewers had been invented by the Romans a thousand years before. But in Europe, only when the sewage was flowing back into the houses did the society, finally see the light and utilize what was available to clean up their ****. Human beings can be lazy, perverse, stubborn and arrogant, but in the end are survivors. We have been crapping all over this beautiful planet for a few hundred years and now the **** is piled up to our noses. Clean energy anyone?

[wet-foot]

So lets see here, the polar ice caps are melting which cools the ocean which cools the gulf stream which brings cooling air and colder temperatures to Europe. So there really is no such thing. the old every (+) has a (-) ....... that's life.

[FAST FRED]

"The Chicken Flu epidemic should help balance the books very easy, when a lot of seniors fail to start collecting. I keep hearing when , not, if."

If you read up on the Pandemic of 1918 you will discover the highest DEATH rate was the young adults that were healthy before infection.

So hopeing to cure the problem$ of massive unemployment and long living Geezers in Old Europe by the use of chicken flu won't work.

Since "global warming" is a fact of life for 13,000,000 years (since the last ICE AGE) it is easily accomidated.

If the Gulf Stream stops , it will give most of old europe with massive unemnployment problems a great boost.

Instead of endless welfare , the excess unimployable population can earn money cutting wood.

A renewable resource! The GREENEY "solution" to life.

FAST FRED

[Guillermo]

Originally Posted by JonathanCole

... only when the sewage was flowing back into the houses did the society, finally see the light and utilize what was available to clean up their ****...and now the **** is piling up to our noses...

Interesting: My deceased father, also a Naval Engineer, had a theory: Humankind developes and grows till its own **** comes up to the people's noses. Then several million people die, we solve the problems and restart again, until the next **** level reach again our noses....