“The Future’s going to happen.” — The Future and its Enemies, Virginia Postrel
In the last article I defined the problem, and will summarize it again below:
- Like it or not we are a high energy society — any city cut off from transport and energy is two to four days away from rioting and looting. (ala Katrina) We are dependent on plentiful energy for transport, growing the food we eat, and pumping and processing the waste we make. Any future in which energy is limited even slightly creates dim and horrific lives for most of humanity.
- The US is dependent on foreign sources of hydrocarbons for a large percentage of our energy needs.
- World demand coupled with politics has created high priced energy.
- Energy isn’t as plentiful as it needs to be if we want a clean environment.
- Current energy production methods create & disperse carcinogenic pollutants widely.
So in a nutshell if we want folks happy and the environment clean, then we need plentiful, cheap, clean energy produced here. Ok, so cheap is a nice to have –Â if we just want to save the US, it can be expensive energy. However, if we want third world countries to improve then energy needs to be cheap.
 Sounds like a tall order, but it’s really not. Every bit of technology needed is already here today, and tested. There are several solutions and in this series we will examine a few. Right now we are going to look into automobiles that run on water.
Positing unlimited, cheap electricity you can produce all the Hydrogen needed to fuel H2ICE engines. (Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engines.) If you have an H2ICE engine, you are basically burning hydrogen created from water, and creating water and laughing gas as the exhaust. 🙂
The NOx problem is one that they are tackling at the CRF lab at Sandia near my sister’s old stomping grounds in Livermore, California. The problem boils down to the same problem that plagues most speed junkies and engine tuners, how to get the most efficient fuel / air mix at the right time. Fuel injection, timing, & carburation in other words.
Well, that’s interesting, but I said this technology exists, and is tested now… so here you go:
BMW’s model