As the last entry of my free and hosted WordPress blog and the first entry of my new Webpress powered system on one of my own personal domains, I want to take the time to thank WordPress for their contribution to the world at large for hosting and supporting such a system. The growth of the blog and the power it offers to the individual to express their ideas to the entire world of interested readers is one of the the best things to come from the rise of the Internet.

Look for Energy with-out Oil at its new home:

http://www.income-energy-time.com/blog

Hope thatI can offer something of value to the Internet community for a very long time to come.

blueram85

I mentioned last week that I took a ride to the US to pick up my copy of Alcohol can be a Gas by David Blume along with a couple other books on Stirling Engines.  I had also ordered a copy of a promotional DVD by David Blume that he made to promote funding for his book.  I think it was the best short trip I have taken in quite a while.  It ended up costing me much less in duty and taxes (even with gas) than having it sent across the border by any shipping company.  Also, I got to catch up on family news with my brother, so a win/win situation for everyone.

 

I took the lazy way to initiate myself into the books contents, I sat and watched the video of David Blume the night after I returned.  I would not say its quality and special effects are on par with “An Inconvenient Truth” featuring Al Gore – film that is designed to effectively make people uncomfortable in their thoughts on Global Warming (not Bush’s callous belittling of the problem by calling it Climate Change).  There are no forklifts to the sky, just a simple introduction and then a cozy seminar given to a group of people about the history of Alcohol and the ways it has been suppressed.  This is certainly not the history lesson I ever was taught when I was fidgeting in my seat at school.

 

 

The book is separated into Six distinct books, and author Blume chooses to begin his tome with the history of Alcohol, he claims it to be the second oldest profession in the world….he doesn’t mention what he believes is the first and I have no intention to go there. 

 

A DVD to educate you on the way you have been misled and lied to!

 

The history lesson on the DVD basically covers the first book of his manuscript, it covers the ways Alcohol and the public has been manhandled by Big Oil – or Megaoilron as he disdainfully defines it.   

 

The video is a disturbing listing of the ways that the use of alcohol (and our personal democratic beliefs) has been eroded simply because MegaOilRon needs to manipulate and use each and every one of us as a deputized agent to dispose of the toxic wastes they produce. I am sure they sit back in their big leather chairs and giggle in their board rooms at the way they have addicted us to their brand of energy and now force us to be their planet killers.  They don’t have to go to any expense to eliminate the toxic wastes they produce, no, they profit handsomely from it, and we are the unwitting accomplices in their drive to kill our planet and our democratic rights as individuals right along with it – They are industry and thus they feel they are the chosen few to topple democracy and make the world into a place where Energy reigns supreme, don’t get me started on the conspiracy to create a one world government with the financial elite deciding what is best for them and destroying public liberty as a desired result. 

 

Be very clear on this: Every time you start your car or burn gas in any application (I include myself here, as being just as guilty), you are being forced to pay more and more for the gas, and have become the unwitting dupe graciously allowed to use your vehicle to dispose of the toxins that are the leftover mess from distilling oil for all the other products that come from a barrel of oil, and profits that makes.  Gas is not a primary product, it is not even the same formulation each time you pump it into your tank, it changes as the various ratios of toxins left over varies day to day, and even hour to hour. 

 

Gasoline is the substance that, in the early part of last century, Rockefeller had left over when he created the fuel for street lamps and other lighting for the cities.  Before they could find a use for it, they simply flushed it into the local rivers.  Henry Ford believed that alcohol was the best fuel, and every Model T was a dual fuel machine – able to run on both alcohol and gas, depending on what was available.  Rural farms all had a still to produce their fuel for the farm, and the city had Rockefeller’s and his industrial compatriots’ gas.  

 

If you believe David Blume – and I do, the Prohibition movement succeeded not as a temperance movement, but as a way for Rockefeller and the Oil industry to destroy the farm still and the independent energy production capacity of the individual.  Rockefeller is said to have provided the Temperance leagues with enough money to buy an all male Congress supported and put in by a drinking electorate, somewhere about 4 or so million dollars at the time – How else would a Congress supported by an all male electorate do something so stupid and self-destructive?

 

So is the call for ethanol as a fuel a new one….not at all, it is just a try to return to the way things were before the Rockefellers and their banking buddies all got together and made a successful try to eliminate competition to a product that they controlled and made enormous profit from…at the expense of the common farmer and workers.  If there is a price difference between two competing products that do the same job, we should have that possibility available. 

 

The rest of Book One goes through the economics of Alcohol as a fuel, and it really is not something that big oil and business wants.  The biggest myth is that if you grow crops for fuel, the world will lose its food – they break it down between food or fuel, Blume makes the argument in a sane and reasoned manner, that we get both with alcohol, as all that is removed is the liquid solar energy, the food that is left as a by-product makes cattle and other livestock bigger, healthier and more nutritious.

 

Big businesses don’t care that the planet is being ruined, and America and Canada’s farmlands raped and destroyed, they want to sell genetically modified seeds and the fertilizer that is required to grow them.  Monsanto is making huge profits, it has been a pick on Cramer’s Mad Money for the simple reason that corn farmers need their seed and fertilizers to grow a crop year in and year out.

 

Blume has an alternative that big business does not want to hear, it is called permaculture – The International Institute of Ecological Agriculture:

 

http://www.permaculture.com

Permaculture is the synergistic growth of multiple crops and different rotations that will nullify the need for modified crops and produce natural fertilizers and actually improve the soil over time not destroy it.  He makes the claim he fed 250 people on two acres of land with his methods.  He says critics claim that is impossible. 

 

The DVD and the Book one go through the ways that this can be done and then points to the country that has done it – Brazil.  They of course had a lot of incentive, they were poor and needed to get their economy on track, they have done it by moving over to use of alcohol as the main fuel, unfortunately overseen by the petroleum industry, but they re doing it, not by cutting down the Amazon, but rather using the Permaculture techniques identified by David Blume in his book, not as a result of his teachings, but by moving back to a closer culture with the natural scheme of things. 

 

You may have noted recently in the news that Brazil has begun fighting the tariffs on the export of alcohol to other countries, US being a main one in this.  They have enough fuel in alcohol to export it, and the entire economy is almost exclusively alcohol driven, the cars all run on alcohol and their car industry must produce alcohol engines for their cars – a thing the industry said could not be done, but was accomplished within 6 months when they were faced with no other option.

 

I urge everyone to go out there and get this book, or at least somehow take a look at the DVD – it is as powerful as Who Killed the Electric Car and An Inconvenient Truth, I won’t tell you the presentation is as flashy, it is only a seminar, but the information is some of the most powerful presented.  No wonder the gas companies forced PBS to kill his original series on Alcohol as a fuel.  It could be looked upon as an instructional manual on self-sufficient farming and energy production in the even of total disaster – or a way to thumb your noses at big oil and their plans on world domination trough the subjugation of democratic principles for their profit and power.

 

I am deep into the Book Two, which is a listing of how to make the actual mash precursor to alcohol, I will give greater details of my thoughts on that in a later comment on the book.  For more details on both the viability of alcohol instead of gas and the ways in which we can work with the planet to grow our fuel and food simultaneously visit the website mentioned above:

 

http://www.permaculture.com

 

I don’t say this is the end all and final testament on getting away from oil, but it is certainly a good start at finding new ways to find Energy with-out Oil. 

I took a ride to the US this week, crossed the border at Phillipsburg and went to pick up my copy of Alcohol is a Gas by David Blume,

along with a couple of books on building Stirling Engines and a wood burning camp stove that burns almoost anything and generates hydrogen/produce gas in an outdoor situation. It is simply cheaper to go and get the books from my brother when he is in the neighborhood and then cross the books across the border and pay the duty than to have this stuff shipped and the freight companies get their extras added to the bill. It cost me less in gas and the duty for the package than just the shipping the stuff to Canada all by itself, let alone the duty. (But don’t tell the gas companies, I bet they simply hate the idea of this book being published, let alone being exported to other countries – and if there is a cheaper way to get this vital information to people that are willing to act on it, that could be a disaster for them)

 

I am very impressed with the scholarship case he prresents, both in written form and the DVD he made to promote the book. I will go into much more depth next post. I must admit that this is a surprising and very possible alternative to my original belief that I needed to be totally green and use only solar energy and its renewable nature to power my city dwelling.

I have been discussing the idea of making alcohol, an idea that is suddenly being strongly fostered by Steven Harris of Knowledge Publications, with a colleague. The ability to make alcohol from a still is pretty well documented. He was able to find instructions for making a still for free on the web:

http://designer-drugs.com/pte/12.162.180.114/dcd/pdf/still.pdf

Before I totally advocate this as the magic bullet we need to run Big Oil off the field, there are a lot of other factors to consider, mostly in the actual preparation of the distillate pre-mix. This is well covered in a website from Mother Earth News pointed to by Journey to Forever on ethanol and alcohol.

 

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/meToC.html

 

You need heat to make alcohol, and I fully believe the heat we need is electric. I think my original contention of using Solar Power will be the solution for providing the power needed to heat the (corn/sorghum/other vegetative/old food) mix to prepare it for distillation. After that is done, then you need to heat the actual still to the right temperature. So, power still is needed to input to the system to get alcohol for the various motors out. I would use alcohol for both a car and for electrical generation. At least for the near future. In the very near future, I intend to discuss a (hopefully) nearly ready for production product that will take the requirement for alcohol in the internal combustion engine out of it…….or better yet, remove the gas and replace it with alcohol when that form of fuel is required.

 

This is going to be rather short for me. Most of my friends and acquaintances know I can write a long post with ease. But one final set of comments before I use the infamous “More” command to copy an e-mail from Steven Harris of Knowledge Publications that has lots of links to all kinds of alcohol related stuff, including video and audio of David Blume presentations. He asks for readers to forward the e-mail to all who are interested. I don’t know any of your e-mail addresses, and am not about to spam anyone who doesn’t want the mail. His commitment is pretty obvious in his communications, and I think he is getting frustrated with people who simply don’t want to get out of their comfort zones and help themselves. I agree, and we need to get moving pretty fast, or everyone will be suddenly in the third world with Iraq and Iran holding an upper hand and us all as energy hostages. Even more dangerous, possibly some hawk will nuke them and be done with it. Either way, we need to be ready to support ourselves on this continent with our renewable resources and energy potential. Then be ready, WILLING and able to help others all over the world get energy independent and move the human species forward out of the hate and power struggles of controlled resources.

 

Finally, anyone know what the laws are for running an alcohol still in Canada, it is a request form Steven Harris in his e-mail, and I would love to be able to let him know, as it also impacts me quite a bit as well.

 

Next I will give a book report on the book I just got, the thing is huge and sure looks very promising as a handbook to finding a way out of the quagmire that big oil – or Megaoilron and David Blume calls it. It seems to be a viable alternative to give all – Energy with-out Oil

I am scared to death of nuclear power. Hell, I hate to use a microwave because of the things it is doing to the food. I used to use it a lot, but since one of my friends in Toronto sent me an e-mail on what those invisible waves can do when an oven is run, I stay away from the microwave as much as possible. Not that I can do it all the time, but faced with a choice of using an oven or toaster oven or the microwave, I try to cut free the extra minutes to eat non-nuked food, even if it has been processed, no reason to change it for the worse any more.

 

(blueram85 note to reader – I apologize for entering an entire document for you to read here, but this was a private e-mail and I simply do not have a place to point to on the web to allow you to link to it. I don’t even have a person to attribute the actual e-mail, but it is not my personal authorship. It was forwarded to me by a caring friend. But it is scary enough that it should be seen – if you drink coffee or other water based hot drinks, boil it on the stove – don’t nuke it! You could be just as affected as the poor plants.)

 

Microwaved Water – See What It Does To Plants AND IMAGINE WHAT IT IS DOING TO YOU!!!

Below is a science fair project. In it she took filtered water and divided it into two parts. The first part she heated to boiling in a pan on the stove, and the second part she heated to boiling in a microwave. Then after cooling she used the water to water two identical plants to see if there would be any difference in the growth between the normal boiled water and the water boiled in a microwave. She was thinking that the structure or energy of the water may be compromised by microwave. As it turned out, even she was amazed at the difference.

I have known for years that the problem with microwaved anything is not the radiation people used to worry about; It’s how it corrupts the DNA in the food so the body can not recognize it. So the body wraps it in fat cells to protect itself from the dead food or it eliminates it fast. Think of all the Mothers heating up milk in these “Safe” appliances. What about the nurse in Canada that warmed up blood for a transfusion patient and accidentally killed them when the blood went in dead. But the makers say it’s safe. Never mind then, keep using them. Ask your Doctor I am sure they will say it’s safe too. Proof is in the pictures of living plants dying. Remember You are also Living. Take Care.

FORENSIC RESEARCH DOCUMENT

Prepared By: William P. Kopp
A. R. E. C. Research Operations
TO61-7R10/10-77F05
RELEASE PRIORITY: CLASS I ROO1a
Ten Reasons to Throw out your Microwave Oven
From the conclusions of the Swiss, Russian and German scientific clinical studies, we can no longer ignore the microwave oven sitting in our kitchens. Based on this research, we will conclude this article with the following:

1). Continually eating food processed from a microwave oven causes long term – permanent – brain damage by “shorting out” electrical impulses in the brain [de-polarizing or de-magnetizing the brain tissue].
2) . The human body cannot metabolize [break down] the unknown by-products created in microwaved food.
3). Male and female hormone production is shut down and/or altered by continually eating microwaved foods.
4) . The effects of microwaved food by-products are residual [long term, permanent] within the human body.
5). Minerals, vitamins, and nutrients of all microwaved food is reduced or altered so that the human body gets little or no benefit, or the human body absorbs altered compounds that cannot be broken down.
6) . The minerals in vegetables are altered into cancerous free radicals when cooked in microwave ovens.
7). Microwaved foods cause stomach and intestinal cancerous growths [tumors]. This may explain the rapidly increased rate of colon cancer in America .
8) . The prolonged eating of microwaved foods causes cancerous cells to increase in human blood.
9). Continual ingestion of microwaved food causes immune system deficiencies through lymph gland and blood serum alterations.
10) . Eating microwaved food causes loss of memory, concentration, emotional instability, and a decrease of intelligence.
Have you tossed out your microwave oven yet?
After you throw out your microwave you can use a toaster oven as a replacement. It works well for most and is nearly as quick.
The use of artificial microwave transmissions for subliminal psychological control, a.k.a. “brainwashing”, has also been proven. We’re attempting to obtain copies of the 1970′s Russian research documents and results written by Drs. Luria and Perov specifying their clinical experiments in this area.

Enough said on the microwave, but what about the thought of a nuclear future satisfying the ever growing addiction to electrical power to run almost everything we use in our day to day lives? Is it safe? Please do not be fooled, I am not a radical, preaching my feelings to everyone I see, but the more I think about nuclear power, the more I worry. I think it is time that an individual state his thoughts to the reader. How has the nuclear industry maintained its powerful lobby for so long. Huge subsidies and tax breaks have been lobbied for and obtained, while safe renewable power has been relegated to an irrelevant shout in the wilderness.

It has been decades since the last nuclear power plant was built. For years the uranium industry faltered and stumbled along with low prices for the output of their mines. The governments have subsidized research and development and kept in always in the wings until the fear of Chernoble and Three Mile Island is just a distant memory to those now alive. Over the past few years, however, uranium stocks have been hot, the sector to purchase as energy prices have spiked – both subsidized by your governments, by the way. It has become the investor’s expectation that this is the only alternatives for mass power production without the carbon exhaust of coal fired and gas powered generators – no matter the risks. It has to be given a shot, right, there is simply no other alternative to getting the power everyone craves. Never mind the environmental dangers or the possibility that there might be a much more rational way to create the power from the sun and wind and water, individually and independently – that couldn’t be controlled or metered, so it can’t be a real investment.

I read with interest the comments of the proponents of Nuclear in the book “Fueling the Future” Edited by Andrew Heintzman and Evan Solomon. Chapter 6, Is Nuclear Energy the Answer? It shows the paradox of relying on this form of energy at all. It can only be seen as a stopgap on the way to something safer and where the danger of the wastes are less durable.

I want to fashion a future where we leave as few problems as possible to our following generations. The nuclear industry is willing to turn a blind eye at its results and carelessly pass the incalculable problems of suddenly expanding waste storage from the massive proliferation of new plants projected to cover the requirements to the future. Along with the social security crisis and the fiat currency headaches with its inherent uncontrollable inflation we are fashioning right now, why not just add the possibility of a world where a single terrorist can steal nuclear fuel, build a bomb and/or an organization that can easily hold the world hostage. Even if those daunting security issues can be overcome (and I seriously doubt that is possible given the political climate big oil and its greed has spawned) we would leave the gradual contamination of our world with virulent nuclear waste to posterity to deal with. For that simple reason, until and unless the nuclear industry can answer all the questions on storage and how it will be dealt with before the first new power plant is built, then none should go forward.

 

Nuclear waste is toxic, not for a day or two, and it cannot suddenly dissipate be gone, it lasts for hundreds of years, if it spills, it can kill for miles around, and create deathly living conditions for all animals, not just ourselves – a desolate and deadly environment results, poisoned and warped away from nature. Hydrogen is very explosive if handled incorrectly, but even so, if it leaks, unless ignited, it is a gas that dissipates harmlessly into the atmosphere – or combines to produce electricity and/or heat with oxygen to become water. Gasoline, since it is a liquid, has more potential danger as a contaminant than hydrogen. I have heard of many environmental disasters in leaky tanks in fuel stations where millions are required to clean up the after effects. I have never heard of one where hydrogen has caused any true or long lasting environmental problems ever.

 

Let’s decide, as a planet, that we do not want to have to rely on new and potentially dangerous technologies to save us. We need to migrate to the more controllable and safer generation of power through sun, wind and water to create the fire that generates our power requirements. Nature is abundant, not scarce, and we must realize this and thankfully embrace that bounty to solve our energy dilemma. Last century was one of denial and insanity, hopefully we can replace the paranoia and greed with a more rational exploration of our potentially safe energy sources. Let’s exploit them without hurting our planet or ourselves and move to a gentler and more equitable use of the resources we must all share.

 

So, once again I must come back to the production and exploitation of hydrogen. We need the element to pack potential power and store it as a battery. Then we must transport it to where we will use it to provide the kinetic heat for activating generators for the life blood of society….electricity. We can also use it to solve one of the other pressing environmental problems, the production of fresh and safe water – hydrogen, when it burns creates pure water – not carbon monoxide or dioxide. However we end up manufacturing it, it should be clean, environmentally sane and as power conserving as possible.

 

The way the various articles I read seem to conclude, energy shortages in the past have been approached in two ways by the human animal. Become much better at conservation of the energy available and/or use our brain and ingenuity to find a way to improve the production and quantity. In this particular instance, we are going to have to do both at the same time. It has caused amazement in some authors how much we can find a way to conserve when we need to.

 

Take the example of the simple shopping bag. According to an ad by Loblaws, they want to sell re-usable bags and reduce the number of plastic bags entering the dumps by 1 billion per year! Taking a reusable bag for groceries each and every time we shop will eliminate tons of oil use. If we all decided as a personal measure that we would never us another flimsy plastic bag again, think of the shock that would go through the oil producing community and the gallons of precious oil we can save and conserve for better uses. That is just the first step, maybe we can get some feedback and discussion thorugh your comments on other steps that would send the message to the world we, as individuals, are more than a little bit serious that we must all do our part to produce our requirements through Energy with-out Oil

I know that it is quite early to start telling the world what I want for Christmas. Even worse, to let out my New Year’s resolution where my major goal for the coming year is to proceed with development of a valid way to remove the requirement to burn fossil fuels as much a possible. I make no effort to hide the fact that I am a lousy handyman so one of the main tasks for the blog is to open up to a process dedicated to start finding existing products that might help. There is lots of hobbyist grade stuff out there, and some of it can (or could) be adapted to our purpose, but dedicated low or no added energy consumption items of a scale for house independence are few and far between.

 

I doubt this will be the last article on this topic before the end of the year, I am sure new and interesting items will require revising and adding to the list as time elapses before Christmas. It may be pretty obvious, I have not written this blog for a long time as of yet, and the web constantly offers new possibilities to review and decide a product should be in my possession for evaluation, testing and modification.

 

For the past few weeks I have been reading the biographies of Nikola Tesla, there are a couple of classic ones, I purchased them from Amazon.ca along with a couple of the classic videos on his life.

 

Book – Prodigal Genius – The life of Nikola Tesla – John J. O’Neill

Book – Tesla – Man out of time – Margaret Cheney

E-Book – Tsesla Coil – George Trinkaus

E-Book – Son of Tesla Coil – George Trinkaus

E-Book – Tesla – The Lost Inventions – George Trinkaus

Video – Nikola Tesla – The Genius who lit the world -

Video – The Secret of Nikola Tesla – The Movie

 

So it is a simple jump to ask Santa for a Tesla Coil for Christmas. It is his best known invention (besides the polyphase alternating current motor) and it is often described as an energy reduction device – especially for lighting.

 

A search for “Tesla Coil” on Google got me a site that has all types of electrical kits for the hobbyist and the inventor. The plans are cheap, but in my present case a waste of time until I am well grounded in the concepts and familiar enough to understand what to do with that information. I could ask for a kit to put together. I am not about to go all out and find one that is dealing with seriously dangerous voltages, but rather I only want the medium Tesla Coil found at:

 

http://www.amazing1.com/tesla.htm

 

The unit I want (BTC30 – already built and tested) can be purchased in plan form, as a kit or already constructed and tested. I have no illusions that the one I want is the pre-built and tested unit BTC30 with the optional T08 Toroidal Terminal – 74.95). For the extra hundred over the plans and parts kit, I will save myself hours of aggravation and the humiliation from not properly assembling it well enough to get it working and, thus, wasting the entire (fiat) currency outlay.

 

http://www.amazing1.com/cgi-bin/hitslog.pl?/Graphics/btc30-b.wmv

 

Some video of other working coils is on the web at You Tube:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi4kXgDBFhw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY-AS13fl30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueUl0x9_Hj4

 

That was just a few, but interesting stuff.

 

I want the working apparatus to see what can be done with the reduction of power needed to light a room. The same website has other (smaller) units MTC30 – 49.99 built and tested) that are supposed to light a fluorescent tube wirelessly. The medium unit should be able to do that as well as generate lots of the sparks that the Tesla Units have as their trademark. I am interested in the claim that entire rooms can be lit wirelessly for 100 Watts per hour, making the bulbs highly efficient and saving lots of energy from being wasted – no matter how many bulbs are used.

 

The concept that it makes no difference how many are being lit by the Coil, there is no added power drain and that fluorescent tubes will last for very extended periods make this avenue a great one to explore. If other wireless applications can also be run in the home from the same coil – such as possibly a heater or motor as well – still only drawing the exact same utility power from the wall no matter the load, the effort will not be wasted.

 

I am beginning to look at this as a way toward massive energy conservation for my energy independent house goal. Consider the possibilities if a single Kilowatt per hour Tesla Coil is all that is needed to run a house that originally needed over 10 KW per hour during some peak times. I am probably naïve to believe it would be simple, Tesla worked on this all his life, but then again all his laboratories were lit wirelessly by coils, so the possibility exists. Think of what that will do to the requirements for energy independence and to the nuclear and coal lobbyists trying to make the government allocate massive public investments for their ultimate profit at our expense and the world’s future grief – especially the nuclear lobby. If we can just find a safe alternative to using nuclear, I would rest a lot easier,

 

- it is better to go green than glow -

 

The medium Tesla Coil BTC30 – pre-built and tested costs 499.00 US plus, of course, the added extras of shipping and in my case duty and taxes. At least the Canadian Dollar has finally overtaken the US fiat currency and will be less of a hit on the credit card – think of it as my contribution to overcoming the trade deficit the US has with cheap products from China. Who knows, I may even help keep the country out of a recession with my Christmas list.

 

 

The second item on my wish list is a Stirling Engine application for wood burning stoves. It is a unit designed to use a Stirling engine to turn a fan and create better heating efficiency by moving the hot air around the room. The power comes from using the generated (and wasted – radiated) heat on the wood stove as it burns the fuel to heat. The fan just turns without electricity or other fuel and spreads the heat wealth to all areas. This is not a passive convection unit, but a true machine to make heat dissipation more efficient.

 

The big question people who know my home will ask: Why do you want this, you don’t have a wood burning stove to give heat. No argument there, but I want to see just how strong this fan mechanism really is. If I could remove the actual fan blades (or even just leave then there), and the unit is strong enough to rotate a small generator (we are talking hobbyist size, no large voltage just yet) it could offer avenues of research and design in whole new areas. I plan on using a Stirling Engine to run some form of home generator in my final plan, but finding one pre-built and properly sized is very difficult.

 

The only alternative open to me is to proceed with a study of Stirling engine manufacture. I do have books on the subject on their way, but it is always an incentive to me to see a running unit to help me visualize what I want to accomplish. The Stirling Engine Application that I have in mind is rather cheap, at 189.00 US or its cooler brother for 199.99 plus shipping and handling. It seems worth it to me to get one (or both), if only to add to my sometimes neglected collection of hobby steam engines. I already have a very small Stirling engine, but finding a way to use it is pretty difficult at the present time.

 

If you want to explore this practical application further, go to:

 

http://www.thermalengines.com/index.html

 

What I like best about this particular item is that they have authorized dealers listed to purchase the unit, and some of them are actually in Canada! Even if I don’t get one of these from Santa, I will definitely be getting one sometime in the new year to see how it works afterwards.

 

I figure since the unit is built to take the heat from a burning wood stove, it will also run on the heat thrown off by a regular stove burner. Our stove has a solid glass top over the burners, so I don’t really have to sit it right on top of a burner to get it working, but hopefully it will run on conducted heat beside the burner while we are cooking. It may not make a real difference in spreading heat from the burners to the rest of the kitchen, but it will be a lesson to see it run and experiment with possibilities for other applications.

 

Finally, my last wish presently on the short list, is to get my hands on the Solar House model kit offered for sale at:

 

http://www.electronickits.com/kit/complete/solar/solarhouse.htm

 

The 124.99 price sounds like a steal if it does all the things that it integrates. The picture shows a wind turbine, solar panels and lots of other information in the extensive literature accompanying the kit. It looks like just the thing to get a young student interested in the ways power can be generated in the modern household and how they can work together in a house that becomes self sustaining. OR, even possibly teach this old dog lots of new ways to do what he is trying to do!

 

I want to acknowledge the tireless efforts of the Google Alerts system for scouring the web every night while I sleep and providing me notifications of all the articles and blogs that use a given set of key words. I did the search manually for the Tesla Coil, but the Stirling Engine Fan and the Solar House kit are as a result of the output from these searches that come to me on a daily basis.

 

It never fails to astound me that there are so many other people who are also trying to push farther the boundaries of alternative energy production and reducing our critical and desperate reliance on oil to keep our civilization continuing. Isn’t it really about time we stopped exploiting less well developed countries and resources for fleeting needs. It is time to turn toward reliable, renewable uninterrupted power sources that can co-exist with the rest of nature without damaging the planet or its flora and fauna

I am sure by now it is pretty obvious I am strongly in favor of the use of the power from the sun, be it directly on a solar panel, through the power of the wind, or even as the result of weather patterns bringing water to a stream and allowing it to flow. Any of these manufactures useful energy without any harmful by-products that will eventually heavily impact our future generations in profound ways.

I must admit to being quite confused about the role of the ethanol debate for the farmer. I have made comments that it certainly has been there to get votes from the Mid-West bread belt to help their economics and win elections for people who really only want votes, not to actually move to an oil free state. But the original importance of alcohol as a fuel has never been made clear to me. I am now exploring the personal generation of alcohol as a fuel, both for generators and for the personal vehicle. I mentioned last week that the final outcome of generation an independent household will be quite a mix of present day technologies. I have previously ruled the use of ethanol out, but now, well…..I just don’t know!! One of the original factors was that it is often presented as a fuel that is manufactured and controlled by big business. But assuming a car is able to run on ethanol, if it is manufactured at home, the engine won’t tell, now will it? This is assuming the process is correct and product is of the same or better quality.

 

I also have quoted a great source of alternative energy books and information which has been gradually getting stronger and stronger as the months have passed, that being http://knowledgepublications.com where I have been purchasing large amounts of books and DVDs as they have been made available. These two different concepts have merged together with the sudden availability of a new book by David Blume called “Alcohol can be a Gas – Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the21st Century”

 

I admit to being a skeptic when dealing with any of the carbon based gasses as a replacement for our present supply from below the ground. I wasn’t able to see how this so called solution would help control global warming if you are releasing carbon right back into the environment with every ounce that is burnt. But, I am not close-minded enough to ignore anything that might be a useful resource in understanding a particular solution if offered in a cogent manner. I must admit that this is exactly what I found from a freely offered mpeg audio download that Stephen Harris, the operator of the website provided in some of his advertising for the book he is now marketing. It is a 49 minute audio recording of a regular syndicated radio program called “The Food Chain” Show with Michael Olson – the guests are David Blume (author) and Larry Mitchell of the Corn Growers of America.

 

http://free.knowledgepublications.com/david_blume_alcohol_book_knowledgepublications_dot_com.mp3

If that is too long for your browser as a single copy and paste, use:

http://www.knowledgepublications.com/easy.htm

 

This will get you to a very intriguing interview on the way Oil controls all competition to it by playing with pricing and stock. Let it roll and see what you think. The comment is made that prohibition was encouraged by Rockefeller to ensure that the farm production of ethanol was disabled and his product, gasoline was the winner in the energy wars at the turn of the last century.

 

For my personal consideration, as far as getting off the grid is concerned, the main difference with this type of fuel production is that it is a liquid. It can be stored in much different and more understood methods than hydrogen can as a gas. Will it completely replace my interest in hydrogen? Not a chance, but in my circumstances, a city dweller looking to produce my own energy on a clean and environmentally friendly manner, every rational avenue will be explored.

 

I have no access to a river or stream for hydro-power generation or the ability to simply mount a wind turbine. Identifying a source that provides the constant production of a liquid fuel, able to run any type of motor, such as an automobile engine or a smaller generator, when the sun isn’t shining makes quite a bit of sense. It certainly can be viewed as a reserve fuel, if the system is designed correctly. But, it could be the difference that makes dark winter nights off the grid as comfortable as a shiny spring day with the temperature at a comfortable 70 – 75 degrees (F).

 

The comment is made on the file that Corn, or many other even more efficient crops binds solar power, carbon dioxide and soil nutrients into the growing vegetation. When you create alcohol, you do withdraw carbon from the plant and when you burn it, you release carbon to the atmosphere. But you only need the starch from the plant.

 

The other actual nutritional parts such as proteins and fats required by farm livestock remain in the leftover parts after the ethanol process has run its course. This is a better growth food for cattle than harvested crops where no processing has been done. The end product after ethanol generation cannot be used as 100% feed, it must be mixed into regular food for proper feed. The ethanol production is not a destructive procedure. It is just a step in front of the actual human and livestock use of the crop for nutritional requirements. In this way the amount of waste is reduced and a very useful fuel is created.

 

What I had previously missed is that when the alcohol is used as a fuel the released carbon does not add to the greenhouse gasses present when the crop was grown, but it is recycled back into our lives. I understand that there is not an overall reduction, but it is once again made available to grow more plants – the use of ethanol is not an additive function – but is basically an exact wash. No more carbon is added to the environment when the whole process is considered, and no reduction is made. Those statements cannot be made by Big Oil, every drop extracted from the ground and then processed to be burned adds more carbon and toxins to the environment, and nothing in their work flow gets bound to be removed by the process.

 

David Blume does state, that given a total elimination of carbon production from oil, the planet can absorb the carbon that is still in excess at present and move to a more sustainable equilibrium. Of course if we were to advocate and enhance industries that actually remove carbon, to be used as useful products and then include those as part of an ethanol production at the farm or home level, then the overall accounts reduce over time.

 

I don’t like the idea of using any fuel that adds carbon emissions to the already devastating load being produced by the combustion of gas for whatever reason. I also must admit to the idea that a fuel that is recycling the same carbon in an endless loop that neither increases the quantity or decreases it is still a much more desirable method of energy usage. Since it also looks like it could be developed as a personal resource, independent of oil, to help take up any slack required when pure energy production is not possible makes it a worthy candidate for an economy struggling for Energy with-out Oil.

 

 

Trying to define the direction to proceed – II

 

I very much doubt another Tesla will rise to fulfill the dream of free energy for all, big business will squelch that vision as fast as it did the original. With that as a jump-off point, it is time to move exactly to the opposite – provide each person with his own ability to provide all the personal power he/she requires to deal with the life he/she is presented. To do this, we need the following building blocks

- A power source

- A way to store excess power if/when that source is unavailable

- A generation mechanism to translate the stored energy into kinetic

- Energy conserving appliances to make the most of personal power

 

In my previous weeks’ comments, I have outlined some sources, all from the point of view of the typical consumer who needs the machine made for me. I admit freely, I am a terrible handyman. I want to buy the system and get it to run tomorrow, but something like that isn’t even close to ready. If we are lucky, we will begin to find pieces and parts that can be put into a single workable team for power generation and usage. The aim of this blog is to identify a safe system and provide the details for other terrible handymen who want to reduce or eliminate our dependency on oil as swiftly as possible.

 

Everyone has their pet theories and beliefs to guide them. I have made a few assumptions that are there to guide me toward fulfilling my goal of being energy self sufficient in the city. There are a few other glaring truths that have to be accepted as well.

 

1) Since I have no stream on my small lot, hydro power is out

2) Wind turbines are too loud for neighbors – and there isn’t very much wind in my area anyway

3) Solar Power is the only initial and plentiful energy that is available

4) The sun doesn’t shine every day – so storage of excess power is a must

5) I prefer to use the sun to produce hydrogen and store it in ecologically friendly containers.

6) Electrolysis is the most available method – although granted it does take a lot of energy to create hydrogen

7) I am open to the use of Browns Gas instead of Hydrogen wherever it makes sense in the system

8) I believe that most of the technology required for energy conversion has been invented/perfected over 100 years ago, it remains to integrate that into a viable and safe home system

9) I need a lot of power to stay in my personal preferred lifestyle – the idea here is not to conserve, the idea is to make more than I need at any given time

10) I like the idea of the Stirling Engine over the standard combustion engine to power the generator or turbine

11) Initially, I need only produce electricity to run my home – once that is accomplished, the focus will turn to acquiring an electric car and charging it from the home system. Once that is accomplished I truly will be living the Energy with-out Oil lifestyle (or creating any carbon footprint at all). Electricity will be the only energy required – and it will be entirely carbon free.

12) Once the first system is built it will be much easier to produce a second and then more until the rest of the world is living the Energy with-out Oil lifestyle as well

 

One final thought, which stems from the many personal development books and tapes I have read and absorbed, especially derived from DVD – CD – Book the Secret – the Law of Attraction which holds:

The universe is abundant – not scarce

 

There is more than enough energy there for everyone to use and still the universe will have more than enough left over – in all probability what I use will never even be noticed – in all probability it will be more than replaced faster than it can be used.

 

Tesla was trying to tap that, I am not in his league, but I want to make my small contribution in that direction if at all possible, if only to help persuade others that is has a viable case in favor of it.

 

I am still open to other possibilities for generating the energy we need, the only real overall guideline is that it must eliminate oil from the scene. We don’t need to continue to ad any more carbon to the atmosphere than is already present, so let’s see what we can do to derive Energy with-out Oil

Trying to define the direction to proceed

The problem with alternative energy sources is that everyone has an opinion. Some will be right and some will be downright wrong as far as saving the planet from the predations of man’s oil addiction. I fully believe no matter how universal the concept of energy conservation may become in our lifetime, our bad habits will overcome the best intentions to live the simple life. Each type of alternate energy production will gain its proponents, and hopefully some will become meaningful additions to a world of Energy with-out Oil.

 

We will need more and more energy to power all the things we need to make our lives “better”. The basic necessities are a given, with the rising population, the energy cost for each will rise. Other unforeseen energy gluttons will emerge, such as the requirement for air conditioning at both poles as well as the entire rest of the planet’s surface as global warming makes it uncomfortable for anyone to stay outside in the heat we will be forced to endure. At the rate we are polluting our atmosphere we will need to grow crops underground in vast cooled caverns as we desecrate the outdoors with totally unpredictable weather and natural disasters through carbon emissions. Consider where the light for the massive amounts of photosynthesis will come from. Of course we will need to cook and keep everything clean and tidy with the use of more and more machines that do our work for us, but demand as payment energy to operate.

 

Wherever we turn, we will be faced with a rising tide of energy dependency that will not go away.

 

So how do we satisfy this need for ever increasing energy dependence presently satisfied by dwindling and serious polluting fossil fuels with the available methodology of some form of renewable energy. The US government and big business have decided there are two basic answers, fuel cells and ethanol. From where I sit, ethanol is at best a stopgap until the planet refuses to allow plant growth on its fields, either due to drought or turbulent and uncontrollable weather patterns. But come what may, crop efficiency is going to drop as the effects of carbon pollution increase and magnify the problems we now face.

 

So where is there abundant energy available to be tapped? Basically it will all have to come – one way or another – from the sun, so let’s hope our pitiful efforts at destroying the planet do not spread to include that furnace. Solar Power is basically being overlooked. The predominant alternative energy source right now is wind. It fits right into big business’s view – the J.P. Morgan quote epitomizing that attitude, “Where can do you put the meter?” as he pulled the plug on Nikola Tesla’s attempt to provide free energy to the New York. You can’t put a meter on a receiving antenna, But with a wind turbine, all you need to do is plug it into the existing power grid and sell it for the same price as carbon generated electricity. Wind turbines for the local city house are not very practical, and their noise is not to be tolerated by jealous neighbors for the sake of some green power they don’t think they need (Not in my backyard).

 

Solar power lags behind because it is inherently independent of the grid. It produces power extremely locally and is designed to be used in very specific and defined areas. It doesn’t travel well, but simply reacts to the rays of the sun when they are available. If an individual owns his source of power, how can business and government steal a share with no effort and produce a burgeoning bureaucracy. They want to have any energy created spoonfed to them for their profit, and it is quite a problem to do that reliably with solar. The problem for the individual is that the photovoltaic cell is expensive to produce, even though they will basically repay the owner many times over over the course of their working life. The actual manufacture, distribution and installation of panels is expensive – once that is done, the cost is miniscule. People are given no incentives to go that way here in Canada.

 

Water movement has been used for centuries, paddlewheels and turbines, all can be driven by water movement, and this need not be stopped by the diurnal periods of sunlight. In temperate climates, the seasonal nature of our world does play havoc with steady, constant energy production. As the rivers and streams freeze into the Great White North (at least for the present), any steady power generation disappears until the spring thaw brings back the water current to drive the turbines.

 

What about making a fuel biologically? I am not talking about the attempt to supercede gasoline with corn “gas”, that is just trading one carbon source for another, but it does win votes in the Midwest from farmers who can make a bundle growing it while the consumer must pay higher food costs from the diversion of a foodstuff into fuel. Global warming is the excessive addition of carbon to our atmosphere, how does ethanol eliminate that problem? It may be slightly less toxic, renewable instead of the ground, but it is still producing carbon emissions that are going to cause the same problems we see with oil.

 

No. Biologically created fuel must be fundamentally carbon free to be a true alternative energy option for our planet. I have seen a few articles about making hydrogen from algae. I have been given extensive references on the topic from a very helpful source in the UK. But, just like every other alternative, it has yet to be made commercially viable, and it is still in the laboratory. I can see where the logistics of this is very difficult and research is expensive, but the ultimate advantage is that fuel is created for transportation and later use. This is fundamentally different from creating electrical energy from Solar Panels and Wind Turbines only when the sun shines and the winds blow. It skips the electrolysis or other methodologies required to produce hydrogen from the energy input units of the system. If either sun or wind is missing, the original energy input to the system is gone. At least with hydrogen production from plants, the hydrogen is a primary product and can be stored for later use. The same original energy input argument is valid, in the case of plants, though, the hydrogen can only be made when the sun allows photosynthetic style activities.

 

The standard thesis is that Energy must be created in abundant quantities for two purposes:

 

1) We must make electricity to act as the lifeblood of the common human sedentary tasks – heating the home and office, powering machinery for productive work and leisure, etc.

2) A secondary suitable energy format must be developed in a form that allows the human spirit to break away from sedentary pursuits and travel for both work and pleasure as required.

 

We must power our homes and factories with electricity and provide movement with a suitable fuel to the present transportation devices – or devise radically new ones that can exploit any advantageous features of the new fuel. However we produce and use that fuel, it must be in an ecologically clean manner that adds nothing toxic to our environment. There is nothing that precludes these two requirements from being solved by a single source rather than two.

 

Nikola Tesla is truly the father of the world we inhabit. He devised the actual wisdom, roadmap and machinery that ushered in the Age of Electricity. As a modern man, we all have benefited from that genius. It is impossible to retreat back to the days where this electricity source was not readily available to North America and Europe. If you want to try it, simply remember back to the feelings of utter helplessness when electricity is cut off for even for a very short time. The very fabric of civilization as we know it relies completely on this power – the communication and information world we inhabit has eliminated many skills our forefathers required to survive.

 

Few would survive the sudden imposition of a life without electrical power and the machines that are required to support it once more. My family lived through the Ice Storm of 1998 that crippled most of Quebec in late December and early January. If there is any reason for wanting to become energy independent, this is a very strong case for it. Global warming will play havoc on all things, and there is little change in the delivery of electricity to the grid in Quebec that will categorically prevent similar problems happening when another perfect storm comes this way again.

 

It was Tesla’s insistence on the benefits of Alternating Current that have allowed us to provide electricity almost everywhere we need it – for a price, although that was not his intention. Using the power of powerful water flows is the way he tackled providing power to New York City, and these mighty turbines spinning constantly in Niagara Falls still offer New York its main power supply. A strong effort should be made to take his thoughts and finding to his logical conclusion and deliver energy world wide – J.P. Morgan may have made his family and friends billions on the backs of the poor by ensuring he got a piece of every volt produced, but he also denied the world the access to free energy that Tesla envisioned. His vision included electrically driven planes and vehicles that never ran out of fuel, they received their motive power from invisible electrical power flowing from the air or earth to an electrical polyphase motor through an antenna. This vision eliminates the need for the second energy source, a fuel, to be required. Everything runs on electricity ubiquitously available to each world citizen.

 

In this vision, according to big business, megalomaniacal bankers and elite power brokers, the world fall apart, capitalism would be undermined and anarchy would run amuck. (They wouldn’t be able to make predatory profits) They would scare you with apocalyptical predictions of doom, have you believe that democracy would crumble as the requirement of power as a salable commodity is eliminated as a necessary cost of living. They will put democracy up as what will be sacrificed when that is exactly what they have been trying to undermine all along. The elite wish they could turn the world into a socialist mass of sheep that can be easily controlled by completely and restrictively controlling the availability of power, or food, or shelter, stripping everyone of the freedom of choice, competition and making people forget their privilege of exercising democracy within their lives. They have always been trying to become the ruling elite.

 

In the Solar Hydrogen Civilization, Roy McAlister claims many millionaires a day will be made – the problem for the establishment is that they couldn’t control such a sudden redistribution of wealth. The old ruling elite won’t be able to adjust or clamp strangling controls on them if the money and power shifts away from the “old boys” network suddenly.

 

With technology providing a power source to the individual, I tend to doubt that democracy wil disappear, in fact it is the worst possible scenario for the power elite and organizations that thrive on fear and disinformation. Each world citizen’s standard of living would rise enormously and the need for appliances for each would certainly make the economic markets revolve, evolve and continue to grow. Manufacture of goods would be cheaper and ecologically viable.

 

Communication, Tesla’s other great gift, would take the place of isolation and cultures would meet and have to adapt to each other, rather than simply collide with no recourse for discussion. Especially, assuming a solution that ignores nuclear power and it’s over riding inherent dangers; the ability for terrorists to obtain nuclear weapons of mass destruction. This would offer the opportunity for the ultimate sharing and blending of culture to a worldwide peace formulated from understanding – again scaring the religious terrorists as their power over humanity would be diminished as hate subsides to understanding. As time goes by, people would begin to share a common good and finally understand the way governments are controlled by the power hungry elite and eliminate their propaganda and reduce their harmful influence on civilization for the common people.

 

Of course the need to fight to secure energy resources would vanish, and much of the plans for world domination would become vacuous. Invasion of another country for dwindling resources would become irrelevant. Terrorism of energy supply, the main target for most would vanish. Would this cure all the ills of the world? Don’t be naïve, angry radical men and women will always find a “cause” to use as a road to power, fame glory or revenge, but it would be much more difficult, especially since the other threat to the world, nuclear power would be eliminated. If there is no need for a nuclear power plant, where would the extremists get the ingredients of a bomb to try to bring humanity to its knees to suit someone’s personal vision of the way it must be.

 

I very much doubt another Tesla will rise to fulfill the dream of free energy for all, big business will squelch that vision as fast as it did the original. With that as a jump-off point, it is time to move exactly to the opposite – provide each person with his own ability to provide all the personal power he/she requires to deal with the life he/she is presented. To do this, we need the following building blocks

- a power source,

- a way to store excess power if/when that source is unavailable and

- a generation mechanism to translate the stored energy into kinetic.

 

I start off on this tangential discussion from one of the articles that came into my mailbox frm Google Alerts – I highly recommend using them to make a daily search of the web for any topic of interest. I am seeing lots from the various alternative energy keywords I have entered.

This is a reaction to a letter published at www.shetland-news.co.uk –

“Hydrogen inefficient and dangerous” – Sarah McBurnie

http://www.shetland-news.co.uk/letters_09_2007/Hydrogen%20inefficient%20and%20dangerous.htm

I love this article, not because it expresses ideas that I want to hear, but because it got me looking around at alternatives to alternative fuels. I must admit I have experimented with the production of the gas that Ms. McBurnie mentions, Brown’s gas. In the heady days when I first wanted to take my city house off the grid really fast, and I saw no reason why it couldn’t be done by just anyone on a whim, my first electrolyser produced what I believe was Brown’s Gas.

Splitting water by electrolysis and then transporting and burning the result as a fuel is a wonderful idea. I worked really hard to try to get a reasonable electrode set that was far enough apart to passively split the two outputs (oxygen and hydrogen) to separate areas and then burn the hydrogen, but it was very difficult and obviously my design was not optimal. Unfortunately, there are no commercially available small electrolysers for home use with solar panels yet, so experimentation and individual experimentation is the norm. More about that in a later article I have in mind, but let me continue this train of thought. If there is anyone out there who knows of a small production model electrolyser for solar panels please let me know.

As the price of gas climbed, I also found a product called the Hydro-Gen sold by:

http://www.savefuel.ca

At least this is a production model on the market and available – not a promise that never seems to come available. I ended up buying two of them early on, they are a short round PVC pipe unit that takes its power from the battery output and uses it to break water down to its base components – it then sends the resulting gas through a clear plastic tube into the air intake.

I ran one of the units in the car for the better part of two summers. Right now I think my car is sitting dead in the garage as a result of the draw on the alternator it made while it was running, but there is the possibility that a wire was eaten away by the catalytic agent and that is the reason. When economics permit, I will be seeing a mechanic to see what is really wrong.

The idea is great, use an electrolyte (potassium hydroxide – also known as caustic potash) in a concentration set to draw output of the alternator of 20 Amps. This will split water and the resulting mild pressure will send the resulting mix of gasses into the carburetor through the air intake. It is up to you to define that correct concentration, the only informal unit gauge is a plastic tube on the side to show how much liquid is left in the “tank”.

By circumstance, I added a more serious problem for the unit, the car I installed it on is stored during the Canadian winter in my garage. Even though we have global warming, making the winters warmer than in the past, it stills seems to freeze the glue cementing the pipes which allows the units to leak at all their joints. I always left one in the sports car stored unused in the freezing temperatures of Montreal winters. I changed the first out after the first winter and used the second one. So, I have never been sure if the unit worked correctly and sent gas to the engine for increased mileage – it never ran continuously long enough to do any serious testing, but it sure felt better to be running it. Subjectively, I had more power for the car.

The pilot light also blew out twice, so I was never sure if the Hydro-Gen was actually running or not because the lamp was not lit. It may have been actually working, but without a light and the gauge not showing any amperage draw, I had to assume a problem with the unit. The high water refill rate was either due to the Turbo on the 300 ZX drawing the solution through the engine, or it simply leaked out through the lower joints of PVC pipe and cap. Right now the car is in my garage, dead, with a required alternator replacement still required to get the car started. So I can’t go forward with that at all.

In all fairness to www.savefuel.ca and John Bolle, the owner of the site, there are now a numberof other models, some of them metal enclosures that will not leak, so he has addressed the problem. the units are larger and for larger output, so I can’t use one….the car I have just barely allows the original into it. The name has also changed to Oxy-Hydrogen as far as I can tell.

So I have used and worked with Browns Gas, and for what it is worth, I see it as a viable fuel, all things considered. The only problem is that it is a mix of hydrogen and oxygen. I see it as a wet, temporary gas that will not store the same way pure hydrogen will. And, creating home pressure systems to use the gas as suggested in both the article and the various supplemental reading seems as dangerous as handling pressurized hydrogen.

 

But the article does list a great many of Brown’s gas advantages for the home: safety and ease of use being the main ones. Intrigued by the claims, I went and dug a little bit deeper – just like all fuels, it has its admirers and its detractors. Both sides are vehement in their opinions.

 

I did a little more exploring – the main person I have since found as a proponent was Dr. Yull Brown – he is now dead, according to the sales comments to promote purchase of the video interviews for sale at:

 

http://www.nottaughtinschools.com/index.html

 

But there are a lot of videos on various aspects of Browns gas – some I would guess are unauthorized uploads of the product they want to sell above to You Tube.

Back to the article that started this train of thought. The links associated with the article by Ms. McBurnie show the problem with Alternative energy as a whole. Little if any solid evidence is forthcoming, and everyone is automatically a fraud.

 

The first link from the article starts with an apology from a company who makes machines – stated as poor quality at the outset. The link then moves to an article totally critical of both Yull Brown and the gas he proposes – which according to the other links, he basically stole….but then, everything I have seen in this area is an old idea made new again anyway, so I would prefer to ignore the flame throwers and look at the actual fuel.

The unicorn of a water powered car is also used as a link. I saw these articles quite a while ago, and I sure wish they would move forward and get practical, but so far, everything is very nebulous and still not even close to proven or viable.

 

Read from the article’s set of 11 points, Browns gas is a great solution for an alternative fuel. But, from a practical ongoing product state, nothing is there as a solution. I do like the idea for instant energy, being produced by solar and wind power directly and then used to power either a Stirling engine, steam turbine or more exotic form of electrical generation for a single home application. The problem, as I see it, is that it won’t store very well. Being able to generate hydrogen and pressurize it into a storage tank as a longer term battery storage would be important for 24/7 power requirements after the sun sets or the wind takes some time off. I don’t discount her points listed in the article here, just do not see this as the perfect solution for total grid elimination. But – it could very well be a part of the final machinery.

 

As I said at the outset, I love this article, it is wonderfully enthusiastic and ebullient, but if you simply follow the links just a little, it becomes high time to come back to earth and realize if this is going to be in the solution at all, it will be as a part, it can’t solve it all. I am not looking to use it to weld or cure cement, we need a way to power a generator for reliable power supplied for an individual home – that is the aim of Energy with-out Oil

 

I intend to go to the past for many of my ideas, not rely on sudden epiphanies that require a country’s worth of resources to make a few rich. The past holds many of the keys we will need to free ourselves. Nikola Tesla created the AC power supply we all depend on for our way of life. Given a trusting environment, he would have offered mankind a way to free ourselves of energy dependency – he saw the universe as overflowing with energy, the more you tapped the more there was. If Edison had not interfered and J.P. Morgan simply supported him until he saw no way to personally profit, his legacy would probably be one of prosperity and peace for the planet. That is what I read into his discourse “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy” printed in Century Illustrated magazine, 1900.

As mentioned in my first installment – September 08, 2007, during which I outlined the basic premise of this commentary, I am looking for ways to get the small individual free from the sticky addiction to oil. I am a firm believer that we already have the technology outlined to shake the bonds and reach for the ideals of safe, environmentally neutral energy production. As a group of individuals we need to find ways to implement the technologies of the late 19^th century and make the transition to clean energy in the 21^st.

 

All through my searches, I see all kinds of governmental incentives for the U.S. states to develop alternate sources of energy. The slowly growing groundswell of opinion and comments makes me believe it is beginning to drive the flow of research towards new ways to generate power for people. The problem for me, is that in Quebec, where most of the electricity is made through hydro-electric power anyway, there are no incentives for going away from the power supply. I can only hope that in the near future, that will change.

 

The idea of offering incentives to get free of the present power deployment structure is not necessarily what big business wants. I also believe, in many cases, the research seems quite tangential, safe for the big corporations to pursue since they have made it so complex that no-one small will be able to duplicate it. Why so much devotion to the flaws of the fuel cell? It is expensive, untried and technologically complex. But it sure is eating up the research dollars when there are so many other more available possibilities for the individual to pursue.

 

The Saturn EV1 was a viable electric vehicle that gained so much consumer loyalty that the death of the vehicle by crushing was documented in the film “Who killed the Electric car?” If you have not seen it, it is an experience that should be a requirement for every consumer. In essence the clean air act was killed by the car companies offering the golden carrot of fuel cell technology and destroying a very efficient and low cost alternative, if it had been allowed to grow naturally.

 

Why kill a viable and popular technology for something that is in the distant future. Why not simply fill the car with plugged in power and concentrate on making that power from other renewable resources. The electrical supply will still have to be dealt with, but the smoke and mirrors of fuel cells makes that a job for the future and will of course have to be done in record time at record profit for the contractors who land it.

 

From what I know of fuel cells, the materials that are required are certainly not renewable, and the environmental benefit is, to my way of thinking, questionable at best. Why not concentrate on putting present day photovoltaic on every roof, create a weatherproof PV film to bond onto the cars’ roofs and recharge a battery whenever the sun shines – it may not be exotic like a fuel cell, but we know the technology is there and although expensive, will pay for itself over its decades long life.

 

But what if the need for a battery evaporated, here the fuel cell is the magic bullet of the large research corporations, high tech, space age and fantastic! Definitely not something within the normal individual’s capacity to produce. It is so perfect for business to “provide” at a generous profit – $6000.00 for less than a 2000 hour service life (quoted price from Build a Solar Hydrogen Fuel Cell System” e-book by Phillip Hurley – copyright 2004 from Wheelock Mountain Publications).

 

http://www.goodideacreative.com/wheelockmtn.html

 

I quote from page 246, second paragraph: At the time of this writing, new 1 KW stacks can be purchased for around $6,000.00 to 8,000.00. Used units of the same output may cost around 4,000.00 to 6000.00. Most current stacks have an operating life of 1500 to 2000 hours. More expensive units can go above the 2000 hour range.”

 

Why not take water and electrolyse it into hydrogen then store that in a pressurized cylinder to be used as needed to run a generator to recreate electricity for the habitat on demand. Fanciful? Yes, at the present time. Electrolysis from water is not the most efficient way to make hydrogen, but then it is a very clean way, with no other by-products than oxygen. In the interests of completeness, electrolysis can be made easier and less energy intensive with catalysts that are toxic and sometimes dangerous, but to my thinking, spending resources on making the proper safety structures failsafe would be much cheaper than constantly replacing short lived membranes of fuel cells so often.

 

I will gladly trade a bit of inefficiency for a cleaner planet. Many would say why not extract hydrogen from oil and gas instead, it is plentiful there, but nothing has been gained by this and our resources will continue to be depleted.

 

I have seen other ways to create hydrogen – there are patents using aluminum wire and spinning drums presently powering entire African villages and various methodologies from the book I suggested in my last entry from Knowledge Publications –

 

http://www.knowledgepublications.com

 

“The Chemistry and Manufacture of Hydrogen” by P. Litherland Teed, published for the first time in 1919 as an extensive overview of creating huge amounts of hydrogen to be used in wartime for observation balloons. The main considerations were the amount of material required and the portability of them to the battlefield. I confess I am not a chemist, and much of the book would be unavailable to me if it had not been for the companion DVD made by Stephen Harris and Roy McAlister going over the book chapter by chapter. It is a strong argument that what we need to do is delve properly into past technologies to help free ourselves of energy dependence on foreign powers that are not interested in promoting a healthy environment for all our subsequent generations to inhabit.

 

http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1900-06-00.htm

 

It is Tesla’s generators that operate still in Niagara Falls, providing power to New York. We need to adapt the technology to individual applications. Using hydrogen as a fuel, to burn and create steam is a strong possibility, a safe controlled steam turbine is a distinct possibility. But, other old technologies can be brought to bear as well. The Stirling engine does not need to be powered by steam, it needs a single heat source to drive the engine. That can be as minimal as sunlight through a directed Fresnel lens, or a controlled burn of hydrogen applied during the times the sun is not available directly. How about simply wiring the electricity generated from a Solar Panel or wind turbine to a hearter coil inside the “hot” end of a Stirling engine to provide power to the cylinders. The motion can be transferred to a generator to generate electricity for household or even vehicular transportation.

 

The problem with Stirling engines is that they aren’t available in the power that makes sense for running either a house or a car. On the American Stirling Engine website:

 

http://www.stirlingengine.com

 

There is lots of good stuff on the topic. What is interesting is that Dean Kamen, developer of the Segway transporation device is shown with the president of American Stirling in an article suggesting that the Segway may soon be equipped with a commercially produced Stirling Engine. Something all of us people interested in the free generation of energy would be ecstatic to see.

 

http://www.stirlingengine.com/FullPower.adp

 

Maybe soon these assorted technologies and ideas that were essentially suppressed and forgotten for a century will begin to become more common and easier to develop. Miniature power plants for each home, running electric generators for the world’s ever-growing hunger for power are the future, and a resuscitation of past unexplored pathways for non-polluting and renewable energy from the genius of the past. We simply need to look at, and adapt the brilliant ideas before the lure of cheap and abundant oil and gasoline shut down our human curiosity for a century and allowed us to ruin the environment we leave to our children. Time to wake up and get back on the road to renewable and safe energy.