Energy Density of Automotive Fuels: Electricity Trails Badly

Exxon Mobil via New Energy and Fuel
The most striking thing about the graphic above is the poor performance by today's automotive electrical storage devices. Liquid fuels far outperform electrical storage in terms of energy density -- range of travel between refuelings. Until better electrical storage devices are developed and delivered -- which may take decades -- liquid fuels will be demanded by discriminating drivers.

...contrast the 300 to 400 miles that a gasoline vehicle can take you with what it would take to do the same in an electric vehicle. Electric vehicle batteries have just a fraction of the energy density of gasoline, meaning they would have to be charged multiple times during a 400-mile trip. There’s currently no major infrastructure for charging electric vehicles on the road, and it can take hours for an electric vehicle battery to charge.

Consumers at times may take for granted the convenience and time-savings offered by the existing fuel station network. The technological processes that recover crude oil from the earth, transport it to refineries, refine it into gasoline and diesel, transport it to fuel stations and store it over time are so incredibly advanced that consumers can fill up with gasoline 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in as many quantities as necessary. That’s a convenience that does not currently exist with other transportation fuels.

...One of our top scientists uses the analogy of backpacking when talking about the importance of energy density: You want to buy the lightest, most easily carried food for backpacking, but it also needs to contain a lot of energy to keep you going. Likewise, gasoline and diesel are the lightest and most energy-dense fuels to carry for transportation. A typical car’s gasoline tank contains less than 100 pounds of gasoline but can power a 3,000 pound car for 400 miles at 60 miles per hour. This performance sets a high standard, and there are few transportation fuels currently on the market that are as light, energy dense and portable as gasoline or diesel. _EMblog via Brian Westenhaus

In the future, the development of lightweight advanced fuel cells running on liquid fuels will shift the equation toward the use of electric motors. But liquid fuels will still be valued for their high energy density, compared to electrical storage.

Super-hybrid vehicles utilising fuel cells, supercapacitors, and chemical storage batteries are likely to play a part in the future vehicular mix. All of those components will be necessary just to match the performance of the internal combustion engine running on liquid fuels.

But with far fewer moving mechanical parts, once such systems are perfected they should have fewer maintenance problems, and may have longer useful lifetimes.

All Electric Cars? Not a Good Bet

Electric storage batteries cannot store enough energy to transport an electric powered automobile very far. This is a serious drawback, and one of the reasons that some people are predicting that it may be more than 50 years before electric cars are taken seriously by most of the buying public.

Brian Westenhaus takes a look at new competition for EESTOR, the maker of a mysterious hybrid battery : supercapacitor. He discusses a "Reticle Carbon", a new electrode material for ultracapacitors that may give electric cars a big boost. As described by Brian, the technology looks fascinating. They may have to wait for financing, however, in this extreme economic slowdown of 2009.

One California startup plans to boost the range of electric cars by placing charging machines at convenient locations. They call them "vending machines for charging electric cars." An important development for California, where daily commutes can be far and long.

For those wondering, Elon Musk's Tesla electric car is still out there working, planning to make a big splash soon.

Hybrids are a necessary link in the development chain, combining internal combustion engines with electric motors. Here is an interesting look at the hybric car, going back to the 1800s.

Some electric car enthusiasts are promoting a "battery swapping" approach to extending range, but executives at Mercedes are giving that idea a thumbs down. Mercedes is promoting permanent lithium ion batteries with a driving range of just over 100 miles.

The bottom line is that traditional internal combustion engine automobiles are in no immediate danger of being replaced by all-electric cars. So far, hybrids have not lived up to their promise, and are more expensive in both short and long term calculations, when taking into account battery replacement.

Al Fin's prediction? Fuel cells that run on all types of hydrocarbon including ethanol and methanol will begin to replace the ICE within 10 years. The new power plants may very well also incorporate newer, lighter hybrid ultracapacitor : battery storage packs for extended boosting power when passing or accelerating onto a turnpike. Fuel cells are on a rapid developmental trajectory, as are ultracapacitors and batteries. But all electric autos are an impractical solution looking for a cause. Only carbon hysteria delusions underlie the persistent demands for all-electric cars.

Energy Briefs

ZeaChem and Coskata are promising high volume bio-ethanol at US $1 a gallon, by 2012. New Canadian startup Syntec promises even cheaper bio-ethanol--40 cents a gallon.

The Syntec B2A technology, initially developed at the University of British Columbia, is focused on second-generation cellulosic ethanol production. The Syntec process parallels the low-pressure catalytic synthesis process used by methanol producers. Syntec's innovative technology uses any renewable waste biomass such as hard or soft wood, sawdust or bark, organic waste, agricultural waste (including sugar cane bagasse and corn stover), and switch-grass to produce syngas. This syngas, comprised of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, is then scrubbed and passed through a fixed bed reactor containing the Syntec catalysts to produce ethanol, methanol and higher order alcohols. The Syntec technology can also produce alcohols from biogas (sourced from anaerobic digestion of manure and effluent), landfill gas or stranded methane.__NextEnergy

Better information regarding the efficiencies of biofuels indicates that recent articles published in Science that were extremely critical of biofuels efficiencies, were highly misleading. The category of "biofuels" is too wide, varied, and inclusive to be susceptible to simplistic analyses such as were presented in the articles referred to by the link above.

The waste heat from internal combustion engines used in passenger and freight vehicles could be put to better use than heating the atmosphere. Honda is looking to put heat-mining technology in its hybrid vehicles.

Honda is exploring the use of a Rankine cycle co-generation unit to improve the overall efficiency of a hybrid vehicle by recapturing waste exhaust heat from the internal combustion engine and converting it to electricity to recharge the battery pack. Honda engineer Kensaku Yamamoto presented an overview of the work in a paper at the 2008 SAE Hybrid Vehicle Technology Symposium in San Diego.

Test results showed that in 100 kph (62 miles/hour) constant-speed driving, the use of the Rankine cycle improved the thermal efficiency of the engine by 3.8%. In the US highway cycle, the Rankine cycle system regenerated three times as much energy as the vehicle’s regenerative braking system.___GCC __via_Ecogeek

Hopeful discoveries in gas storage technology may make gas-phase powered vehicles more feasible.

In the case of gas storage, MOFs offer the crucial advantage of soaking up some of the gas pressure exerted by the molecules. This makes hydrogen derived from non-fossil energy sources such as biomass, or even genetically engineered plants, potentially viable as a fuel for cars while the alternative of pressurised canisters is not, says Ferey. The key difference is that the amount of gas stored in a conventional cylinder at say 200 atmospheres pressure could be accommodated in an MOF vessel of the same size at just 30 atmospheres, which is much safer...The porous nature of MOFs enables them to be exploited in quite another way as catalysts to accelerate chemical reactions for a wide variety of materials production and pharmaceutical applications, although this field, as Ferey noted, is still in its infancy. ____Source

This technology will likely require another ten or more years to become available for production model vehicles. By then, it is likely that series hybrids powered by bio:fuel cells will be common, incorporating a number of different ways of capturing waste heat to re-charge auxiliary batteries and super-capacitors.