[ExI] Dark Matter

spike spike66 at att.net
Thu Nov 14 06:38:11 UTC 2013


 

 

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 7:43 PM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] Dark Matter

 

On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 3:56 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>>.Highway 50 has enormous potential as a showcase location for ground based
solar.  It's about 600 km of paved two-lane with a good solid base under it
and very little rain, little cloud cover ever out there in that big old
desert.  What we could do is use all those Chinese PV factories' output,
install ground based PV a km or more either side of the road, collect the
power every km or so, use the power to convert low-grade bituminous coal
from Wyoming and Utah or biomass from California's Central Valley to liquid
hydrocarbon fuel.  Autonomous trucks would haul in water and feedstock, then
haul out Diesel oil.  Since the trucks are autonomous, we could use smaller
trucks to preserve the road, or even do stuff like taking standard tanker
trucks and retrofitting the big Diesel engines with smaller ones so that the
trucks cruise at 80 kph instead of the usual 110-130, so that alone would
nearly double the fuel economy in hauling out synfuel. 

 

>.Better: pipelines.  Since you have a stationary power source, let the
water & feedstock flow in and the fuel out.  Over flat enough land, angle
them so the water & feedstock pipes go down, and the fuel pipe up, about a
centimeter for every kilometer horizontally, and you might be able to pool
the fuel & have water/feedstock pumped out at existing towns, possibly piped
straight to gas stations, greatly decreasing the infrastructure needed.

 

 

I think you are onto something there, me lad.  We grind the biomass and
create a slurry, then send the feedstock and water together in a pipe.  I
need to work out that economic model.  I know how much tanker trucks cost,
don't know much about pipe costs.

 

spike

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20131113/35fd6a9d/attachment.html>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list