[ExI] Dark Matter

[Kelly Anderson]

On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 8:43 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 3:56 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>
>>  Highway 50 had 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.
>>
>
Not a bad idea. As long as you can fund it with kickstarter instead of gov
dollars... LOL


>  Better: pipelines.
>

Pipelines are better, though if you are talking about oil shale, I don't
know if that would be easy to pump through pipes, even as a slurry. Maybe
the autonomous trucks or a train


> 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.
>

The only gas station shown on Google maps in the 152 miles between Delta,
Utah and Ely, Nevada is three miles off the road in Baker, NV. Google
street views shows that it has two pumps and no permanent attendant. There
isn't even a door on the gas station.
http://goo.gl/maps/jAC56

The other station has four pumps and isn't even listed as a gas station on
Google maps.
http://goo.gl/maps/0wH5i

I don't think either sells enough gasoline to justify local pumping. The
day Google did street views, apparently only four other cars were seen
along this 152 mile stretch. Check out this hyperview I made:
http://bit.ly/HZzOjE

There is a lot of sun there... that's for sure. Of note is that Nevada was
the first state to legalize autonomous vehicles. Go figure.

-Kelly
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