To really get off oil we'd have to...

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LTLFTcomposite

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To help pass the dog days of summer while waiting for news from Nissan this little OT idea came to me. About half of oil production goes gasoline/light automotive use, so even if we all had EV's that still leaves the other half to worry about, for whatever your favorite reason, be it carbon, geopolitical instability, peak oil, environmental concerns, etc.

So while Nissan is busy putting the finishing touches on solving half the problem it is incumbent on the rest of us to come up with solutions for the other half.

I'd like to kick it off with a look at some agriculture production. If I'm not mistaken large scale farms run on diesel fuel for tractors, trucks, combines, etc. Let's go out on a limb and assume we won't see battery powered combines any time soon. If we assume that clean electricity generation becomes a reality, is it possible to power large equipment like that off the grid? Large mining operations use giant shovels that are electrically powered. Of course those shovels are relatively stationary. Could you power large farm equipment with some kind of cabling system? Maybe like trains? Or crop circles where the equipment moves around a central point?
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
testing... can you post to an OT thread once it is approved?
You can, but it looks like they don't show up in the "View new posts"
 
So electrification of crop circle farming... You'd need electrically powered machinery of course. The cabling to the poles located at the center of each circle would have to be underground. Could the supply from the center pole be kept under enough tension to reach the full radius? Maybe if the pole was tall enough. You'd also have to worry about moving the machinery from one circle to another, and to and from a maintenance facility. At least the machinery wouldn't be "running" (eg harvesting) it would just be in a transport mode. Maybe that could be done under battery power.
 
There are people trying out just this concept of farming with no fossil fuels in real life. These are the people who take peak oil seriously - and want to figure out what to do.

My feeling is that when we start seeing shortages, essential activities like farming would get preferential allotment. We may also be able to fuel farming equipment using biofuels - even though they can't scale up to power all the cars.

BTW, there are electric tractors being used in some farms. You can do a search on that.

http://www.renewables.com/Permaculture/ElectricTractor.htm
 
evnow said:
My feeling is that when we start seeing shortages, essential activities like farming would get preferential allotment.

How about preferential allotment to the backhoes that dig the trenches for the cabling to the crop circles?

Interesting spot I think on the discovery channel about soybeans, and that they are making some parts of the large farm equipment that harvests the beans out of soy-based plastics. That must be really depressing if you're a soybean to see that thing coming at you, knowing it was made with your relatives.
 
It could be more easily done with a rail system, in other words think of train tracks going in a large circle, the area between them (1/2 way point) is as far as the harvesting/planting equipment would have to work/reach. It could be electrified via an overhead trolley system, similar to what "Light Rail Vehicles" use in cities, such as the MBTA's Green line. This way, the power lines are overhead, and the "cantinary" makes contact with them from below, also similar to electric buss's that some areas have... The tractors could also have a battery storage system for going short distances without ovehead power, this oculd be used to switch from area to area.

Also, maybe the rails are not needed, like the electric bus's, but then the cantinary system above has to carry power and netural/ground (2 wire system), which makes the wiring a bit more expensive to maintain etc, but the "tractors" could still have rubber tires, and you don't lose any land to a rail system, it's all farmable, even between the poles holding up the cantenary.
 
This might be a really good application for exchangeable batteries. Your tractor comes with two battery packs and a large charging dock. Naturally you would need a high enough charging rate to match the usage rate. I haven't much of any idea what that rate would be, but it doesn't seem like it would be outlandish. The bigger issue might be getting enough power to the charging dock, but that's no worse (or at least very little worse) than the draw if the tractor was tethered.

By the way, I'm no farmer, but my guess would be that plowing might be the heaviest load. Disking, seeding, and spraying all strike me as having less drag, though harvesting might come close if you're pulling packing equipment.

Battery-powered combines? Sure, why not. Many years ago (OK, 60+) I had two uncles who took their combine from Kansas up though Minnesota every fall, harvesting wheat for farmers along the way. I was too young to know the details, but it didn't seem like they had that big an engine on their monster.
 
It is also a question of scale.

Small farmers can get by using farm animals. No need for fossil fuels or complex michinery. I've seen claims of very productive sustainable organic farming. Farmers in China & New Guinea figured out sustainable farming using permaculture and crop rotation long time back. We have all the tools and knowledge needed to do sustainable argiculture on a small scale.

It is anybody's guess whether we can sustain 6 billion people without fossil fuel inputs. I'd guess not ... we are also likely to hit major non-renewable resource cruch - like ground water acquifers and phosphate.
 
evnow said:
It is anybody's guess whether we can sustain 6 billion people without fossil fuel inputs.

Sorry evnow, but I'm king of this thread, and I decree two rules:

1) No directing people to the airlock to exit spaceship earth
2) No "undue" reduction in our way of life. Particularly when it comes to family and the experiences we share together. families still need their trip to Disney World, although if they have to go in a smaller conveyance or it takes a little longer that's ok.

Now that all the agriculture issues have been resolved, let's move to something more important. How about water skiing in an oil-free world?
 
Another option is to side-step the 'problem' entirely - a farming Kobayashi Maru of sorts...

Industrial-scale farming is best for the seed and agribusiness sectors, but many farmers would be broke without the government subsidies.

Here's a look at a method of farming that provides better yields, much fewer (often zero) chemicals and fertilizer, and is already well proven. No tractors, combines, or harvesting equipment needed. http://www.cinram.umn.edu/afta2005/pdf/Sharashkin.PDF

Incorporating at least some of these methods nearly eliminates the oil turned into fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides, plus on-the-farm fuel and lube oil use. It's also a fabulous way to close the gap between the farms and people - better quality and fresher food, organic and sustainable, and a smaller transportation footprint.
 
Think outside the box, folks - many folks around the world are already getting off the "that's the way we've always done it" merry-go-round...

Take a real look at Dr. Sharaskin's paper. Russia's 2 acre family farms continued to feed the country even thru the lowest periods of the country's history. There's an active Ecovillage/Kins Domain movement that's expanding thru Russia and parts of the US, Canada, and Australia at least. It's already proven to work much better than industrial farming - but news sponsored by Monsanto or ADM certainly won't be reporting this story anytime soon. ;)

These family farms produce 92% of Russia's potatoes, 77% of its vegetables, 87% of fruit, 59% of meat, and 49% of milk. These numbers are official but are known to underestimate actual farm production, as this is only the produce the farmers sell.
 
Next generation biofuels using algae may produce a substitute for diesel. We're going to need something like that to replace jet fuel, because commercial aircraft are not going to fly on electricity.
 
Rik said:
Next generation biofuels using algae may produce a substitute for diesel. We're going to need something like that to replace jet fuel, because commercial aircraft are not going to fly on electricity.

http://www.tupolev.ru/English/Show.asp?SectionID=82
 
Rik said:
Next generation biofuels using algae may produce a substitute for diesel. We're going to need something like that to replace jet fuel, because commercial aircraft are not going to fly on electricity.

We can synthesize any hydrocarbon we need today - it's expensive, but it's been around sine the 1930s or so. Synthetic motor oils (the ones made from man-made base oils - most AMSOIL, Redline, some Mobil 1) - use PAO (poly-alpha-olefin) base oil that can be synthesized from ethylene gas - the stuff bananas give off as they ripen.

Considering that our fuels are hydrocarbons, and that we seem to have an abundance of carbon in the atmosphere these days, we could synthesize liquid hydrocarbon fuels from the air and water.

Lots-O-Options!
 
Replacing petroleum-based fuels with natural gas gets around some problems associated with petroleum but does not do enough to reduce GHG emissions. 50% less CO2 than coal is not good enough.
 
Meh. Maybe we live with some carbon emissions from natural gas. Fifty years from now maybe we'll be having the same discussion about how do we get off natural gas.

Anyway the question at hand was how do we get off oil. So what do we do with shipping? Cargo ships, cruise ships, and smaller vessels like research ships, smaller naval ships. Can we get some kind of super-safe super-simple cost effective "nuclear reactor in a box" solution that doesn't require so much training and expertise to operate?
 
What's wrong with training and expertise? Apparently the Navy is able to provide the necessary training and expertise to run nuclear subs. I'm not sure how we can use nuclear to fly airplanes, but it sure looks like it should work for all large to moderate sized ocean vessels.
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
Meh. Maybe we live with some carbon emissions from natural gas. Fifty years from now maybe we'll be having the same discussion about how do we get off natural gas.
We don't have 50 years to figure out how to drastically reduce carbon emissions.
 
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