If China developed, produced and exported as many Electric bikes
as it uses it's self why wouldn't it be a carbon neutral economy?
I think that China is doing a great job of off setting it's Carbon output,
but then I am electric vehicle fan. It's an item that you should be able to buy from local shop like a mobile phone!

Replying to [Aero]:
China is planning to build an ECO-CITY with Singapore.
There are already the Green city, which uses Geothermal heating for the winter, and Optical Fibers directing Sunlight into the building. The electric bicycle, is an age old technology. The Electric Tram was running the streets of Singapore, San Francisco, Hong Kong and many other cities sometime in the 1950s and 60s. The main problem is the transfer of the electrical energy to the mobile vehicle.

Feasible studies has the Fuel-Cell in the futuristic form of energy that will be driving the electric motors. However it has to use Hydrogen gas, which is in Class 1 Division 1, the top of explosive hazardous gas and vapor. The dispensation of the Hydrogen, delivery and storage is a major obstacle to going into the Fuel Cell technology.

I was thinking of the first air-ship, the Zeppelin, invented and used by the Germans in the first world war, and was later transformed into a commercial airliner. But a horrible accident took place in New York, the Hydrogen filled balloon was engulfed with flame when a lightning struck it during mooring and many people died.


http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/ships.htm

http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/images/zeps/LZ130.5.gif


We can take a small step, first by increasing efficiency of the machines. The piston engine has poor effective output versus fuel input, about 60% only due to the high friction on the piston rings and firing sequence. Recently the price of Heavy Fuel Oil has increased to as high as the low grade Diesel Oil. There is an engine company, successfully converting Diesel engine into dual fuel engines, running on gas and diesel. It requires a pilot fuel to start the engine and then switch over to the dual fuel or gas fuel. But this is only the interim method to reduce the dependency on fossil fuel and save the earth by reduction in CO2 emission.
Four-Stroke Engine (look at the contact between piston and cylinder block)

STREET SMART

Replying to [Street Smart]: Thank you for your reply
I don’t believe that fuel cell technology is the way to go, better battery technology however provides much better efficiency. 2008 to 2009 will be year of the humble battery!

Replying to [Aero]:Yes, you are right.

Top notch car makers have Fuel Cell models in the future offering already. BMW has a Hydrogen Gas Engine in their sleeves as alternative besides the FC engine. The Fuel Cell has one setback, it freezes at temperature -20 Degrees Celsius.

Beside the Fuel Cell technology to deliver the electricity, there are talks of: Setting up a Solar Energy base on the Sun-side of the moon, and beam the energy back to Earth by micro-wave. The major problem will be to maintain the Solar Energy Generator and very high cost of installation.

PORTABLE Nuclear Energy
As mankind learn to harness and control nuclear reactors, the promise of the future of nuclear energy seems more fulfilling than ever. Some day, mass transportation may be run by nuclear powered engines. There is only one obstacle to overcome before this becomes feasible and a reality.

GAS Powered engines.
This is already implemented by South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and several other countries. This conversion is less of a drastic change to the design of the engine. The energy delivered by the gas is less than the liquid fuel of gasoline or diesel, but it burns with lesser emission of Carbon Dioxide. The world's energy resources is turning from Oil to Gas, as more exploration sites reveal high amount of Natural Gas. This gas is liquefied and stored in spherical shaped containers.
Bio-gas is also obtained from the sewerage reclamation plant, along with water recycle. German and British Engine makers have the Dual-Fuel Engines in their catalogs. Some of the Gas-fired turbine engine makers are: Siemens, GE, MTU, Hitachi, make turbine engines, like the jet engine.
This engine has higher efficiency, there is lesser frictional loss, but the compression ratio is lesser, it runs on very high speed. In between is the Rotary Engine. Much research work on this type by the engine makers were done for this configuration, but delivery was not seen to date.
GE Turbine Engine
STREET

Replying to [Aero]:

The Wankel Rotary Engine proves to be higher efficiency due to lower frictional losses.

Street Smart

Replying to [Street Smart]:
Nice, I like your products have you seen, Tesla motors
they have an all electric sports car.

Replying to [Aero]:

The electric motor did not see much development for some time, I mean the design and construction of a squirrel caged induction motor, or a slip-ring motor is the same today as it was 20 years ago. However the electrical supply to the motor has taken a tremendous step forward, it started with the Electronic components going into the high power drive.

The electrical motors I worked with in the 1960s were basically with combination starters of slip-ring and resistance starting for the larger motors and Star-Delta starters.

Later on, in the 80s, Solid-state starters were made, using the Semiconductors or tyristors, this is also known as Soft-Starters. But only recently the Inverter system was introduced and this help to save considerable amount of energy.

Research work in the field of Super-conductivity sprung some discoveries in early 1970s, and there was a rush of activities and development on this, but has faded out of publicity at this time. Super conductivity was demonstrated by floating a magnet in liquid Helium, and this promises great progress into the area of achieving a state of weightlessness with superconductivity and magnetic levitation. However to keep that state of superconductivity, liquid Helium has to be used, and this require absolute low temperature, which is difficult to maintain and costly. Thereafter a series of published discovery on higher temperature superconductivity and this led to more claims of higher and higher temperature with different materials. But they are still in the cryogenic ranges.

In Electrical and Electronic engineering, the only element holding back the speed of a super-computer from operating at the speed of light, is resistance to the electrical conductivity. Recently, the Scientists discovered those Cryotrons (super conductive elements) for computers and the magnetic resonance, which is a very powerful magnet working in harmony with its wavelength. This led to the discovery of the MRI (Magnetic Resonant Imaging) machine which can pin-point a tumor in the human body.

If we have the super-conductive system, we can make a flying saucer, floating on the air, against gravity, and taking the mapping of the Earth's magnetic field to go from point A to point B in any direction.

Street Smart

Replying to [Aero]:Dear Sir,

I have just looked into the Telsar motor, which is electric motor, and the electrical supply as we have discussed is an Inverter system. A battery of electrical cells, electro-chemically charged will supply a Direct Current (DC) voltage to a series of 72 Insulate gate bipolar transistors (IGBT), which will convert the current to Alternating Current (AC) and inverts the phase to the rotor as compared with the stator.

The refueling socket is electrical charged voltage. This is the setback, as the refuel will take several hours to recharge the batteries. However, this battery pack can be replaced by Fuel Cells, using Hydrogen Gas to generate the electrical current.

The advantage of the electric motor over the internal combustion motor is the lesser friction on the two points of contact with the bearings at both sides of the rotor.It does not burn any fuel, and thus no emission of Carbon Monoxide or Dioxide, the Green House Gas. The most dangerous is NOX, which is not in the scope of our discussion. However I am talking about the future, and about Super-conductivity.

Liquid helium at temperature below -268.9 Degree Celsius (4.26*C above absolute) can create a super-conductive environment. When superconductivity was first discovered, it was thought that the phenomenon could be completely described by the statement that the electrical resistance is zero. Later however, it was found that this is not a complete description. At the same time that the resistance disappears, any magnetic field which is present is expelled from the body. Hence, a superconductor is not only a perfect electrical conductor, but also a perfect magnetic shield. The fact is that persistent electrical eddy currents occur spontaneously on the surface of the superconducting body. These currents exactly cancel any magnetic field initially present in the interior.

Another way of describing a superconductor is to say that it is perfectly diamagnetic, and for this reason it is repelled from a magnet. For example a small bar magnet will hover above the bottom of a shallow lead dish at liquid-helium temperature and will skate around in the dish with no measurable friction. A lead ball at such temperatures can be kept above a magnetic field in a completely frictionless condition, becoming a theoretically perfect gyroscope. It will turn over once every twenty four hours because of the rotation of the earth to which the frictionless support system is attached.

Very recently it has been discovered that certain alloys become superconductive at abnormally high temperatures. For example, Nb3Sn (a niobium-tin alloy) is superconductive at 18* absolute.Powerful electromagnets made of Nb3Sn will not consume any electric power. They show great promise for use as research tools and for thermonuclear fusion reactors.

(Pg 209 and 210 The Book of Popular Science Vol 5.. Publisher Grolier Incorp. 1970.)

Street Smart

Replying to [Street Smart]:
Here are the White Papers on the all electric Tesla Motors

http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/twentyfirstcenturycar.pdf
http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/TeslaRoadsterBatterySystem.pdf

I still do not like the Fule Cell idea, uses to much energy to convert to Hydrogen.
If anyone finds a better production all electric car please post the details, I want one, in fact I am not going to buy another car with pistons and hope all you car companies read this!

Replying to [Aero]:

We all have the same feelings about nuclear energy in the 1960s and especially after the Chenobyl Nuclear melt-down. It is natural to fear something which we have not understand and be able to control. But nuclear fission in the past has now been fusion, a safe reactor which is controllable.

Hydrogen gas can be obtained from Chemical reaction, E.g. if you mix Calcium Hydrides with water, you will get one mol of Hydrogen gas for every mol of CH3. There are processes which can extract the Hydrogen from Methane gas, which is a very common gas, and is a dangerous Green House Gas if left to escape to the atmosphere.

The fuel cell, as in my previous postings is a promising Power Pack for the future, and soon cars, trucks, trains and power stations will be run by the Fuel Cell principle. However this will have to wait until the last drop of fossil fuel runs out.

The business of the next decade will be the recycle of used oil and converting the hydro-carbon into hydrogen and carbon molecules for both uses. Superconductivity will be the next generator of electricity, and soon cars will be running on electrical energy generated by either the fuel cell or rechargeable batteries, or solar energy pack of a combination of all these plus electro-chemicals.

We are emerging into a merging of technologies, and this is the next phase or the new age. The first phase are the knowledge of science mixed with mirth, and religious beliefs, and then the institutionalized learnings of science and so segregation of the various disciplines, where medical science centers around biological, physiological aspects of the human body and drugs. Then the doctors are more into the diagnostic and physiological therapy, where there is physics such as radiation of gamma rays and the Electromagnetic Resonance Imaging equipment to provide the doctors with a 3-dimension map of the body tissues for a more precise treatment, or surgery, even this is done with laser technology.

Your subject "Carbon Neutral Plan" can be realized with the 'pressure' of diminishing fuel oil and gas energy supply to push us to look for the alternative source of energy. We are becoming more miser to waste energy with engines of low efficiency, high carbon dioxide and NOX emissions, at higher cost.

If you can look at the future through the crystal ball, you will see this form of energy for transportation applied in all walks of life.

Super conductivity will provide us with a perfect engine without lubricating oil, and without friction, maybe without moving parts.

Street Smart

Replying to [Street Smart]:

Such amazing load of information which is a true projection of the future transportation system.

Should take note, and learn from.

James OO7