Re: Cooking oil at $5.50/gallon at Food Lion...

"Thomas Bartkus" <thomasbartkus@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:nNudncbOjNft7tPZRVn-pQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Okay. Here are a few numbers, rudely and crudely googled, to start
playing
with. Someone please shout out if this doesn't look right.

A gallon of gasoline, when burned efficiently, yields about 5
kilowatt-hours
of energy.

Whoops! My original google source was wrong!
That should have been a whopping 33.5 kilowatt-hours in a single gallon of
gasoline.
Burning a single gallon of gasoline yields a *heck of a lot* of energy!

Going back to solar at 4.2 kilowatt-hours/day on a typical square meter.
You would need to convert 100% of the solar energy falling on 8 square
meters on an average day to produce 1 gallon of fuel as gasoline.

Make that 192 square meters if you want to produce 1 gallon per hour.

Assuming, of course, that you could capture 100% of the sunlight with
perfect conversion efficiency.

And it only takes 0.16 lbs of raw hydrogen (H2) to match the combustion
energy in 1 single lb of fuel so hydrogen gas really is energy dense when
compared to gasoline. With gasoline at about 6.5 lbs/gal, he trick is to
carry 12 * 6.5 *.0.16 = 12.48 lbs of hydrogen to match the energy content of
a modest 12 gallon gas tank.

It's been a slow day ;-)
Thomas Bartkus





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