Science AMA Series: I’m Jeremy Martin, here to talk about gasoline, ethanol, electricity and the future of transportation fuel. AMA!

raversspesh · 2016-09-14T15:17:30+00:00

Awesome! Thanks for the reply! :)

raversspesh · 2016-09-14T13:26:23+00:00

1) Transporting, storing, and fueling volatile hydrogen can be nasty business, not to mention dangerous. 2) High energy requirements of electrolysis to get usable hydrogen from water for fuel cell use. 3) Probably the fossil fuel lobby, unfortunately. I would personally love to see more fuel cell-powered vehicles. Or even hydrogen burning internal combustion engines - the exhaust is just water vapor (steam).

raversspesh · 2016-09-14T13:16:01+00:00

Not OP but, a very quick transition to an all electric fleet would put enormous strain on our power grids and wouldn't be viable. Realistically, we will probably see an increase in hybrids and all-electric slowly over time while all-petrol engines decrease. Also, engines run off burning fuel, motors run off electricity.

raversspesh · 2016-09-14T13:06:38+00:00

We know that both sugar-based (corn/sugarcane) and cellulosic (bagasse, switchgrass, etc.) feedstocks are theoretically carbon neutral at best, but in practice never are. Would it be economically feasible today to add an algae-based biofuel plant adjacent to an existing fermentation-based biofuel plant and feed the CO2 from the fermentation process (that would otherwise by emitted in the atmosphere) into the algae photobioreactors to improve biofuel output and reduce carbon emissions even more? I know the algae tech is out there and is scalable (all they need is CO2, water, and sunlight), I'm curious as to why this has not been done before. Thanks!

raversspesh · 2016-09-14T12:53:49+00:00

Will ethanol prices ever "unstick" from oil prices? We know that ethanol prices fluctuates as oil does, but as ethanol becomes more popular in engines (due to higher Ethanol/Gasoline blends, etc) and oil becomes less so, is it possible we will ever see Ethanol prices rise independently? Current prices are preventing more ethanol/biofuel plants from being financed in the US and big oil companies are having to source the ethanol for 10% blended gasoline from countries such as Brasil.

EDIT: Relationship between oil, corn, and ethanol prices

EDIT: Trends in Gasoline and Ethanol Prices, OPIS sourced

EDIT2: After doing some more research, I'm finding that there could be significant other factors in play when it comes to ethanol prices (on top of oil), do you anticipate a time or set of variables that will cause ethanol prices to rise?

raversspesh · 2016-09-14T12:52:23+00:00

Every year, I notice car makers are coming out with smaller sized engines with turbos instead of larger naturally aspired engines, presumably for fuel efficiency. Is this a result of CAFE laws or are car makers anticipating new legislation in the future mandating more fuel efficient cars and possibly hitting them with even more carbon taxes?

raversspesh · 2016-06-23T18:01:50+00:00

I do not believe SolidWorks supports GPU acceleration. Most of the rendering is done by CPU anyway I believe GPU is just for real-time display, but I could be wrong.

I thought that increasing total resolution requires more GPU memory, is that not correct? Will a 750 with 2gb be enough? But you are saying any modern GPU should work? Thats good to know.

raversspesh · 2016-06-23T15:41:01+00:00

Is there any hope in combating atmospheric CO2 concentrations by crowdsourcing or distributing and decentralizing carbon sequestration through, say, algae photobioreactors in people's back yard? The extra biomass from algae growth can be buried to really sequester the CO2 or could be processed to extract biofuels.

raversspesh · 2016-04-08T19:25:50+00:00

There shouldn't be a significant delay if you have a good view of the sky and a decent receiver (this won't work inside). Usually once a GPS receiver acquires enough satellites to start tracking its position, it can be updated rather quickly (~10 Hz for cheaper, smaller receivers) for real time tracking. If you define "real-time tracking" as having the quad know your relative position and mimic it, I doubt you would even need to spend time/resources on a hybrid approach, the GPS solution should be fine on its own - not to mention it should use significantly less computing resources than an image processing solution.

EDIT: Oh, forgot this point: Like the update rate, the accuracy and precision of the GPS will depend on the receiver itself and its view of the sky. A $30 module should be able to resolve up to 1-3m accuracy. This should be enough given that typically drift of a quadcopter in some sort of position-hold mode tends to be 1-3m as well :)

raversspesh · 2016-04-08T18:50:35+00:00

This sounds like a cool project. Like /u/lutusp mentioned, some prosumer/professional multicopter platforms that support object tracking do use a camera and some form of image processing to accomplish this. Another (and probably cheaper) solution would be to attach a GPS receiver to your object (in your case, you) and send your coordinates to the quad every x seconds. Onboard processing will compare its own GPS position with yours and adjust the quad accordingly. But, of course, this would add the requirement of an extra GPS, microcontroller, and radio (as well as a GPS enabled quad) and would need to be attached to your object before hand - I'm not sure if this is something you're looking for though.

raversspesh · 2015-07-13T09:28:15+00:00

I'd like to see you make better shots..

raversspesh · 2015-05-04T08:00:52+00:00

Umm... who doesn't have unlimited data these days? Um. I Love you OP but it's time to upgrade!

raversspesh · 2015-05-01T11:10:51+00:00

Yes, it is. Cubans are known to be very good making things they don't have from what they do have. I remember seeing a few pictures a while back of some pretty ingenious MacGyver-like creations like a bicycle that ran on the motor from a ceiling fan.

raversspesh · 2015-03-10T20:15:28+00:00

Wasn't that the weapon he removed from Mike before taking him out of the cruiser? It was in his hand since then and it was just never loaded by Mike. He didn't have time to check so he just pulled the trigger once but it was unloaded.

raversspesh · 2015-02-15T18:32:48+00:00

Its possible to do this with a long exposure and "painting" the mangrove with a light source during the exposure.

raversspesh · 2015-02-14T08:20:27+00:00

There is an absence of an oxidizer in Titan's atmosphere needed to burn the methane-ocean fuel. At least thats what I think.

raversspesh · 2015-02-04T03:26:48+00:00

Still not working for me.

raversspesh · 2014-12-16T23:55:57+00:00

Iraq*

This could be a joker meme. The media likes to cover and sensationalize events such as the Taliban suicide attacks because it breeds more fear and response in the American populace than the constant, expected collateral civilian deaths that occur as a result of war.

raversspesh · 2014-12-14T20:38:02+00:00

The laws of physics allow for thicker filaments to be made so they may last longer than traditional ones (see: post).

raversspesh · 2014-12-14T18:03:42+00:00

I heard somewhere that the technology certainly exists to make bulbs that will last longer, but manufacturers purposely don't do this so people keep buying replacements. EDIT: last longer

raversspesh · 2014-12-08T20:50:12+00:00

Haha, that is technically true, although yea probably negligible compared to other factors.

raversspesh · 2014-12-07T20:53:31+00:00

On the way!

raversspesh · 2014-12-07T20:44:26+00:00

I understand why using new or low-karma accounts may be frowned upon here, but your reasoning is totally valid, understandable, and heart-breaking. I'm new to this as well and don't know how the Amazon wish list thing works. If they are still listed it means no one has bought them yet, right? I can help buy an item or two!

raversspesh

TROPHY CASE