By their nature, maglev systems are already fast(100+ mph). But they are far more efficient than conventional trains. It would be a waste of energy to revert to using antiquated technology like diesel locomotives for transcontinental transit.
You make an excellent point about vacations and consumerism, on the otherhand. But that doesn't mean people shouldn't broaden their horizons with travelling, it simply means they could benefit by seeing things on their own, instead of allowing themselves to be rushed around in corporate shuttles and whisked by all the cliche sights and sounds of where they visit. Certainly gives a bad impression of us Americans. _________________ The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 11:57 pm Post subject: Biomethane
would be the perfect solution to the aviation industry. They can continue using methane from "conventional" (i.e. nonrenewable) sources as well as that from feeders which process agricultural waste (which the US produces a LOT of). In addition, methane is a great Jet Fuel (it produces lots of energy per unit weight while it can also be easily liquefied and put in tanks, well, at least much easier than hydrogen ).
Under my perfect plan (yes, I have a plan for future energy), this would produce enough energy for maritime and aviation uses, since land transportation (short range vehicles and long-range, high-speed trains) would be covered by a huge solar energy grid, powered by individual homes. Energy too cheap to meter? Sure!
Maglev may be suited to US, because of the distances. But I dispute its energy efficient. I was doing a lot of research work on this area yesterday. (see links below)
Conventional rail is capable of 220 mph in commercial service (Eg Madrid-Barcelona AVE line), so maglev offers a marginal speed advantage, baring it mind you need very good alignments for 220mph (4000-5000 yard radius curves) in any case.
Link Report
Joined: Jun 18, 2005 Posts: 3886 Location: In a van down by the river
Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2005 9:06 am Post subject:
Keeping planes in the air is not going to be a priority.
How many people are going to fly to Hawaii, they already have to import a majority of their food. When food costs go up each year it will not be a fun place to visit. They will be lucky if it does not end up looking like the Easter Islands which had the same problem... too many people not enough resources.
The only reason to travel will be to look for a job so you can get enough money to get some food. That is the reason all the Okies if which Iam one went of to California. This is going to be the Grapes of Wrath in reverse.
People are going to have to flee the megatropolis we have now and will be lucky to find a job in the countryside that will feed them, damn lucky. They are more likely to be walk-in than flying in a plane at 35,000 feet drinking mimosas.
Joined: Jul 25, 2004 Posts: 681 Location: Hunter Valley, New South Wales, Australia
Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2005 8:05 pm Post subject:
The_Toecutter wrote:
By their nature, maglev systems are already fast(100+ mph). But they are far more efficient than conventional trains.
Hi Toecutter. WOW, maglev...UM, it is the most expensive & energy intensive form of trasportation I can think of. Not to mention being even less adaptable than present rail syatems, which find it difficult enough NOW, to cope with changes.
Quote:
It would be a waste of energy to revert to using antiquated technology like diesel locomotives for transcontinental transit
I wasn't referring to diesels, Bye The Way.
I was referring to wood-buring steam locomotives. Why?
Fairly simple - steam is very simple.
Efficiency won't matter one tuppenny damn if there's no electricity and that's what maglev needs in ....well, trainloads, pardon the pun.
It's also incredibly electrically complex. The electromagnet's switching mechanisms needed to make the train "go" (linear accelerators notwithstanding) are even more complex than the present SD90MAC's that grace American railroads today. And they need a specialist centralised plant to fix the bits.
Sure, maglev is a nice, smooth way to travel, BUT - we're talking about Peak Energy here.
I'm thinking exclusively about how to make a trans-continental transportation link work in it's simplest, least troublesome, least energy-intensive, least technologically challenging, low-cost way.
Steam fullfils all of those criteria nicely.
Quote:
You make an excellent point about vacations and consumerism, on the otherhand.
LOL, thankee...
Quote:
But that doesn't mean people shouldn't broaden their horizons with travelling, it simply means they could benefit by seeing things on their own, instead of allowing themselves to be rushed around in corporate shuttles and whisked by all the cliche sights and sounds of where they visit. Certainly gives a bad impression of us Americans.
It gives a bad impression of everyone - and TO everyone.
I think it was Mark Twain (a great traveller, may I remind you - he visited Australia and had a few pithy comments to make about the place) who said:
"A traveller understands every culture he goes to - a tourist doesn't even understand their own."
If you say that there should be a return to Travelling (Mark Twain style) then, YES, I wholeheartedly agree. Some of his one-liners are more relevant now than when he uttered them.
Hi Toecutter. WOW, maglev...UM, it is the most expensive & energy intensive form of trasportation I can think of.
Expensive? Yes. The cost rest in the track, looking at about $10-25 million per mile depending on type of maglev train. You read that correctly.
Energy intensive? Not so compared to normal passenger trains. Just one example is the Magnemotion's system. 100 wh of energy consumed per passenger per mile, about half that of a conventional rail-based train. Link
That is an extreme example, of course. Generally, a maglev consumes about 30% less energy for travel than a conventional train. Link
Quote:
Efficiency won't matter one tuppenny damn if there's no electricity and that's what maglev needs in ....well, trainloads, pardon the pun.
We wouldn't have electricity in the 'doomer 2' scenario, the one with a mass dieoff. In that case, you make a very valid point. I think the disagreement arised due to variations in how we view the severity of the problem. I think the 'doomer 1', in which we have to drastically cut our consumption of resources, in which the dieoff may not be as large as many here predict, and in which our standard of living won't go to the dark ages, but more or less drop back another 100 years(although if we'd adress the peak problem now, we may still keep many of the luxuries we have today), is more probable.
In a 'doomer 1' scenario, we'd have electricity. 'Doomer 2', not likely.
Quote:
I'm thinking exclusively about how to make a trans-continental transportation link work in it's simplest, least troublesome, least energy-intensive, least technologically challenging, low-cost way.
Steam fullfils all of those criteria nicely.
Heppen to have any numbers handy? I am interested. Steam turbines are more efficient than ICEs by a significant margin. How they would compare with maglev, assuming the same speed for each, I am interested in. Even if a steam train isn't as efficient as a maglev, it does have the advantage of being able to be run via burning biomass, but electricity can also be generated in the same manner. The steam train sure would be a *lot* less expensive for its rails over the maglev's tracks.
Quote:
If you say that there should be a return to Travelling (Mark Twain style) then, YES, I wholeheartedly agree. Some of his one-liners are more relevant now than when he uttered them.
Twain is awesome. He's wrote some hilarious crap, pieces on everything from politics to masturbation. _________________ The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson
Joined: May 20, 2005 Posts: 204 Location: Austin, Tx
Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2005 11:01 pm Post subject:
The_Toecutter wrote:
Quote:
Hi Toecutter. WOW, maglev...UM, it is the most expensive & energy intensive form of trasportation I can think of.
Expensive? Yes. The cost rest in the track, looking at about $10-25 million per mile depending on type of maglev train. You read that correctly.
There is one maglev train in operation in the world to the best of my knowledge (in Shanghai). It goes about 19 miles total.
I think the idea for maglev trains was floated over a hundred years ago--yes, the technology has improved since then, but the costs haven't. If, at the peak of cheap energy, we can't have more than one novelty maglev line in the world, then yes, it is obviously the most expensive and energy intensive form of transportation around. Laying $10-30 million/mile rail is an energy intensive process or it wouldn't cost so much.
It isn't even a matter of doomer scenarios or not. It is obviously prohibitively expensive and inefficient at the time of cheapest resources and energy--how will it get built as the cost of laying rail lines increases dramatically? As fossil fuel prices increase, the cost of laying rail and the raw materials for rail will increase. So, in reality, those costs will probably go up to $50-100 million per mile within the decade. No one in their right minds is going to drop a billion dollars for a rail line that goes 10 miles (other than Los Angeles, which spent something like a billion per mile on its useless subway system which goes about 10 miles in no directions anyone actually needs).
Even assuming steady per mile prices for laying new rail line, New York to Los Angeles would cost somwhere around $52 billion dollars (assuming the average of your $10-25 range, $17.5 million/mile, and about 3000 miles of rail). That would be the most optimistic scenario; after environmental impact studies, court cases, cost overruns, various corruption and whatnot, yadda, yadda, yadda....a transcontinental maglev line could probably not be built for under $200 billion at today's energy and resource costs. At the point at which we'd even consider it--e.g. when oil has broken the back of the airline industry, so say $150+ per barrel, we're looking at a tripling of energy costs, plus a similar increase in steel (given that China wants an awful lot of steel as well), then, realistically, a transcontinental maglev line is looking for like a trillion dollar project. And that would just be a line servicing L.A.-NY, not Chicago, not Florida, not Seattle, not Dallas...add in all the cities that require service and your costs are far, far, far in excess of the capital possibly available for such an endeavor.
It just isn't going to get done. Especially when you compare the cost to traditional rail--cost cutting wins every time.
HFO is a low-grade fuel primarily used in industrial boilers and other direct source heating applications (i.e., blast furnaces). It is also used as a principal fuel in marine applications in large diesel engines. Given its high boiling point and tar-like consistency, HFO typically requires heating before it can be moved through pipes or dispensed into a boiler or other heating vessel to be burned.
HFO is the least expensive of the refined oil fuels and can only be used by facilities that have preheating capabilities. HFO is typically high in sulphur and other impurities that are released into the air when the fuel is burned.
This would burn fine in jet engines if you provided thr required heating. There is a bit of a problem with corrosion of the turbines due to the impurities and the nasty emissions. But if you're not worried about that, there is plenty of HFO for the forseeable future.
There is a bit of a problem with corrosion of the turbines due to the impurities and the nasty emissions. But if you're not worried about that, there is plenty of HFO for the forseeable future.
Me, worried about the plane falling because the turbines have been eaten away by the fuel? Of course not!
Link
That is an extreme example, of course. Generally, a maglev consumes about 30% less energy for travel than a conventional train. Link
Hmn, some of those figures are taken from Transrapid's 'spin', makers of the system in Germany.
For example it cannot really be claimed maglev is 250 safer than conventional rail because no-one has every been killed in a high speed train on dedicated tracks.
Anyway, I could go on about various aspects of it. But the point is a wooden or concerete tie costs a few$ and rail is not hugely expensive, certainly compared to a maglev, which needs a huge amount of steel and exotic control systems
I can't really see the point of wanting to go over 200mph in any case with energy being tight and in theory airlines travel being less. Maglev also doesn't fit in with conventional systems very well, which is an important cost consideration.
It's a nice idea Maglev, but even the Chinese have kept very tight lipped about the real costs of the (short) system there.
On the energy consumption front the consumption for European high speed rail is 35-60 kw/h per mile from real world energy figures, less than half that of maglev. Link
The US figures should never be used as the US has one of the least energy efficient systems in the world.
I love how a thread about aviation after peak oil has almost immediately turned into a thread about future rail service. I hope we have the energy to build out the infrastructure, but I doubt it.
Joined: Feb 20, 2005 Posts: 2778 Location: Uppsala, Sweden
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2005 2:19 pm Post subject:
I wonder how much the cost of flying is fuel costs?
If it is not to a high a percent prices could be kept down (for a certain time) by slashing pay and comfortable stuff, a la Ryan Air.
Sci-fi: Why not put some kind of vehicle on a rail ramp and accelerate into the upper atmosphere with some really big electromagnets? Then you let it land on the other side of the planet. Sort of an electromagnetic transport ICBM. Would it work, in theory? _________________ Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
On the energy consumption front the consumption for European high speed rail is 35-60 kw/h per mile from real world energy figures, less than half that of maglev.
Problem is, which maglev? Theres three varieties.
The first is stuff we knew about 150 years ago, active maglev that uses feedback circuits to keep the thing levitating. The german system uses active maglev. This stuff sucks, because if your feedback circuits die you drop to the rails, and you allways gotta be pumping current through your feedback loop. Economies of scale might make it work if there was no alternative but...
Theres the second maglev idea: Superconductor maglev which uses magnetic repulsion via the meisser effect. Japanese maglevs and newer systems have been experimenting with this. It doesnt require active current being pumped through, but it does require you to keep the damn things cold enough to be superconducting. Better maybe than active maglev? I dont know.
The third option is inductrack, passive maglev with halbach arrays. This uses big permanent magnets set up so that when they pass over coils the eddy currents lift the train. No power requirements except to get the train moving, and no liquid helium or liquid nitrogen superconductors to keep cool all the time, possibly much more cost effective. I suspect maglev has a future sometime, and I suspect it will use the inductrack system, but ordinary rail works well enough now that I dont care. Link
Quote:
Why not put some kind of veichle on a rail ramp and accelerate into the upper atmosphere with some really big electromagnets? Then you let it land on the other side of the planet. Sort of an electromagnetic transport ICBM.
I imagine we'll do this to do cheap space travel, but run the numbers and you can find that the acceleration track required for reasonable g strains to achieve orbital velocity is hundreds of kilometers long, so you might as well just never leave the track. Maybe you can make real short onces for transporting durable commodities that can withstand hundreds or thousands of g's. Or maybe we'll use this for takeoff assist to save fuel costs at traditional airports.
Joined: Jul 25, 2004 Posts: 681 Location: Hunter Valley, New South Wales, Australia
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2005 8:23 pm Post subject:
Hi Toecutter. Thanks for the very well reasoned response. I'd be MORE than happy to get the figures to you - if I could figure out a way to attach stuff to these posts...is there any way to do so?
The_Toecutter wrote:
Quote:
WOW, maglev...UM, it is the most expensive & energy intensive form of trasportation I can think of.
Expensive? Yes. The cost rest in the track, looking at about $10-25 million per mile depending on type of maglev train. You read that correctly.
Energy intensive? Not so compared to normal passenger trains. Just one example is the Magnemotion's system. 100 wh of energy consumed per passenger per mile, about half that of a conventional rail-based train. Link
That is an extreme example, of course. Generally, a maglev consumes about 30% less energy for travel than a conventional train. Link
Quote:
Efficiency won't matter one tuppenny damn if there's no electricity and that's what maglev needs in ....well, trainloads, pardon the pun.
We wouldn't have electricity in the 'doomer 2' scenario, the one with a mass dieoff. In that case, you make a very valid point. I think the disagreement arised due to variations in how we view the severity of the problem. I think the 'doomer 1', in which we have to drastically cut our consumption of resources, in which the dieoff may not be as large as many here predict, and in which our standard of living won't go to the dark ages, but more or less drop back another 100 years(although if we'd adress the peak problem now, we may still keep many of the luxuries we have today), is more probable.
In a 'doomer 1' scenario, we'd have electricity. 'Doomer 2', not likely.
Quote:
I'm thinking exclusively about how to make a trans-continental transportation link work in it's simplest, least troublesome, least energy-intensive, least technologically challenging, low-cost way.
Steam fullfils all of those criteria nicely.
Heppen to have any numbers handy? I am interested. Steam turbines are more efficient than ICEs by a significant margin
LOL, Internal Confusion Engines is what a friend of mine calls them.
Quote:
How they would compare with maglev, assuming the same speed for each,
I know the French TGV was originally going to be a Gas Turbine direct drive, but that got killed off by the Oil Price Rise (gee, we've been here before it seems) in the 1970's.
I'd assume they would be planning a direct-drive with a capacity of 330km/h +. One could most DEFINITELY use a steam turbine, and achieve the high horsepower tradtionally associated with steam turbines.
The boiler could be "fuelled" by a variety of substances - from bio-oils that cannot be burnt any other way (I am assuming that such sludgy oils may exist in the future) to traditional coal, to bagasse (left-over from sugar-cane refining) to compressed garbage briquettes, to my personal favourite: compressed wood briquettes. Even the dreaded Hydrogen is a disticnt possibility.
NOTE WELL: I'm not trying to rule anything in or out. please don''t imagine I'm saying the hydrogen is "our saviour", as I am most CERTAINLY NOT. It's just one more fuel that can be used by the steam locomotive, WITHOUT expensive catylists and fuel, cells, etc etc.
Quote:
Even if a steam train isn't as efficient as a maglev, it does have the advantage of being able to be run via burning biomass, but electricity can also be generated in the same manner.
But not transmitted. I'm trying to answer the problem of "how can one have transport assuming the Electicity Grid falls over?"
I seem to be what you might call a "Doomer 1.5".
I personally don't beleive we'll see a huge die-off in the Third World, where the big population is, simply because they won't miss what they don't have. For example, after the Boxing Day tsunami, the residents of Sri Lanka dusted off their ox-carts and went about their daily business (and cleaning up I presume), because Oil supplies were interupted. They didn't use much Oil so they didn't miss it when it wasn't there.
The same holds true for India, Pakistan, rural China, and most of Africa. This is where the Big populations of the world reside. And if Oil cannot be obtained, they'll just switch back to what they have always used.
Sure, central authority will collapse in the countries, but so? Who's gonna miss that?
Quote:
The steam train sure would be a *lot* less expensive for its rails over the maglev's tracks.
AHHH....the present cost (in Australia) of putting down tradtional track is about $3 million to $5 million per km (converting to US currency: about $3.68 million per mile to $6.2 million per mile, where 1 mile = 1.6 km therefore one mutliplies the amount by that to get the per mile figure).
The present cost of a diesel locomotive in Australia (a 4,000 hp diesel-electric AC transmission) is said to be about the Aus$6 million area (about $4.6 million US). In the "dollars per horsepower" this comes to $1500/hp.
The present calcualted cost of a STEAM locomotive (assuming turbo-compound, and that more than one such locomotive is purchased) in Australia is slightly over $2.5 million (about $1.9 million US). The steam locomotive, if turbo-compound, could be around the 12,000 horsepower.
Reality check - David Wardale achieved 5,500 cylinder hp in his "Red Devil" steam locomotive rebuild in South Africa, in 1981 (about 4,500 at the wheels). The steam locomotive I have in mind is two "Red Devils" back-to-back, PLUS a 4,000 hp turbine to give a total of 4,500 + 4,500 + 3,000 (Hp of turbine at-the-wheels) = 12,000 hp.
In the "dollars per horsepower" this comes to about $209/hp.
So, the steam locomotive costs LESS to build & fuel.
Quote:
If you say that there should be a return to Travelling (Mark Twain style) then, YES, I wholeheartedly agree. Some of his one-liners are more relevant now than when he uttered them.
Twain is awesome. He's wrote some hilarious crap, pieces on everything from politics to masturbation.[/quote]
LOL, he never wrote ANY excremental pieces at ALL, LOL, he ways always pithy & to the point, LOL!
Joined: Jan 19, 2005 Posts: 68 Location: Dorset, England
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 8:55 am Post subject:
Starvid wrote:
I wonder how much the cost of flying is fuel costs?
15-20% depending on the airline _________________ "If the complexity of our economies is impossible to sustain [with likely future oil supply], our best hope is to start to dismantle them before they collapse." George Monbiot
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).
I hope we have the energy to build out the infrastructure, but I doubt it.
