Are IC Engine Alternatives Really Viable? | Ceramic Rotary Engines, Inc

Hydrocarbon fuels used in internal combustion engines or turbine engines are unparalled in performance and efficacy [References 1-3]

Liquid hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline, butane, kerosene and propane pack at least 10 times more energy, pound for pound, than batteries do, even after taking into account how inefficiently a metal IC engine burns fuel [References 3-5]

Octane, for instance, has a specific energy of 12.3 kWh/kg which is roughly 18 times that of Li-SOCl2 batteries (660 Wh/kg) and 33 times that of Li-S batteries (370 Wh/kg)

Batteries are very heavy and their energy density is lower. Low power to weight ratio reduces performance and efficiency [References 3-6]. While the weight of an electric car or electric airplane remains unchanged with use the gasoline-powered vehicles and airplanes reduce in weight as fuel is used up.

Automobiles can be propelled relatively cheaply on one tank of fuel for over three hundred miles without refueling. Battery-powered cars have a lower mileage range [Reference 5]

Jet turbine engines using hydrocarbon fuels can lift over two hundred tons of a large passenger aircraft high into the stratosphere (over 40,000 feet) for distances over 8000 miles at a time relatively cheaply. No competitor in sight [Reference 3]

Hydrocarbon fuels have long been around and the dangers associated with transporting them in vehicles and airplanes have been minimized [Reference 5]

Battery technology has yet to deal with the dangers associated with its toxic contents. Fire and explosion hazards have yet to be minimized.

How many batteries would be needed to store, say, not two months’ but two days’ worth of the nation’s electricity? The $5 billion Tesla “Gigafactory” in Nevada is currently the world’s biggest battery manufacturing facility. Its total annual production could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. Thus, in order to fabricate a quantity of batteries to store two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand would require 1,000 years of Gigafactory production [References 7-9].

Radically increasing battery production will dramatically affect mining, as well as the energy used to access, process and move minerals and the energy needed for the battery fabrication process itself. About 60 pounds of batteries are needed to store the energy equivalent to that in 1 pound of hydrocarbons. Meanwhile, 50 to 100 pounds of various materials are mined, moved and processed for 1 pound of battery produced. Such underlying realities translate into enormous quantities of minerals—such as lithium, copper, nickel, graphite, rare earths and cobalt—that would need to be extracted from the earth to fabricate batteries for grids and cars. A battery-centric future means a world mining gigatons more materials. And this says nothing about the gigatons of materials needed to fabricate wind turbines and solar arrays, too [References 8].

Lithium Batteries’ Dirty Secret: Manufacturing them leave a massive carbon footprint [References 8,9]

The MIT Energy initiate warns that Electric Vehicles may never reach the same sticker price so long as they rely on lithium-ion batteries [References 10-12].

According to a study by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the environmental ramifications of Electric Vehicles from well to wheel are significant [Reference 4]. The study took into account all factors along the lifecycle of an electric vehicle, from the toxic battery ingredients like nickel and copper to the energy sources which power the grids that ultimately charge the cars’ batteries. “The global warming potential from electric vehicle production is about twice that of conventional vehicles,” one part of the study concludes, indicating that energy developed from lignite, coal, or heavy oil combustion makes it “counterproductive to promote electric vehicles.”

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