Yes folks some idiots are actually burning corn in stoves as a medium for heating their homes.
Those normally wonderful and tasty sweet kernels of corn that we chew off of the cobb are now being used by some supposed green folks as a heating fuel. Some enterprising morons in the Midwest and Northeast are selling stoves that burn dried corn kernels. These stoves are fitted with hoppers in which the kernels are stored and then fed into the stove via an auger. The flow characteristics of the dried kernels allow this "pellet like" fuel to easily stoke the fire in the stove. The dried corn kernels have a heating value in excess of 7,000 BTUs per pound, a value that is similar to hardwood. http://www.cornstoves.info/amaiz_hm.html
Corn kernels have the following composition: 8% protein, 3% oil, 62% starch and 27% water. You have all see the "Nutrition Facts" on food labels. Using the chemical composition of corn listed above, a bushel of corn that weighs 56 pounds has some 100,000 food Calories. If we assume for the moment we could get all of our 2,000 Calories a day from just eating corn, a bushel of corn would feed an adult for almost fifty days. http://www.ansc.purdue.edu/swine/swineday/sday96/psd16-96.htm
Heating a house with corn instead of wood, natural gas, or propane is a crime against humanity and animals. These folks who think they are green are robbing some starving person of protein, lipids and carbohydrates. If they want to heat their homes with biomass they should burn wood in their stoves. Wood has cellulose and lignin that are not digestible by humans, but also have a heat of combustion of approximately 7,000 BTUs per pound. The folks who use corn kernels in their stoves enjoy the ease of filling the hopper with corn rather than splitting logs. As punishment for their crimes against humanity, their sentence should be to split logs all day long.
This week's Gangrene Award, kind of like the "Green Darwin Award", for the dumbest green technology goes to the folks who invented or use corn stoves. Theese folks who think CORN stands for "Cretins Organizing Reduced Nutrition".
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Australian Gasifier
This week’s gangrene award goes to a couple of Australians who believe they are saving the planet by operating their automobile on wood. Yes this enterprising couple from down-under have developed a gasification trailer that they pull behind their large van . The gasifier housed in the trailer coverts wood and water to a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide (syngas) by a process of partial combustion. The syngas is then fed into the fuel injection system of their van as a gasoline substitute. http://members.tripod.com/~highforest/woodgas/woodfired.html
On the surface this all seems wonderful and very green. Operating a vehicle on felled eucalyptus trees is something most would applaud as substituting fossil fuel for renewable fuel. Let’s now look at the efficiency of their Rube Goldberg vehicle with a caboose. They claim they can travel 2 kilometers for each kilogram of dried wood they “burn”. A kilogram of dried wood has an energy content of 16,500 BTUs so their contraption travels some 2 kilometers or 1.25 miles on 16,500 BTUs. The 16,500 BTUs is the energy content of 0.143 gallons of gasoline. Dividing the miles by the volume of gasoline equivalent we get an effective fuel efficiency of 8.74 miles per gallon. Not bad back in 1971 when most American cars weighed 5,000 pounds and had similar fuel efficiency. Now that we are in the 21st century even the Hummer H2 can beat this Aussie contraption by a mile. The good news for the world is GM is finally admitting that the Hummer is a Bummer and this gasification technology never made it out of Darwin.
As you know the Gangrene Award is like a Green Darwin Award so that this week’s winner from Darwin Australia is like killing two birds with one stone. I was a little scared making this week’s nomination as the couple is very religious and the signs on their van exclaim “righteousness exalts a nation” and “pray for our nation”. Now that they have their Gangrene Award hanging above their fireplace they can claim that GAS stands for Gigantic Australian Stupidity.
On the surface this all seems wonderful and very green. Operating a vehicle on felled eucalyptus trees is something most would applaud as substituting fossil fuel for renewable fuel. Let’s now look at the efficiency of their Rube Goldberg vehicle with a caboose. They claim they can travel 2 kilometers for each kilogram of dried wood they “burn”. A kilogram of dried wood has an energy content of 16,500 BTUs so their contraption travels some 2 kilometers or 1.25 miles on 16,500 BTUs. The 16,500 BTUs is the energy content of 0.143 gallons of gasoline. Dividing the miles by the volume of gasoline equivalent we get an effective fuel efficiency of 8.74 miles per gallon. Not bad back in 1971 when most American cars weighed 5,000 pounds and had similar fuel efficiency. Now that we are in the 21st century even the Hummer H2 can beat this Aussie contraption by a mile. The good news for the world is GM is finally admitting that the Hummer is a Bummer and this gasification technology never made it out of Darwin.
As you know the Gangrene Award is like a Green Darwin Award so that this week’s winner from Darwin Australia is like killing two birds with one stone. I was a little scared making this week’s nomination as the couple is very religious and the signs on their van exclaim “righteousness exalts a nation” and “pray for our nation”. Now that they have their Gangrene Award hanging above their fireplace they can claim that GAS stands for Gigantic Australian Stupidity.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Solar Jet This Week's Green Darwin
This week the Gangrene Award, an award given to cretins who pretend to be green but are not (kind of like a Green Darwin Award), is given jointly to Solar Impulse of Switzerland and the International Air Transportation Authority (IATA). These two parties have entered into a partnership agreement to develop a solar powered jet. http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7010068304
The jet which will be the size of an Airbus 300 Superjumbo will only seat a pilot and no passengers. What is not reported is that the jet will never fly at night and can only fly in westerly direction to avoid the sunset if it indeed can be powered by solar panel. The truth is that it cannot be powered by solar panel without falling out of the sky if it is going to be a superjumbo jet that will carry four hundred or more passengers. http://www.plane-spotter.com/Aircraft/Airbus/A300.htm The Airbus 300 has a mass of 100 metric tons without fuel and has a wing area of 260 square meters. The incident sunlight at high noon is 1 kilowatt per square meter. The most efficient commercial photovoltaic cells are 22% efficient. Therefore if the entire wing area is covered with state-of-the-art solar panels this Rube Goldberg device will generate the amazingly low power of a 1984 Ford Escort Engine with an output of 57.2 kilowatts.
By comparison the two jet engines on an A 300 each have a cruising thrust equal to 170 kilo-Newtons (75% of their maximum thrust). One kilowatt is the power is expended when a thrust of one kilo-Newton propels an object at a velocity of 1 meter per second. At a cruising speed of 800 kilometers per hour or 222.2 meters per second, each of the 170 kilo Newton jet engines on an A300 expends power at the rate of 37,774 kilowatts. Both jet engines therefore expend power at the rate of 75,548 kilowatts or some 1,321 as much as the paltry 57.2 kilowatts the PV cells could generate at high noon.
The imbeciles at Solar Impulse and their partners at the IATA are the winners of this week’s Gangrene Award for their ability to spend seventy million dollars on this hair brain idea that may only be able to power the emergency landing lights. IATA now stands for “Idiots Aboard The Airbus”.
The jet which will be the size of an Airbus 300 Superjumbo will only seat a pilot and no passengers. What is not reported is that the jet will never fly at night and can only fly in westerly direction to avoid the sunset if it indeed can be powered by solar panel. The truth is that it cannot be powered by solar panel without falling out of the sky if it is going to be a superjumbo jet that will carry four hundred or more passengers. http://www.plane-spotter.com/Aircraft/Airbus/A300.htm The Airbus 300 has a mass of 100 metric tons without fuel and has a wing area of 260 square meters. The incident sunlight at high noon is 1 kilowatt per square meter. The most efficient commercial photovoltaic cells are 22% efficient. Therefore if the entire wing area is covered with state-of-the-art solar panels this Rube Goldberg device will generate the amazingly low power of a 1984 Ford Escort Engine with an output of 57.2 kilowatts.
By comparison the two jet engines on an A 300 each have a cruising thrust equal to 170 kilo-Newtons (75% of their maximum thrust). One kilowatt is the power is expended when a thrust of one kilo-Newton propels an object at a velocity of 1 meter per second. At a cruising speed of 800 kilometers per hour or 222.2 meters per second, each of the 170 kilo Newton jet engines on an A300 expends power at the rate of 37,774 kilowatts. Both jet engines therefore expend power at the rate of 75,548 kilowatts or some 1,321 as much as the paltry 57.2 kilowatts the PV cells could generate at high noon.
The imbeciles at Solar Impulse and their partners at the IATA are the winners of this week’s Gangrene Award for their ability to spend seventy million dollars on this hair brain idea that may only be able to power the emergency landing lights. IATA now stands for “Idiots Aboard The Airbus”.
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