Energy: Riding GREEN

11/16/2007

Paul Munnis


The hybrid revolution not yet at its peak and there are many alternatives yet ahead for America. The biggest challenge is to retrofit the existing fleet of cars and trucks thus allowing people to salvage their present investments.

It has long been practical to retrofit cars and trucks to be permit a driver to switch between the use of propane gas for urban use and gasoline for highway use. The city of Boulder, Colorado has for example been running such an urban fleet for years and the U.S. Post Office has a great deal of experience with the technology too. These retrofit kits can be bought and put onto vehicles today. The technology has been proven. For a discussion of the conversion effort here is a link. CLICK HERE.

Did you know that there is a hybrid version of the gas hybrid that burns water? Well there are claims to that effect. You can go to a web site discussing this creation of a new fuel, HHO, by clicking HERE.

California has realized alternative fuels as viable technology and is concerned about the safety of the after market conversions. As a result they have established a certification process for those performing the conversions. To read about it then Click HERE.

Here is a complete directory of retrofits that is quite interesting to go through just Click HERE.

If indeed plug-in cars become practical because of better battery development, we could expect to see a good mechanical / electrical engineering team come up with a method for installing the batteries into today’s cars and trucks and allowing the use of urban travel with a switch-over to gas for highway use. This whole issue of plug-in cars is focusing on battery technology and there is a great deal of focus on the subject. One engineer has proposed building long-life and highly efficient batteries out of recycled nuclear rods. Just a small chunk placed in a small reactor could provide lots of power. So far no running prototype has been produced.

Over at Texas A&M they have taken a different approach. It’s called an ELECTROCHARGER.

The ELECTROCHARGER is the most significant advancement in automotive performance in the past 100 years. It is the world's first retro-fittable hybrid electric system and is the newest technology in engine performance adders such as Turbochargers, Superchargers and Nitrous Oxide systems and can be utilized in conjunction with these conventional power adders as well.

The ELECTROCHARGER is a power adder that takes the place of your alternator and runs in parallel with the engine and all of its modifications and it increases the initial acceleration rate of your vehicle from idle, which provides faster acceleration and power right off the line.

To learn more about the ELECTROCHARGER you can Click HERE.

Some of the best engineering brains in the business have only just begun to address the issues of low cost energy alternatives to oil based energy. We should take heart for while $100 gas may be here and $200 gas threatening us, our American engineers are challenging oil companies with a few ideas of their own.