An added thought...and another reason why this idea of home-brew transport fuel from air or water needs to be pursued.
> Again, it would make zero sense unless the electricity used > to manufacture the nitrous-based cryo-mix is off-peak > energy - coming from nuclear/wind when it > would otherwise be wasted One reason (of the many) that nuclear energy never really made it big-time here in the USA (as opposed to France, for instance) is the antiquated insistence from short-sighted CEOs of short-sighted power companies, who only considered nuclear for "base-line" operation. In France they were not burdened by near-term profit considerations (and had no gas anyway), and now in 2005 as they are almost all nuke, safe-nuke, it should be mentioned, the French are reaping the huge benefits of that foresight with plenty of discretionary income in the hands of Jean Q. Publique... and adequate tax revenues to boot. Nuclear plants need to be operated at full throttle 24/7, and actually cost less to run that way than to try to accommodate variable diurnal supply/demand. Consequently, US producers (the "Cons" i.e. Con-Ed, etc) looked at their night-time demand and covered that with nuclear but decided that everything else would have to be fossil based, because in the sort-term - this was the best use of capital when the prime interest rates were way up there. It does make short-term economic sense (if you knew that fossil fuel prices were stable over decades). In the 70s-80s it looked like natural gas prices would only go down, not up, as many new suppliers were coming on tap -so why would you use nuclear for anything but base-line? Now that we can see that the Cons of our great Petrocracy have once again screwed John Q. Public out of his hard earned discretionary income, as gas prices have tripled over what the CEOs thought they should be in 2005 - and we reluctantly realize that we must start planning on adding new nuclear (not the old kind but totally redesigned)... then it should be realized that the task will have to go far beyond baseline considerations ... and that there could end up being huge off-peak capacity. ERGO. Why not encourage John Q. Public (and/or Jane) to make his/her own ecologically sound transportation fuel with this off-peak capacity at home? Riiiight...and screw the Petrocracy out of tax dollars and greed dollars? Well, it's all about exercising political will-power, isn't it? If redesigned and vastly increased nuclear capacity should come on line before the runaway greenhouse effect sets in, (and we CAN make that happen, if the political will power is found at the grass-roots) then there is an added benefit to all of this. (it took me 8 paragraphs to get this far), but the main point is >>>>> if you are compressing air to make a liquid transport fuel in a small garage-plant then you are going to have a lot of "waste heat" from this, but it is not really wasted as it can provide 1) all of your hot water needs 2) all of your nighttime heating needs 3) some of your daytime air-conditioning needs IOW by allowing John Q. Public to help wean us from CO2 we have found hidden efficiency in many ways.... and perhaps avoid a runaway greenhouse scenario... *Just say adieu to CO2...* Jones
