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"Ted Mittelstaedt" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Dori A Schmetterling" > wrote in message
> ...
>> Interesting commentary. Actually I am not one of those advocating
> hydrogen
>> fuel; I am fairly agnostic about these things and aware that each type of
>> fuel has pluses and minuses. What I am curious about is what the total
>> lifecycle cost is of batteries.
>>
>
> That really depends on the battery material and composition. Lead and
> Cadimum are nasty things in the environment and so battery handling
> for those batteries must be more expensive since you have to recycle them.
>
> NiMH batteries however can be just thrown away, their materials have no
> environmental issues. An interesting discussion of them is he
>
> http://www.cobasys.com/pdf/tutorial/...technology.pdf
>
> My guess though is that the manufacturers will recycle them anyhow as
> the materials are more expensive than plain lead.

FROM DAS: I read your post further down about the estimated USD 6 energy
cost. I need to ponder that. (I was thinking about the total cost of
smelting the ores etc, but maybe you have given a simple, effective
indicator.)

I have retained a copy of the Cobasys battery article as it's a good
explanation of how they work, but it does not, understandably, discuss the
cost of making and disposal/recycling.

My underlying point is, I suppose, about displaced enery consumption.
Electric trains are often considered wonderfully environmentally friendly,
whilst it is overlooked that you need, in most cases, regular power stations
using oil or gas, to produce the electricity in prodigious quantities. Only
a few regions, such as Switzerland, are blessed with truly environmentally
friendly power sources such as water (hydroelectric).
Same with electric cars. You need to make the batteries and, even if they
are, after all, quite cheap in energy and environmental terms, you still
need to build vast numbers of electricity generating stations to run them...

>
>> A recent report in the UK, from a reputable source, apparently, concluded
>> that the energy cost PER PERSON is lower in the car than in a train! My
>> 'issue' is that evangelical advocates for a particular form of fuel (or
>> transport) overlook total costs.
>>
>
> I would agree with that, because the train doesen't run all of the time
> fully loaded. I would imagine if every train that ran was fully loaded,
> the cost per person would be different. If fuel costs rose and more
> people took the train and fewer took a car, the energy cost per person
> on the train would drop.

FROM DAS: Precisely. We can forget about the 'ifs' of fully laden trains
all the time. I have been on trains with standing room only, but these only
run on main routes and it doesn't occur throughout the day or throughout the
year. Even in the US I was on a well-patronised train, namely from Philly
to DC, and then from DC to NYC, but I am sure that's an exception, too.
(I.e. it's a main route.)

In principle you are right about shifts to trains if cars become less
available, but in a free society this is a pipe dream. In the ex-COMECON
countries there is still a quite high utilisation of trains, stemming from
the days of when it was very difficult for individuals to own cars (for a
variety of reasons) and when ticket prices were kept artifically low. But,
I suggest, this is falling as more and more people buy cars. The fact is
that the automobile is one of the most important (if not THE most important
factor) in the free movement of individuals (hats off to Henry Ford here).
You can see that despite the high fuel taxes in Europe and other places
sales of cars continue to rise in most years.
It has been calculated in the UK that even if only 10 percent of freight
were moved to rail from the road, it would DOUBLE the freight train
requirement, and there is no way anybody is going to invest in such
infrastructure unless there were coercion or other factors at play. Rail
transport for freight is only of limited economic value because of its
inflexibility, so it's good, for example, for the long-distance transport of
coal, but useless for the movement of 1000 computers being sent to 100
wholesalers in 20 different parts of the country.

Even in Germany, where any significant company had a railhead, use has
declined dramatically...

I am a great fan of rail travel, but not at the expense of economic reality.


>
>> This extends into related matters. For example, nothing is worthwhile
>> recycling other than aluminium containers. The rest should be
> incinerated.
>
> Not true, this depends greatly on a number of factors, source separation
> and quantity. Paper is definitely worth recycling. I remember being in
> cub
> scouts 25 years ago before curbside recycling was mandated and one of our
> fund raisers

FROM DAS: This is I dispute. These days paper recycling is a 'political'
act done to salve people's consciences. A few years ago in the UK a major
newspaper tried paying people GBP 5 for every ton (or was it per 100 kg?) of
paper but the campaign failed as they could not sell it on for a profit.
Yes, our local council also collects paper as well as other items, but it
would be simpler and cheaper to incinerate it.

Try buying writing paper made from recycled paper. It's not as good and
costs more.

The only way to make paper recycling economically viable is not introduce
market distortions, such as taxes on landfills and other ways of handling.


> was paper drives, a few tons of newsprint, cleaned of garbage like string,
> paper bags, etc. was worth money that was definitely greater than the
> hauling costs. And before curbside recycling was mandated there were
> people making a few bucks driving around to business collecting cardboard
> boxes. White office wastepaper is also worth recycling, once again if you
> can train people not to throw colored paper into the recycling bins at
> the office.

FROM DAS: To many 'ifs'. Forget about 'training'. Even if 99 out of a 100
get it right, just one sheet of coloured paper ruins the batch...

Here in Britain we are always exhorted not to chuck our Yellow Pages
directories into the paper recycling bins (because of the yellow paper), but
how many take heed? Paper is paper, right?


>
> Clear glass containers are also worth recycling if they are source
> separated
> from colored glass, and from clear plate glass. Glass containers melt at
> a
> lower temperature than plate glass and sand, thus it is cheaper to make
> clear glass containers out of recycled clear glass containers.

FROM DAS: Even more so here. One brown bottle in a batch of 100 uncoloured
ones is enough to rion the lot.


>
> Steel for most purposes (ie: from the household) isn't worth it, the costs
> of
> collection outweigh the savings for most things, unless you have a lot of
> steel in one place (like a car)
>
[..........]
> glass is
> more of a problem because of the wine industry, wine in a clear wine
> bottle
> would almost certainly look much less appetizing (who wants to buy a clear
> bottle of liquid you are supposed to drink that is the color of urine?)
> and
> the wine industry would probably suffer sales as a result. They also
> don't
> put wine in aluminum cans, at least, not anything that your going to get
> someone to pay $100 a bottle for.

FROM DAS: I don't get it. White wine (urine coloured?) is always sold in
uncoloured bottles.

>
>> BUT it is difficult for local politicians to posit that -- who wants an
>> incinerator down the road?
>>
>
> If the household waste stream was clean garbage - paper, food, etc. -
> no problem. But with people throwing the household chemicals (like
> batteries) into the waste stream that they do, an incinerator puts out
> a lot of nasty heavy metals and costs more than just dumping it into
> a sealed landfill.

FROM DAS: Modern scrubbers easily take care of noxious gases, just like out
of car exhausts.


>
> The thing is though that a lot of the hauling costs of recyclables you
> have to pay anyway. The garbage hauler hauls the same weight of
> material off from your house whether he's taking one garbage can
> or one garbage can plus a smaller box of recyclables like glass
> and paper. If you can get the people to source-separate the recyclables
> so the garbage hauler has the two containers to deal with, then
> the costs are the same to the garbage hauler in fuel.
>
> We have curbside recycling here and there's wide participation. Before
> we had it, a typical garbage hauler might be able to so, say, 100 houses
> before his truck was full and they had to send another one out.
>
> Now the garbage company sends 2 trucks out, the first is the garbage
> truck and the second is the recyclables truck. The garbage truck now
> does perhaps 200 houses. So the end cost to the garbage hauler is
> the same, and the advantage is that back at the garbage haulers place
> he gets enough quantity of recyclables that it makes it worth while
> for someone to come buy them from him.
>
> As a point of fact the garbage haulers do just this - they sell the
> recyclables
> they collect to companies that come buy them.

FROM DAS: We have versions of this in the UK, the exact format depending on
the Local Authority (municipality). It does not detract from my general
contention that incinerators would be the most efficient solution (you can
also use the heat output for heating, done in some places in Europe). For
things other than aluminium only distortions help, one of these being the
(political) difficulty of building incinerators.

As regards glass, the raw material is infinitely available, and I have seen
the energy balance.

Try speaking to people in the recycling and incineration business.
[............]