Where Our Energy Will Come From

Even hydrogen proselytizers acknowledge, however, that immense obstacles remain. What's still lacking -- and essential -- is a cheap, nonpolluting way to generate the energy to derive pure hydrogen, which comes from either water or hydrocarbon fuels such as methane. Also, on a horsepower basis, fuel cells cost five times as much to make as internal combustion engines. And the fuel tank in today's prototypes takes up the whole trunk... Buried just below the ocean floor along the continental slopes as well as in the Arctic permafrost are vast deposits of crystallized natural gas suspended in ice, known as methane hydrate. The U.S. Geological Survey reckons global reserves of methane hydrate contain twice as much energy as the world's proven deposits of oil, natural gas, and coal combined.

Mr. Singh's Search for the Holy Grail
by Charles Graeber
Popular Science
He claims that his invention makes an engine cleaner, quieter and colder than its internal-combustion cousins around the world -- while using up to 20 percent less gas... Singh takes the chalk and draws a rectangle with a domed top: a combustion chamber and the cylinder head, the ashtraylike piece of metal he has modified. Then he draws a diagonal line across the edge of that dome, then another, representing the grooves he has carved -- his invention. The grooves are supposed to better mix the air and fuel inside the chamber. Singh is convinced that it makes combustion more efficient... Turbulence is the chaotic movement of fuel and air through the ICE's combustion chamber -- the swirl and tumble that makes hydrocarbons and oxygen combine fast and furiously in an efficient engine. Compressed fuel stagnates and separates and burns inefficiently, if at all -- imagine trying to burn a phone book without fanning the pages. Turbulence mixes it up, fans those pages. It's what allows modern high-compression engines to go boom.

On page two, "the efficiency of that bang had stalled out at around 28 percent". Like the late Smokey Yunick, who pushed fuel economy and performance of the internal combustion engine, Singh is a mechanic extraordinaire.

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