Plug-In Hybrids Use Over 17 Times More Water Than Regular Cars, Researchers Say
While plug-in hybrids offer great increases in fuel efficiency, they may come at a surprising cost: water. A recent study from Environmental Science & Technology found that plug-ins require the consumption of 3 times more water, and the withdrawal of 17 times more water, than their gasoline counterparts. As Popular Mechanics pointed out last week:
A 30-mile commute in a gasoline-powered car would require the withdrawal of 18.9 gallons of water… The same commute in a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), meanwhile, would take a whopping 318 gallons…
So what accounts for the increase in water usage? PHEV’s don’t require water directly, but the power plants that power them do:
Any power plant that runs steam turbines uses water, whether fired by coal, natural gas, or nuclear energy, says King, a mechanical engineer at the Bureau of Economic Geology at UT. Many plants consume water by running it through cooling towers where it evaporates away. Plants can also tie up water resources via withdrawal, in which plants recycle water that is drawn from a reservoir.
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This is enough of an increase to warrant consideration by public policy-makers, especially in arid climates. If 25% of the nation’s fleet converted to plug-in vehicles it would require an additional 1 billion gallons of water for electricity generation. For comparison, that’s almost half the total urban water used by the state of California in one year.
But no one, including the study authors, is saying that plug-in hybrids should be blacklisted. It just adds an important consideration for water-stressed areas that have plans for a grid-based automotive fleet. It also highlights the importance of using sustainable (wind, solar) sources of electricity for electric vehicles.
And as far as the alternatives go: PM pointed out that growing a bushel of corn requires 2200 gallons of water, which only makes 2.7 gallons of ethanol. I would take a fleet of plug-ins over a fleet of Flex-Fuel vehicles any day.
Related Posts:
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Will Plug-In Hybrids Become the Standard?
Source:
See the study here.
ES&T (Feb. 20, 08): Plugging in to more water use
Popular Mechanics (Mar. 7, 08): Plug-in Cars Could Drain U.S. Water Supply, Researcher Says
I don’t really see why it is gonna require a whole lot of new power plants, most usage will be off peak when people get home from work and will charge overnight.
But you should plan on people who will stop using heating oil this winter opting for electric space heaters due to the excessive costs. I have natural gas and unless I get a new furnace electric is cheaper for me than nat gas. I suspect it will be the same this winter.
I love it when the liberal lefties get all twisted up around their own badly-thought out ideas! I didn’t even know that cars used water! Not a drop goes into mine. So tell me, what does an environmentally conscious tree-hugging dirt worshiper drive in this world? Certainly not a plug in car, they use too much water. And the big bad oil companies are going to screw us with gasoline (never mind the fact that the EPA and other lefty groups won’t let them drill for more oil or build refineries to increase supply). Oh no, global warming wouldn’t allow me to drive a gas powered anyway! What global warming? In 1988 we had two weeks over 90 degrees… in 2008 we had zero days over 90 degrees. And record snowfalls in the winter for the last two years. Sounds like global COOLING to me!
Yes, I’m a right winger that is merely pointing out the flaws in the lefty “logic”.
Does anybody realize that corn, the main source of American Ethonol, is grown no matter what the end use is? American Farmers raise grain in the most efficient ways possible because the only way for them to make a profit is to maximize income and minimize cost. Ethonal is made from a small portion of the kernel of corn. Also there are by products from the portion of a corn kernel that the ethanol is produced, this is used to feed livestock and produce other products like corn-board and corn based plastics.
If you were to add up all the energy that it took to create the fossil fuel based gasoline I think some of you green heads would vomit and crap your pants. The processes that created natural crude oil are far inferior to the direct production of highly refined ethanols based corn and plants.
If one were to take into account the processes it takes to create energy, I am convinced that ethanol plants are the most efficient. Oil Refineries require huge amounts of water to create high quality oils and gasoline. Ethanol is fuel, usable by slightly modified internal combustion engines. Ethanol is basically moonshine. Old timers could run their High compression 440 mopar engines on “moonshine”, high proof alcohol, corn based ethanol.
Oil reserves are vast volumes of fluid created from decomposed broken down life forms from thousands or millions of years ago. How much energy did that take to create.
I have nothing wrong with hybrids, it make sense. there is an interesting example of where college engineering students from retributal colleges design drag racing cars utilizing 5 horsepower Briggs & Stratton engines to see how fast they can accelerate given a specific energy input. One team surprised everyone when they used the 5 hp engine to power an air pump and store the energy in a compressed air tank and then used the highly compressed air to power an air motor similar to those used shop tools. the results were incredible. the stored energy showed its strength as the car rocketed off on the dragstrip making the traditional direct drive gasoline engine powered cars look like slow moving slugs. This is a simple look at a hybrid system, where a main power source is used to store small amounts of energy several times over, maybe millions of times over, to add up to a short pulse of high powered thrust. Imagine blowing up a balloon and letting it go when it is completely full of air. when full and released it flies considerable distance, but an empty balloon will not move a foot with a hefty breath of air.
Years ago the best way to gain economoy in a car was to either turn off or cut the belt to your AC compressor, this causes less resistance on the engine and there for took less gasoline to keep the motor turning. a proper hybrid would use the most efficient fuel source available with the most efficient engine size, compression ratio, super/turbocharger, and most efficient storage battery along with an efficient alternator. Also to consider is durability. Sure a 4000hp v8 top fuel drag race engine is available, but they might break down after fewer than 1000 revolutions where as a 12.7 liter Detroit Diesel may be good for 15 million cycles.
In all honesty Hybrid Drive is a very complex system as a whole, but broken down could be considered a simple design problem waiting to be solved.
When broken down, one would need to know operating revs, generating power of the alternator, fuel consumption at given rpms, storage rate of the battery system, and the draw amperage of the electric wheel motors.
Honestly 100mpg cannot be impossible with so many areas to improve on efficiency. Board track racers of the past have performed very well in efficiency tests, but they were in situations where they had minimal rolling resistance and extremely low wind resistance.
Its all a matter of what we are willing to put up with in order to achieve high mpgs. drive in a soup can with very little acceleration and it is possible, but people want/need to go fast so …
There are similar discussions going on at other sites on transitional technologies. As soon as people assume that a single solution is the only solution, we run into trouble - because every technology has its limitations. Those here who are thinking systemically are going in the right direction.
PHEVs are a transitional technology. EVs are also transitional. The solution is much larger than what we drive. It lies in how we live. For our current civilization to survive, we must redefine our purpose and set about living within the carrying capacities of our local environments. That will take life and economic changes of an order of magnitude that most people prefer not to contemplate.
So - a tiny step in the right direction is to reduce our use of fossil fuels for everything. PHEVs do that - a little. And remember, it’s not the PHEV that uses too much water - it’s the power plant. It is good to know that fossil fuel-powered electrical generation uses too much water. Perhaps that, along with climate change issues will help us move towards better options. Eventually, we’ll begin to conserve and preserve - then perhaps we’ll survive.