DEMON NITROGEN?

The featured automobile is stripped to just enough frame and tires to hold one human, the motor, and the "fuel.'' This car can travel 15 miles at 20 miles per hour on 48 gallons of liquid nitrogen. At current prices in Southern Oregon, this is $125 worth of liquid nitrogen.

Reducing this price by half to allow for economies of scale, I calculate four dollars per mile or approximately 80 times the fuel cost for my 1983 GMC diesel Suburban. Compared to a current model automobile of weight comparable to the test car, the fuel cost is about 150-fold higher (300-fold at current prices).

Even if they give the fuel away, however, there is another small problem. In order to drive the same distance (1,000 miles) that my Suburban travels on 40 gallons of fuel, the test car will require 11 tons of liquid nitrogen. Eleven tons of fuel (on a very large trailer) will drop my fuel efficiency to at least a factor of four below the test car, so now I need 40 tons of fuel. This is approximately the capacity of the tractor-trailer trucks that are used to distribute fuel to service stations. These trucks require even more fuel. Let us assume a factor of two.

So, we estimate that this new technology will give us a range of about 500 miles if we all travel in tractor-trailer fuel trucks and pay about 1000-fold more for our fuel. Not to worry - they are tinkering with ways to make it better - probably by means of lubrication with a fat tax-financed research grant. As to the ancillary advantage of cleaning the atmosphere of carbon dioxide, it will be necessary to liquefy about 50% of the atmosphere of the entire Earth to reduce carbon dioxide levels to those of the 1940s. The energy for this liquification and for storage of the resulting carbon will need to be produced without the use of hydrocarbon fuels.

The only advantage of this method of propulsion is that its development will not lead to peudoenvironmentalist demonization of nitrogen. The only technologies selected for demonization are those that do cost-effective and practical work. This one does not.