An idea for an carbon neutral car

This is a compromise of sorts for the greenie types.  They want a carbon-free car,
not just a carbon-neutral car.  Perhaps they would settle for this.  Lots of luck
with that.

Anyway, the idea is to use molten-salt reactors of the type that Thorcon is going
to make.  This should be scalable, so that many reactors could be made, thus
lowering the cost.  Not to mention, it is a much cheaper nuclear reactor than the
solid-fueled water-cooled conventional reactors.

You could even run it on waste from nuclear power plants, which would kill two
birds with one stone.  Maybe the PETA people would object to killing birds.

There was already an idea discussed in a video I once posted somewhere, which
proposed to use molten-salt reactors to make jet fuel.

It so happens that seawater has 100 times more carbon dioxide in it than the
atmosphere.  There may be enough to make this economically feasible, provided
that the costs can kept as low as possible.

The idea is nuclear methanol.  The idea of using nuclear power to make methanol was
discussed on my blogs as well.  This was a Japanese study , however the
price for methanol thus produced may be a bit higher than market prices.  Of
course, molten-salt reactor technology should be cheaper, and mass production
of Thorcon reactors cheaper still.

Of course, if you just use hydrogen, it may be better.  Why?  Hydrogen is the
best for rockets because it burns hotter.  The same principle could be applied
to Stirling engines.  That is to say, the hotter the Stirling, gets the more
efficient it is.   Make the engine small and compact.

In order to obtain the hydrogen, we can make ammonia instead of methanol.  Ship
the ammonia to the point of sale, and crack it to make hydrogen.  There would
be no carbon at all.  Maybe that would make the greenies happy after all.

Provided that nuclear hurdle can be surpassed, which may be possible, the second
part of the system involves Stirling-electric hybrids.  Stirling engines have
some setbacks as an automotive power plant, but if they are small, then they
should work in cars.  In addition to making them about 25 kilowatts or so, the
batteries can be smaller as well.

The batteries add to the weight of the car, so they should be minimized.  You
could use ultracapacitors for quick bursts of power as well.  The ultracapacitors
will last the lifetime of the car, most likely.  Batteries have to be replaced
often, and those aren't cheap.

You don't need large powerful engines.  A car can cruise down the highway on
25 kilowatts of power from a Stirling electric engine.  A little more power
for passing and going up hills can come from the batteries and the capacitors.
One problem for Stirling electric is that they need to warm up.  The warm up
period can be electric only.

Perhaps this idea would a lot like the existing hybrids of today.  However, no
existing hybrid that I know of uses Stirling engines.  They still use internal
combustion engines, which aren't as efficient as Stirling engines.  So, the
higher priced fuel can be partially offset by increased efficiency.

So there you have it.  If the economics can be made to work, then the car concept
could be marketable.  The economics of cheaper energy from molten-salt reactors
and efficiency of Stirling electric engines may make this idea economically feasible.