Hypography Science Forums: ronthepon - Viewing Profile - Hypography Science Forums

I had no idea where else to put this... anyway;

Anyone living at or near Madison? I had to ask.

Hey people, long time.

Anyway, I happen to be doing a project on analyzing the viability of ethanol as a energy carrier and a replacement fuel.

Having checked out a big deal on where ethanol production is flawed, and where it has place for improvement, I'd come to the conclusion that ethanol has a bright-er future.

I'd come to believe that ethanol might actually get cheaper than petrolem at a point of time, and replace it completely. Then came a big problem:

We use ~76 million barrels of gasoline per day.

Why is that a problem? Because I've come to believe that (for cellulosic ethanol) a ton of biomass yeilds a few gallons.(link)Check out Germany's achievement. We probably wont multiply that by ten or something even in the future.

Switchgrass, gives us like 11-12 tonnes of biomass per year per acre on an average. So we need like...(*grabbing calculator) uh... 2-3000 million acres of land area to fulfill the complete replacement scenario. Remember that the total land surface area is like 36000 million acres. We'd be needing like 8% of the total land area for switchgrass or Miscanthus giganteus. Dunno if it'll be available easily. EDIT: Oh and did I forget to mention? Total cultivated land is like 12% of the land area.

The waste may take care of around 300-400 million barrels of the around 30,000 million barrels that we'll need worldwide per year. (My calculation. Seem flawed to me, Please correct me)

Does anyone have any definite data on what is the actual scale of possible ethanol production? (throw in 400,000 acres of switchgrass cultivated areas in the US if nessecary).

Been around programmers for years, yet never actually got to work with them. Yes, I don't know one bit about computer programming. I've always wanted to know how to write programs, but I've never had the guts to go on the apparently difficult and gruelling path to become a programmer.

Things turned dark and cold when I got to Half-Life map editing. I knew how to make wonderful environments, and got to explore world I created. But the world were horribly empty, or simple repeats of the same things I had created only days back. I had the source code right under my nose, but didn't have one bit of knowledge about how to use the wonderful tools.

But now, everything's gonna change. After coming to my new college, I was introduced to a course 'EC-101A'. Instantly I knew that I was where I always wanted to be. I would get to learn C++ in my very first semester, and possibly java by the second...

So here I am, setting up my base camp, ready to build my bones. I hope others like me will join me in my quest, and those who already have undergone it will assist...

I begin tomorrow...

Till then, the compiler I use will be 'Dev-C++ 4.9.9.2', available from here.

Okay, studies have started, and the first thing in my math 101 course if funtions in two variables.

Now, limits for single variable functions were pretty simple, all you had to do was to approach the point in question from two directions.

Obviously there are infinite 'directions' from where we can approach the a point defined by two variables. I mean if the variables are 'x' and 'y', there are infinite ways we can move towards, say (0,0) in the x-y plane.

I tried using a generalised approach to the point by relating x and y as , obviously we can simply substitute the point in question and get a representation of 'c' in 'm'. Like for (0,0), c becomes zero, and for (1,1), c becomes -m.

Hence, we have a general line serving as a direction of approach. We can easily use this general approach line to substitute one of the variables in the function in the terms of the other. Having done that, it shall be easy to find the limit of the function from the 'general direction'. (The limit will contain the 'm' term, and that will give every possible limit from every possible direction.)

In the end, all that remains for me to do is vary m from minus infinity to plus infinity, and every direction of approach has been covered.

Right?

But no, apparently, while this method suggests a limit of zero for the function at (0,0) the function does not have a limit there. (Somehow a 1/2 is also there as a limit from some direction)

So who's helping me?

I had approached a thermodynamics(?) related excercise some time ago, and don't really feel sure about the way I approached it.

Suppose we had two gas filled chambers, perfectly isolated from the surroundings reigion, both separated with a valve.

The thermodynamic state of the chambers (chambers 1 and 2) are charecterised by gaseous pressures, Volumes and Gaseous temperatures as-

Pressures and

Chamber volumes and

Temperatures and

(Subscripts denote the chamber number.)

Supposing the valve was suddenly opened. Assuming ideal conditions, We've got to find out the final state the system reaches. After it reaches equilibrium that is.