From: Alfio Puglisi (puglisi@arcetri.astro.it)
Date: Sun Jun 15 2003 - 04:02:30 MDT
On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>### Are you located in Europe? That might explain your position, since cars
>in some parts of Europe tend to be quite polluting. In other countries,
>properly designed and run gasoline-powered cars (SULEV and ULEV designation)
>remove allergens and organic particulates from the air they use, and produce
>almost pure water and carbon dioxide. There is no health-related reason to
>limit that. On the other hand, current batteries and hydrogen handling
>technologies have high risks, including lead poisoning, explosions, and
>ozone layer destruction.
Yes I am in Europe. My country's average population density is 196/km2,
and my city is about 3600/km2. This is average for big cities in Italy,
for example Naples goes up to 8000 people/km2. With a 1-1 ratio between
the number of people and the number of engines (yes, we are more motorized
than the US), no amount of catalizers will clean a car output enough.
Actually, it is true that many cars here are of old design and pollute
more than their fair share. New cars are a lot better, now the problem is
to give everyone the money to change their cars in a short timeframe :-)
>Actually, it would be trivially easy to add flower fragrance to car exhaust.
>This is a cool idea, now that you got me to think about it!
>Spike, do you feel like patenting a car-exhaust deodorizer, with electronic
>choice of fragrances? You could have nice smells, cinnamon and chocolate, or
>fart smells, in case you are being tailgated. Let's found "Spike & Rafal's
>Car Smell Emporium"!
I better run to the patent office before you and Spike start your business
:-))))
Ciao,
Alfio
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Jun 15 2003 - 04:11:39 MDT