The 50 Technologies

Walking through the 50 Technologies and Their Economic Impact

Disclaimer - Graph of completion Here we discuss all the tools, but please remember that in Part 1 of the 4 Part Series, many of the machines are still on the drawing board.

Agriculture

If you eat, you use a Tractor. Maybe not you directly, but the farmer that grew your food. And food is a $8T industry. The GVCS field agriculture machinery that support this $8T industry are:

Fig 1. The Tractor, Microtractor, Microcombine, Universal Seeder, Spader, Hay Cutter, Hay Rake, Baler, and Dairy Milker, and a Bakery Oven are critical tools of the $8T food industry.

Tractor, MicroTractor, Bulldozer and Power Cubes

The tractor is a cornerstone of a farm, construction, or other materials production industries. A tractor has the traction to pull things, and to do utility work with variou implements that can be added to a tractor and use the tractor’s mechanical power through a Power Take-off (PTO). As such, the tractor can be a swiss army knife of heavy duty work. For the smaller individual or home scale, we have the MicroTractor in the set, which is a small, walk-behind or ride-on tractor at the 16-32 hp size that can perform many gardening and utility functions and can fit in a smaller areas where a large tractor would be impractical. If we go up in scale - use a stronger frame and at least 64 hp, and add a bulldozer blade to the tractor - then we have a bulldozer.

The tractor is a machine on the scale of 50-320 hp in the GVCS ecosystem, and unlike traditional tractors, we focus on modular power. We currently use small 16 hp engine units at $17/hp (ref), which is the lowest cost way to obtain engine power, while making maintenance very easy. Like in nature where a tree is made of many branches, our tractor is made of many small engine units. This way, the same design pattern can be used in the 16 hp tractor as in the 320 hp tractor. The price for using larger diesel engines is 2-4 times larger.

By using the modularity concept, we create our typical construction set approach for heavy machines. For example, if a large tractor frame is fitted with a bulldozer blade - then we don’t require a separate bulldozer in addition to a tractor. This saves a lot of resources - making technology significantly lower cost to maintain. Exploring the limits of modularity, we found that it is much less expensive to scale our machines usig modular and overbuilt parts that make sense both for small and large machines. For example, we can use 4 of our identical track units, each rated for up to 80 hp - Our track unit, for example, allows for a $30k version that matches the traction of a Cat D7 - a sizeable cost savings comprd to a base price of ½ a million. .

Fig. Pattern Language for a Tractor - up to automated control.

The key is making it easy and quick to interchange parts - from small parts to large implements. This is a great challenge for advanced industrial design.

Fig. Industrial smaller parallel and trained configuration. OSE machines can be designed like this, but higher flexibility of the OSE platform can allow for an improved configuration.

Fig. The flexibility of a modular OSE tractor. The modular OSE tractor can be built from the same components, but apply to 16 hp or 320 hp machines while using the same over-engineered components such as the ½” thick steel tracks

Spader, Seeder, Bulldozer

Your food today is grown largely by tractor-driven tilling and seeding, unless you’re a breatharian. Tillage in the OSE system chooses the spader as a more progressive technology compared to the age-old plow.

Fig. (Image of 1800 steam tractor with 50 bottom plow)

The spader works essentially like a bunch of shovels moving rapidly - which till soil without crating a hardpan typical of the more common plow. Manufacturers claim that spading uses 40% less fuel than plowing - because a spader can combine tilling, harrowing, and planting in one operation. A plow, which drags through the soil, requires a lot of wheel-to-ground traction, whereas a spader requires very little - thus avoiding soil compaction. It takes a spader under 9 minutes and 2 gallons of fuel per acre of field - such that feeding Dunbar Village would take 6 hours to plant for a whole year of crop Thus, one day to plant, two days to harvest - and the village has food for the year.

The tractor and universal seeder is an example of how we approach multiple purpose machines. The tractor is a large-size swiss army knife for doing many different tasks. The Universal seeder is designed to plant all types of seed, from alfalfa to wheat, to tubers, and to live plants like sweet potato slips. Modifying the device rapidly is key to this flexibility.

Fig. Swiss army knife tractor concept

The point of using powerful machines wisely is that in the OSE perspective of lifetime growth - life could become easy so we can focus on evolving as humans. Our experiment involves building a college campus where peole live this. When they graduate, they know how to organize a village to spend 2 hours per day working on survival, and then the rest of their life they pursue their highest ideals.

The experimental village thus requires one farmer who is employed 3 days of the year, assuming the equipment does not break down, and generates 30 acres * $20k/acre of sweet potato, and $5k/acre for 10 acres of wheat if that is turned into bread - or $650k worth of food for the community with direct marketing. That is $27k/hour if baking is automated - a decent pay, but not like the $25k/minute rate of Warren Buffett

Of course these are unreasonable figures, but they do represent the idea. The only way that customer acquisition and marketing costs do not ruin such ideals is in the case of direct marketing - where the on-site farmer-scientist provides for a captive audience of the Dunbar village. If each person eats about $2600 per year , feeding 150 people would involve revenues of $390k - but that would be a full time job. We will look more carefully at the business model for resident farmer agriculture in the Enterprise chapter.

Now it would take more time to do a diversified operation, but this is shown just as a baseline to see what’s possible in terms of the effort. Several Ph.D.’s can be granted to develop a diversified, 40 acre subscription farm, using open source equipment and a captive market, or Local Food Nodes as part of a distribution platform.

The OSE project will develop such a food enterprise both for its campuses and for the outside community - once all the farming machines are done, the aquaponic greenhouse production is optimized, and derivative food processing tools are developed.

The open source tractor can be built at a cost of $125/hp at a scale of 80 hp, compared to $370-$1000 for other brands. It is useful to understand the basic cost breakdown based on off-the shelf parts:

Fig. Cost breakdown of a tractor by Frame, engine, hydraulics, control, automation, and balance of system - $125/hp. (p590MJ)

The cost advantage is less visible at the 32 hp MicroTrac, at $160 per hp - though but a comparable mahine like the tracked Toro Ding costs around $1000/hp (ref).

Fig. Microtrac with tooth bar bucket can till your garden, and provide valuable utility work. It is an indidspensible utility machine for any prosumer.

Hay Cutter, Rake, Baler

If farm animals are involved, then you need these. Or if you want to move large quantities of materials, then a bale is a useful form: from a bale of hay, brush, cotton, cardboard, or plastic - bales allow large scale moving of materials. Bales of aluminum cans are likewise useful for melting down in your induction furnace. If you are making fuel pellets from biomass, plastic pellets for making 3D printer filament - you will need a baler to make 1 ton bales.

Dairy Milker

For animal husbandry, hay baling stores hay for the winter. Unless you are talking about the fish in your home aquaponic system. Dairy products themselves are $116B

of the global economy - hence the relevance of the dairy milker.

Table: values of the overall food, dairy, cattle, vegetable markets worldwide. Combining the dairy milker with computer vision and automation, we envision a solar robotic milker - our MicroTrac with a milking stall - that drives up to a cow to milk her, and then brings the milk back for storage and processing. This allows field milking without human labor for small diversified robofarms that combine the best of regenerative agriculture with modern tehnology to relocalize farming.

Fig. Robotic milker

MicroTrac

A very interesting use arises with a small, solar, robot tractor - the MicroTrac driven by a solar panel. By adding a $10 Raspberry Pi Zero Controller and a $100 solar panel you can be your robotic tractor - for agriculture and other. You can now mow your lawn automatically, and even pelletize it for fuel for a pellet stove. This is possible because today - advanced microelectronics such as the Raspberry Pi is 100 times faster that the first supercomputer, which cost $9M in 1975.

Fig. A solar-driven MicroTrac concept with solar panel and $50 arduino controller can provide autonomous agriculture

Bulldozer

Now add a bulldozer blade to a beefed up, tracked tractor - and you have one of the most powerful devices for regeneration - or destruction - depending on how you use the machine. Bulldozers are powerful earth moving machines - to build roads, grade house foundations, and in agriculture - to build regenerative earthworks for water and erosion. The biggest example is the 12,000 square miles that have been regreened in China - the Loess Plateau. .

Fig. Loess Plateau reforestation

So, if you ever drove on a road - you used a bulldozer. Maybe not you, but whoever graded the road base.

Microcombine

The Microombine is used to harvest grains and seeds of any type. This is the core of human harvests world wide. For the OSE case, we have a much more flexible and modular machine in mind. Based on our module-based aproach, we can use the same drive platform as the tractor

Fig. Showing the base drive platform that can be used

Bakery Oven

Humble bread is a $419B global market https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-trends/global-industry-reports/manufacturing/bakery-goods-manufacturing.html . It is the 12th most popular food in the world. https://www.farmflavor.com/at-home/what-is-the-most-popular-food-in-the-world/ And 49% of Americans eat bread https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/each-day-50-percent-america-eats-sandwich-180952972/ .

Now bulldozers, tractors, and combines are all good - but the next step for gobal agriculture is the transition to perennial polyculture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpJR2yfLUU0 , with only a small fraction of tillage ramaining.

Construction - 13 Tools

If you want to build a charter city or a smaller campus, you will need construction equipment - and a trencher to put in gigabit internet fiber between the locations.

The tools in the construction part outside of the tractors include the backhoe, trencher, cement mixer, sawmill, CEB press, well-drilling rig, soil pulverizer, hammermill. The universal rotor is a tool used in other sectors of the GVCS - and the SeedHouse is a living machine.

Fig. 13 tools of the construction part of the Global Village Construction Set.

Backhoe, Trencher, Cement Mixer

The backhoe or excavator can be used to dig aquaponic ponds, foundation trenches. It can be used to remove stumps, do trenching, and with a grapple it can be used to lift logs or to hoist heavy objects. Backhoes are relatively simple devices - a set of pivot joints that use hydraulic cylinders for their motion - producing thousands of pounds of digging force at the touch of control levers. There are both side-to-side moving backhoes, but a 360 degree rotating backhoe is much more flexible. The small side to side version can be used on a front quick attach of a tractor.

Fig. OSE backhoe from 2010 https://www.google.com/search?q=ose+backhoe&client=ubuntu&hs=ToH&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLzZKelOLYAhULbawKHQo-DVwQ_AUICigB&biw=1351&bih=731#imgrc=t8j52U9--mn6BM: mounted on he original lifetrac, a small one used for water line trenching in 2012 http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/File:Bhp1.jpg , and a larger one from 2013 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6Jpysxw3Ty-oH4bggp32PR_rPWr8bKC1 . Next iteration is the 360 degree backhoe with remote control drive to facilitate hydraulic line routing.

The trencher in the original GVCS icon is a wheel trencher. We built 2 prototypes, and the next iteration will be a chain-based trencher based on our favorable experience with oversized chain drive on the bulldozer tracks.

Fig. OSE Trencher http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Trencher - 2011 and 2013 builds. The cement mixer is indispensable. Cement has been used in ancient Rome and in mesoamerican temples. Scotland's County Cork had 23,000 lime kilns at one time - had one kiln per 80 acres. Wood or coal was used as fuel. http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/09/lime-kilns.html http://www.chapelgatehome.uk/our-blog Portland cement tool over lime cement in the last 100 years, but lime concrete is favorable in foundations becaue it doesn’t crack as easily as Portland. Using modern appropriate technology, lime cement production in solar microfactories is a viable enterprise at the 1 ton per day scale using an open source microkiln the size of a refrigerator. Limestone goes in one end, and lime comes out the other. With such small appliances costing around $1k, cement production can be distributed - while making cement production carbon neutral, annihilating the current 5% CO2 emission share of the the concrete industry.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concrete This is possible in about 50% of America, where the bedrock is made of limestone. That’s a $10B industry in the USA alone.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement_industry_in_the_United_States

The cement fryer - a rotary lime kiln - is much like the cement mixer: a Universal Rotor with a heating element. A rotating pipe heated by PV, and an Arduino microcontroller to measure temperatures and guide the process to efficient completion. While not part of the 50 GVCS technologies, it’s a ready derivative:

Fig. PV of the Open Source Materials Production Facility, a solar Power Cube, a Universal Rotor, metal pipe and an Arduino microcontroller constitute the lime cement maker.

If we want to go to the essence of construction, take the backhoe excavator, chase it with a bulldozer with ripper shanks, and then rock under a site could be extracted to build a pond. This rock, if limestone, is feedstock for your lime kiln. In some places, rock outcroppings make access to limestone easy.

CEB Press , Soil Pulverizer, and Sawmill

The Compressed Earth Brick press and sawmill are critical tools for construction in that they produce materials. The CEB Press allows one operator to load raw dirt right from the building site to produce about 5000 bricks in a day - enough for a small house.

Fig. The CEB Press is the first machine that we have prototyped, and it is ready for widespread replication around the world.

We have used the soil pulverizer to prepare soil for pressing CEB blocks. The soil pulverizer was used to both pulverize the soil, and its bucket was used to press bricks for CEB construction.

Fig. Soil pulverizer - Aidan on the tractor + loading the brick press by Yoonseo

Our next step on the CEB press is a full soil conditioner which pulverizes soi, adds cement at a measured quantity of 5%, and then loads the mixture into the CEB press - to allow for production of high quality, stabilized block.

Fig. The soil conditioner accepts raw soil from a tractor loader, mixes a measured amount of cement, and loads the prepared mixture into the CEB press for effective production of stabilized block at 12 cents ( 10 cent cement cost for a 20 lb block, and 2 cents gasoline cost). per block in materials. This means that we can build a 1’ thick CEB wall section for $50 in materials.

The sawmill is a machine that can produce dimensional lumber - a staple of construction. Our sawmill is a variety known as a swing-blade sawmill, which has a single blade that can rotate 90 degrees and make a dimensional piece of lumber by going forward and back on a piece of wood. We chose the dimensional sawmill for its simplicity over a bandsaw mill, as blade sharpening is much easier - and maintenance is the larger cost of any equipment if that equipment is designed for a lifetime.

The sawmill is a good example of how we can use GVCS product ecologies to reduce complexity and reduce the cost of equipment. We design not just individual machines, but machine ecosystems that feed off one another. We can obtain drastic cost reduction by borrowing existing modules from the GVCS. For our case, it makes sense to design the sawmill as a Bobcat standard quick attach implement. We borrow the tractor as a quick attach point, so that we do not need a bed upon which the sawmill head would otherwise ride. We borrow 32 hp from the tractor Power Cubes. We also borrow the hydraulic motor which we attach with hydraulic quick-connect hoses. Thus, we have essentially stripped down the entire sawmill to the long carriage with the cutting head - saving $2k https://www.ebay.com/itm/30hp-Kohler-Engine-1-1-8-D-Command-15Amp-Exmark-CH750-0026/132423001888?epid=26011371639&hash=item1ed506a720:g:4YUAAOSwH2VaS3-h on the engine, $2k https://sleequipment.com/dovetail-utility-trailer-7x20-with-3500lb-axles.html?fee=8&fep=524834&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIws349azn2AIVBqxpCh1rMwbpEAQYASABEgIeHPD_BwE on a trailer. The greatest advantage would be the setup time - if designed as a quick attach implement, the sawmill can be taken to a log, rested right by the log, and ready for action - as compared to systems where the carriage base must be set up or the log moved into cutting position. If the sawmill can straddle right over a log or be raised with the loader arms, there is no limit ot the side of log that the mill can handle.

Fig. The simplicity of the OSE swing-blade sawmill involves a long linear track mounted as an implement for the tractor. To provide 3 axes of motion - the loader mounting includes height adjustment (z motion), and a lightweight cantilevered head provides side-to-side motion. The cost of about $1500 is significantly lower than the $15k http://www.dltimbertech.com/dl-180-swing-blade-sawmill-10-x-20.html minimum for a comparable 32 hp sawmill. (ref)

And the sawdust that we generate can be used as animal bedding, insulation, or it can be pelletized to make fuel pellets.

Universal Rotor

The Universal Rotor is a fundamental building block for just about any moving machine. It is a combination of rotary motion and a useful tool-head. As a design pattern consisting of a shaft, bearings, and a motor - a wide array of working tools can be attached to it - so that the Universal Rotor can constitute a drill, a wind turbine, a wheel, a hammermill, cement mixer, sawmill - etc - essentially any machine at any size - from small cordless electric drills to a larger 50kW rotor of a wind turbine. The Pelletizer , Chipper/Hammermill, Dimensional Sawmill, Rototiler/Soil Pulverizer, Cement Mixer, Well-Drilling Rig, 50 kW Wind Turbine, Microcombine Thresher, and Bioplastic Extruder are direct applications of the universal rotor, and combined with precision machining structures, the Universal Rotor also include the heavy duty CNC Multimhttps://www.opensourceecology.org/portfolio/pelletizer/achine with lathe, drill press, slow cutoff saw, surface grinder, and other machines of fabrication. If we can build a Universal Rotor, a Power Cube, and weld together a supporting structure - then we have - broadly speaking - build 23 of the 50 machines of the GVCS. For example, if we consider the electric motor - it is a a shaft, 2 bearings, a structure, and the ‘tool head’ could be considered the electrical windings that make the shaft spin. Or, if we consider the metal lathe - a part of the Multimachine - then it is clear that the lathe consistr faksdjdfjks of a heavy shaft, 2 heavy bearings, and the tool-head is a chuck for holding work-pieces.

12. Well-Drilling Rig and Chipper/Hammermill

The well-drilling rig is a machine used to dig deep water wells. It consists of a universal rotor which uses 3” (https://www.aquascience.net/grundfos-10sq05-160-230v-10gpm-1-2hp-230v-2-wire-96160140-3-stainless-steel-submersible-well-pump?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlt-S3PDn2AIVC6tpCh369g34EAQYASABEgJr__D_BwE. 10’ of this pipe store 4 or 6.5 gallons of water. ) or 4” drill pipe to drill down to a depth of 100m or more using hydraulic rotary drilling. In this method, a stream of water is sent down the pipe during the drilling operation to send up tailings and soften the area of the drill point. A heavy duty hydraulic motor spins the drill rod - and new sections of drill rod are attached one after another. When the operation is done, the drill pipe is left underground and a submersible pump is inserted to pump water from the well. Fig. A hydraulic deep well pump drilling system explained. The water swivel is the key part here. Otherwise 3” pipe that an be used as drill pipe and casign is $12/foot. https://www.discountsteel.com/items/Galvanized_Steel_Pipe.cfm?item_id=172&size_no=11#skus The chipper/hammermill is another application of a universal heavy rotor with swinging or fixed blades. This machine shreds or pulverizes materials, and can be as small or large as needed. Fig. Hammermill variations with various blades to chip wood or crush rock. A modified version of a heavy rotor can be a grinder. The scale can be from the largest - shredding cars - to the smallest - with small electric motors - if you have hydraulic drive and electric drive.

The House - Seed Eco-Home and Aquaponic Greenhouse

The Seed Eco-Home is a living machine - and becase it is the single largest cost of living today, we dediced to include that in the GVCS. (Initially, the house was not in the GVCS - but it was added as the Microhouse.) The The Seed Eco-Home is the culmination of all the construction machines put to use. Homes are also about $3T (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction#Industry_characteristics - residential construction is about ⅓ of all construction) market worldwide - which if open-sourced, could provide 30 million regenerative housing jobs for open source home building entrepreneurs Earning $100k each per year. This is 30 million potential collaborators - through we need only about 1000 at this time.

The OSE/OBI https://www.openbuildinginstitute.org/ Seed Eco-Home is a an affordable, expandable eco-home that can be built for ⅓ the cost of a typical home, while including ecological features. Rather than building a large house, we propose starting with a seed home, and then growing it as the need arises.

We are pushing ecological limits in our autonomous house design. The house is off-grid with PV, provides its own cooking fuel from a biodigester, includes roof-top rainwater collection, and grows its own food with an aquaponic greenhouse. Mowed lawn or biomass is used to provide heating biomass pellets for a hydronic stove that is fueled by pellets. The eventual product vision is a house that produces fuel for cars as compressed biogas or compressed hydrogen - by splitting water. Thus, we are correcting the oil and gas industry with 100% renewable energy, using simple, proven technologies. We are not relying on advancements in battery technology as a prerequisite to sustainable transportation, and by not requiring scarce lithium for batteries, we are aiming for an abundant and environmentally friendly energy future. http://www.kitco.com/ind/Albrecht/2014-12-16-How-Green-is-Lithium.html We favor rooftop PV plus electrolysis as the preferred route for transportation fuels, where every house becomes a gas station. Using medium pressure electrolyzers that can produce hydrogen up to 33 atmospheres without needing a compressor - we can readily store hydrogen in large propane tanks or higher pressure steel pipe.

Fig. Seed Eco-Home

Fig. Aquaponic greenhouse glamour shot.

The aquaponic greenhouse is designed to provide a year-round supply of fresh eggs, vegetables, fish, and mushrooms. The goal is to include automated planting with a small Farmbot (https://farm.bot/ . By Shuttleworth Fellow friend Rory Aaronson.), where the resulting deep pots are planted in the towers. With a 1000 plant growing capacity in the main towers, the greenhouse can provide a robust salad daily, where we plant and harvest 15 plants per day from a small 800 sf greenhouse. A mushroom yield of 1lb is obtained per week from a tower that takes only 1 square foot. We also intend to use automated 3D printed aerial drones for planting seeds directly into towers - a great example of useful product ecology. Local food addresses the issue of food miles, where food travels an average of 1500 miles in the USA before ending up on someone’s plate. https://cuesa.org/learn/how-far-does-your-food-travel-get-your-plate This is one of the numerous inefficiencies that will be addressed by a more efficient, open source economy. This brings us to transportation.

Transportation.

The microcar, truck, electric motor, and hydraulic motor are the 4 GVCS machines directly related to transportation.

The worldwide production of cars is a total of 95M per year, 75% of which is done by the top 15 companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry#World_motor_vehicle_production This lends itself to massive distribution of power. The OSE paradigm proposes instead that there would be on the order of million distributed enterprises - essentially one per 10,000 people. Each facility would produce cars on the scale of dozens or hundreds in the community-supported manufacturing (CSM) scenario. Thus, car producers replace car dealership - as the producer takes to dealing. This would go well with a gas station at every home, splitting Seed Eo-Home rooftop water for fuel at a cost of 80 cent per gallon of gasoline equivalent. http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Hydrogen_Production

Fig. Seed Eco-Home to car fuel infrastructure consists of rooftop water collection, 10kW of PV panels, a storage tank for hydrogen, and compression to 200 bar. Piece of cake if you consider not doing this - wars for oil. This gives us about 100 miles of fuel worth per day in a 100mpg microcar.

OSE Microcar

The OSE Microar is a Hydrogen Hybrid Hydraulic (H3) vehicle. Hydrogen is chosen because an internal combustion (ICE) engine running on hydrogen is twice as efficient (40%) as a normal ICE (20%), and only 25% under the 50% efficiency of fuel cells. http://environment.yale.edu/gillingham/hydrogenICE.pdf A hydraulic drive train (71% efficiency) - has a higher efficiency than a continuously variable transmission (60%) for fuel cell electric vehicles - meaning that the humble hydrogen hydraulic car gets a higher mileage than a fuel cell car, at significantly lower cost. At a design weight of only 850 lb, less than ¼ of a typical car, the OSE microcar focuses on moving the passenger, not a large chunk of metal accessory to the core purpose. Lighter cars have a good safety record. Before the S.U.V. boom, the country (USA) had the world's lowest highway death rate.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/business/averag e-us-car-is-tipping-scales-at-4000-pounds.html Additionally, gas mileage for the OSE Microcar is specified for 100mpg. While not as testicular as a Tesla, the OSE specification requires higher self-esteem on the part of the driver to accept acceleration from 0-60 of 12 seconds, as opposed to under 3 seconds for a Tesla Model S.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fastest_production_cars_by_acceleration

Fig. The OSE Microcar concept.

Can smaller cars are safer? This is controversial. https://www.ptua.org.au/myths/smallcar/ Physics says that energy of motion is proportional to v squared, and data shows that 56% of car deaths are single-car collisions. So unless you are going to hit another oncoming car or an immovable object like a large tree, your tiny car of under 1000 lb has 36x less energy to dissipate than a Chevy Suburban of 6000 lb. And, the lightest car - the Smart Carfortwo at 1800 lb http://driving.ca/hyundai/accent/auto-news/news/these-are-the-ten-lightest-cars-you-can-buy-in-2015 and it certainly does get eaten up in a frontal 2 car collision with a larger car. And crashes took more than 37k lives in the US http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview#Crash-types , with 20-50x more if injuries are counted. http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safety-facts/road-crash-statistics (are injuries better or worse in large cars?)

But this is all before self-driving cars enter the scene - which have been tested for 0 driverless car crashes over 1.8 million miles by Google - with 13 fender benders caused by other cars. http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/googles-self-driving-car-is-ridiculously-safe In other words, the case is there for super-small, super-efficient cars that are robotically controlled.

What we have in mind follows the standard of the 200 mpg fuel efficiency of the VW L1 first prototype car, at 640 lb weight, 8 hp, top speed of 75 mph, with tandem seating for 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_1-litre_car. The efficiency dropped to 170 mph in a hybrid version - http://gas2.org/2009/09/14/volkswagens-diesel-hybrid-1l-concept-gets-170-mpg-available-by-2013/ If OSE achieves the same with 16 hp instead of 8 hp, and using hydraulics while not needing to go to a hybrid drive-train that apparently reduced its initial mileage performance - then we will have a major victory for open source- Hydraulic accumulators may be used for peak power. Plus, we’d like to achieve this with hydrogen as fuel in later versions.

More specifically - our model is an H3E car - including a hybrid electric component. The hydraulic component is a peak power electric-hydraulic micro-Power Cube of about 40 lb additional weight - powered by the onboard starter battery for its cranking amps. This additional 30 seconds of a starter battery would double the power of the 16 hp engine - such that burst of energy for passing and sudden acceleration can be achieved easily.

B The Solar Car

The Solar Challenge is a fascinating event that shows PV-covered cars traveling 62 mph average across Australia. Granted that the driving is in expensive prototypes ad a sunny country - only in daytime - this still bodes well for the feasibility of solar transportation. The typical cars used are small - surface area of a Toyota Prius - and the OSE version would be twice as large 24x8 feet for 3kW of installed PV + 44 lb Lithium ion batteries + 2.5 kW small engine. http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Solar_Car This allows for a total of 7kW of continuous power for one hour, or 4 kW total power continuous - at 750 lbs of weight. This just may work - if we 3D print a form frame for carbon fiber layup. 3D printing here may be the enabling technology.

Truck

The truck is a medium-size, hydraulic, 80 hp driven vehicle comparable to the Mercedes Unimog. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unimog With a design top speed of 62 mph, a weight of 6550 lb, and a hydraulic power take-off, the OSEmog could function as an agricultural tractor as well. The OSEmog is designed to accept a loader or various implements on the front or back. Using basic hydraulic circuits, the machine would have high and low gear, and speed cotrol via simple flow control valves.

Fig. The OSEmog is a multipurpose truck for carryng loads or operating various implements. With off-the shelf parts, it is designed to be field serviceable, and the working hydraulic fluid can be grown - canola oil with additives.

Hydraulic and Electric Motors

Both the car have a choice of using hydraulic or electric drive. The advantages of hydraulics are low-cost, high torque, and simplicity of resulting drive design. Hydraulic motors cost only $10/hp, half that of electric motors - but a typical 40 hp hydraulic motor weighs about 50 lb http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/45.6_Cu_In_Hydraulic_Motor as opposed to about 350 lb https://inverterdrive.com/group/Motors-AC/TECA2-200L-4-Pole-B3-High-Efficiency-AC-Motor-200/ . Typically electric motors are high speed and need to be geared down - whereas hydraulics can be used largely with direct drive. If high torque electric motors are used - these are more like $100/hp when the controller is included - making the drive system 10x as expensive for larger machines. Electric motors are sensitive to moisture and dirt, while hydraulics are designed for dirty environments.

We electric motors and generators - in solar electric power cubes - or in wind turbines. But the flexibility, power, and simplicity of hydraulics is a better choice for practical applications - especially when powered by hydrogen and transmitted by canola oil as the hydraulic fluid.

The electric motor can also be 3D printed, making it fit with the OSE product ecology.

Fig. A proprietary, 3D printed, 600W, 80% efficient electric motor. The equivalent is worthwhile to open-source.

Electric motors can be both linear and rotary. In the linear form, they are known as solenoids - very useful devices that are used to make valves. For automation - we use dydraulic valves to control machines like the brick press - and solenoids are used wherever pneumatic or hydraulic controls are needed. This means any automated system - from the water control in aquaponics to the control of an industrial robot.

The electric motor of interest ranges from a small 5W one to power a cordless drill - to the 50kW scale for use in the 50kW wind turbine.

This brings us to the energy sector.

Energy Tools

The sun currently shines 10000 times more power to the earth than the entire civilization uses. The implications are profound: there is no such thing as an energy shortage. Energy scarcity is an imagined problem if we talk about actual availability of energy.

We look at it as- it is a high priority to trap solar energy directly - by effective solar design of buildings (Homes and businesses spend about 50% of their energy on heating and cooling. )- and using photovoltaic energy (Solar Concentrator) to generate electricity locally, with wind (50kW Wind Turbine) wherever possible. For machines, the choice is to use hydrogen, charcoal, and compressed biogas.

Hydrogen is by far the most efficient and clean when derived from water (as opposed to refining from oil and gas). The process gives 0 pollution, and the product of hydrogen combustion is water. The OSE platform calls for provent internal combustion engines running on hydrogen as an immediately executable transition to a renewable energy future in transportation. Leading research institutes, such as the Rocky Mountain Institute (ref), promotes the hydrogen economy as the future, and hydrogen as a future energy source is not controversial if one assumes abundance of fuel feedstocks and distribution of energy production. Solar hydrogen can be produced anywhere, and wind hydrogen can be produced in most places around the world. We do not put such a high stake into batteries or supercapacitors when it comes to energy for cars, simply because chemical fuels are up to 140 times as energy dense. A typical energy density chart typically has chemical fuels off-the-charts good:

Fig. Show specific energy density of storage media, with bats and caps, and chemical fuels, for perspective - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor#/media/File:Supercapacitors-vs-batteries-chart.png. With supercapacitors having 100x less energy storage per weight than Lithium-Ion batteries, while costing 10x as much as ($2.85/kJ) as those batteries ($0.8/kJ), they are super-completely out of the question with today’s technology except for niche applications. Engines are .5kW/kg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-weight_ratio#Engines and Fuel (gas, diesel, methane) is 50MJ/kg and hydrogen is 140MJ/kg - or 50-140x more energy per weight than batteries. Given the environmental challenges of mining and recycling scarce metals, there is little case for battery-powered cars.

That means that a non-battery car can lug around a higher percentage of payload (persons, cargo) rather than carrying around more car structure and batteries.

For other purposes, biofuel pellets are desirable for heating fuel (after energy efficiency and solar thermal is maxed out) - such as by an aquaponic greenhouse with a black tubing heat exchanger.

Biofuel pellets can be burned partly to release heat in winter - and if taken out of combustion after the volatile chemicals are burned off but before carbon burns to ash - then we have produced charcoal that can be used in a combustion engine. Thus, dual-fuel hydrogen/charcoal cars are in our view the transportation of the future. We are open to fuel cells entering the scene, and at $134/kW they are almost feasible.https://energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/fuel-cell-technologies-office-accomplishments-and-progress They are too complex at this point for easy DIY production, so we may revisit this in 10 years if the technology becomes more accessible. Currently, fuel cells require exotic plastics and platinum, both of which are scarce resources. We are aiming for a sub $10k car which can be made with a standard internal combustion engine (ICE) running on hydrogen. Did you know that the first internal combustion automobile in the world ran on hydrogen in 1808? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Isaac_de_Rivaz Furthermore, ICEs are about 20% efficient - ICEs running on hydrogen are about 40% efficient. For comparison, fuel cell vehicles are 50% efficient.http://environment.yale.edu/gillingham/hydrogenICE.pdf Given that the efficiency gain of 25% of fuel cells over hydrogen ICEs comes at a 10x larger cost today, the case for pursuing hydrogen ICEs is much higher than the case for fuel cells. much cheaper H2ICE are seen by many experts as the means to provide a transition between emitting and non emitting transport and stationary system. https://pureenergycentre.com/hydrogen-engine/

Fig. The possible cost of a fuel cell car today for a 200kW sedan is $26k - and an overall minimum of about $75k. The open source hydrogen microcar is aimed at an under $10k cost and more than 100 mpg using widely available technology. (comparison of components and price, using ref 3 above)

The answer already under our nose that is perhaps the most optimistic case for the energy revolution is solar power - at 0.015 cent per kilowatt-hour - demonstrated in 2016 by the Seed Eco-Home. http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Hydrogen_Production This is 4x cheaper than gas turbine electric generation https://qz.com/135032/fuelcell-energy-fuel-cell-profit/ , and it allows for an equivalent 80 cent per gallon electricity cost for producing hydrogen.

The Power Cube

Our current Power Cube is a universal power unit that can power any of the large GVCS machines, from cars to lathes to the brick press. The Power Cube is gasoline powered and has a 16 hp engine. We already ran this on charcoal gas - and as such - the same power cube can readily be used in dual-fuel operation - gasoline on the one hand, and charcoal on the other. Once we add the gas production infrastructure - the power cube can run on the hydrogen and biogas production from the House. Because the pelletizer is part of the GVCS - we can make charcoal pellets from biomass pellets as a byproduct of space heating. The concept of pellets is important - in that pellets are a flowable fuel. Meaning - that just like gasoline or tradition fuels - it can be stored in a tank and delivered as fuel as if it were a liquid - by using a small auger. This makes pellets a convenient fuel source, which unlike wood - can be used automatically in small machines.

Moreover, the Power Cube can be run on solar energy, allowing for autonomous tractors and solar cars to enter. Solar power cubes are a good idea for shop power - where PV on the workshop roof feeds electric power cubes for hydraulic shop power. Power cubes can also be made very small - on the 1 kilowatt scale. They can also be stacked readily for higher power, so if we want a 160 hp bulldozer, we can do that based on our existing Power Cube.

The Power Cube involves developing open source engines so that they enter the realm of lifetime design public technology. A universal version of an open source engine means that such an engine could be maintained and produced in a distributed fashion, bringing it closer to appropriate technology with a lifecycle that includes more reusability of parts.

Fig. The Power cube and its different fuel sources - from gasoline, to charcoal, to compressed biogas, hydrogen, and electric.

The large torque of hydraulics makes them very flexible for driving a wide range of machines. A small power cube, such as a 300W version running on a single solar panel, can be used to drive a 2000 lb MicroTrac as a practical, autonomous tractor. The idea is that the machine would move very slowly - all day - on solar power. This is afforded by that fact that hydraulics have high torque at any speed - making this a perfect application of solar energy to autonomous, robotic tractor drive via a small microcontroller such as a $10 Pi Zero with Wireless.https://www.adafruit.com/product/3400 Thus, we can pull chicken tractors or pig tractors with a solar robotic tractor for a diversified agriculture operation.

Fig. Infographic. Mega power cubes for 160 hp for a bulldozer, and a micro power cube for a solar grinder/pelletizer or chicken tractor.

Autonomous animal tractors are another possible application of Power Cubes…

Fig. The economic breakdown of an autonomous chicken tractor. PV panel + micro power cube at $500, plus the tracked drive for another $500 with open source hydraulic motors. The hydraulic motors (SME) are produced on the open source lathe (SME).

The Gasifier

The OSE gasifier is a device that converts charcoal into gas for fueling engines. Note that this gasifier uses charcoal that is produced as a byproduct of space heating. The gasifier is a metal container filled with charcoal, which upon being lit via in a small burn zone with an air inlet - burns and produces gas. This gas can be used as fuel in a regular internal combustion engine. The power of this lies in that with minimal modifications, a standard engine can be fueled by charcoal - which is derived from wood or other biomass. This means that wherever plants grow - they provide a distributed and practical fuel source byond oil wars. https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/index.html To produce charcoal, biomass is first pelletized. Burning pellets for space heat - and removing them from the burn before they turn to ash - produces charcoal pellets.

Fig. Infographic. Space heating produces charcoal in the OSE ecosystem. The Gasifier vaporizes charcoal, which is then burned in a standard engine. This process can be used to fuel cars - no engine modification required.

The first reaction may be that if we turned plants into vehicle fuel - then we would destroy all of nature. That is not true, because there is plenty of biomass reserve that can be used to fuel the entire American car fleet, which uses about 60% http://needtoknow.nas.edu/energy/energy-use/transportation/ of all the energy in the transportation sector. Did you know that the largest single crop in the United States is lawn? There are 40 million acres of turf grass. http://scienceline.org/2011/07/lawns-vs-crops-in-the-continental-u-s/ What if we turned lawns into fuel crop, while increasing esthetics and reducing herbicides? Yields of grass are 4 dry tons per acre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass - and if charcoal is produced at 25% efficiency - that is one ton of charcoal per acre - or 40 million tons of charcoal can be harvested from lawns alone, with no effect on food production, while increasing the ecological diversity of lawns. The average american uses 500 gallons per year of fuel. https://www.treehugger.com/culture/pop-quiz-how-much-more-gas-do-americans-use.html Lawns could thus provide ¼ of the entire car fleet fuel in the USA! (Charcoal is ¾ the energy content of gasoline by weight. At about 3 kg/gallon - 500 gallons is 1500 kg- about 1.5 metric tons - so 33M people could be supplied by fuel from lawns. If 95% of households have cars - https://photos.state.gov/libraries/cambodia/30486/Publications/everyone_in_america_own_a_car.pdf - and household is 2.6 - there are about 120M drivers in the USA. Thus - ¼ of US drivers can be fueled by lawns.) This is at the crappy USA 23 miles per gallon - so increasing fuel efficiency to 100 mpg https://www.motherearthnews.com/green-transportation/green-vehicles/build-your-own-car-zm0z13amzmar with super-efficient micro-cars could mean that the entire US car fleet is supplied by fuel from grass. Efficiency and ecology - as opposed to battery technology with questionable environmental side effects and its centralization based on scarce resources - make the OSE platform converge on biomass and hydrogen as the fuels of choice. The OSE platform reserves the role of batteries only as a small part of vehicular power, not the backbone of the auto industry.

The biomass route needs no technical invention to realize - today - and is also a carbon-neutral route. From the OSE perspective - hydrogen is clean (it produces water as the byproduct) but not better on ecological grounds (it does not contribute to biological ecology) - but it is much better on efficiency grounds.

When discussing biofuels, it is important to point to the food-fuel-fiber integrated agroecology route as the preferred OSE route to agriculture. As opposed to genetic engineering to produce super-crops, the OSE platform favors ecological integration over genetic manipulation - so that we avoid creating super-problems at the same time. The ecological route means that we learn more about dealing with integrated ecosystems, not trying point solutions (genetic engineering) as a cure. When dealing with powerful technologies like genetic engineering, we must pay attention to unintended consequences. The current economic paradigm of profit maximization is not compatible with care in the use of genetic engineering. We favor increasing productivity by stacking yields of multiple crops that work harmoniously in a polyculture setting - with tree crops as a significant component. For us, the breakthrough work of Badgersett Research Farm is seminal in providing this leadership. They are developing perennial crops (hazelnuts and chestnuts) that could serve as a viable replacement for soybeans and corn. (ref). Hazelnuts and chestnuts provide the same nutrition as their annual counterparts - but are perennial - and therefore do not contribute to the average 4 ton per acre annual soil erosion in the United States. (ref). Let me repeat that - the avarage topsoil loss in the United States - per acre - is 4 tons. What that means is that agricultural soils today are so depleted that they could not grow crops if it were not for the heavy inputs of fertilizers. The biological activity of commercial farmland is severely depleted (ref), not sustaining the soil food web of microbes that bring fertility back to the soil. (ref). Our proposition for perennial polyculture - is not new (ref on seminal works, Tree Crops, Regrarians, etc) - and it can produce food, fuel, and other materials.

To improve the world, all you need to do is plant trees. Desertification still claims an additional ______________ square miles every year, and it would be good to reverse that.

It takes less than 60x the land area to produce solar hydrogen compared to the land area required to grow biofuel crops. Between biofuel (easy) and hydrogen (hard), humanity’s fuel needs can be met. Let’s look at numbers: we already said 300 gallons of fuel equivalent per acre (enough to fuel one car for a year at a fuel economy of 40 MPG https://www.google.com/search?q=average+miles+per+year+usa&oq=average+miles+per+year+usa&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l2.7415j0j7&client=ubuntu&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 ) fuel consumption - roughly one gallon per day. If we apply this to hydrogen - 50kWhr of electricity is required to produce 1 kg of hydrogen, roughly one gallon gas equivalent. This can be obtained from a 9 kW PV array - running 6 hours per day - 54kWhr. The space required for a 9 kW array is 60 square meters if the panels are 15% efficient. An acre is 4000 square meters - so producing solar hydrogen requires 66 times less land area than growing the equivalent grass. Our materials cost for 9 kW of solar panels is under $9k. So one can obtain 20 years of hydrogen fuel for a PV investement cost of $17k.

Fig. Home hydrogen production. The OSE open source goal is $9k for PV panels, $2k for storage, $2k for pump, $2k for plumbing, and $2k for the electrolyzer. That is $17k for a lifetime supply of hydrogen. Compare to gasoline - $1250/year on average. Payback time for home fuel station is 14 years in the USA and 7 years in Europe. We intend to make hydrogen production a standard feature of the Seed Eco-Home.

Add a paragraph about renewable energy plantations - perennial polycultures for fuel, food, fiber.

Fig. Basic economic model for renewable energy plantations involves $x/acre in coppiced fuel, $1000/acre in nuts, and $2k/acre in sustainable chickens that fertilize the crop via autonomous chicken tractors.

Heat Exchanger

The heat exchanger is a device that takes heat from one medium and puts it into another. For example, in the Seed Eco-Home - we have a hydronic stove with heat exchanger which is used to heat water for heating the house.

Fig. Hydronic stove with heat exchanger. A heat exchanger heats water, and if that water is boiled, it can be used to run a steam engine or turbine. Small steam engines have been used for shop power 100 years ago, and they can be used even more effectively today. You can get a working kit for $275 on Ebay.

Simpler examples of the heat exchanger are the Hillbilly Heater. This device traps solar heat and puts it into water circulating through the black tubing. This energy is released through another coil in the aquaponic ponds, for example. A closed heat exchanger means that the water in the black tubing does not mix with the pond water. Or, this heat exchanger could be an open heat exchanger, where the water is heated and then used as hot water in a shower - so that a steady supply of new water is fed through the exchanger instead of just circulating - as in the pond heating case.

Fig. The hillbilly heater can be used to heat ponds or to provide hot water for the house.

Modern Steam Engine

The modern steam engine is an engine that produces power from steam. The industrial economy was created by steam power. And steam turbines are the main way that power is generated today.

A modern steam engine is a small engine that makes sense to build wherever space heating is involved. For example, a centrally heated building could be generating power at the same time as its being heated - if a heat engine with a generator is added to the system. Thus, we are piggy-backing on an existing power source, while using all the waste heat.

Under 500 hp - or in any small scale installation - it is more effective to have a steam engine as the engine of choice. Above 500hp, it is more effective to use a steam turbine. Large power plant steam turbines reach 50% efficiency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine#Practical_turbine_efficiency

A flame-fired or solar-powered heat exchanger can produce steam - for electricity generation. This makes sense for combined-heat-and-power systems. Most of today’s electricity is produced by water that is boiled in power plants to provide electricity via steam turbines. (ref) This can be done effectively on a scale of 500 or more horsepower - which is village scale, not home scale. For the smaller scale, a small steam engine can be used. For this reason, we have incorporated a modern steam engine into the GVCS - as a machine for producing electricity on top of a heat source. This could be done in our hydronic stove - where the water goes from the steam engine and then to house heating after some power has been extracted for electricity. It makes sense to convert the heat into high grade electricity - when the steam engine is connected to a generator.

Fig. Hydronic stove with power generation.

Did you know that the modern steam engine - a specific advanced version - is more efficient than the internal combustion engine? The Cyclone engine is a high tech, high temperature steam engine made of stainless steel and exotic materials - with thermal efficiency over 30%. http://cyclonepower.com/

There is another steam engine that received a lot of attention on the internet but appears not to work well - the Green Steam Engine. We do not endorse the engine, as suggested by Tom Kimmel of Kimmel Steam Power http://kimmelsteam.com/green-robertengine.html - and you can read more in an old blog post. (http://opensourceecology.org/steam-meet-report/ . I have since contacted Mr. Greene for data on Feb 1, 2018, but I have not been presented with any data.)

All together, the modern steam engine is valuable for household power, if the Power Cube is used for mobile power. Would would be the cost of a steam engine add-on to a household infrastructure? Small models of ¼ hp are available for under $300 in parts, (http://ebay.to/2EwmHWt ) and these are scalable readily to larger sizes. The current seed eco-home stove has sufficient power to run this engine, so only an additional pump would be required to feed water to this system.

Integration of such a system would work well if pelletized biomass were used as fuel - and subsequently - charcoal would be produced for use in cars as a byproduct of household power generation. An interesting milestone would be an automated biomass energy system from an autonomous tractor-pelletizer - up to the production of charcoal as car fuel using gasifiers - all from one’s former lawn converted to bioenergy crop. In such case, nickel iron batteries may be desirable in so far as excess energy storage from daytime solar power.

Fig. The energy product ecology of the Seed Eco-Home includes solar hydrogen, biogas for cooking, and production of car fuel from the lawn.