Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?

[CORed]

[ QUOTE ]
Interesting thread. I love this crackpot stuff. Reading it is kind of like playing the lottery. If it only works out one time ...

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I had high hopes for cold fusion. But I haven't seen even the few remaining believers claim that they've managed to power a even light bulb.

[Phil153]

[ QUOTE ]
Practically speaking there just isn't enough arable land to supply the amount of biofuel we would need to replace diesel and petrol.

[/ QUOTE ]
Actual, algae farms in the desert can provide all US fuel needs, using only a fraction of US desert area. It's a viable project, produces cheaper fuel than imported oil, has massive economic benefits and zero CO2 emissions. There are some technical hurdles but everyone agrees they are all solvable - this is a less difficult project than the Manhattan project to build a nuclear weapon. There's no reason not to do it.

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

[skillzilla]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLKExuHlQMQ

[Phil153]

The trouble with the hydrogen car you linked is that it's not commercially viable, and it doesn't solve any of our energy problems or issues with CO2 emissions. The problem is that hydrogen fuel has a low energy density and really severe storage requirements. At 700x the pressure of the atmosphere (a viable but expensive storage scheme for a car) it has 4.7 MJ/L, compared to gasoline with 40 MJ/L. This means you need 10x the storage space or accept 10x less power/range. All for a massively higher price tag due to the complex power generation engine and storage requirements. Not to mention, you have to convert an entire country full of service stations, cars, trucks and factories with very expensive equipment to be able to begin using it.

Contrast this with algal biodiesel, which runs in cars exactly the same as normal diesel, already has cheap, mass produced engines in existence (basically, normal diesel engines) and fills up from the pump using existing storage and transport mechanisms. There's no comparison between the two.

Hydrogen is a pipe dream with zero practical application.

[RunDownHouse]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Has it been actually proved that it takes more energy to produce than it can provide? I've read a lot of stories saying that there are studies going both ways and it varies wildly on how and what the researchers include. I remember reading about one study counting what the workers on the farm and factory ate for lunch each day as energy to produce and such things.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's probably slightly positive in energy terms, maybe 1.3x or so, from the synopses I've seen. For tropical crops like the Oil Palm that numbers is much higher. If the growers are not using mechanised farming then it's yet higher.

Practically speaking there just isn't enough arable land to supply the amount of biofuel we would need to replace diesel and petrol.

[/ QUOTE ]
How about jatropha? Its apparently half the cost to produce biofuel from it as corn, and less than sugar cane.

[Quicksilvre]

[ QUOTE ]
The trouble with the hydrogen car you linked is that it's not commercially viable, and it doesn't solve any of our energy problems or issues with CO2 emissions.

[/ QUOTE ]

Also, they explode when you get into an accident.

[Neko]

[ QUOTE ]
New Scientist, the UK's top science magazine

[/ QUOTE ]

Just an observation about New Scientist...I've been a casual reader for a couple of years and some of their articles are absolutely ridiculous and show little understanding of the actual science they're reporting on. It seems like a *science* tabloid more than anything. Anybody else feel that way?

disclaimer: I really only read articles about physics, so I may just be cherry-picking all the stupid articles somehow.

[Neko]

I guess other people feel the same way, open letter written by Greg Egan

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/...scientist.html

[Mr_Moore]

So if this of any value at all?

[Jamougha]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Practically speaking there just isn't enough arable land to supply the amount of biofuel we would need to replace diesel and petrol.

[/ QUOTE ]
Actual, algae farms in the desert can provide all US fuel needs, using only a fraction of US desert area. It's a viable project, produces cheaper fuel than imported oil, has massive economic benefits and zero CO2 emissions. There are some technical hurdles but everyone agrees they are all solvable - this is a less difficult project than the Manhattan project to build a nuclear weapon. There's no reason not to do it.

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

[/ QUOTE ]

I can't be arsed to look up the data right now but I've been through this one before and it turns out to be complete bs. The figures they use for oil per hectare are based on production under laboratory conditions. This means perfectly even illumination, no microfauna predators and so on. The best anyone has ever gotten from a field trial is about half the yield per hectare of the oil palm. It's also not for lack of trying. Algae are a dead end.

yah I know sucks, I was super-excited too when I first heard about this. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]