Posted on 05/25/2007 9:24:25 AM PDT by HangnJudge
Then you need another tank to convert cellulose into glucose and things will really be good - organic cars powered by termites and bacteria.
Polysaccharides like starch and cellulose are used by plants for energy storage and building blocks and are very stable until exposed to enzymes. Just add enzymes to a mixture of starch and water and the enzymes use the energy in the starch to break up water into only carbon dioxide and hydrogen, Zhang said.A membrane bleeds off the carbon dioxide and the hydrogen is used by the fuel cell to create electricity. Water, a product of that fuel cell process, will be recycled for the starch-water reactor. Laboratory tests confirm that it all takes place at low temperature--about 86 degrees F--and atmospheric pressure.
. . . The research was based on Zhangs previous work pertaining to cellulosic ethanol production and the ORNL and University of Georgia researchers work with enzymatic hydrogen production.
I couldnt have said it better myself, and I tried:
"I'm not a global warming nut, but I think this country needs a major initiative to eliminate our dependance on fossil fuels. A manhattan project for our generation. If we succeed, the oil money will be cut off and the arab nations will, within a generation, go back to being irrelevant." http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1821957/posts?page=33#33
and there was much rejoicing from the tortilla markets!
These nuts have gotta stop coming up with ways to convert food into gasoline substitutes. This is an environmentalists “feel good” approach to a non-existant problem. The only thing this accomplishes is a reduction in the food supply and an increase in the price we pay for the ingredients in our foods. If the greenies would get out of the way of progress, we could drill new wells and build new refineries and the price of fuel would go down.
Seems suitable for your renewable energy ping list. I’ll bump this for later reading.
That’s why I’m curious about a comparison in terms of energy output per dollar. I’m betting that the stuff ain’t cheap; that a dollar’s worth of hydrogen from starch won’t take you anywhere near as far down the road as a dollar’s worth of gas.
In their winning team project, Linking Supercomputing and Systems Biology for Efficient Bioethanol Production, Scott Molony, Steven Arcangeli and Scott Horton contribute to a growing body of research on creating microrganisms that can produce alternative fuels. This team used supercomputers to analyze biological networks, looking at tens of thousands of genes and their biological pathways to discover clues for engineering direct biofuel production by microorganisms, said competition judge Dr. Gary Benson, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, Department of Biology, Director of Graduate Studies Program in Bioinformatics, Boston University. Through a real team effort and a sophisticated, interdisciplinary approach, they developed a promising method that takes us a step closer to engineering biofuel. Based partly on the teams work, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory received a major grant to continue this research. The teams mentors were Dr. Nagiza Samatova, Mr. Chris Symons, Dr. ByungHoony Park, and Dr. Tatiana Karpinets, all with Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The winning Science project with the Siemens Foundation competition was precisely on the subject, with meaningful results.
Have a Blizzard and think about that a bit before making a rash move.
I’m concerned about my car becoming diabetic.....
Very promising. One question though, how does it do in sub freezing temperatures?
After reading this article, I would say we are MUCH closer than we were ten years ago.
Please Freep Mail me if you'd like on/off
Uh oh...
If this works out, GA Tech will be hatin’ life!
Don’t worry. We’ll just have the cars poop on the road.
So is Michigan where sugar is made from sugar beets.
Actually we make more sugar from beets than we do from cane.
The last figures I could find say the US produced 3.45 million tons of cane sugar and 3.75 million tons of beet sugar.
Since there is no difference between the two, when you buy a bag of sugar there is no way to tell if it came from sugar cane or sugar beets. Their chemical make-up is identical.
If you want a real olfactory treat (sarcasm) drive by a sugar processing plant - smells worse than a pig farm. You might think sugar production smells good. Believe me, it doesn't.
Ouch!
Fortunately, Ga,. Tech has a large presence at ORNL so maybe they would be involved too.
If I could stop using oil however, even I would saw nice words about UGA (maybe 1 or 2)
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