Posted on 08/09/2008 6:52:41 AM PDT by LomanBill
My son has been talking about this quite a bit lately.
And W knew it was a farce when he said it.
I’ve been following this tech for a while. I think it has a lot of promise, particularly if the refining process can be miniaturized to a single family scale. A small algae greenhouse (Valcent style) and a mini refinery next to the garage, and every family can have almost free fuel.
Just a fantasy, but I hope it happens one day.
Pretty cool idea - and it doesn’t utilize food crops as fuel.
The article does a good job of highlighting the potential benefits and the challenges associated.
Brings to mind such things as:
Fuel from a roof-top photo factory?
Artificial photosynthesis?
What God’s nature does in a single leaf is astounding! We humans have much to learn.
If there is one promising alt energy technology that could be viable it’s algae. Fuel cells are the other.
The article has alot of wrong information in it but has most of the broad points correct.
1) Repeal the Environmental Protection Act, and dissolve the EPA.
2) Build 800 nuclear power plants.
3) Seize overseas oil fields and incorporate them as US territories (Mexico and Venezuela would be easiest, SA, not so much).
All the rest of this nonsense is just a load of crap.
It’s Saturday and the boy is sleeping in - but I’ll ask him where he read about this subject. He will enjoy reading this article. The kid shocks me all the time with things he finds on line to read.... ;^)
>>The article has alot of wrong information in it
For example?
[particularly if the refining process can be miniaturized to a single family scale. A small algae greenhouse (Valcent style) and a mini refinery next to the garage, and every family can have almost free fuel.]
You read my mind ;-)
“Valent Syle”, hey I hadn’t seen that before. Just Googled it and I think I’m going to try some vertical gardening. Thanks for the tip FRiend.
>>All the rest of this nonsense is just a load of crap.
Crap? Thanks for bringing that up:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Methane+Cattle+Colorado&btnG=Google+Search
Whoops, forgot the “Fuel” part of the Crap/Methane search.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Methane+Fuel+Cattle+Colorado&btnG=Search
“Colorado Rancher Plans to Fuel the Future with Cow Power”
Also, algae is a very good source of food. It is probably THE most efficient method of converting sunlight into usable energy, both for cars and people. If the growing ponds could be located next to some type of power plant, you could use the CO2 from the plant to feed the algae, which in turn could be burned in the power plant.
“A ray of photosynthetic hope for energy independence?”
It will take more, much, much, more than a ray of hope for algae to account for even a tiny percentage of fuel usage in the U.S.
Getting 10 million gallons of oil per square mile per year is hardly going to make any difference unless one thinks that a thousand square miles of land will be devoted to algae growing in the near future.
For example:
“Use of hexane as a solvent to leach out the oil, which, along with pressing can extract more than 95 percent of the oil; however, there are inherent dangers here due to the volatility of hexane solvent.”
This is bull. Hexane is a commercial production process used on a very large commercial scale and extremely safe. This sounds like environinny hysteria.
the other:
“(batteries) require hours to recharge; unless you want to charge them quickly (thus shortening their life span)”
The new nanotechnology Lion’s are able to charge very quickly with little heat and hold up for thousands of charges. With an on board generation source they can be quite viable.
The guy needs to do his homework better.
Well, we planted 141,000 sq/mi. of corn last year.
Uh, how is this different from ETOH?
Uh, how is this different from ETOH?””
ANS: ETOH already has the 500 billion dollar infrastructure in place.
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