The Next Generation:Energy
 

There are quite a few things on the Horizon in the energy field.....thought I would make a thread to encompass the emerging technology....and add as I find new stuff.

"Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, courtesy of the power plant's exhaust stack, the algae grow quickly even in the wan rays of a New England sun. The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with 40 percent less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates) and another bonus: 86 percent less nitrous oxide.

After the CO2 is soaked up like a sponge, the algae is harvested daily. From that harvest, a combustible vegetable oil is squeezed out: biodiesel for automobiles. Berzin hands a visitor two vials - one with algal biodiesel, a clear, slightly yellowish liquid, the other with the dried green flakes that remained. Even that dried remnant can be further reprocessed to create ethanol, also used for transportation."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0111/p01s03-sten.html

This is My favorite

"Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water. While no one plans to put people into a thermal depolymerization machine, an intimate human creation could become a prime feedstock. "There is no reason why we can't turn sewage, including human excrement, into a glorious oil," says engineer Terry Adams, a project consultant. So the city of Philadelphia is in discussion with Changing World Technologies to begin doing exactly that."

http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php...013-000199.htm

Very cool. I wonder how well these things scale up though--and how well theyd be adopted. It's going to take a pretty serious attitude adjustment for any of that to become well adopted, but maybe $4 a gallon at the pump might do it...

Sounds good, especially the bacteria part, though we do need to find other ways of producing energy (or rather, more cost effective) than simply elongating the life cycle of oil.

I love that stuff, very very cool. I really hope we get it working on a big scale.

There are so many good ideas out there for energy; they just need funding. And when the price of gas or heating oil hits $5/gallon and moves north from there, they'll finally get it.

I'm glad this guy got funding; it's a clever idea that is doubly-attractive to potential customers (clean exhaust and make $$ at the same time). But even then it's only 11 million. Venture capitalists are only now starting to put real bucks into energy research. But like I said, five-dollar gas will help move that along.

Of course if we had a _really_ farsighted gov't, they'd be helping more. Private industry really only steps in to solve problems that are very likely to grow more acute quickly. You need gov't involvement for long-term planning.

The first thing that came to mind was 'YOU'RE DRIVING PEOPLE!'