Phage

I can see this helping with global warming because larger and faster processing centers will be made. I am sure that there will be more demand for power than can be supplied with the current waste. So what will they do? One idea would be to plant something that grows quickly and is very difficult to kill, and just harvest it for power generation. For this purpose kudzu is perfect in the US; it grows up to a foot every day and you can run a lawnmower over it without any harm.

The advantage is that the most efficient gathering methods for fuel is also a carbon sink for the environment; everything converted that is biological in origin is breaking even. This reduction will help get emissions under what can be absorbed naturally.

Hain

How can this help? Global warming doesn't concern with how the carbon based fuel is collected only with how it is burned.

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vinaur

It doesn't matter how you make the fuel. You are still burning it. By developing a new source of fuel you are making the pollution even worse. Without alternative sources of organic energy, humans would be forced to develop more ecological methods to extract energy, even if they were more expensive. However, with cheap alternative sources available you are slowing down this development and extending the era of burning organic materials, which inevitably produce CO2 and contribute to the global warming. So unless you can figure out how to burn organic materials without CO2 as a product, you are not doing environment a favor.

Phage

Ok, lets put it in simple terms.
Carbon Fuel -> Carbon Dioxide (greenhouse gas)
Carbon Dioxide -> Plants (Mmm, nummy CO2)
Plants -> Oil (Carbon Fuel)

vinaur

Let's extend on the idea and correct it.

Carbon Fuel -> Carbon dioxide (global warming);
Carbon dioxide -> Plants -> O2 and H2O (both are great);
Waste -> Oil --burned-->CO2 (once again global warming);

Hain

Obviously you are failing to realize that by burning the plants and waste that you are making oil with is only going to make MORE CO2. Vinaur is right. It's a nice idea to waste carbons for fuel... but too much pollution is made. You might as well start launching the hydrocarbons from Titan and burn them. You never need to worry about the environment, it gets worse and worse!

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Phage

vinaur
Augi

I will try to be even clearer here.

CO2 is released by burning oils, and cleaned up by plants. We have two different types of oils that we can burn now, fossil fuel or TDP oil. They both burn the same, but there is a difference in production.

Fossil Fuel: The nasty part of this fuel is that we are taking carbon that has been stored for millions of years and releasing it into the atmosphere. This results in an artificial imbalance, which the plants of the world are slowly trying to correct... unfortunately more slowly than we are adding carbon.

TDP Oil: This oil comes from living things, either plants or stuff that eats plants. All the carbon in these things has been reclaimed from the atmosphere, and we are just dumping their carbon back into it. The plants of the world are now working on reducing an overall constant amount of carbon, so they are always gaining ground.

Summary: TDP cannot release new carbon like other fossil fuels, it can only use carbon that is already in the atmosphere. We cannot TDP and burn everything biological in the world, so using TDP results in a constant reduction of carbon in the atmosphere.

vinaur

OK I see your point. However, there is another problem. If you start using plants to make oil (and you will still essentially be using plants even if you are using animals, since they eat plants), you will be destroying a whole lot of plant life, which has already been decreasing pretty fast. Planting more plants would not work either, since plants take a whole lot more time to grow than we would be using them for our ever-expanding need of gasoline and other such products. It's a very attractive source of energy, yet I don't think it will do the environment as much good as it will do bad.

Janey

Ya, try looking at the Candu reactors....

I didnt see it in the discussion above, but i read a nice story (it may have been by Arthur C Clarke) about power being generated by taking advantage of the temperature differential in the Oceans, between the bottom and the surface, using long cables strung from the surface to the bottom. In this story, (i really have to locate it) there iwas an installation in Trincomalee's harbour. that's why i think it was clarke who wrote it, because he lives in Sri Lanka.

Phage

Plants we cultivate have been doing rather well, and since you don't really have anything to back up your claim that we will be using them faster than they can grow I don't think it is a valid argument. I do think that it is interesting that you argued against planting more plants.

I think it will do the environment more good than it will do bad by replacing fossil fuels.

Phage

These really work, and are pretty cool because they harvest solar energy without much in the middle. Unfortunately they are in the ocean which can be a problem; corrosion drives costs up as well as the complications in getting the power to shore. Places that are not near the coast are also kinda out of luck.

vinaur

I never actually said that we should not plant more plants. By all means I'm for it. I said that if we were to start using TDP to make oil and would start planting plants, we would still not be able to grow as much as we would be using. I'll research the number and come back with some statistics.

vinaur

OK. I wasn't looking too hard for the data, but here's what I came up with (BTW this was in year 2001):
According to this site and after doing some conversions, you get about 12 082 092 000 liters of oil each day.

Density of petroleum is somewhere around 0.85 kg/L, so that comes out to be 10,269,778,200 kg or about 10,270,000 tons of oil per day.

Now since they don't really give info (or I just couldn't find anything) on how much oil we get from 100 pounds of plants, I'll say that it's 50 pounds (once again if someone knows the number, please tell me).

So then, we need about 20,500,000 tons of plants daily. That is quite a lot. I really doubt that we can grow and harvest that much in a day.

Phage

vinaur
From the article: Just converting all the U.S. agricultural waste into oil and gas would yield the energy equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil annually. In 2001 the United States imported 4.2 billion barrels of oil.

I am sure that the US is one of the larger consumers of energy, so other countries will be able to do better. This is without even increasing our production.

vinaur

Alright, I give it a rest for now.

mark747

oil is still cheaper...

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tecoyah

If this Idea was used to its full potential......this massive consumer driven (and trash producing) economy could likely sustain itself indefinately. Not to mention the lessening of needed landfill space:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/967192/posts

zajhein

This seems to be a pretty old topic but there's been some new developments lately, namely these floating tubes called Pelamis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelamis...ergy_Converter

The idea has been around for a while and was first scheduled to be tested back in 2002 from a Scottish company. Back in february of this year a whole wave farm was announced which would be the biggest to date. Saw this a few days ago on a modern marvel's episode.

Though only having 15% operating efficiency doesn't sound great, they say 30 of these things can power 20,000 homes. I would think flotation devices attached to the sea floor to harness the change in hight of waves would increase energy output like this company produces.
http://www.oceanpowertechnologies.com/index.htm
There's also an article about a wave power park being built in Reedsport Oregon with these buoy.
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com...story?id=47546

Here's just a general source on energy production
http://home.clara.net/darvill/altenerg/nuclear.htm
And just the wiki article on wave power..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power

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