I believe fusion may be getting closer than 30 years. It's been decades away my whole life, but there are several new approaches out there that look interesting, maybe even promising. (Cellulosic ethanol has also been 5 years away for 40 years. The gap will never close, in my opinion.)

 

I stopped believing in solar power (and even less in wind power) when it downed on me that the maximum output you could get from any solar cell or device can never be greater than 1050 watts per square meter. My personal opinion on this matter, is that the future of energy generation on earth is either nuclear fusion (which is still 30 years away... ) traveling wave reactors, thorium reactors or (finally) solar power generated ex-terra, that is, by placing solar panels in orbit around the earth and then beaming down the power generated through microwaves or some other technology. I really think that the future is nuclear... but unfortunately there's just too much politics involved.

Nuclear power is perhaps the best we know up to this point so I tend to agree. Interestingly enough the sun is a giant nuclear power plant and we wouldn't exist without it. Thus, my attempt to tap into it with solar ideas. Poor ideas perhaps (I said that and am not implying that you did) but it is a start given the fact that I am going at things with little more than the curiosity of a child when I can manage an hour or two after work.

Now that I think about it let me tell you something I find interesting about nuclear power for example as it relates to a meltdown. Radiation flows and causes harm to biological creatures and other life forms (although I'm sure Lichen thrive on radiation). When there is no meltdown little to no harm is caused and power flows via lines and such. So the child in me is wondering... what if we could cause a reverse meltdown that had a good effect as opposed to a negative effect? Remember Feynman and Co. working on the nuclear bomb? Everybody was thinking 'explosion' but the reverse 'implosion' changed the course of history for better or worse. So I get back to Tesla in my mind. Thinking outside of the box. But there is no money in that is there? That's why they went with Edison ultimately isn't it? Don't get me wrong, Edison was brilliant in his own right but every time I get my electricity bill each month I have mixed feelings wanting to thank and curse Edison at the same time!

 

I believe fusion may be getting closer than 30 years. It's been decades away my whole life, but there are several new approaches out there that look interesting, maybe even promising. (Cellulosic ethanol has also been 5 years away for 40 years. The gap will never close, in my opinion.)

Fusion... if it happens in my lifetime I'll be more than happy to buy you a beer and have a chat about it...

 

I believe fusion may be getting closer than 30 years. It's been decades away my whole life, but there are several new approaches out there that look interesting, maybe even promising. (Cellulosic ethanol has also been 5 years away for 40 years. The gap will never close, in my opinion.)

I just saw an incredible demonstration on cellulosic ethanol from a very nutty professor. I would like to believe it is all true. I point you to a publication if anything becomes of it.

 

I just saw an incredible demonstration on cellulosic ethanol from a very nutty professor. I would like to believe it is all true. I point you to a publication if anything becomes of it.

I'm skeptical ... but I always give the benefit of the doubt to extreme research like this one... gonna have to wait and see, and then see if it can be independently verified

 

The problem with cellulosic ethanol is not so much the process. There has been enormous advancement in the required enzyme catalysts and the process configuration. The problem is simple logistics. The network of roads and the fleet of trucks that would be required to feed cellulosic plants, to make a significant amount of fuel, is simply daunting.

 

The problem with cellulosic ethanol is not so much the process. There has been enormous advancement in the required enzyme catalysts and the process configuration. The problem is simple logistics. The network of roads and the fleet of trucks that would be required to feed cellulosic plants, to make a significant amount of fuel, is simply daunting.

In a word: infrastructure ?

 

Yes, but you're talking about more road and trucks than currently exist in the country, all for hauling around biomass and then the products and waste materials. I've seen the pro-cellulosic presentations from the optimists in the field, but all they did was convince me it could never work.

The projects that can work are where/when the raw material is already in hand, such as wood pulp or bagasse. But these are all far too small to supply any significant portion of fuel demand.

See here if you want to follow a commercial scale project, and get a rebuttal of my view.

 

The network of roads and the fleet of trucks that would be required to feed cellulosic plants, to make a significant amount of fuel, is simply daunting.

Okay I have to ask the obvious. Why cant they drive the trucks on the roads that are already here?

 

You may find this article interesting, it's about turning sunlight into fuel.

From the article:

"When you really get this worked out and do this at scale you can do it more efficiently than plants do it and it doesn't compete with resources we use to make food," he said. "It doesn't use land and water, those scarce resources."

Emphasis mine. It'd be a neat trick to see him collect solar photons in industrial quantities with zero area.

 

Okay I have to ask the obvious. Why cant they drive the trucks on the roads that are already here?

Many are not already there. The idea is to grow switchgrass on land that is too poor for food crops, so that food crops are not displaced. Add to that the fact that there will need to be an order of magnitude more traffic (requiring trucks, drivers and road maintenance crew that are not there yet), and you have a significant hurdle. All that to meet less than 30% of our fuel needs. There's not enough land for more.

Cellulosic plants benefit from an economy of scale but this is limited by the cost to transport material in and out of the location. If raw material has to come from more than 50 miles away, you can't afford it. But you can't grow enough biomass within that radius to support an economical plant. It's the catch-22.

Here's a related paper. I couldn't find what I went looking for but that paper gives you an idea of the challenge. This presentation touches on it as well, but it's not what I wanted. I'll keep looking.

 

I guess I have a hard time relating being I live in both a farming and now oil industry region and from my life time of personal observations I have always noticed that when something becomes of value there is no shortage of people willing to build whatever it takes to get the product to market be it roads, railways, pipelines or the processing plants themselves and where I am at none of those things are seen as insurmountable hurdles to development.

 

Imagine if uranium wouldnt be so dangerous.

You could store a blister pack with small portions in a drawer, time to time, insert one in the generator under the sink. Why evolution didnt come up with something like that?

 

Imagine if uranium wouldnt be so dangerous.

You could store a blister pack with small portions in a drawer, time to time, insert one in the generator under the sink. Why evolution didnt come up with something like that?

I thin "evolution" is the wrong word in this context, but, it did. It's called "fossil fuel".

 

...when something becomes of value there is no shortage of people willing to build whatever it takes to get the product to market..

Exactly right, and that's why there are precisely zero cellulosic plants operating commercially so far. It is NOT of sufficient value. The only reason people are chasing it at all is because of the law requiring it - yet another government intervention and distortion into free markets. You can build a cellulosic plant and make money, but that money comes from the taxpayers, not customers.

Government intervention into fusion has actually set it back decades. All the money got diverted into one basket - the ITER tokamak in France - that is looking more and more like a boondoggle. We should have put more eggs in other baskets.

 

Regarding the thread title, see this news.

 

Regarding the thread title, see this news.

Wow! sunlight into alcohol... maybe next they'll make a device that turns sunlight into beer?

 

Regarding the thread title, see this news.

I hate these articles.

But hydrogen has not taken off as a fuel source, even as other alternative energy sources survive and grow amid historically low oil prices. Hydrogen is expensive to transport, and the costs of adopting and distributing hydrogen are high. A gas station owner could more easily switch a pump from gasoline to biofuel, for example.

[SARC]
If only someone would figure out how to transport hydrogen, all our problems would be solved!
[/SARC]

You'd think there were piles of hydrogen lying around waiting to be consumed -- if only! They never ask where the hydrogen would come from. (Hint: fossil fuels).

 

A huge problem with hydrogen for a mobile fuel is its low energy density. You can carry more if you keep upping the pressure, but that's not the coolest thing to have in a car either. 300 miles worth of fuel at 6000psi seems like a very bad idea.

Sunlight to hydrogen is the dream; solar powered hydrolysis without making electricity first. It's been years since I looked in on the research. With nothing in the popular press, I guess it's not too exciting.

 

Getting it right, as with PCR, takes ingenuity and lots of work.

I heard a talk given by Kary Mullis (the inventor of PCR). He said that he had an "ah ha" moment that it could be done and then it took something like 2 years to actually do it.