Tomorrows news today

[plural]

An alternative source for biofuel

This has got to be one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. To date, while perhaps well intentioned Biofuels have not been a realistic option, they require too much land and too many resources to produce too little fuel, not to mention the overall question of burning food in our cars.

Comments

Duh.

[iptv-tech.livejournal.com]

I suggested this 6 years ago.

And don't give me energy per acre crap, you can build a building as tall as you want to and build a huge water tank on each floor, and each tank have several perforated dividers (about 1 every 3 inches) from wall to wall.

Unlimited amount of energy per acre because you can have as many floors as you want.

Same goes for the other fuels too, if you utilize hydroponics. You don't have to grow in the ground and restrict yourself to one plant in a limitless vertical space.

[budhaboy.livejournal.com]

My pic?

Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor

From there, go full electic cars, or fuel cells where the hydrogen is made from nuclear generated electric power.

Sure you've got to still deal with the spent fuel, but the beauty of these babies are:

1) Self regulating due to the physics of the fuel
2) Nitrogen, not water is used to turn the turbines... This has two positive effects:
2a) Nitrogen won't pick up radioactivity.
2b) Nitrogen won't rust the pipes.

In sort: It physically can't melt down, and since you don't have to drain the radioactive water, or maintain the pipes for the water they are relatively maintenance free, and VERY safe. Sure you've still go to deal with the waste, but what's worse: spent nuclear fuel, global warming. There is still risk of terroist attacks, but since they can't melt down, you can totally bury them in a bunker.

[plural.livejournal.com]

agreed

[ignote.livejournal.com]

I wanna know where the hydrogen powered cars are. According to a decrepit uncle of mine who works in the automotive industry, we've had the technology for a good portion of his lifetime.

[plural.livejournal.com]

the problem isn't hydrogen cars,
it is hydrogen fueling stations.

if one goes boom, it is very bad
so you want them away from populated areas
but if you do that it is too inconvenient
for people to gas up

[budhaboy.livejournal.com]

Funny you should mention...

An excellent wikipedia article on the overarching topic:

Hydrogen Economy

From my previous link on PBNRs (I actually hadn't read it in couple of years), I noticed that China has scheduled to come out with one working reactor this year and another 30 (?! welcome to the new chinese world) within the decade. They are in the process of using a process by which the extreme heat will actually generate hydrogen, and skip the process of electricty altogether... the point it to leap directly to a hydrogen economy.

!@#$ Brazil, brother, brush up on your mandarin.

[budhaboy.livejournal.com]

Excellent question.

I first heard of them back in the eighties by a grandfather as well. Apparently, the issue is with the fuel cell technology not being quite ready for prime time, and hence VERY expensive.

Remarkably, the Mythbusters a year or so ago had an episode where they were dicking around with using Hydrogen to run an old Olds Cutlas with no modifications what so ever. They were shocked, and giggling like school girls, until they had a carb backfire that nearly took Jamies eyebrows...

There are problems with hydrogen as a fuel source:

1) The molecuels are so tiny, they are very hard to contain.
2) Metal in the presence of Hydrogen causes it to become brittle (for reasons I'm not too clear on).

Check out this wikipedia article on the hydrogen economy