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Kidney Cells Make Implantable Power Source
Galactic_grub writes "New Scientist has an interesting round-up of patents related to green power technology. The ideas mentioned include an implantable power source made from stacks of kidney cells that could drive implanted devices like pacemakers, a chemical way to purifying hydrogen, a buckyball-based filter for methane fuel cells and an organism that turns grass cuttings (and other bio-waste) into ethanol."
The faster we switch ethanol production over to cellulose, the better. It would mean that we're not cannibalizing our food supply to make it, and the cost wouldn't be tied to the rising price of corn.
Making our ethanol out of the leftover waste materials is probably the only way ethanol will ever take off in this country.
Alchemist: Be Thou For the People
Just a note about the fullerene filters mentioned in the article, they do not filter methane they filter Methanol specifically they prevent Methanol from diffusing across the memebrane of the fuel cell thus decreasing the amount of Methanol that is wasted.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Sure, but in areas like that you're going to see a lot better returns on solar power than areas with high rainfall will. In that respect, this sort of technology will be a complement to solar power. In other words, areas with lots of rain and cloud cover will have more available biomass for fuel, whereas areas without the rainfall will see much more output from solar generators. Ideally, it should balance out, although in actual practice it will certainly be more messy than that.