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$1/Gallon "Green Gasoline" In Sight
mattnyc99 writes "We've gotten excited here about the startup that claims it can make $1/gallon ethanol out of anything from trash to tires. But we've also seen how cellulosic ethanol is a better option, and how ethanol demand in general is only adding to the worldwide food crisis. So what about $1/gallon gasoline? NSF-funded researchers at UMass Amherst just completed the first direct conversion from cellulose using a new method of hydrocarbon refining, which they claim can be commercialized within 5-10 years and essentially make fuel out of anything that grows. Quoting: 'We already have the infrastructure in place to distribute liquid fuels. We're using them to power transportation vehicles today, and I think that's what we'll be using in 10 years and in 50 years,' Huber says. 'And if you want a sustainable liquid transportation fuel, biomass is the only way to go.'" The process is running at about 50% efficiency now; the $1/gallon figure is based on getting to 100%.
Mr Fusion!
Seeing doc putting in that banana peel was just too much :-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I thought this was a joke, then I saw that the article was in Popular Mechanics and thought "whew" (because every story that has ever run in popular mechanics about technologies of the future has been spot on).
So this would be a boon for the construction industry as well?
if i had a car that ran on patent applications, i could literally shovel garbage into it and get wherever i needed to go
and it wouldn't cost anything
heck, they'd pay me to take the stuff away
I heard about a guy that knew a guy that got 500%, but a Big Oil company bought all rights to the process, murdered his wife and slept with his dog!
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Poor grammar, little understanding of the subject, being unjustifiably pedantic AND a Godwin! You're on a roll today!
As others have pointed out, including myself, limits to thermodynamic efficiencies do not apply to physical processes. They just don't.
=Smidge=
That clearly shows that Big Oil companies are either stupid or into bestiality.. they should have killed the dog and slept with the wife..
That brings an interesting thought to mind, though. I know that we can't sequester carbon very well in a gaseous form, and that other forms are expensive to produce, but what if we were to grow plants, cut them down, and stick them underground in some salt mines or something?
It's been done before. Works great, until some stray asteroid happens by and wipes out your civilization, and 65 million years later those scrappy little mammals that survived the nuclear winter in their cozy burrows have evolved a civilization of their own and are busy pumping all your carefully sequestered carbon back to the surface to be burned and released into the atmosphere...
Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
what if we were to grow plants, cut them down, and stick them underground in some salt mines or something?
This is essence what happens to most of the paper that enters most American homes (newsprint, magazines, junk mail) - it gets put out in the trash, and ends up in a landfill, where it gets buried and takes decades to centuries to break down.
So, don't recycle that paper! Put it in a landfill and sequester that carbon!
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Hey, with the StreetDeck system in my Aptera, I can play the sound of a V8 if I want to hear it ;)
I just invaded Grammar Czechoslovakia and duped Grammar Neville Chamberlain; now it's on to Grammar Poland.