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Gasoline From Thin Air
disco_tracy writes "An enzyme found in the roots of soybeans could be the key to cars that run on air. If perfected, the tech could lead to cars partially powered on their own fumes. Even further into the future, vehicles could draw fuel from the air itself. Quoting: 'The new enzyme can only make two and three carbon chains, not the longer strands that make up liquid gasoline. However, Ribbe thinks he can modify the enzyme so it could produce gasoline. ... [Perfecting this process] won't happen anytime soon... "It's very, very difficult," to extract the vanadium nitrogenase, said Ribbe.'
Vaporware, literally.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The actual article is about an enzyme. The chemical transformation still requires energy, just as charging a battery does.
What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
I highly doubt that the original inventor has claimed to produce perpetual motion, but the summary will certainly lead people to think in that direction.
They're converting carbon monoxide into hydrocarbon chains. The only energy you are getting out of the car's exhaust is what it didn't use the first time around due to incomplete combustion.
... if and only if someone can make a profit out of it. Hydrogen is the future as it requires you to fill up a fuel container of some sort in exchange for money. Who here really thinks all these multi-billion oil companies are going to let free and abundant fuel circulate without putting up a fight?? Be honnest: it would be against the nature of capitalis. I mean, free stuff is only good if you can resell it to someone else, right?
To produce the fuel, the energy that will be stored in it has to come from somewhere> .
That's why the idea of a vehicle creating its own fuel out of thin air is stupid, you'd want to use the input energy to drive the car directly. More efficient.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Look, this pie in the sky shit is bull. I appreciate R&D much more than most, but we're not going to start chaining carbon atoms on the fly anytime soon, any more than we are just around the corner from inventing the battery that powers Iron Man's suit.
Let's focus on the here and now. A guy named John Wayland who works for Dow Kokam built a 10 second car from LiON batteries, and is now going around to America's drag strips and laying waste to Corvettes and Nissan GTRs in his 1960s Datsun 1200. And when I mean laying waste, I mean a beatdown. Take a look at this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rVTIpS5zb4&feature=player_embedded
This is what we should be looking at. Building a power infrastructure that makes 208 twist locks as easy to get to as gas stations. Or converting gas stations to have a nice 200W 20Amp at every pump. Not this crap.
What are you talking about, this technology has been around for millions of years. It works like this:
1) Plants take CO2 out of the air
2) Plants use water and the sun to convert the CO2 into glucose
3) Plants die
4) Plants get buried
5) Plants decay
6) High pressure and temperature cooks buried plant matter and converts to crude oil
7) Crude oil is distilled to separate out gasoline (This is the profit stage for those who were wondering)
Voila, gasoline from thin air! Only takes a few million years... Hope you weren't planning on driving too fast.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Turning carbon monoxide into hydrocarbon fuel is a trick that's been known for some time now. Presumably this enzyme does it at room temperature, which would be a useful trick, but it's not a new one. Show me the enzyme which can convert carbon dioxide and water to hydrocarbon fuel, instead... right now we need the whole organism to do it, it'd be a lot simpler if it was just one enzyme.
It's because then you'd constantly require more vespene gas, and imagine how annoying that would be!
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
The analyses that claim a huge supply in the US are starting to come under criticism. Our supply may not actually be that huge.
There's also the fact that right now, we haven't figured out how to safely extract a large portion of it. Most of the deposits can't be accessed without hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) - The chemicals used for hydrofracking are toxic as hell, and wells that are hydrofracked seem to be prone to losing integrity and leaking gas into aquifers. That's why in Dimock, PA, you can't drink your well water, but you can console yourself with the fact that you can light your tap water with a match. That's why New York is in the process of passing a moratorium on hydrofracking until next year (It passed the state senate by a landslide this week).
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
These are a staple on slashdot lately. Every crackpot scheme to extract energy from X very cheaply seems to get immediate front page coverage. There's at least one a month and they range from overblown PR at best to outright snake oil at worst. /. seriously needs a "Perpetual Motion" category for these stories so I can ignore them completely.
Same as gasoline...you always require more vespene gas and eventually you just run out.
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
I'd be more interested in splitting the CO2 into carbon and oxygen, for breathing purposes rather than fuel. Spacecraft and submarines use lithium hydroxide "scrubbers" to remove carbon dioxide from the air. It has the side effect of keeping one of the oxygen atoms of the molecule as well as the carbon. The lithium hydroxide is also used up in this process, meaingin a limited supply of breatheable air. If the CO2 is can be cracked back into carbon and oxygen, then you could develop a continuously renewing cycle for the air. This means fewer supply runs for ISS and other outposts.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Wow, you could take the <1% of your exhaust that's carbon monoxide, convert it to fuel (losses), then burn it (average vehicle energy usage efficiency, after all losses: 20%). Yeah, that's really going to up your mpg. :P
And what's wrong with the Sabatier reaction? And talk about a lossy way to store energy. :P
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
Yes, and that guy will mysteriously die in 3, 2, 1....
Its right there in the summary. "Ribbe thinks he can modify the enzyme so it could produce gasoline" THINKS? *reads article*. "The new enzyme can only make two and three carbon chains" Wait.. how many carbon chains do we need? *googles* oh. http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/alternative-fuels/question1051.htm "The chains from C7H16 through C11H24 are blended together and used for gasoline" 7-11. So basically ... they are nowhere close. Tell me when they are dealing with efficiency issues of generating the gasoline or developing a system in which to recycle it. This is non-news. If they were talking about refining the tech they have to produce propane (which is what they accomplished) it would still be on the "oh another alternative energy idea that will probably still fall flat on it's face due to cost, efficiency etc"
insert funny sig here
Gasoline is a complex mixture of hydrocarbon chains of various lengths and shapes. Why the heck would you take something like this and try to modify it to create gasoline rather than approaching the task from the other point of view. Here in Australia we have cars that run on LPG and I believe our standard mixture is about 70% C4H10 and about 30% C3H8. Why not take one of these engines and modify it to run on just the C3H8 that this enzyme claims to create then focus on the important aspect of increasing the efficiency and speed of conversion.
Derr... if it gets too hot, we just turn up the A/C. A small increase in fossil fuel consumption to produce the required electricity is expected, which may increase AGW, but we can just turn up the A/C to compensate.
Solving the problem once and for all!
ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!
"Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
Because we can burn natgas in Combined Cycle power plants at over 80% efficiency, instead of in cars at under 18% efficiency. So we should put all the natgas we can into generating electricity instead of using filthy, inefficient coal plants, rather than diverting that gas into cars at under 1/4 the efficiency. In other words, use under 1/4 the natgas to make electricity rather than wasting 3/4 of the energy in it in cars.
Just because T Boone Pickens has a plan to create scarcity in the glut of natgas he owns so much of, to drive up prices by wasting 3/4 of it, doesn't mean we should do it.
--
make install -not war
If the numbers are not realistic (e.g., we need 2x arable earth surfaces to keep up with current consumption), it is a non-starter.
Kinda neat, but not going to solve the world's problems.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.