Slashdot Mirror
Spinach Could Be Used For Hydrogen Fuel
An anonymous reader writes "If Popeye had made alternative fuels, he'd have probably come up with something like this. Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed a system that converts solar energy directly into hydrogen using the common spinach plant."
How many miles per acre do you get?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Where are all the Popeye jokes?
Billions of dollars and man hours wasted just so we don't have to give up our cars for a quick run down to the store. Cheap oil is cultural heroin. The developed world is proof positve, you monkeys.
Food based fuels are worthless. Extremely low yield and drives food costs up and deletes food supplies, and you need an acre of land to produce a gallon of usable fuel.
I can convert beans into methane in my large intestine.
--
BMO
At this point, anything that has hydrogen in it or can turn into hydrogen somehow can be used as fuel these days but for what purpose was this research made for? The government already stated that they don't want an alternative fuel to be crop-related so there's not going to be any mass-market for this unless they plan on designing a Popeye mech. It won't be long before we struggle for food worldwide without innovating new ways (redundant much?) to mass-produce crops. Pigs will probably have to fly in a floating pig pen because there won't be much room to breed and eat them, and cows will have to live on the moon. Of course I'm joking and I sure hope Oak-ridge is also joking about using Spinach as fuel. They need to focus on fusion like they used to before Clinton canned their fusion project (unless they are researching it now)
Here's the more detailed press release. They're using proteins extracted from spinach and they plan to eventually produce them synthetically. The spinach doesn't directly produce the hydrogen.
They really need to stop wasting time and money researching how to reduce the food supply. It makes a lot more sense to look at potential energy sources that do not reduce the amount of arable land.
It is bad enough to have food riots for natural reasons... why would you want to take responsibility for helping contribute to food shortages on purpose? Basic R&D is fine, but, for crying out loud, we don't need government subsidies to go into "production" quantities of this stuff, yet.
Sure, we need a replacement for fossil fuels... eventually, I just don't see how skewing food prices now will be a good thing in the long run.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
What I want to know is how long it takes a certain amount of plants to churn out a certain amount of hydrogen. If a small enough number of plants could cough up enough hydrogen fast enough, maybe people with their own gardens could one day harness this and self power their cars enough for short, daily driving.
Hydrogen Fuel != Fossil Fuel
Fossil Fuel == Bad
Therefore (they conclude):
Hydrogen == Good
The proponents of Hydrogen Fuel say that the only waste product in the burning of H2 and O2 is H2O but this is NOT true. Because you do not get a 100% efficient burn and because H2 is very leaky stuff even in a fuel cell, the other waste product they fail to mention is the fuel itself. So the question is what happens to H2 and O3 in the upper atmosphere? We were is such a rush to eliminate CFCs (quite heavy molecules in comparison) because of their effects should they reach the ozone. How ironic that so many now turn to H2 as a panacea of clean energy when it can be demonstrated that it affects on ozone and unspent and leaky H2 has no where to go but up. http://eands.caltech.edu/articles/LXVI/H2.html
Thank you. TFA is one of the most poorly written pieces of drivel I have read in a long time. It barely makes any sense...
Umm, so this is some kind of nuclear process to produce hydrogen? WTF!?! This is just the worst example from TFA, the whole thing is crappy. Thanks very much for your link, it actually explains what has happened.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Damnit, is it too much to ask to actually put some details into the summary. At least a third of the comments here are "OMFG, why are we destroying our food supply for fuel!!!" which is a complete misconception. For Christ's sake, the summary is two lines long and one of them is a joke.
That is all.
Kimchi is food of the gods. It's fermented cabbage spiced with garlic and chilies. When you order Bul Go Gi (marinated barbecued beef) in a Korean restaurant, they bring you 10,000 little cups with all sorts of cold, pickled roots and vegetables. Kimchi is our favorite, and when the waiter tells us, "be careful, it is very hot spicy!" we have already started devouring the stuff. After the meal, they give you something called soju, which is a kind of rice vodka. The result is that after the meal, with the hot spicy vegetables, and alcohol, you have the feeling that your breath can melt car paint.
Now back to the fuel topic . . . the day after, I always feel like I am farting fire. I always expect Greenpeace to show up in rubber rafts at the door, and complain about me polluting the environment. Kimchi seems to me to be an excellent source for an alternative flatulence energy source. Forget about lighting your farts; after an evening of Kimchi, they self-ignite.
If my manager ever asks, "We need someone to fly to Korea for a week," I will do cartwheels and scream, "Me, me, ME!" And then I would eat Kimchi for breakfast lunch and dinner. Um, I'm not sure, did I get the point across that I love Korean food?
Now, if this Kimchi generated fuel would scale up to practical, economic level . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The efficiency of photosynthetic proteins is terrible compared to inorganic photocatalysts. The only advantage biological systems have is that the only reasonable room temperature catalyst for photoconversion of carbon dioxide in air is biological. If you only want to make hydrogen, commercial systems already beat the theoretical highest possible efficiency of biology.
The article that you link to doesn't say that hydrogen isn't good or that it isn't green. It simply says that it may not be ideal. IF hydrogen builds up in the atmosphere then there will be some environmental impact, but that is not known. Even if it does build up, there is no analysis of whether that environmental impact is more or less than alternatives.
Green isn't some philosophical ideal - it's a moving target based on what we can achieve.
The problem with hydrogen is *still* storage, production is easy. A quick run to the store takes several cubic feet of the gaseous stuff.
Beans could be used for methane fuel.
Spinach prices skyrocket. Children worldwide rejoice.
1) pigs and cows don't produce food, they consume it. You don't need innovation to feed the world - just stop eating meat. You'll also be helping the energy crisis, water crisis, and climate crisis at the same time.
2) THE government? I assume you mean America's government, but even then I'm not sure which one you're referring to... it changes every once in a while you know, as does technology.
I know people are working hard to try to find an alternative to fossil fuel, but I believe using plant as an alternative is probably a lost cause. Whether you try to create methanol from plant (or food) or as the article suggests, use the spinach protein to extract hydrogen from water, is not very efficient way to create fuel. Sure, plants are "renewable", but at what cost? The gain in fuel is not enough to offset the cost, not only the economic cost of producing the fuel, but the environment, societal cost too. You may argue that we simply haven't found an efficient way to do it, that's all, but we eventually will. However, the cost to environment and the ripple that it creates through societies (e.g. rise of food prices) will always be there. Unless, of course, we could harvest plants/food massively, at very low cost, and without effect to the planet. That is a tall order, by itself.
I believe there are better ways, which we already know now, and which have lower long term cost. Nonetheless, the research project mentioned in TFA is still very cool.
Anyone else read that as *Spanish*?
I wondered if it was some attempt to improve the country's finances and reduce unemployment at the same time.
Of course if you wanted to drive anywhere between noon and 4 p.m. you'd be SOL...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
IF Popeye had made alternative fuels? ONRL is simply replicating what you get when Popeye takes a dump.
s/Popeye/Chuck Norris/g
Are we going to send our finest young men and women to conquer the spinach producing countries now?
1) Take proceeds from myy sugar and corn ETFs that went up from Ethanol;
2) Sit back and wait for Spinach ETF;
3) Profit.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
"converts solar energy directly into hydrogen"
It converts the energy from electromagnetic waves into a proton and an electron? I'd be impressed.
Without reading TFA, I'm pretty sure it simply splits water.
Popeye really wasn't eating the spinach... he was smoking it!
(Why do you think 1/2 the time he would be shown sucking it down thru that corncob pipe of his, hmmm?)
Fuel from Olive Oyl?
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
The US is the number 2 spinach producing country in the world and the largest exporter. China produces 85% of the worlds spinach so they will probably benefit more from this technology than we will.
Is it really scientifically valid to say "ethanol does not really work, therefore nothing that involves using plants can ever work?"
Or, would it make more sense to evaluate this, entirely different, technology on it's own merits?
I am not saying this is a promising technology, but I don't know if it should be dismissed, by people who clearly do not understand it, just because of such a sweeping generalisation?
My car was nearing empty so I put some spinach in my tank. The tires bulged up a lot and got some sort of battleship design on them. Then my car took off (luckily, I was able to jump inside) and I made my 30 minute morning commute in just 3 minutes. Of course, it was knocking cars off the road right and left. And I'm not sure how a corncob pipe got stuck in my car's grill.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
That cheap oil is why you've got a computer to sit posting on Slashdot with in between your bouts of watching hentai, you monkey.
Why should everyone deal with higher food prices especially healthy foods we shouldn't discourage people from eating? Fuck the lazy and make them drive less and build up superior public transportation. It's not like the whole world has too much food and we'd only be converting waste.
You simply don't need to drive your big ass SUV down the road to the shop. When the petrol runs out then tough luck. Walk more fatties.
Since people have/are/will riot in some countries over a lack of food does it make any sense to devote arable land to producing fuel for vehicles?
Riddle me this regarding "fossil" fuels......how come you find them thousands of feet UNDER the sea floor? Seems like much of the "fossil" fuels are be produced abiotically. If so, then exploration and extraction will always trump converting useful farmland for biodiesel since the farmland is dwindling compared to population growth.
I won't even get into the debate about how to solve the population crunch, peak oil (and if it is just lack of technical capability, artificial scarcity, etc), or how to sequester the carbon (or even if that is necessary).
I'm just saying arable land is more precious for feeding hungry people than it is for quenching thirsty cars.