Lots of people think that reducing the number of cars is the solution.
In reality, the world needs and area 190 miles by 190 miles of desert to replace all its oil consumption with synthetic fuels.
Now, why don't you try to create services to reduce the number of cars in the world? Like carpool services, buses, trains, etc.? You can make money and save the environment. Try it - youl'll like it.
You're very right. Keep in mind that as far as I know, humans have never run out of anything. People were predicting in 1980 that the united states would be starving in 2000 because of population growth. Did it??????? No. Read about the Simon-Ehrlich wager. An environmentalist, Paul Ehrlich, bet that prices of metals he picked would go up. An economist, Julian Simon, bet that prices would go down (remember, the environmentalist picked the metals). Guess who won. The economist. The prices went down, despite massive consumption. We have never really run out of anything. If we stopping being creative and inventive, then we will be in trouble.
Here we go again, biofuels and all. First off, lets talk about enzymes. People say that cellulose is hard to break down. Here's how to break it down, much more efficiently and cheaply than enzymes: 500 degrees C. The fact is that gasification and thermochemical processing will be more efficient. Many coal and biomass to liquids processes are 85% percent plus energy efficient. Ethanol fermentation is less (appears 75% biomass to ethanol). Instead, let's go for gasification and produce biogasoline, a real fuel with a proven track record. Where does the heat from gasification come from? The sun. We will use big, cheap arrays of mirrors to heat up containers (made of iron?) of the biomass, what ever it may be. Then we remove crud like sulfur and nitrogen, and pass it over a series of catalysts the make gasoline. This happens in one huge desert solar power plant. Of course, as Elon Musk said, it would be better just to burn all that biomass in a big combined cycle power plant and charge up our electric cars.
The thing about biofuels is that they are ridiculously inefficient. Even algae, the most efficient biofuel, is only %6-7 efficient solar to fuel conversion, and most are less than %1. A much better way to convert solar energy to fuel is with Sandia's sunshine to petrol program. We could be looking at much higher efficiency (%40+). They react a metal with water to create metal oxide and hydrogen, and then heat up the metal oxide to regenerate the metal. The hydrogen then is reacted with CO2 to produce gasoline. About 1 gallon of water is consumed per gallon of gasoline, and they could operate on waste water anyway. This is real, drop in replacement gasoline.
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Lots of people think that reducing the number of cars is the solution. In reality, the world needs and area 190 miles by 190 miles of desert to replace all its oil consumption with synthetic fuels. Now, why don't you try to create services to reduce the number of cars in the world? Like carpool services, buses, trains, etc.? You can make money and save the environment. Try it - youl'll like it.
You're very right. Keep in mind that as far as I know, humans have never run out of anything. People were predicting in 1980 that the united states would be starving in 2000 because of population growth. Did it??????? No. Read about the Simon-Ehrlich wager. An environmentalist, Paul Ehrlich, bet that prices of metals he picked would go up. An economist, Julian Simon, bet that prices would go down (remember, the environmentalist picked the metals). Guess who won. The economist. The prices went down, despite massive consumption. We have never really run out of anything. If we stopping being creative and inventive, then we will be in trouble.
Here we go again, biofuels and all. First off, lets talk about enzymes. People say that cellulose is hard to break down. Here's how to break it down, much more efficiently and cheaply than enzymes: 500 degrees C. The fact is that gasification and thermochemical processing will be more efficient. Many coal and biomass to liquids processes are 85% percent plus energy efficient. Ethanol fermentation is less (appears 75% biomass to ethanol). Instead, let's go for gasification and produce biogasoline, a real fuel with a proven track record. Where does the heat from gasification come from? The sun. We will use big, cheap arrays of mirrors to heat up containers (made of iron?) of the biomass, what ever it may be. Then we remove crud like sulfur and nitrogen, and pass it over a series of catalysts the make gasoline. This happens in one huge desert solar power plant. Of course, as Elon Musk said, it would be better just to burn all that biomass in a big combined cycle power plant and charge up our electric cars. The thing about biofuels is that they are ridiculously inefficient. Even algae, the most efficient biofuel, is only %6-7 efficient solar to fuel conversion, and most are less than %1. A much better way to convert solar energy to fuel is with Sandia's sunshine to petrol program. We could be looking at much higher efficiency (%40+). They react a metal with water to create metal oxide and hydrogen, and then heat up the metal oxide to regenerate the metal. The hydrogen then is reacted with CO2 to produce gasoline. About 1 gallon of water is consumed per gallon of gasoline, and they could operate on waste water anyway. This is real, drop in replacement gasoline.