Lol @ Japan. It's true isn't it? A culture that revere's and respects nature.... But f*ck anything that lives in the sea. That sea sh*t aint nature. Lol
I started playing with computers in the early 1990s. IMO the novelty factor might have been part of the coolness and yeah that is gone, but otherwise what you can do now is 10000000x more interesting. AI, computer vision, speech recognition systems. There is a lot more to know and low level details like programming assembly become not as useful or productive. So what! Now you can do some really cool stuff on a higher level.
You can get a laptop nowadays with an NVIDIA GPU, terabytes of storage, lightning fast SSD, 32 gigabytes of RAM and run artificial intelligence algorithms that will learn to play those 8 bit atari games at super human levels through raw experience. You could start building the real skynet from 1980s terminator... If you think things arent cool now youre stuck in a very small box.
Schizophrenia. I've met a woman who thought the same things. She was actually Schizophrenic. It's a terrible disease. She also thought her neighbours were breaking into her home and planting bugs, etc.
Of all the comments I've read on here, including the OP I have failed to see one major issue with this. Probably since this site is more for 'computer nerds' than 'energy nerds' like I am;)
All issues with hydrogen aside, there is another 'issue' with this process, that of course the article fails to mention. They ALWAYS leave something critical out, because this of course has to be as 'exiciting' as possible. They never mention the downsides.
The downside is the bottleneck in this process is not the hydrogen production, but the production of Xylose. They can't simply take biomass and turn it into hydrogen with this process. They must first 'break apart' the cellulose in biomass in order to obtain xylose sugars. THIS is the hard part, and therefore the expensive part. THAT is the part that requires the breakthrough.
It's the same issue that cellulosic ethanol faces. They're both based on the same thing. Making use of sugars from cellulosic biomass. The problem isn't making use of the sugar (the so-called 'breakthrough' here) The REAL issue that needs a breakthrough is actually turning the cellulose into a mixture of sugars. Either using enzymes, heat, acid, etc.
That's where a little bit of literacy on the technology can give a totally different view of these so-called 'AMAZING!!! STUPENDOUS!!' breakthroughs. The news is so dumb sometimes it makes me cringe.
HERE is where a breakthrough is required to make this so-called amazing process viable:
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/jin2/
Cost of breaking down cellulose is the barrier here. With current technology, it would be very expensive hydrogen, but that may change.... but if you can make hydrogen cheaply, you can make ethanol cheaply so why bother???
I can tell from the comments here that most ppl here are computer guys and may be very computer literate but not very 'energy literate'. This news caters to that.
Slashdot Mirror
Lol @ Japan. It's true isn't it? A culture that revere's and respects nature.... But f*ck anything that lives in the sea. That sea sh*t aint nature. Lol
I cant seem to visit the site. Either its been hacked or overloaded?
I started playing with computers in the early 1990s. IMO the novelty factor might have been part of the coolness and yeah that is gone, but otherwise what you can do now is 10000000x more interesting. AI, computer vision, speech recognition systems. There is a lot more to know and low level details like programming assembly become not as useful or productive. So what! Now you can do some really cool stuff on a higher level. You can get a laptop nowadays with an NVIDIA GPU, terabytes of storage, lightning fast SSD, 32 gigabytes of RAM and run artificial intelligence algorithms that will learn to play those 8 bit atari games at super human levels through raw experience. You could start building the real skynet from 1980s terminator... If you think things arent cool now youre stuck in a very small box.
Schizophrenia. I've met a woman who thought the same things. She was actually Schizophrenic. It's a terrible disease. She also thought her neighbours were breaking into her home and planting bugs, etc.
The oxygen goes into carbon dioxide, which is carbon, plus oxygen. C + O2
Of all the comments I've read on here, including the OP I have failed to see one major issue with this. Probably since this site is more for 'computer nerds' than 'energy nerds' like I am ;)
All issues with hydrogen aside, there is another 'issue' with this process, that of course the article fails to mention. They ALWAYS leave something critical out, because this of course has to be as 'exiciting' as possible. They never mention the downsides.
The downside is the bottleneck in this process is not the hydrogen production, but the production of Xylose. They can't simply take biomass and turn it into hydrogen with this process. They must first 'break apart' the cellulose in biomass in order to obtain xylose sugars. THIS is the hard part, and therefore the expensive part. THAT is the part that requires the breakthrough.
It's the same issue that cellulosic ethanol faces. They're both based on the same thing. Making use of sugars from cellulosic biomass. The problem isn't making use of the sugar (the so-called 'breakthrough' here) The REAL issue that needs a breakthrough is actually turning the cellulose into a mixture of sugars. Either using enzymes, heat, acid, etc.
That's where a little bit of literacy on the technology can give a totally different view of these so-called 'AMAZING!!! STUPENDOUS!!' breakthroughs. The news is so dumb sometimes it makes me cringe.
HERE is where a breakthrough is required to make this so-called amazing process viable:
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/jin2/
Cost of breaking down cellulose is the barrier here. With current technology, it would be very expensive hydrogen, but that may change.... but if you can make hydrogen cheaply, you can make ethanol cheaply so why bother???
I can tell from the comments here that most ppl here are computer guys and may be very computer literate but not very 'energy literate'. This news caters to that.