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1.) electric vehicles are also vastly simpler mechanically, so what you gain with energy storage efficiency in gasoline tanks you loose with their complex motor
by m_mueller 10y ago
1.) electric vehicles are also vastly simpler mechanically, so what you gain with energy storage efficiency in gasoline tanks you loose with their complex motors.
2.) if cheap energy density is the problem they want to solve, then this process at least needs to be compared to using the land to grow plants in order to turn them into ethanol fuel. So a comparison like "wind farm under average conditions + ethanol farming" vs. "wind farm under average conditions + solar under average conditions + CO2 to ethanol process" --> how many Joules of kinetic energy can you produce per square kilometer of land, given the fuel/electricity is used in the currently most efficient motors/batteries?
- adrianN 10y agoMany people dislike growing plants for Ethanol production because they compete for arable land that can be used to produce food. Solar and wind farms can be built in places where agriculture is not viable.
- eveningcoffee 10y agoGrowing plants for fuel by itself is not a problem. Core issue is that the collective intelligence of us as species does not appear to be higher than yeast.
- m_mueller 10y agowell, at the end it's just sunlight, carbon, nitrogen, water, a few minerals and a bunch of chemical reactions. I'm pretty sure you could find a biological process to put anywhere that's also viable for solar farms, including open water. In fact, haven't there been a bunch of papers using algae?