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Growing sugarcane does a pretty good job of converting CO2 into hydrocarbons using solar power. But to be cost-competitive with fracked methane, I'm pretty sur
by logfromblammo 9y ago
Growing sugarcane does a pretty good job of converting CO2 into hydrocarbons using solar power.
But to be cost-competitive with fracked methane, I'm pretty sure we're going to need some heavily genetically-engineered strains of algae, growing in artificial forests of pipes.
The irony is that algae can be used to clean up fracking wastewater, so it makes methane production cheaper as it competes.
- astrodust 9y agoSugarcane and switchgrass might be able to close the loop, but these take a lot of mechanical processing and land to do so, which could introduce additional costs. The promise of syntetic fossil fuels from things like water and CO2 is that you don't need a lot of land, you just need energy, and that energy can be renewable.