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It depends. Small organisms can potentially scale really well. If yeast, bacteria or algae can do what you want, you have at least some hope of scaling that up
by kadoban 5y ago
It depends. Small organisms can potentially scale really well. If yeast, bacteria or algae can do what you want, you have at least some hope of scaling that up arbitrarily.
- aunty_helen 5y agoThere's a problem with microorganisms that can live in diesel. That is, they can live and grow in diesel. https://www.google.com/search?q=diesel+bug https://www.google.com/search?q=diesel+bug
- kadoban 5y agoI think the idea is the microorganism you output some precursor(s) that you'd then process. If not, I guess you could pasteurize whatever it is, after filtering and such. Doesn't seem like it should be too much of a problem.
- regularfry 5y agoThis is the problem algae farms all run headlong into: sunlight density. The energy output you get from doing anything with the biomass can't exceed the received sunlight energy times the photosynthetic efficiency of your microorganisms. And that efficiency might not be as good as solar cells. The way this process does an end-run round that with added hydrogen is interesting, though.
- pfdietz 5y agoI think algae farms are actually CO2 limited. Even a corn field, in calm air and bright sunlight, runs out of CO2 in about five minutes. And plants like corn have all those leaves above the ground for lots of mass transfer. (Transfer of turbulence to ground level may be a way wind turbines can increase agricultural yield, I think.)