44 ms·

I'm still against it. Burning caloric mass for energy when so much energy is around us is just plain ignorant. We need to move to solar and wind power.

by peg_leg 13y ago

mseebach 13y ago
The energy content in algae comes from the sun, so this is solar energy, just being captured in the form of liquid hydrocarbons instead of electricity.
- xexers 13y ago
  I understand that... but aren't you still going to have smoggy cities with biofuels? Even if they are net carbon neutral, they suck up carbon while being produced and then are burned in cars driving in the city, thus creating smog in the city... smog which has all kinds of health problems.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - mseebach 13y ago
    Yes, cars still pollute, although the bad smog we're seeing in eg. China has more to do with unclean combustion and no or poor filtering than is has to do with hydrocarbon fueled cars per se. The reason a scalable carbon-neutral liquid hydrocarbon solution is attractive is that it's a drop-in solution to CO2 emissions. Battery-powered cars are neat and might well be the way of the future, but it's a very long play. Even if we had the money to replace all cars on the face of the planet with Priuses, there are some very significant constraints on the production on batteries in the form of rare earth minerals. Also, even if you did that, there's still trucks, ships and airplanes to address, never mind that most of the planet's electricity isn't exactly cleanly produced. The carbon-neutral liquid hydrocarbon solution on the other hand would be applicable without any of those constraints.
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
> Burning caloric mass for energy when so much energy is around us is just plain ignorant. No it isn't. What the algae does is exactly it: harness all that "energy around us", which is scattered around and hard to get, in a more efficient manner.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Burning the resulting synthetic petroleum is still highly inefficient; you're only going to get 1-5% total efficiency with most of the energy being converted to waste heat. I could see this being used to generate fuel on-site at remote airports or places where its difficult to truck liquid fuel, but electricity is still going to be the way to go. Its just too easy to move it (with HV transmission lines) compared to large amounts of liquid fuel.
angersock 13y ago
You can't beat the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels for many applications. Sorry.

I'm still against it. Burning caloric mass for energy when so much energy is around us is just plain ignorant. We need to move to solar and wind power.

by peg_leg 13y ago

I'm still against it. Burning caloric mass for energy when so much energy is around us is just plain ignorant. We need to move to solar and wind power.

mseebach 13y ago

The energy content in algae comes from the sun, so this is solar energy, just being captured in the form of liquid hydrocarbons instead of electricity.

xexers 13y ago
I understand that... but aren't you still going to have smoggy cities with biofuels? Even if they are net carbon neutral, they suck up carbon while being produced and then are burned in cars driving in the city, thus creating smog in the city... smog which has all kinds of health problems.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- mseebach 13y ago
  Yes, cars still pollute, although the bad smog we're seeing in eg. China has more to do with unclean combustion and no or poor filtering than is has to do with hydrocarbon fueled cars per se. The reason a scalable carbon-neutral liquid hydrocarbon solution is attractive is that it's a drop-in solution to CO2 emissions. Battery-powered cars are neat and might well be the way of the future, but it's a very long play. Even if we had the money to replace all cars on the face of the planet with Priuses, there are some very significant constraints on the production on batteries in the form of rare earth minerals. Also, even if you did that, there's still trucks, ships and airplanes to address, never mind that most of the planet's electricity isn't exactly cleanly produced. The carbon-neutral liquid hydrocarbon solution on the other hand would be applicable without any of those constraints.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

> Burning caloric mass for energy when so much energy is around us is just plain ignorant. No it isn't. What the algae does is exactly it: harness all that "energy around us", which is scattered around and hard to get, in a more efficient manner.

toomuchtodo 13y ago
Burning the resulting synthetic petroleum is still highly inefficient; you're only going to get 1-5% total efficiency with most of the energy being converted to waste heat. I could see this being used to generate fuel on-site at remote airports or places where its difficult to truck liquid fuel, but electricity is still going to be the way to go. Its just too easy to move it (with HV transmission lines) compared to large amounts of liquid fuel.

angersock 13y ago

You can't beat the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels for many applications. Sorry.