Kidney Cells Make Implantable Power Source

Galactic_grub writes "New Scientist has an interesting round-up of patents related to green power technology. The ideas mentioned include an implantable power source made from stacks of kidney cells that could drive implanted devices like pacemakers, a chemical way to purifying hydrogen, a buckyball-based filter for methane fuel cells and an organism that turns grass cuttings (and other bio-waste) into ethanol."

Proper Ethanol

[Swordopolis]

The faster we switch ethanol production over to cellulose, the better. It would mean that we're not cannibalizing our food supply to make it, and the cost wouldn't be tied to the rising price of corn.

Making our ethanol out of the leftover waste materials is probably the only way ethanol will ever take off in this country.

Tag: coppertop

[ajlitt]

Interesting, but this [lanl.gov] is worth far more badass points at the retirement community.

Methanol not Methane!

[wizardforce]

Just a note about the fullerene filters mentioned in the article, they do not filter methane they filter Methanol specifically they prevent Methanol from diffusing across the memebrane of the fuel cell thus decreasing the amount of Methanol that is wasted.

Paying the Cost to be the Boss

[Doc Ruby]

These are all interesting and valuable technologies for extracting and using energy. But of course they all consume some of the energy they help produce and deliver. Making that delivery system less efficient in order to use it at all.

But existing fuels have the same problem. Is there anywhere that shows how much energy is consumed by extracting petroleum from the ground, getting it to a ship or pipeline, refined into products, then across to where it's burned for power? How much gasoline is burned driving to a gas station to fill up? How about the energy required to build and maintain the infrastructure, or even explore for new fields? Some of these losses are small, but they all add up. How about for coal and natural gas?

Once we know the "energy budget" of each kind of energy system, we can actually make sensible choices. Gasoline has some of the highest energy density of any fuel, but its pollution has extremely high energy costs to recover from. Maybe some of these other systems are better net propositions. Or maybe they just look good on TV, until you see all the costs that actually goes into using them.

Re:water necessary...

[ricree]

Sure, but in areas like that you're going to see a lot better returns on solar power than areas with high rainfall will. In that respect, this sort of technology will be a complement to solar power. In other words, areas with lots of rain and cloud cover will have more available biomass for fuel, whereas areas without the rainfall will see much more output from solar generators. Ideally, it should balance out, although in actual practice it will certainly be more messy than that.