New Solar Cells Can Convert CO2 Into Hydrocarbon Fuel (nextbigfuture.com) 195
"Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have engineered a potentially game-changing solar cell that cheaply and efficiently converts atmospheric carbon dioxide directly into usable hydrocarbon fuel, using only sunlight for energy," reports Next Big Future. Slashdot reader William Robinson writes:
This artificial leaf delivers syngas, or synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide. Syngas can be burned directly, or converted into diesel or other hydrocarbon fuels. The discovery opens up possibilities of clean reusable energy.
"A solar farm of such 'artificial leaves' could remove significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and produce energy-dense fuel efficiently..." according to the article, which adds that the process could prove useful in the high-carbon atmosphere of Mars. "Unlike conventional solar cells, which convert sunlight into electricity that must be stored in heavy batteries, the new device essentially does the work of plants, converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into fuel, solving two crucial problems at once."
"A solar farm of such 'artificial leaves' could remove significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and produce energy-dense fuel efficiently..." according to the article, which adds that the process could prove useful in the high-carbon atmosphere of Mars. "Unlike conventional solar cells, which convert sunlight into electricity that must be stored in heavy batteries, the new device essentially does the work of plants, converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into fuel, solving two crucial problems at once."
Expected efficiency and cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether or not this is interesting really depends on the expected power / area and cost (production and operating) of an engineering version. It is better than bio-fuels by those measures?
Re:Expected efficiency and cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bio fuels require you to grow stuff, which means maintaining the soil, keeping pests away, harvesting etc. These converters should be a lot simpler.
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You're just changing the growth medium. Soil, water...either way it has to be maintained and contain nutrients of various types.
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Don't bet on it being simpler. Most artificial processes require exotic catalysts that are quickly poisoned and need to be regenerated.
But I don't think the gadget was the point of the operation, I think they were studying the mechanism.
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50 years from now: "The Earth is getting too cold and plants grow suckily! We need more CO2 in the atmosphere again!"
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Not because of this. This would be relatively carbon neutral as you use the carbon removed from the atmosphere as fuel that puts carbon back into the air.
If this became widespread, likely the best we could hope for is enough scale to slow the release of new carbon (carbon that had been in sequestration like fossil fuels).
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You need to compare on the basis of cost, not simplicity. You can have a complex process which is cheap, or a simple process which is expensive. If the cost to harvest (and refine if necessary) is less than the cost to build regular PV panels or these new type of solar cells, then the energy biol-fuels produce will be cheaper than solar (putting as
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That train left a long while ago. It's the economy, stupid. And the stupid economy needs to grow. GROW! GROW! More! Exponential functions are grand!
Does it work better than a tree? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because so far most of these carbon removing technologies fall way short of just planting a grove of trees. This seems like one of those problems where maybe nature is handing us a simpler solution. But for the sake of science (and keeping that funding flowing) we go out of our way to make a less efficient, more expensive machine to do the job that a tree will do for free.
Re:Does it work better than a tree? (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, the last time I checked, my trees didn't come with a fuel hose that could fill my car's gas tank.
Not speaking to the merits of this technology, but if it does work, it would be slick.
Re:Does it work better than a tree? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Does it work better than a tree? (Score:4, Insightful)
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sugarcane is pretty close to a tree with a fuel hose...
Excellent! I have a bunch of leftover sugar. I will be a good Samaritan and dispose of it in my neighbors' gas tanks. What a pleasant surprise it will be for each of them when they discover they have a full tank of gas.
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Though I did see in an old magazine (Mother earth news?) where someone rigged up a stove in their car to generate CO to burn in the engine. Don't know how true the article it was, or how well the car ran...
Oh yes, "wood gas" engines are a real thing.
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So...nothing new under the sun, just different catalysts.
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In Western Europe this is known as the cars that ran during WW2 and under the German occupation.
Might be something you can still find sometimes on roads of not-Pyongyang DPRK.
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Mod parent up (Score:2)
On mars? Yes much better than a tree.
Yes!
Where you can grow plants and get bio-diesel, plants are in competition with this device.
Where you can't grow plants efficiently or at all - like Mars or my apartment balcony (they keep dying because I keep forgetting to water them), this may be interesting if it's better than other sunlight-to-energy systems.
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Except, what would you do with gas on Mars? It's handy here because the other half of the reaction, oxygen, is abundant everywhere. On Mars, you'd have to also haul massive tanks of compressed oxygen around to react with your gas.
Now, in deserts on Earth perhaps... except I suspect that this process consumes abundant water to supply the hydrogen, so it wouldn't be particularly well suited for deserts. Or Mars.
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Except, what would you do with gas on Mars? It's handy here because the other half of the reaction, oxygen, is abundant everywhere. On Mars, you'd have to also haul massive tanks of compressed oxygen around to react with your gas.
If only there were some way to make a solar cell to strip off the carbon from C02 in order to free up some oxygen. Seriously though, the missing ingredient here is hydrogen, not oxygen. Perhaps water in the soil could provide both oxygen and hydrogen.
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It's pretty damn difficult to achieve efficiencies as low as photosynthesis in the wild so it probably does. Then again, it's pretty damn difficult to achieve efficiencies as high as photovoltaics so it is very unlikely for this technique to ever match that.
(Note the inevitable consequence: growing crops indoors under photovoltaic powered lamps that emit frequencies that are actually usable for photosynthesis is more energy efficient and sustainable, today already. The future of agriculture is not very pret
Transfom Hydrocarbon Fuel into CO2 (Score:4, Funny)
I have a nice way to transform Hydrocarbon fuels into CO2
Is the energy density any better than pure solar? (Score:3)
Because if not, I fail to see any significant advantage.
I'm not saying this to be just contradictory to any new development in the energy industry... this is a serious question. If the amount usable energy that can be obtained by the fuel it produces in terms of energy per dollar of investment spent on the technology is not any better than what you can get from modern efficient solar cells then it makes much more sense to use solar power and electricity instead.
Re:Is the energy density any better than pure sola (Score:4, Informative)
So the main competition for this technology is not regular solar, but plants and algae, which are much cheaper to grow.
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Energy density (I assume you mean energy produced in a given amount of time with a given surface area, e.g. watts/square centimeter) isn't the only factor that counts.
How you intend to use or store the energy is also a factor.
Pure solar typically produces either heat (sterling engine) or DC power (typical solar cell) as its direct output. Some solar devices include add-ons to convert that energy into battery storage, mechanical energy, AC power, fuel, or some other form of energy.
This device appears to pro
Sounds fantastic. Which of course means (Score:2, Insightful)
you will NEVER be able to walk into a local Home Depot and buy one. Not tomorrow, not 5 years from now.
I hear about solar panels as clear as glass a few years ago, that you could put on all the windows in your house to generate cheap electricity.. Still don't see them on the market, don't expect I ever will.
For whatever reason, maybe its oil company conspiracy, maybe the ideas were fake to begin with, who knows, we see news about all kinds of new technology concepts, that NEVER COME TO FRUITION.
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Transparent solar panels over your window would generate marginal amounts of electricity for large cost (the panels are still expensive). They'd only generate energy from light that doesn't pass, so they'd necessarily reduce the light entering your home; the darker they are, the higher their generation capacity.
Imagine you have a choice between a 28mpg car and a 28.2mpg car. The 28mpg car costs $19,000; you can get the model with 0.2mpg more, but it costs $118,000. Which do you buy?
They use electricity! (Score:2)
They claim to have a process to convert sunlight "directly" into synthesized fuel but in the photos and the description we see a common off the shelf photovoltaic cell in the process. Therefore this process is tied to the efficiencies of photovoltaics, and that the process can be driven by other electricity sources, such as wind, hydro, or nuclear.
I've seen something very similar being investigated by the US Navy, the difference is that the Navy powers the process from nuclear power. They might have some
Something isn't clear... (Score:2)
Here is the basic construction of the device from TFA:
"The UIC artificial leaf consists of two silicon triple-junction photovoltaic cells of 18 square centimeters to harvest light; the tungsten diselenide and ionic liquid co-catalyst system on the cathode side; and cobalt oxide in potassium phosphate electrolyte on the anode side."
So, the cathode is immersed in a combination of water and ethyl-methyl-imidazolium tetrafluoroborate (from TFA).
The anode is immersed also in an electrolyte.
The result is that "hy
Doesn't need sun. Electricity + CO2 + H2O - oil (Score:2)
Reading TFA, I noticed an interesting point:
The process doesn't require light. It uses silicon photovoltaics providing power to a "reverse fuel cell" which coverts CO2 and H2O to H2 and CO (which the Fischer-Tropsch process can turn into diesel fuel, light crude, etc.)
This means the process doesn't have to be deployed as solar panels. It could also be run in an enclosed reactor, driven by electricity. This could be used to turn power from fusion, fission, wind, space-collected-and-downlinked solar, or w
Re:And the carbon monoxide? (Score:4, Informative)
CO is usable and can be 'burned' which results in CO2 (oxidation.)
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CO is usable and can be 'burned' which results in CO2 (oxidation.)
Yes and in fact it (CO) is explosive and poisonous.
Converting to a more portable and safer fuel would be a good idea.
Carbon monoxide is the key reactant in reducing iron and other metallic ore to metal.
This could move some smelting and refining to a locations in the sunny south west
and sub saharan Africa.
Specialty smelting and recycling comes to mind as an early adopter.
Re:And the carbon monoxide? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:And the carbon monoxide? (Score:5, Insightful)
Syngas can be converted to gasoline or diesel via the Fischer-Tropsch process.
Which also generates a bunch of heat at temperatures moderately above water's boiling point, which must be removed to keep the process in its optimal temperature range. This is suitable for co-generation, producing more electriity than is needed to run the plant. So in addition to clean diesel fuel (or gasoline with a little refining) and a bit of chemical feedstock, you get to feed the grid.
Re:And the carbon monoxide? (Score:5, Informative)
Dude this is older than photography ! :
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/A_Peep_at_the_Gas_Lights_in_Pall_Mall_Rowlandson_1809.jpg [wikimedia.org]
By the mid to late 19th century sizable infrastructure was built to produce a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen in huge complicated plants, and distribute it in major cities through pipes, for lighting - especially street lights - and maybe cooking and heating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Coal gasification processes to create syngas were used for many years to manufacture illuminating gas (coal gas) for gas lighting, cooking and to some extent, heating, before electric lighting and the natural gas infrastructure became widely available.[citation needed] Although the syngas chemical composition can vary based on the raw materials and the processes, the syngas from coal gasification generally is a mixture of 30 to 60% carbon monoxide, 25 to 30% hydrogen, 5 to 15% carbon dioxide, and 0 to 5% methane. It also contains lesser amount of other gases.[19]
The syngas produced in waste-to-energy gasification facilities can be used to generate electricity.
Of course, a leak or poor piping might make you pass out and die from carbon monoxide poisoning or perhaps you might poison yourself with a gas stove. But indoor (or outdoor) open fires of wood or coal had their share of problems too.
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The benefit of CO is that it's big, heavy, and we have good detectors for it. And I don't think it has the issues with metals that H2 does either. All things considered, I think CO is a better gas to have to work with.
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And 20 years later when the patent expires and no one wants a functioning, researched, unencumbered technology? How does your conspiracy handle that scenario?
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And 20 years later when the patent expires and no one wants a functioning, researched, unencumbered technology? How does your conspiracy handle that scenario?
I'm not the poster you are talking to, but I will give a reason why useful patent-unencumbered things may never make it to market, and by extension, why a competitor may want to buy up the rights to promising technology and put it on the shelf, knowing that economic forces alone will keep it from seeing the light of day even after the patents expire:
Many technologies are "partially researched" or "completely researched but still millions of dollars away from going to market for the first time." Maybe the d
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This only makes sense out of context. The conspiracy theory is that a revolutionary, workable solution gets bought and shelved, to continue reliance on traditional fuels. If it is so revolutionary, why not bring it back?
Also, you are really general, instead of addressing the energy sector specifically. Lots of energy companies are in the toilet now, and are in a good position to revive discarded stuff, even if it just buys then a few years of positive balance sheets.
Sure big business won't look at something
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This only makes sense out of context. The conspiracy theory is that a revolutionary, workable solution gets bought and shelved, to continue reliance on traditional fuels. If it is so revolutionary, why not bring it back?
From an economic standpoint, a workable solution may require an insane amount of cost (labor). For example: a few centuries back, a certain amount of human labor (which requires wages) could produce 400 tonnes of iron from ore; the hot-blast furnace allowed you to use the same amount of labor to produce 86,400 tonnes of ore. How expensive do you think a car engine would have been before and after the invention of the hot-blast furnace?
From a business standpoint, there's risk. Something might cost a l
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The Marxist comment was more for emphasis than technical accuracy. Marx did suggest, at a point, that reducing employment by making things more-efficient was bad; this wasn't really the thrust of Marx's philosophies, and is often criticized as being wildly out-of-context by broadly-read economists if you bring it up. Still, we have a lot of left-wing capitalists criticizing trickle-down economics as Republican-conservative bullshit (because of tax cuts for the rich) while simultaneously arguing that busi
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Well-known examples include medicinal use of marijuana in the United States from the mid-20th century until 10 or 20 years ago (I think it's still technically not FDA-approved but the feds are looking the other way in states that have laws that allow for its use)
The FDA is insane. I read their page on importing drugs. They say they can't recommend it at this time, and that the border agent at customs will use his discretion, and won't let packages in with more than a 3-month supply, and might decide to not allow it. They also state that enforcement against individuals is not part of the FDA's regulation plan; they'll go after distributors who try to bulk-import shitloads of foreign drugs. The whole several-page explanation ends with a statement that WHEN YOU R
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No dude, it's a hallucinogenic drug used recreationally. It's going through research and some phama cos are trying to make a more-effective derivative (e.g. better anti-addictive properties, less hallucination). The drug has approximately zero toxicity (extreme overdose is safe), no addictive potential, and little penetration into the recreational use market, and is thus not worth scheduling; if it were scheduled, it'd have to be Schedule-1 (no medical use), and then getting it FDA approved requires shit
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And 20 years later when the patent expires and no one wants a functioning, researched, unencumbered technology? How does your conspiracy handle that scenario?
Some do want encumbered tech -- it allows profit.
Consider Tesla's home storage battery.
It is small dense and profitable for Tesla. It allows of peak slurping
and off peak time delivery to the auto, home or grid.
However there are some quite old and well tested iron chemistry batteries.
They are environmentally safer and can be disposed of in common land fills.
They are heavy as all heck but once installed need never be moved.
They can be installed in man hole covered cylindrical or other vaults in driveways
or
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They also have low specific energy, poor charge retention, and high cost of manufacture. And, indeed, are very heavy.
They might be worth considering for some specific solutions, but it's clear it won't do for most of them (e.g., car-batteries).
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I'll search for my tinfoil-hat right now! Just wait a sec! I'm sure it must be in my drawer somewhere...
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Think of it as recycling. Instead of adding more CO2 with every liter of dinosaur remains burned, you only burn what you previously have taken from the atmosphere.
In theory, this means everything that burns some for of gasoline or dieser could suddenly become CO2 neutral.
Re:Useless... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not better than photovoltaic cells. It is just more compatible with our current energy infrastructure. There are billions of cars out there that run on hydrocarbons. It is way easier to give them a clean source of hydrocarbons than to scrap them and build billions of electric cars.
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I agree with you about the car scrapping and using that technology (provided that it really works as advised).
But the point here is the energy source in general: there are not just cars that need energy.
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I don't see your point.
Re:Useless... (Score:5, Insightful)
You convert CO2 in CO. Then you oxidize it to get CO2 back.
No CO2 sequestration at all!
So, how would this be better than photovoltaic cells?
It's better because every time there's a story on photvoltaic cells, a bunch of self-appointed geniuses yell: "I'm the first person to realize that the sun doesn't shine all day! It won't do any good without energy storage!!1!"
Well, here's a solar technology with built-in energy storage.
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Otherwise you can revert to natural wood/bamboo growing as energy source: it sequestrates CO2, stores energy for later use, produces O2 and food...
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No sequestration needed. There is and will be a demand for fuels for a good while into the future. This has the potential to reduce the use of fossil fuels which adds carbon to the system by reusing carbon already in the system.
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Electricity that's not produced by burning stuff (photovoltaic panels, windmills, nuclear plants) is much better as there is no CO2 emission at all.
FLAMEBAIT? (Score:2)
If anything that contradicts (or questions) the main topic is flamebait or troll, then you are done with free speach.
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"Flamebait" and "Troll" are alternately used as "-1 Dumbass" when someone posts a candidate for stupidest question of the year.
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Of course, it must be said that by now we also have an infrastructure to power those explosion-powered vehicles.
Contrary, say, to the claims of some that hydrogen would be the new way to go. And insisting the infrastructure is already there, so it would be cheap to implement. Alas, our infrastructure for gasoline is NOT suited for hydrogen, and all the pipelines and storages would need a complete overhaul, making it prohibitively expensive for little added benefit.
On the other hand, artificial gasoline or s
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Solar Impulse 2 has no payload beside itself and one guy. I will agree that commercial flight will be a sound possibility, but not of the kind that does transportation of passengers and air mail.
We do have 1000 mpg cars. They barely fit the definition of a car, and would likely be a death trap on the roads. In fact, you may as well build a bicycle/tricycle in the same shape and reach legal road speeds. But to fit four people and minimal luggage you'll have a lot of trouble reaching even 100 mpg (while not t
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Why on earth would you agree with that? There is absolutely no sign whatsoever that commercial solar powered flight could ever possibly be achieved.
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And took 15 months to do it. Magellan circled the world in 1519-1522 in 36 months, also using no fuel, but bringing back 26 tons of spices. The Solar Impulse 2 could barely carry one pilot and nothing else.
Since then, the sailing circumnavigation record has improved to 45 days, and the solo record is 58 days. Makes a sick joke out of the Solar Impulse 2.
Let's see. Very close to 500 years between the two feats. Going in, there was essenti
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There was a time during the transition from the age of sail to the age of steam where a type of ship called a windjammer proved economical. A windjammer is a large steel hulled cargo sailing ship with as many as five large masts, called a windjammer as it was so fast and efficient it seemed to make the wind stop.
Such a ship was expected to circumnavigate the globe in 8 months, making as many cargo stops along the way as it could. Such ships would often carry bulk commodity goods since they could afford ta
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The Solar Impulse 2 is analogous to a go-kart. It's an extremely-light plane carrying one passenger at low speeds using a ridiculously-wide wingspan. You may as well claim on-board wind power is viable for air transit by pointing out that you can fly a kite.
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I think the solar impulse 2 exactly proved how infeasible commercial airplanes would be, if they had to rely purely on solarpower/batteries.
The weight/power ratio was atrocious, with the solar impulse. Extrapolate this to a modern airplane which needs to carry 100 people, and you'd get something that wouldn't fit even the biggest airports, would weigh thousands of tons, and wingspans that would be mind-boggling long and thus made of impossible strong materials, rivalling carbyne. It would never be economica
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Ha Ha. It's gonna have nanoflake tungsten diselenide. And where do you think you're going to get that stuff from, Mr. Libertarian?
From the big people.
Of course.
Re:Expect it to get borked (Score:5, Informative)
Powering transportation solely on electricity gives the state the ability to decide when, where, and how much you can use because it's a public utility but under the legal control of the state.
Uh, what? Powering transportation solely with electricity is the only way an individual can become energy independent. I can install enough photovoltaic panels to power a Tesla for literally all of my driving needs (I fly when I travel long distances). Those panels are not only not a public utility, but quite specifically my private property. If I lived in the country, I could put up a windmill, either instead of or in addition to photovoltaic panels. Again, private property. Install enough of them, and a battery bank in the basement, and I can disconnect my house from that public utility too.
I certainly can't drill an oil well in my backyard and run an oil refinery in my basement. I can't strip mine my backyard for coal and run a steam-powered car. I can't cut enough trees to burn wood and run a steam-powered car either. I can't even plant enough switchgrass, harvest it, and make enough ethanol. Even if I could strip mine my backyard for coal, it would have to be half a mile thick to handle my transportation needs for the rest of my life, and coal just doesn't come that way.
Neither fossil fuels nor biofuels can fuel my transportation needs. Either I'm not allowed to utilize them (and wouldn't want to, because of the stench), or they literally aren't energy-dense enough, respectively. Biofuels depend on plants, which are lucky to convert even 3% of the sunlight falling on them, and they convert into biomolecules that I have to do something dramatic to in order to utilize their energy (usually at further loss). Commercial off the shelf photovoltaic panels convert sunlight at 22% efficiency, directly into electricity I can use, or can convert into something I can use with well-understood, cheap circuitry.
Powering transportation, and indeed everything else, solely on electricity is the one and only path to personal energy independence that can be pursued by more than a handful of farmers with massive amounts of acreage. And it's physically possible today. Right now. For everybody in the world who lives in low density housing. It's not financially possible for most just yet, but at least physics isn't preventing it.
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Good luck on an overcast week in mid winter.
Takes a lithium battery bank about the size of a refrigerator. Two, if the house is large or poorly insulated. Expensive, but physically possible, and it will only get cheaper. Photovoltaic panels still generate power on overcast days. Just not as much. Whereas the "hydrocarbon fuel" panels in the linked story probably generate nothing, since their efficiency is so terribly low in the first place. The battery bank gets charged with overcapacity on sunny days. Yes overcapacity costs more. I'm only ma
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I have done the math. Why do you think I said it would cost little? I said no such thing, and explicitly said it would cost a lot, twice. You're not actually reading my text. Also, first you talk about one week, then you talk about multiple weeks. Since when was multiple weeks an issue? I said nothing about it. That's you. And I don't live in Germany, so their clouds and winter don't concern me. Yes, it requires a much larger battery than just an overnight battery. This is not a shock to any six y
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If you did that math for this case, then you must have looked up the lowest solar isolation average day of your specific winter. What was that? Nothing you said tells me you appreciate what it would take.
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Cost twice of what?
You have serious reading comprehension problems. I said it would cost a lot, twice. Twice I said it would cost a lot. See? I didn't say it would cost double.
And you're a bit confused about how electricity works too. No, not "at best the week before." It depends entirely on how over-provisioned the battery is and how over-provisioned the solar array is. In my area, the average is 4.8 full sun hours per day. A cloudy day cuts that to 15%, so the equivalent of 0.72 full sun hours. If I over-provision
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Nevertheless, even in very sunny area's there is always a possibility of having a week where there is considerably less sun (and thus energy).
The parent poster was right, thus, that - if you're speaking of being completely self-sufficient - you would need batteries that can span a week or more. The best batteries for home-use gives you about 3 hours of electricity, for an average household. So you'd need 2-3 to cover one full night. That means it would take about 20 battery-packs to cover a week. At an aver
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I once did the math on what it would take for me to live off the grid. I assumed I could have a solar panel the size of my roof, any bigger and I'd run into building code problems. In the summer I'd have enough electricity to run the house and charge up an electric car for my then short commute. I didn't recalculate since then for my now longer drive to work. In the winter though I'd have enough power for lights, refrigeration, entertainment, and maybe to run some large appliances. I'd have to rely on
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I once did the math on what it would take for me to live off the grid. I assumed I could have a solar panel the size of my roof, any bigger and I'd run into building code problems.
<snip>
The cost of the solar panels, battery chargers, etc. was more difficult to calculate since prices for such are rarely advertised outright.
Times, they are a-changin'. Costs of panels and inverters are now quite public. 7000 watts of panel capacity will cost you $7700 for a pallet of 25, delivered. Those are 17% efficient, made in America. An inverter to match runs around $1500 plus $70 per panel, give or take. Charge controllers run $1000 or so, often as an added feature on an inverter that includes the charge controller built in. Batteries are indeed a bit arbitrary. Giant sodium ion batteries run 60 cents per watt-hour. Large flooded
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How pure does the feedwater have to be to avoid poisoning the catalyst or the membrane? Maybe subtract the energy required to purify it.
What energy? Reverse osmosis and dionization resins can do it physically and chemically. No energy needed, aside from the pressure needed for RO to work. If you use a fiber/carbon/DI system then gravity is enough. You'll have to recharge the DI resins chemically more often though.
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And if it's taken from air water, there should be also plenty of O2 also produced. But this is not mentioned.
So H2 must come from somewhere else. That is not mentioned as well. This is what I am questioning.
Then, you my friendly moderator, please take into consideration if it's more important the moon I am pointing at, or the finger I am using to point.
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It says you get hydrogen
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For example, in the Sahara desert as close as possible to the equator you have plenty of sun light, but very little water vapor in the air. While photovoltaic would be great there, this solution would be really bad.
So, why not mentioning at all from where the hydrogen is taken?
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the Mojave's mean winter temperature is 50 degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature, the maximum possible humidity is 7.6 grams of water per kilogram of air. Its summer mean temperature is 90 degrees Fahrenheit, with a maximum humidity of almost 30 grams of water per kilogram of air. So winter 30 percent humidity is 2.28 grams of water per kilogram of air, while summer 10 percent humidity translates to 3 grams of water per kilogram of air.
In a port town, 90F weather might get you 78% humidity before or after a rain. That's 24g/kg, where 10% humidity in the Mojave desert is 3g/kg. At 50% humidity, that's more like 15g.
High humidity at those temperatures translates to 2.4% of the air as water; low humidity of the desert is 0.3%. It's only 8 times more here in heavily-saturated conditions, or 5 times as much in normal conditions.
To compensate, you'd need little more than a ground-sourced pump and a fan. You'd pump water with propylene g
Re:Wow! Let's give them more money! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then in ten years we will wonder what the fuck happened.
The main reason most of these things don't come to market is that inventions are coming so rapidly that something BETTER comes along and obsoletes them before they reach manufacturing and deployment.
Nevertheless, enough make it that things are improving substantially. For instance: Photovoltaic prices recently "crossed-over" grid power costs for much of the temperate-zone sunny sites - even without further government subsidies on manufacture and installation. That's a BIG change from a decade ago.
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Nah - not so fast (Score:2)
The installed cost may have 'crossed over' - but as the increasing problems being revealed over maintaining base load when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing indicates that this is because the real costs aren't being accounted for.
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but as the increasing problems being revealed over maintaining base load when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing indicates that this is because the real costs aren't being accounted for.
You're talking grid-connected sun and wind farms.
I'm talking standalone systems, like solar homes: Panels, charge controller, battery, inverter. Maybe dump load. With enough batteries to cover typical cloudy periods and a backup generator for the odd day or two a year that the system's storage wasn't sized b
Working models are available now! (Score:4, Funny)
We already have a working prototype cell that turns sunlight and CO2 into a burnable fuel.
You might already be familiar with them. They call them "trees."
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Trees have a number of problems. First, they're low-efficiency, they only turn a small percentage of sunlight into fuel, the narrow photosynthesis range. Second, they have a long maturation time until they're ready. It takes significant fuel and effort to turn them into a usable fuel; there's cutting, trimming, overburden, hauling, storage, all of which is labour-intensive.
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Presumably these cells have a different set of requirements and outputs. Also presumably there'll be lots of cases where they aren't an improvement. But it's possible that there will be lots of cases where they *are* an improvement.
Additionally, the outputs generated are different. E.g. there's no mention of synthesizing cellulose. This is both good and bad, depending on your needs.
All that said, it's my guess that the process will require catalysts that aren't cheap, so in most use cases this will be i
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And how much energy does it take to extract CO2 from the atmosphere regardless of the conversion process?
You don't have to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. You could instead extract it from the exhaust pipe of a power plant.
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I'm not old, but I was taught in school that CO2 makes up 0.03% of the atmosphere.
Now, go away with your religious tones. Evil? What the fuck does that mean is, is that a job for Gawd, Jeebus, Batman or Superman?
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okay lets see
1 in theory you could put these plants in locations that don't require huge ships burning just about raw crude to get them to the place they are being used
2 this is a great way to store energy for times when solar does not work
3 if we get enough capacity we could oh store the "extra" in a reserve ---- the reserve amount would be "progress"
4 this can be used to power stuff that can't yet be powered by electric ---- giving time to invent a way
anything short of ZPMs is going to have a downside so