Gasoline From Thin Air 283
disco_tracy writes "An enzyme found in the roots of soybeans could be the key to cars that run on air. If perfected, the tech could lead to cars partially powered on their own fumes. Even further into the future, vehicles could draw fuel from the air itself. Quoting: 'The new enzyme can only make two and three carbon chains, not the longer strands that make up liquid gasoline. However, Ribbe thinks he can modify the enzyme so it could produce gasoline. ... [Perfecting this process] won't happen anytime soon... "It's very, very difficult," to extract the vanadium nitrogenase, said Ribbe.'
Call me when it's in production (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Call me when it's in production (Score:5, Funny)
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We ALL love the smell of our own farts. One of those things we don't talk about or admit, like picking our noses in traffic.
Now when you can't handle the smell of your own fart, that is when you can stand up and be proud.
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Vaporware, literally.
Now, patenting the air we breathe will finally be possible.
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It converts carbon monoxide, which is even less abundant.
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So I can smoke my cigarette and fuel my car at the same time?
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Remember when NOx and SOx were the big thing? You never hear them talk about COx.
Misleading Summary (Score:5, Interesting)
The actual article is about an enzyme. The chemical transformation still requires energy, just as charging a battery does.
Re:Misleading Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
indeed, thats what gasoline is, a energy container. Its just that its the perfect combo as its highly stable (relative to just about anything else with equivalent energy density), yet will release the energy quickly if poked in the right way.
i keep wondering if one could turn a highway into a kind of electric railroad tho, by equipping electric vehicles with a system to tap supply system pretty much like a electric train do today. So for longer stretches, one would not drain whatever internal storage system one have available.
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Also the article mentions, "cars partially powered by fumes".
We already have that via exhaust gas recirculation. I don't know how common it is in gasoline engines, but in diesels it's pretty standard. It's a way to reduce unburnt hydrocarbons and soot by feeding the exhaust back into the engine.
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It reduces nitrogen creation by bringing the cylinder temperature down. It takes power away from the engine not power it. That's why there's an EGR controller that turns it off when you need the power.
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making the engines more complicated and expensive in the process.
still, the diesel engine is supposedly able to run on coal dust if adjusted correctly...
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making the engines more complicated and expensive in the process.
[citation needed]
I always thought Diesel engines were simpler than gasoline, because, once started, you don't need any electricity to run them, no spark plug or any other source needed for ignition, just pressure.
Re:Misleading Summary (Score:4, Informative)
The higher compression means that the they must be built stronger. AKA more expensive.
Also they use a high pressure fuel injection system which is also more expensive and complex than a simple spark plug and carb.
So yes they tend to be more expensive to build and more complex.
But they do not need to have their spark plugs replaced or have your typical tune up.
Thing is that modern electronic ignition and spark plugs have made gas engines also about as user low maintenance as a diesel.
Re:Misleading Summary (Score:5, Informative)
Modern diesel engines are exactly as complex as modern petrol engines. No mainstream petrol engines now use carboretters (that I know of). The only big disadvantage with diesel engines is that they are heavier - they require a little more ironmongery.
Diesel engines are generally simpler to run and way less sensitive to water. There's a reason all commercial vehicles are diesels. The weight is also a reason why we haven't seen diesel bikes hitting the mainstream yet either.
Essentially, with current engine design, the _only_ disadvantage to diesels is their weight. That and their performance characteristics - you don't get high reving fun diesels.
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A year or so back Subaru introduced an aluminum boxer diesel. If it proves reliable that should help out with the weight somewhat.
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there is also the issue of cold climates, as under those conditions the piston needs to be heated (usually electrically) so to get the diesel mix to ignite at all. Luckily, modern engines do so automatically as part of the ignition sequence, tho earlier one had to turn it on manually (and if forgotten, i suspect it could drain the battery).
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they're electricaly simpler, but their fuel injection is enormously more complicated than a carburator. a diesel requires one really strong fuel pump to bring the pressure to above 10 atm, then it takes one individual small pump per cylinder, synced to respective engine piston, to inject the fuel at pressures higher than the air pressure inside the combustion chamber. that's one of the reasons diesels were always a hulluva more expensive than gasoline engines.
electronic fuel injection on both gasoline and d
expensive yes, complicated no (Score:2)
Diesel engines need to be physically stronger than gasoline engines, which is why they're heavier and more expensive. However they're actually simpler since you don't need to time the spark for each cylinder.
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What if your battery was charging based on the air around it - and the air it comes in contact with is constantly changing since you are moving?
The idea has SOME merit, though they are no where near that stage.
Re:Misleading Summary (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but batteries suck. As much as they've improved in recent years, they're still far less useful than fuel. Carbon chains, especially hydrocarbons, are relatively stable, energy dense, easy to transport and comparatively easy to convert into mechanical or electric energy. If you can find a way to efficiently and easily produce hydrocarbons directly from carbon dioxide, water and an arbitrary energy source, you've basically just solved any energy crisis and cured global warming.
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We have one. It's called the Fischer-Tropsch process (plus electrolysis). The problem is that the fuel is super-expensive at today's energy prices.
Hydrocarbons are not "comparatively easy" to convert to mechanical or electrical energy. Compared to an electric motor powered by a battery, an internal combustion engine is a veritable Rube Goldberg Contraption.
As for batteries: they've had an 8% energy density improvement per year for the past two decades. That rate shows no sign of slowing down; rather, it
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Wait, you said dioxide, not monoxide (which is strange, since the article is talking about CO, not CO2). In that case, change my post from "Fischer-Tropsch" to "Sabatier".
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That was my first thought too - where the energy input into the system? Making gasoline locally may or may not be sane, depending on how much energy input (from other sources) is required to produce a given energy output in the form of gasoline.
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Vapor? (Score:2)
Cars powered by natural gas is an already proven technology. Why do we keep inventing more "alternative" energy sources when we've got ones that work now?
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Because ultimately, natural gas has many of the same issues as petroleum.
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But it also has significant advantages over petroleum, like the huge supply in the US. And it has advantages over other alternatives, like the fact that it's available now, and it's cheap. I don't particularly like the idea, I'd rather see fully electric cars and more nuclear power, but it shouldn't be dismissed.
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The analyses that claim a huge supply in the US are starting to come under criticism. Our supply may not actually be that huge.
There's also the fact that right now, we haven't figured out how to safely extract a large portion of it. Most of the deposits can't be accessed without hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) - The chemicals used for hydrofracking are toxic as hell, and wells that are hydrofracked seem to be prone to losing integrity and leaking gas into aquifers. That's why in Dimock, PA, you can'
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Right now your catalytic converter converts CO (which is a partial combustion product) into C02 and heat. They're saying this enzyme could turn it into propane, which could then be burned again in the engine thereby using the energy that would normally be wasted.
They're also suggesting that you could split CO2 from the atmosphere into CO (probably by electrolysis) and use it to produce gasoline for fuel. That would be an achievement because it solves a lot or energy storage problems.
Re:Vapor? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Wow, you could take the <1% of your exhaust that's carbon monoxide, convert it to fuel (losses), then burn it (average vehicle energy usage efficiency, after all losses: 20%). Yeah, that's really going to up your mpg. :P
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I would like to see a comparison between using the enzyme to recycle CO in the exhaust as propane (or gasoline) vs using a conventional catalytic converter to power a simple heat engine in a hybrid.
If our pollution ever gets so bad that cars can generate gasoline out of thin air, we won't care because the CO concentration will have long ago killed us all. It could potentially be used to make syngas, but it will have to compete with other already working technologies there.
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Well, because natural gas fields deplete much, much more rapidly than oil fields (http://depletion.blogspot.com/2009/01/natural-gas-crisis-looming.html). While I agree that we can and should diversify our transportation sector infrastructure to use hydrocarbon gases, it's not a permanent or even a long term answer. It can slow down powerdown though and give us more time to transition. I think that's the greatest value in NG.
Re:Vapor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we can burn natgas in Combined Cycle power plants at over 80% efficiency, instead of in cars at under 18% efficiency. So we should put all the natgas we can into generating electricity instead of using filthy, inefficient coal plants, rather than diverting that gas into cars at under 1/4 the efficiency. In other words, use under 1/4 the natgas to make electricity rather than wasting 3/4 of the energy in it in cars.
Just because T Boone Pickens has a plan to create scarcity in the glut of natgas he owns so much of, to drive up prices by wasting 3/4 of it, doesn't mean we should do it.
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You'd be better off just making the car completely burn the fuel in the first place.
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The infrastructure exists, it's reasonably cheap an
So it can run without a gas tank? (Score:2)
Lisa, get in here! (Score:3, Funny)
Stupid journalists (Score:5, Insightful)
I highly doubt that the original inventor has claimed to produce perpetual motion, but the summary will certainly lead people to think in that direction.
They're converting carbon monoxide into hydrocarbon chains. The only energy you are getting out of the car's exhaust is what it didn't use the first time around due to incomplete combustion.
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Eh, if it improves the MPG, why not?
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So will the bullet points in TFA, but that's probably not the researcher's doing either.
this will be revolutionnary... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Yeah, just like they've used their secret fleet of black helicopters (which they lease from the Trilateral Commission) to fly around the country to squash all of the Free Energy inventions, especially the water powered car, and that one that gets double the mileage if you just use a different air filter.
What are you, twelve years old?
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Unless "the man" is going to come spray black spray paint on your solar panels and tear your wind turbines down with Oil and Gas pickup trucks, I'm fairly certain renewables are the future. They of course *do* have an upfront investment, but with lifetimes measured in decades, it seems to be a worthwhile investment.
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Who here really thinks all these multi-billion oil companies are going to let free and abundant fuel circulate without putting up a fight?? Be honnest: it would be against the nature of capitalis. I mean, free stuff is only good if you can resell it to someone else, right?
Like the RIAA? But how are the energy companies going to fight it? I'd be willing to bet that in fifty years you won't see any more power lines or gas stations; electricity will be generated by solar cells and windmills on your roof and b
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Conservation of energy anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
To produce the fuel, the energy that will be stored in it has to come from somewhere> .
That's why the idea of a vehicle creating its own fuel out of thin air is stupid, you'd want to use the input energy to drive the car directly. More efficient.
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Yes, it's not coming out of thin air, it's being extract from the air around you. Out of thin air is generally used to mean 'from nothing'. That is not the case hear, and they should avoid using the expression because it obviously confuses people like you.
".. you'd want to use the input energy to drive the car directly. More efficient."
depends on many practical factors.
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It still doesn't work. There is significant energy stored in CO so I can see a catalyzed reaction where some completes oxidation and the rest plus water becomes propane, but there's not that much CO in the air (otherwise we would all die).
This cocking around is stupid... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's focus on the here and now. A guy named John Wayland who works for Dow Kokam built a 10 second car from LiON batteries, and is now going around to America's drag strips and laying waste to Corvettes and Nissan GTRs in his 1960s Datsun 1200. And when I mean laying waste, I mean a beatdown. Take a look at this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rVTIpS5zb4&feature=player_embedded [youtube.com]
This is what we should be looking at. Building a power infrastructure that makes 208 twist locks as easy to get to as gas stations. Or converting gas stations to have a nice 200W 20Amp at every pump. Not this crap.
Re:This cocking around is stupid... (Score:5, Informative)
200W? The flow through a gasoline fuel hose can be expressed in watts if you care to. Gasoline has about 32 megajoules per liter. Maximum gas pump in the US is 10 gallons per minute, or 0.63 liters per second. Thus the energy flow rate is 20 megajoules per second -- that is, 20 megawatts. If a gasoline engine is only 1/4 as efficient as an electric engine and there are no charging losses, you can derate that to 5 MW to get the equivalent electric power needed. So, you can keep that 20 amps... provided you're willing to charge at 250,000V. Good luck with that.
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How about 50kW [engadget.com]?
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How about 800kW [gas2.org]?
50kW barely even qualifies to be called rapid charging.
For those wondering what rapid chargers look like -- a couple hundred kW rapid charger is usually a box about the size of 1-2 small soda machines with a cable about the size of a gas hose (but heavier) coming off it. The aforementioned 800kW charger is the size of four large soda machines pushed back to back.
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Re:This cocking around is stupid... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not it at all. The main problem with swapping battery packs is an infrastructure management problem.
First off, if there was only one type of battery pack, that would be rough enough. Stations would have to have large stores of surplus battery packs, which cost $10k or more each, take up a large amount of space, and weigh hundreds of pounds. But there's not ever going to be just one kind of battery pack, and it's not for a lack of interest. Different vehicles have different needs. Luxury car owners can afford better, longer-range battery packs than owners of economy cars. RWD cars need the weight in the rear, taking up part of the trunk area. Depending on the layout, a sedan either needs a pack under the floor or in a T-shape down the center tunnel. Pickups have different layout needs than SUVs than cars and so on. Want to try to fit an SUV pack into a motorcycle?
Now factor in that battery chemistry is a huge moving target right now. Even drivetrains and inverters are a moving target. You can't standardize on a single voltage charge/discharge profile in such circumstances. Really, you're talking about stocking dozens of each of dozens of different types of battery pack at every station, and having these stations dense enough to support long distance travel. It's just not going to happen. And as if that's not bad enough, there's also some real engineering challenges, like making such an integral part of the vehicle's structure readily removeable and reattachable over many cycles, and especially the removal and reattachment of the electrical hookups.
Battery swapping was an idea envisioned when rapid charging was much more difficult. It no longer is. So there's no need for it any more. Modern li-ion cells can charge in minutes without ruining the pack's lifespan if you can provide sufficient A) power and B) cooling.
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Split a pack up into, say, 10 separate packs which can go into arbitrary locations, and you 10x the connection problem, double the combined cost of the battery packs for the vehicle (because of the overhead on packs as small as you'll end up with), increase its weight, and increase the cost of the pack swapper several times over.
Re:This cocking around is stupid... (Score:4, Insightful)
2. "Bad batteries". People worry about the idea of swapping out their good/brand-new (but drained) battery and getting a crappy used one in return. But this is because people are thinking in terms of owning the battery-packs. What would probably instead happen is that you buy a car and then sign up with some provider of battery-packs. You basically lease a battery from their pool, and can swap it at any participating station. You don't own any of the batteries but pay for the cost of the electricity and the battery packs together, and over time, either paying each time you get a new fully-charged battery, or having some kind of account/membership/bill that you pay monthly. The "bad battery" problem then amounts to a corporate reputation issue. Presumably there will be different suppliers/companies, some with better quality control (retiring old batteries) than others...
I still don't see quite how this will work, unless we move to a government-owned or monopoly service station. Otherwise, what happens when you get a swap at a Chevron station and get a bad battery pack, and then when it runs out (prematurely) you swap it at a Texaco station? How does Texaco get reimbursed by Chevron, without a legal fight and finger-pointing? These battery packs are going to be quite expensive on their own, obviously.
Surely you don't advocate only being able to exchange batteries at stations owned by the same company? What would happen if you're on a road trip and the only station in the small, rural town you're driving through isn't a participant in your lease contract, and your battery's nearly dead? The whole point of hot-swappable battery packs is to preserve the basically unlimited range that today's cars have (as long as a gas station (any brand) is around). If you're going to tie people to a certain company, then it would be unsafe to ever leave your town, and this means you'd never need to exchange your battery as you'll just drive home to recharge it.
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John charges his car in 4 hours using 230V@30A. He gets about 200 miles out of that, provided he doesn't let the car stand for a week on end without using it.
End of story. You take into account his weight, the fact that car weighs half as much as a volt, etc etc. You're the math whiz. He charges it at the end of this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIHyHFq9iwk&feature=related [youtube.com]
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That's a pathetically slow recharging time. Right now, I can spend less than 5 minutes refilling my gas tank, and that gives me about 350 miles of range. If I'm taking a road trip, I can probably drive 500-750 miles per day (750 if I have another person to help with the driving). Having to sit around some shitty service station for 4 hours recharging for a mere 200 miles would make my road trip 3-4 times as long. No thanks.
Unless they can figure out how to get electric cars to recharge completely in wel
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Yes, because society should only ever work on one thing at a time. The technology that exists today is perfect and cannot be improved upon. These so-called scientists should be throwing away their useless "research," start rolling up their sleeves and laying down concrete for EV charging stations. I think we can all agree that this is the best long-term strategy for solving our energy problems.
The video is cool, but the rest of your comment is too ridiculous to justify a non-sarcastic response.
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Let's focus on the here and now. A guy named John Wayland who works for Dow Kokam built a 10 second car from LiON batteries, and is now going around to America's drag strips and laying waste to Corvettes and Nissan GTRs in his 1960s Datsun 1200. And when I mean laying waste, I mean a beatdown. Take a look at this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rVTIpS5zb4&feature=player_embedded [youtube.com]
Yeah, that's cute. How's it do on the skid pad? Or and endurance race? Here's a "streetable" Supra that ran 9 flat in this run, and is running in the 8.6's now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pszfCIg_Fw&NR=1
If you're looking to go 1/4 mile in a straight line, I'd say you should look at the nitromethane monstrosities that are running a 1/4 in under 4.5 seconds these days.
This is what we should be looking at. Building a power infrastructure that makes 208 twist locks as easy to get to as gas stations. Or converting gas stations to have a nice 200W 20Amp at every pump. Not this crap.
Meh, personally I''m holing out for "Mr. Fusion."
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John in his videos seems to indicate he can go about 200 miles on one charge at highway speeds. And it takes 4 hours using 230V@30A to re-charge. Perfect? No. A good start, though.
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When our national transportation infrastructure shifts to being built around dragsters - that will be a useful data point.
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"...built a 10 second car..."
Too bad I live farther than 10 seconds from work. Look, until we can pack enough power into cheap batteries to go more than 100-200 miles on a charge (or charge those packs in a few minutes), electric cars are just a short range novelty.
And don't go spouting off about how 90% of trips are less than 50 miles. What do I do for the other 10% of my trips? Sit around and wish I had a long range car?
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But how am I going to get the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need?
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Electric technology isn't anywhere where you want it to be yet, at least not a the price point you'd want to sell to your average consumer. So you make money on the high end (Tesla Roadster) and the low end (Nissan Leaf), and hope you recoup your R&D fast enough that costs will drop and you'll eventually be able to sell what you want manufacturers to sell.
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What will really sell is an electric car that can take a family of 4 with luggage 300 miles and charge in less then 5 minutes, and is comparably priced to current gas models. We also need to deal with the problems with range due to temperature. Meaning, the 3000 miles but be 300 miles MINIMUM under the worst condition.
I think your minimum is too high. We have one car - a 2004 Honda Odessey - and we rarely go more than 220 miles between fueling (in city). Even on long car trips (across the great basin) we rarely get over 300. This is no problem for us. Now I could see it being more of a problem in rural areas, but 80% [dot.gov] of the US population lives in urban areas these days so you could get most of the market with a lower target.
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http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100601/innovation-taking-aim-at-gas-guzzlers.html [inc.com]
And clearly we have plenty of room to improve current efficiencies.
Yet another "breakthrough" (Score:4, Interesting)
Turning carbon monoxide into hydrocarbon fuel is a trick that's been known for some time now. Presumably this enzyme does it at room temperature, which would be a useful trick, but it's not a new one. Show me the enzyme which can convert carbon dioxide and water to hydrocarbon fuel, instead... right now we need the whole organism to do it, it'd be a lot simpler if it was just one enzyme.
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Converting carbon dioxide to hydrocarbons is a solved problem [freepatentsonline.com].
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Show me the enzyme which can convert carbon dioxide and water to hydrocarbon fuel, instead... right now we need the whole organism to do it, it'd be a lot simpler if it was just one enzyme.
Enzymes are like UNIX: one tool to solve one problem. You're asking for a Windows solution. One of the many benefits of having enzymes that only catalyze one or possibly two steps in a reaction is that they're much easier to regulate, individually and as a system, since you can use feedback and feedforward, based on the concentration of the reactants and products, so you can get a system that works like a manufacturing kanban [wikipedia.org] system. Another benefit is that small enzymes are easier to make and last longe
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Instead of having one super-amazing enzyme, why not do it in stages?
Cows have 4 digestive compartments for a reason. :)
Sick of perpetual motion machine articles (Score:4, Insightful)
These are a staple on slashdot lately. Every crackpot scheme to extract energy from X very cheaply seems to get immediate front page coverage. There's at least one a month and they range from overblown PR at best to outright snake oil at worst. /. seriously needs a "Perpetual Motion" category for these stories so I can ignore them completely.
Atmospheric engine developed, but not by J Galt? (Score:2)
The summary makes it sounds like a scam (Score:2)
Seems dubious. (Score:2)
This sounds to me like it's venturing into perpetual motion machine territory. Also, if this technology were eventually to become realistic and practical I'm curious to know what the impact would be on the environment given that such vehicles would be drawing their fuel directly from the air. I could be wrong, but it seems like the impact could be significantly worse than anything today's vehicles might do.
Why the heck modify the enzyme to produce gasoline (Score:3, Interesting)
OK.... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the numbers are not realistic (e.g., we need 2x arable earth surfaces to keep up with current consumption), it is a non-starter.
Kinda neat, but not going to solve the world's problems.
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What are you talking about, this technology has been around for millions of years. It works like this:
1) Plants take CO2 out of the air
2) Plants use water and the sun to convert the CO2 into glucose
3) Plants die
4) Plants get buried
5) Plants decay
6) High pressure and temperature cooks buried plant matter and converts to crude oil
7) Crude oil is distilled to separate out gasoline (This is the profit stage for those who were wondering)
Voila, gasoline from thin air! Only takes a few million years... Hope you
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No, but if it gets too warm, it'll make many of us very uncomfortable, and displace all the people who live near sea level (which I believe is most of humanity--for some reason, people like to build cities next to water).
Re:Yet another (Score:4, Funny)
Derr... if it gets too hot, we just turn up the A/C. A small increase in fossil fuel consumption to produce the required electricity is expected, which may increase AGW, but we can just turn up the A/C to compensate.
Solving the problem once and for all!
ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!
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Yes, and that guy will mysteriously die in 3, 2, 1....
Re:i dont understand why (Score:5, Funny)
It's because then you'd constantly require more vespene gas, and imagine how annoying that would be!
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Especially with the car's voice constantly reminding you.
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Same as gasoline...you always require more vespene gas and eventually you just run out.
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Or, E=mc**2 (if you're into fortran-style notation)
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Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but can be transformed from one form into another" (I know this doesn't hold true especially under Einstien's equation E = mc2)
Yes it does. The fact that energy and mass are the same thing doesn't prove you can make energy.
So if we are going to spend the energy doing "work" by travelling, then it begs the question...
Don't start that again. Have you really not read begthequestion.info yet?
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Congratulations. You sir (or madam) are smarter than some investors.
Yes, that is the fundamental question to always ask about any energy proposal - where does the energy ultimately enter the system? Any system that proposes a 100% or near 100% 'recycling' of energy for perpetual motion has pretty much always been a fraud. People on slashdot and other geeky sites will often talk about the Laws of Thermodynamics, and that's basically the principle they are talking about too (along with a few other things like
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Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but can be transformed from one form into another" (I know this doesn't hold true especially under Einstien's equation E = mc2)
Actually, no, relativity didn't repeal the laws of thermodynamics, it just explained them better. E=mc2 is simple; as wikipedia explains [wikipedia.org]
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I considered modding down you post, but decided to mod it down with words instead.
Is it is ludicrous, please explain why. You might very well be right, but you also might just be a nine-year old who doesn't have a clue. Please elaborate.
And to the baffoon who modded OP up: "why?"
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Is it is ludicrous, please explain why.
The guy is criticizing the summary so I'll just attack that. It claims they want to 'draw fuel from the air itself', that means extracting carbon and hydrogen from the air and somehow assembling it into a long chain hydrocarbon. There is very little carbon in air and what there is will take a lot of energy to extract from carbon dioxide. Any hydrogen in air is held in water and again will take a lot of energy to extract.
This idea will fly like a lead balloon.
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What solvent? What energy source for the reaction? What is the reaction rate? What concentrations of reactants and catalysts would be required for enough fuel output to be useful? How do you remove, purify, and dry (remove moisture from the resulting hydrocarbon fuel) the product? What kind of automated device will do this? Does anything like it even exist today? How much would it cost to purchase, operate, maintain, and dispose of? How big would it have to b