Gasoline From Thin Air 283
Posted
by
kdawson
from the vanadium-nitrogenase dept.
from the vanadium-nitrogenase dept.
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.'
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.
this will be revolutionnary... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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:Yet another (Score:3, Insightful)
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 weren't planning on driving too fast.
Not many organic- or biochemists on slashdot, eh? (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:This cocking around is stupid... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
Re:Conservation of energy anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
Re:Yet another (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, and that guy will mysteriously die in 3, 2, 1....
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.
Re:Misleading Summary (Score:2, Insightful)
I can think of one reason this will never work: People suck at driving. All it would take is one idiot to roll their car, snag a wire and take the whole cable system with 'em. It would severely hose traffic for hours since not only would you have the usual mess from the jackass's car, but now you'd have potentially hot cables all over the highway mucking things up.
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.
Re:Misleading Summary (Score:3, Insightful)
A year or so back Subaru introduced an aluminum boxer diesel. If it proves reliable that should help out with the weight somewhat.
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.
Re:This cocking around is stupid... (Score:1, Insightful)
What do you do now for a trip that's more than you can drive in a day? You either plan for a multi-day trip, or you arrange for faster transportation.
Your question misses the point. Lots of people will get along fine with a car that can only go 100-200 miles on a charge. If they need to go farther they will make arrangements. Ever heard of a car rental agency? How about you just borrow one from your immediate family?
Furthermore lots of families have 2 cars. They can get an electric for commuting and a fuelled car for the other stuff. This is just a variation on a family buying an SUV for one use and maybe a smaller econobox for other uses. The use cases are plentiful and there's a million ways electrics can be practical.
Plus, I hear that the electric vehicles are cleaner enginewise, need less servicing, and when needing repair, easier to fix than the average gasoline/diesel vehicle.