Making fuel from air and water

[slimmouse]

Drew,

Seriously,

Youve just gained a real friend in me.

Keep it real, Bro !

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Conservation.

Dynamite is processed in a way that creates toxic byproducts and it uses a lot of (very clean) water (and makes it very toxic by the time it's finished with).

We use dynamite to blow up mountains in West Virginia. We extract coal and use diesel to send it from one side of the country to the other.

We burn this to create electricity. This electricity pumps 60-90% of the water that goes to the central valley and southern california - feeding the country's biggest farms and 30 million people with water. This hydraulic lift over the Tehachapi mountains, is the single biggest consumer of electricity in the state of california. 3% annually, or something.

This water is filtered and polished before being delivered to homes and businesses. The clean is energy intensive and the pumping requires more power still.

The home owner in the San Fernando Valley, uses this potable water to irrigate his lawn and the only person to ever set foot on his grass is his gardener, once a week at best. The sprinkler system sends water coursing through 75F (annual, daily average), 3 times a week and twice a day. 60-90% of that evaporates depending on when his sprinklers are set to go.

This is insanity - the definition of madness. Replacing fossil fuel with clean energy does not change this insane behavior. People are irrational and will behave as such. Until that changes, then all the free-clean energy in the universe will be just kicking the can a bit farther down the road.

Thanks for the clarity, Rory. You've encapsulated the real problem quite nicely. My only addition to that summation is that energy=money. We must find a way to eliminate the greed factor from money itself, so that we can have an economic infrastructure predicated on sustainable living for all. That means our money is no longer tied to wealth creation but is representative of energy, both the human energy we produce and the planet's energy that we utilize. We must replace a culture that values consumption with a cuture that values conservation.

[DrEvil]

Conservation.

Dynamite is processed in a way that creates toxic byproducts and it uses a lot of (very clean) water (and makes it very toxic by the time it's finished with).

We use dynamite to blow up mountains in West Virginia. We extract coal and use diesel to send it from one side of the country to the other.

We burn this to create electricity. This electricity pumps 60-90% of the water that goes to the central valley and southern california - feeding the country's biggest farms and 30 million people with water. This hydraulic lift over the Tehachapi mountains, is the single biggest consumer of electricity in the state of california. 3% annually, or something.

This water is filtered and polished before being delivered to homes and businesses. The clean is energy intensive and the pumping requires more power still.

The home owner in the San Fernando Valley, uses this potable water to irrigate his lawn and the only person to ever set foot on his grass is his gardener, once a week at best. The sprinkler system sends water coursing through 75F (annual, daily average), 3 times a week and twice a day. 60-90% of that evaporates depending on when his sprinklers are set to go.

This is insanity - the definition of madness. Replacing fossil fuel with clean energy does not change this insane behavior. People are irrational and will behave as such. Until that changes, then all the free-clean energy in the universe will be just kicking the can a bit farther down the road.

Thanks for the clarity, Rory. You've encapsulated the real problem quite nicely. My only addition to that summation is that energy=money. We must find a way to eliminate the greed factor from money itself, so that we can have an economic infrastructure predicated on sustainable living for all. That means our money is no longer tied to wealth creation but is representative of energy, both the human energy we produce and the planet's energy that we utilize. We must replace a culture that values consumption with a cuture that values conservation.

Spot on. One idea that I know has been discussed here before is expiry dates on money. If you don't spend it it becomes worthless.
Another wild-eyed one is to tie the value of currencies to green energy. If you have a lot of "green gold" you have a strong currency. If you pollute - not so much.

Now, if only someone could squeeze the oil-price a bit. Not much, just enough that tar sands and shale oil become too expensive to extract again.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Spot on. One idea that I know has been discussed here before is expiry dates on money. If you don't spend it it becomes worthless.
Another wild-eyed one is to tie the value of currencies to green energy. If you have a lot of "green gold" you have a strong currency. If you pollute - not so much.

Now, if only someone could squeeze the oil-price a bit. Not much, just enough that tar sands and shale oil become too expensive to extract again.

I do like the idea of energy credits - particularly for green energy. The only real hope for future economies is re-localization; top-down statist planned economies are doomed to failure. I'm sure it will be tempting for TPTB to maintain their illusion of control by hanging on to the old ways. Utimately, civilization needs to wake up and realize that money=fiat currency/fractional reserves/compound interest is a death sentence.

As much as any of us individually tries to cop a greener than thou lifestyle, we are all Scrooge staring horrified at The Ghost of Christmas Future's bony finger pointing at our own tombstone. And like Scrooge, I'm sure we all have the same question, "Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only?” Then consider that where the project of civilization is concerned there are billions of Scrooges that would have to transform collectively to achieve the happy ending Dickens penned in A Christmas Carol.

How do we do it? I don't believe there is a one-size-fits-all answer. We're going to go through some sort of trial-and-error and ultimately, what works for one community may not work for another. The important thing is to remain adaptable, keep trying to do the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people, the measure of success being: whatever works!

[DrEvil]

I'm a big fan of bottom up power. We're getting pretty close to the point where small communities can almost be self-sustained with power, food and tools.

Power via solar, wind, thermal etc. The crucial thing missing is storage to make them stable supplies and not dependent on weather, but that is hopefully close to being fixed. Room temperature superconductors are becoming a reality, and materials science is doing some amazing things with power density.

Food via farming (duh). "Regular" farming in rural areas, hydroponics etc. for cities and towns.
10 years from now you can probably get a nice steak that has never been close to an animal. 10 years after that you can "print" it yourself. If we can remove livestock as a food source we would also save a lot of forests and climate gas releases.

Tools and parts can soon be manufactured easily and quickly with additive manufacturing/3D printing.
There's already printers that can make electronic circuits, biological stuff and copies of itself.
The more heavy-duty things like laser sintering is also getting more common. Won't be long until high-end dealerships and garages start using it, and 10 years later they upgrade, and suddenly Joe's garage at the corner has a nice second-hand machine and it has become normal (Just think about how fast we went from smartphones being "Wow!" to smartphones being "Gaah! I have to upgrade. Again!").

[justdrew]

Researchers generate solar electricity with photosynthetic proteins
By CleanTechnica | Tuesday, December 24, 2013 8:58 EST

Researchers at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have developed a bio-based solar cell. They embedded the two proteins photosystem 1 and 2, which in plants are responsible of photosynthesis, into complex molecules developed in-house, thus creating an efficient electron current. Headed by Prof Dr Wolfgang Schuhmann from the Department of Analytical Chemistry and Center for Electrochemical Sciences (CES) and Prof Dr Matthias Rögner from the Department of Plant Biochemistry, the team has published a report in the journal “Angewandte Chemie.”
Isolating and embedding photosystems

In leaves, the photosystems 1 and 2 utilise light energy very efficiently; this is required for converting carbon dioxide into oxygen and biomass. The Bochum researchers’ bio-based solar cell, on the other hand, generates electricity rather than biomass. Prof Rögner’s team isolated the two photosystems from thermophilic cyanobacteria that live in a hot spring in Japan. Because of their habitat and behaviour, their photosystems are much more stable than comparable proteins of species that do not occur under extreme environmental conditions. Prof Schuhmann’s team developed complex electron-conducting materials, so-called redox hydrogels. The researchers embedded the photosystems into these hydrogels in order to connect them to the electrodes of the photovoltaic cells.

Structure of the bio-based solar cell

The cell is made up of two chambers. In the first chamber, the protein photosystem 2 extracts electrons from water molecules, thus generating oxygen. The electrons migrate through the redox hydrogel to the electrode in the first chamber which is connected to the electrode in the second chamber. The electrode in the second chamber conducts the electrons via a different redox hydrogel onto photosystem 1. There, electrons are passed to oxygen; water is generated. However, the photosystems carry out these processes only if they are powered by light energy. Thus, if exposed to light, there is a continuous electricity flow within the closed system.
Efficiency may be increased

In order to convert solar into electric energy, there must be a potential difference between the two electrodes. The Bochum researchers have established this difference by deploying redox hydrogels with different potentials. The potential difference determines the bio photovoltaic cell’s voltage and, consequently, its efficiency. Currently, the bio-based solar cell boasts an efficiency of several nanowatts per square centimetre. “The system may be considered a blue print for the development of semi-artificial and natural cell systems in which photosynthesis is used for the light-driven production of secondary energy carriers such as hydrogen,” says Prof Rögner.
Project funding

The project was funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) as part of the Cluster of Excellence RESOLV (EXC 1069) and by the EU as part of the programmes “CyanoFactory” and “COST Action TD1102 Phototech”.

[slimmouse]

As something of a light aside ( apologies where due), when I was glancing thought the thread titles of the "general discussion" board , it came to me that this particular thread title would also possibly make an exellent title for an album, by some aspiring 'alternative' musicians.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Hey slimmouse, how's this for an album cover?

[stillrobertpaulsen]

This thread seemed like the most appropriate place to deposit the latest from eternal optimist Al Gore:

The Turning Point: New Hope for the Climate

It's time to accelerate the shift toward a low-carbon future
(Sorry if that font seems oversized, but if you click on the link, you'll see I replicated the actual font size of the article. -SRP)

By Al Gore
June 18, 2014 9:00 AM ETIn the struggle to solve the climate crisis, a powerful, largely unnoticed shift is taking place. The forward journey for human civilization will be difficult and dangerous, but it is now clear that we will ultimately prevail. The only question is how quickly we can accelerate and complete the transition to a low-carbon civilization. There will be many times in the decades ahead when we will have to take care to guard against despair, lest it become another form of denial, paralyzing action. It is true that we have waited too long to avoid some serious damage to the planetary ecosystem – some of it, unfortunately, irreversible. Yet the truly catastrophic damages that have the potential for ending civilization as we know it can still – almost certainly – be avoided. Moreover, the pace of the changes already set in motion can still be moderated significantly.


There is surprising – even shocking – good news: Our ability to convert sunshine into usable energy has become much cheaper far more rapidly than anyone had predicted. The cost of electricity from photovoltaic, or PV, solar cells is now equal to or less than the cost of electricity from other sources powering electric grids in at least 79 countries. By 2020 – as the scale of deployments grows and the costs continue to decline – more than 80 percent of the world's people will live in regions where solar will be competitive with electricity from other sources.

No matter what the large carbon polluters and their ideological allies say or do, in markets there is a huge difference between "more expensive than" and "cheaper than." Not unlike the difference between 32 degrees and 33 degrees Fahrenheit. It's not just a difference of a degree, it's the difference between a market that's frozen up and one that's liquid. As a result, all over the world, the executives of companies selling electricity generated from the burning of carbon-based fuels (primarily from coal) are openly discussing their growing fears of a "utility death spiral."

Germany, Europe's industrial powerhouse, where renewable subsidies have been especially high, now generates 37 percent of its daily electricity from wind and solar; and analysts predict that number will rise to 50 percent by 2020. (Indeed, one day this year, renewables created 74 percent of the nation's electricity!)

MORE AT LINK ABOVE

As it pertains to the man who had the Presidency legally stolen from him by SCOTUS, I have to quote myself from earlier in this thread:

Now, don’t get me wrong, Goddess bless Al Gore for doing more to raise awareness of the reality of Global Climate Change than any politician. And as far as conservative ignorance can make science “debatable”, it’s such a willful ignorance that it defies debate, like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail deliberately ignoring all his lost limbs. “The polar ice caps are melting!” “No they’re not!” “Look, you can sail a fucking boat through the North Pole!” “It’s just a flesh wound!” “OK, that’s a partial admission. What are we gonna do?” “Claim all the oil! Drill, baby, drill!” Shit, if Pat Fucking Robertson can’t reach these goalpost-shifting nimrods, nothing will. Yeah, he briefly saw the light before flip-flopping. But even if a miracle occurred, they saw the light and Al Gore and friends had all the political will they ever dreamed for, we would still be operating on the delusion that we can buy our way out of this predicament. That the same selfish mentality where we can all be greedy little consumers obediently sticking our snouts in the corporatist trough that got us into this mess is going to save us because this time, the corporate trough we’re slurping from is Green.

I submit that to reduce the PPM of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, perhaps the most environmentally conscious move would be not to consume carbon in the first place! Maybe that means a real global revolution to change the way money works. Not just changing the way wealth is distributed as various revolutionaries have in the past, but changing the nature of money itself. Maybe that's too much to wish for. Perhaps the more practical route is addressing the elephant in the living room, that dirty C word no President since Carter has had the courage to tackle head on: CONSERVATION!

There's not too much in this latest article to alter my opinion of him. I appreciate the fact that he describes Climate Change as an "existential threat", but unfortunately neglects the fact that existential threats require revolutionary action to counter the threat. He mentions the recent news of extreme Arctic melting and of ice sheet destabilization in Antarctica and Greenland, yet makes no mention of any possible self-reinforcing feedback loops this could trigger; no mention of methane, any possibility this could runaway from human control is deferred. He seems cognizant of the fact that it takes 20-30 years to replace an energy infrastructure; yet makes no mention of Peak Oil or the $20 trillion price tag Robert Hirsch puts on replacing the energy infrastructure. His message seems to be, "vote Democratic and we'll probably just squeak by, vote Republican and we'll all die." But unless the 22nd amendment is repealed, the odds that the executive branch will stay in Democratic hands for the next 20-30 years are pretty microscopic.

No politician is perfect, yet I keep hearing the words of Dennis Kucinich echoing in my mind, "Is this the best we can do?"

[gnosticheresy_2]

How Bill Gates aims to clean up the planet

[seemslikeadream]

thanks for that link

[stillrobertpaulsen]

How Bill Gates aims to clean up the planet

Hey, great to see you! Thanks for bumping up this great thread of yours!

[chump]

pdf

Suppressed Inventions - Table of Contents:

...

Section IV

The Suppression of Fuel Savers and Alternate Energy Resources

Nikola Tesla - A Brief Introduction

Tesla's Controversial Life and Death

Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires

From the Archives of Lester J. Hendershot

Gunfire in the Laboratory - T. Henry Moray and the Free Energy Machine

Sunbeams From Cucumbers

Archie Blue

The Story of Francisco Pacheco

Amazing Locomotion and Energy Super Technology and Carburetors

The Charles Pogue Story

News Clips on Suppressed Fuel Savers

[Burnt Hill]

^ Mars - The Telescopic Evidence?

Sorry, first thing I clicked on. Its a bit dated.

[chump]

Hmmm...

Amazing Locomotion and Energy Systems Super Technology and Carburetors

------------------------------


The Charles Pogue Story