Mar
19
Nitrogen Fertilizer from the Air or Soil for More Food & Fuel Crop Production
March 19, 2008 | 6 Comments
Nitrogen fertilizer is a necessary man made soil additive for two important food crops, rice and corn, that need substantial amounts of natural gas to be made. The past two weeks have seen two noteworthy news releases that promise that the genes of plants that use the air and soil components and symbiotic bacteria, fungi [...]
Mar
18
What is a Stellarator?
March 18, 2008 | 6 Comments
The marvels of human imagination are astonishing. Way back in 1951 Lyman Spitzer at Princeton University proposed a design for plasma containment now called a stellarator. Stellarator is a word supposed to suggest a connection to a “star machine” and is being built by the Max Planck Institute as a way to contain plasma for [...]
Mar
17
Better Nuclear Fuel for More, Safer and Cheaper Electricity
March 17, 2008 | 1 Comment
Technology that encapsulates atomic fuel first conceived and researched as early as the 1950s at the Oakridge National Laboratory and in partnership with West German teams has re-emerged and recovered to levels approximate to the best achieved in the 1960s by the West German teams. Today’s efforts lead by the Idaho National Laboratory with members [...]
Mar
14
What Is This Pyrolysis Fuel Making Thing?
March 14, 2008 | 2 Comments
With the very knowledgeable folks in a stunned sense of realization that biomass is the oil reserve that dwarfs Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and all of OPEC, and everything else combined and would not deplete, the connections to the excitement are to a chemical process called pyrolysis, that everyone else is wondering about. Pyrolysis is cooking. [...]
Mar
13
Getting a Handle on Biomass for Fuel
March 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Renewables are all the rage and biomass sources are leaders in using solar energy to catch atmospheric CO2 into hard forms such as plant materials to use for feedstocks for fuel production. Bit how viable is biomass? There is already a backlash to the U.S. corn to ethanol effort with food production diverted to fuel, [...]
Mar
12
Another “Trillion Dollar” BUG!
March 12, 2008 | 1 Comment
OK, maybe it’s a personal problem with Brian Westenhaus. A dollar’s worth of gasoline is equal to just less than $1.43 for ethanol at the gas pump to run the vehicle. Butanol comes with very high octane and a $1.06 value. The gasoline to match the butanol octane would have to have additives (ethanol) to [...]
Mar
11
It took awhile to get to past the press release information about GM’s investment in Coskata. All the hype buried the technology, and understandably so as the proposition of $1 ethanol is interesting. Under all that is the technology. Lets see what is going on. Whatever is chosen to be used for a feedstock, its [...]
Mar
10
Solar Thermal Power Is Coming On Strong
March 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment
A review of the players in thermal based solar shows some surprising numbers and valuable innovation. The base design of a mirror focused on a black tube filled with an oil base working fluid, while old is still coming on strong. Two prototypes have started up and ten, yes ten, are in or past the [...]
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