Energy
(just did some reading on means for capturing sunlight and how efficient they are; it challenged some of my preconceptions of where the solution might lie, so I though I’d share it with you guys too. I omit energy sources that are many thermodynamic steps removed from incident solar radiation, like hydroelectric, wind and waves - I *assume* these are extremely inefficient converters).
Chlorophyll (in plants, converts sunrays into ‘redox potential’ - useful chemical energy that can smash carbon dioxide and water together to form hydrocarbons - like sugar or biodiesel): ~100%
Conversion of chlorophyll-derived energy to useful molecules, like sugars: 50%
Factor in the energy spent by the plant so that it can live, and the sunlight reflected off the leaves, and your big green plant could theoretically convert just 11% (other sources quote 34%). Sugar cane is at the top end of the ones that have been measured: 4%; corn is 0.5% (corn is a major crop being used for bioethanol); wheat is 0.3%
Solar panels: 20%
Algae: 13%
I’d also like to know what the energy efficiency of a snickers bar or a sausage is (in terms of energy used by plants to make the individual components, energy to make the bar, energy to transport it to me, versus the energy it refuels my body with); my (largely baseless) guess is that it must be anywhere in the 0.000x - 0.0000000x% range. What a waste of sunrays!
UPDATE: http://venturebeat.com/2008/05/29/sapphire-energy-gets-open-checkbook-from-investors-for-algae-based-gasoline/ “Green crude” project putting bacteria in dirty water or seawater and extracting petroleum gets ‘blank cheque’ to make it happen, and quick. The Wellcome Trust is getting in on this, which is interesting - and probably a good sign for the viability of the technology
Related:
- WTF-of-the-day: Friday 30th May ‘08
- A US cleantech company called Blacklight Power has raised $60m for a new, very clean form of electricity production. Nothing astounding there, really - cleantech is very much du jour. What's "WTFotd"-worthy about this story is that the technology they claim to have developed runs against a key part of quantum physics: they claim that they have discovered a lower energy level for electrons than the 1s shell resting state: the hydrino. To the layman: hydrogen has been extensively studied because it's the simplest periodic element, and when you're talking quantum physics, studying basic, simple systems helps... a lot. So physisicts think they understand it pretty damn well. A fundamental tenet is that the lowest energy 'shell' (think of it as an orbiting satellite around a planet) that electrons can take around a hydrogen nucleus is called 1s. This is the 'resting state', and most physicists don't believe it could be pushed any lower. *If* it could, then you could take out the difference in energy, use it to power a plant. But physicists believe that hydrogen electrons can't go any lower: try to squish it in any closer, and it will just press back; so the only energy you...
- Your food has… software?!
- Thought for the day: the genome of a cell is its software. "Mad" scientists like CJ. Venter are already finding out how to 'install linux' on bacterial 'hardware' by swapping out its own chromosome with that of another bacteria, or even a man-made chromosome. And for some time now we have been editing the software of many cells out there: adding anti-pesticide genes, swapping out some genes to put in drought-resistant ones to help prevent famine in Africa and to deal with climate change, and in the lab it's a daily occurrence, making certain proteins in bacteria 'glow' under UV light (so you can track them as they move around) by pasting in some code that we took from a squid's software, or that of a firefly. Meanwhile, machines to synthesise DNA (put together the long strings of A, T, G, C nucleotides in specific order) - i.e. to 'burn the code on a cd rom' - are getting smaller, more accurate and more affordable. It may not be long before they're the size of a desktop printer. ------------- Imagine, if you will, a future in which more of your food is grown by you - apart from animals, which...
- Hyperefficient solar panels
- Biochemists have long known of examples in the wild of structures capable of converting light energy into chemical (stored) energy with extremely high efficiency - figures of 90% or even 100% have been knocking about (with important caveats - e.g. this figure depends on the light being of the right wavelength, etc). I'm of the firm belief that when it comes to structures and devices, what nature evolved, humans can in time approximate or perhaps even improve upon by design (though when it comes to complex systems like the human cell - in extraordinarily complex and interlinked homeostasis - it's borderline impossible to design from scratch). So what happens to society when hyper-efficient photovoltaic technology arrives that allows us to 'mine' the Earth's one and only energetic input with >90% efficiency? We'll be able to power our lives without relying on digging up pre-existing energy stores. That day could bring a technosocial revolution of the likes we haven't seen in a long time, certainly since the invention of the Internet. It'll almost certainly affect the balance of power globally and within a country's society, government and markets. What's more, if it changes how we power our lives - which it...
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