The Other Solar Power: Infinite Energy - and Norm Saves the World, Again
I have created fusion power.
Yes - fusion power. Infinite power, for the next 5 billion years.
How have I done it?
Yes - lots and lots of free energy. And how do you turn that into something useful?
Looks pretty amazing right?
It is a chloroplast, the most common way that organisms turn light into energy.
In other words - people are really just trying to ape what the natural world has already done. And... turns out that what is often more efficient than trying to come up with our own way of doing things is just to copy what has already been done. Bio-mimicry, and it can give us all the energy we need.
I have already written about algal biofuels and how they will eventually change the world, but a new company has come up with a new way of doing it.
Essentially, the way that it works is that instead of trying to get hydrocarbons out of algae, you just get sugar out of them. And sugar can become pretty much anything that we need, most importantly, ethanol.
Here is the some of the article - pretty damn interesting:
"Proterro's microorganisms, a type of cyanobacteria, can produce far higher yields of sugar per acre than sugarcane and other conventional sources, Kasdin says. Sugarcane plants use water and energy from the sun to produce a lot of biomass that isn't sugar, and then that bulky biomass has to be transported, and the sugar extracted, which contributes to its cost. In Proterro's system, more of the water and energy in sunlight is directed into making sugar instead of supporting biomass, and the organisms don't need to be harvested—instead, they continuously secrete sugar in a form that's easy to use to make biofuels.
Proterro's microbes naturally produce sucrose when the water that they're growing in becomes too salty—it's a defense mechanism to keep water from being sucked out of them into the surrounding water via osmosis. The company has identified the genes that trigger this mechanism, and engineered the organisms to switch it on. The researchers have also engineered the organisms to secrete the sugar, which makes it easier to collect. In conventional approaches to making fuels using algae or cyanobacteria, the organisms have to be harvested and dewatered—the oil or sugar is then isolated from the rest of the biomass, which is one reason algae fuels are expensive. "
Yes - fusion power. Infinite power, for the next 5 billion years.
How have I done it?
Yes - lots and lots of free energy. And how do you turn that into something useful?
Looks pretty amazing right?
It is a chloroplast, the most common way that organisms turn light into energy.
In other words - people are really just trying to ape what the natural world has already done. And... turns out that what is often more efficient than trying to come up with our own way of doing things is just to copy what has already been done. Bio-mimicry, and it can give us all the energy we need.
I have already written about algal biofuels and how they will eventually change the world, but a new company has come up with a new way of doing it.
Essentially, the way that it works is that instead of trying to get hydrocarbons out of algae, you just get sugar out of them. And sugar can become pretty much anything that we need, most importantly, ethanol.
Here is the some of the article - pretty damn interesting:
"Proterro's microorganisms, a type of cyanobacteria, can produce far higher yields of sugar per acre than sugarcane and other conventional sources, Kasdin says. Sugarcane plants use water and energy from the sun to produce a lot of biomass that isn't sugar, and then that bulky biomass has to be transported, and the sugar extracted, which contributes to its cost. In Proterro's system, more of the water and energy in sunlight is directed into making sugar instead of supporting biomass, and the organisms don't need to be harvested—instead, they continuously secrete sugar in a form that's easy to use to make biofuels.
Proterro's microbes naturally produce sucrose when the water that they're growing in becomes too salty—it's a defense mechanism to keep water from being sucked out of them into the surrounding water via osmosis. The company has identified the genes that trigger this mechanism, and engineered the organisms to switch it on. The researchers have also engineered the organisms to secrete the sugar, which makes it easier to collect. In conventional approaches to making fuels using algae or cyanobacteria, the organisms have to be harvested and dewatered—the oil or sugar is then isolated from the rest of the biomass, which is one reason algae fuels are expensive. "
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