[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2010/01/Fuel-from-Germs.mp3[/podcast] For years, we’ve been turning crops such as corn, wheat and sugar beets into fuel, using yeast to convert sugar into alcohol. But there’s an obvious problem with this. That stuff we’re turning into fuel is also food for humans and feed for animals. (And as an aside, how come we always call it …
Tag: oil
Liquid fuel from solar power
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/07/Liquid-Fuels-from-Solar-Power.mp3[/podcast] In recent years, scientists and engineers have turned to biofuels—fuels generated from living things, and hence renewable—as a means of weaning us off of fossil fuels in favor of something cleaner, less likely to run out, and less wrapped up in international geopolitics. Fermenting the sugars found in corn or other grains into ethanol …
Making fuel from air and water
Download the audio version.Get my science column weekly as a podcast. We can and do recycle all sorts of things. Paper, plastic, glass (OK, that last one not so much right now), Christmas fruitcakes…the list goes on and on. Wouldn’t it be great if we could also recycle the hydrocarbons we burn as fuel? Imagine …
Vacuuming away CO2…
This might be useful down near Weyburn, where they’re using CO2 injection in the oilfields. The CO2 currently comes by pipeline from Beulah, North Dakota: …the new device captures carbon dioxide molecules that are already in the air and releases them as a pure carbon dioxide stream. This stream can be sequestered or used to …
Mrs. Beeton’s Ad of the Day
All the advantages of a gas cooker with none of the disadvantages, this oil cooker promises it “Cooks the Food without Cooking the Cook,” and who could argue with that? I find it interesting how many of these old ads try to connect something that would seem to be merely a matter of simple preference–cooking …
Turning anything to oil
Imagine a process that can turn any kind of organic waste into high-grade oil. It sounds too good to be true. But that’s the promise of the thermal depolymerization process (TDP), outlined in the May issue of the respected popular science magazine Discover (from which most of the following information is drawn). Naturally occurring oil …
Fossil fuels
Our modern society is based on “fossil fuels,” which may sound to you like we’re burning dinosaur bones for heat. We aren’t, but we are burning the remains of plants and animals that lived millions of years ago, releasing the solar energy the plants captured through photosynthesis and the animals captured by eating the plants. …