On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 03:28:31PM -0800, Sander Pool wrote: > > IMO an ideal way to fuel our vehicles would be to use plants for fuel. > Plants grow and take CO2 out of the air. We harvest the plants and convert > into fuel. Burn the fuel, produce CO2 and water. Recycle. Problem would be > efficiency of course. I think corn based ethanol is used here/there as fuel? > > Alternatively we could start growing lots of trees to suck up CO2 from the > air. Harvest the trees but don't burn them. If only there was a fire-proof > way to store large quantities of wood. CO2 levels a tad high? Grow another > few cubic miles of poplar. > > Never mind me, I'm just day dreaming :-)
Trees? How about phytoplankton? The best way to store carbon is probably as calcium carbonate. I don't think we'll have much trouble within the next 20 years producing genetically engineered phytoplankton or whatever that'll pull lots of CO2 out of the atmosphere... Of course, I seem to recall a science fiction book where such a project went horribly wrong and brought down CO2 levels waay too far while killing off lots of ocean life. Oh well. Maybe nanotech or bacterial colonies inside facilities on the surface would be a better way. With fusion or decent nuclear policy, the energy to pull CO2 back out of the atmosphere should be cheap. Regarding the use of biomass to supply the world's energy, I don't think that's a great idea, but I think it's a great idea where lots of organic waste is produced when you'd otherwise have to *use* energy to haul it off to a landfill. I seem to recall several projects like this: a wood pellet boiler next to a sawmill, a sewage gasifier and fuel cell in Japan, etc. Think about all the sewage that's going to waste right now. We really don't have to grow plants specifically for energy production. We already waste enough of the energy of the plants we currently grow. -- Sean R. Lynch <http://sean.lynch.tv/>
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