Re: [silk] Biryani Recipes
On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 12:45 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian sur...@hserus.net wrote: There's a distinctive biryani in there you might not have tried yet - kappa biryani (with tapioca substituted for rice) I've never been able to understand the allure of kappa biryani. If cooked a lot like in a biryani, it gets all squishy. I love kappa as a side to most meat dishes but not as a mix-in. -gabin -- measure with a micrometer, mark with a chalk, cut with an axe
Re: [silk] fuel from grass
On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 2:27 AM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: Some more background on the commercialization of butanol (and assorted isomers) here [1] I may begin to like bio-fuels if there is a promise to cultivate 2 acres of food crops for every acre of biofuel. Cheeni
Re: [silk] fuel from grass
On Tue, Mar 08, 2011 at 11:07:28AM +0100, Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 2:27 AM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: Some more background on the commercialization of butanol (and assorted isomers) here [1] I may begin to like bio-fuels if there is a promise to cultivate 2 acres of food crops for every acre of biofuel. I hear you can grow crops in the shadow of PV panels. Which can do 20% without breaking a sweat. Water electrolysis would work, Sabatier would work (using CO2 scrubbers), but in principle you can find mild synthesis conditions for alcohols or higher hydrocarbons. Methanol would seem a good sweet spot here. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
Re: [silk] fuel from grass
On Tue, Mar 08, 2011 at 06:57:15AM +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: Some more background on the commercialization of butanol (and assorted isomers) here [1] Converting cellulose (nevermind lignin) to something useful is hard. Animals manage to do it only with help of symbionts, wasting most of the potential energy in the process (bugs have to eat). If you go alcohol, you still have to destill the dilute (own waste stunts and then kills bugs), and be it a vacuum destillation. Efficiency of photosynthesis is 0.1-1% for higher plants, 0.84%-1.26% being the total photosynthetic efficiency of the planet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency Photovoltaics approaches 50%. There's plenty of potential in circulated (100% recycled) electrons, and for everything else there's synfuel. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
