Hello all,
First off, I must say I hate the term "alternative energy." Why? Alternative
has a sort of 'its not the greatest but its something to fall back on' kind
of attachment to it. I think this stuff is more like "advanced" energy, but
thats just my $0.75 (inflation, no longer $0.02)
I've heard of the possibilities of running engines on compressed or
liquefied methane gas. Quite powerful, low pollution, much easier on the
inner works of the engine, valves in particular. I have also read Zubrin's
books on exploration schemes for Mars, in particular the bits about in-situ
fuel generation, that is, making methane with resources available on the
Martian surface.
Now my only problem with this, and why I prefer hydrogen over this, is you
still get CO2 from burning the methane. Supposedly there is too much CO2 in
the air. Well.... can't we just manufacture CH4 fuel from H2O we get from
seawater (or whatever logical source) and CO2 from the atmosphere? Granted
the atmosphere of Mars is primarily CO2, but it is also at a far far lower
pressure. I would think there is plenty of CO2 available in our atmosphere
to be used to produce automotive fuel (or gas for heating homes, cooking,
etc.) We would then not be adding any CO2 back to the air, simply recycling
what we have already there. The energy to do this could be obtained by wind
farms or solar collectors.
As for the problem of transmitting all the energy from distant facilities to
consumers not near the power plants, why can we not use the energy to make
some high energy liquid or gas (CH4, LH2, etc.) and literally pipeline our
energy to distant points, at no loss? Except of course whatever is involved
in conversion/reconversion and moving it from A to B.
Is there actually enough useable (as in, we can actually really harness it)
wind around the US to power all this? Solar?
--Kyle
- [Vo]: Methane as fuel, recycling CO2? Kyle R. Mcallister
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