Richard Branson, virgin-deluxe, may end-up looking devinely "inspired" (meme-brain) because of a James-Burkean "Connection" which he probably has not even anticipated. We may even call that future connection the prize winning 'Branson membrane.'
Everyone who has thought about the Branson prize has looked into the principles and processes involved in CO2 removal from a mixed gas stream. Fred Sparber has mentioned some techniques. There is not much CO2 percentage-wise in air, but the economics for direct removal still look decent IF (and probably ONLY IF) that CO2 is immediately recycled into biofuel, to displace some of the fossil fuel that casued it in the first place. It makes no sense to pump CO2 into the ground. Wiki has a good CO2 article except it neglects much of the 'recycling into biofuel' info below: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide Carbon dioxide is in the category of acid gases (as is hydrogen sulfide and nitrogen oxides) and since it is found in natural gas - where in combination with water vapor, it becomes highly corrosive and rapidly destroys pipelines and equipment- unless it is removed- we already know how to remove it quickly and cheaply and enrich it from methane. A key point here is that - on exposure to water, CO2 comes a highly reactive chemical and is no longer "inert". This is a key to how its own chemistry allows an extraordinary conversion percentage (>100% of apparent solar energy). The technology for membrane removal of CO2 (and other methods) is already highly advanced for methane- and that implies an easy route to the Branson Prize for someone. Probably sooner rather than later. Let's hope so, but not for the prize alone. There is much much more which can be bootstraped onto a "Branson Membrane" in the rural USA. The 'acidity' of CO2 (carbolic acid etc) is actually the key to a complex chemical pathway which allows solar radiation to interact with algae as a catalyst, and produce more net chemical energy than if 100% of the solar energy falling on the surface of the bioreactor were being converted. Algae farming is not simply solar conversion - in fact, it is more similar to a chemical factory which uses a solar-photons as a catalyst. Growing algae is most efficient if you add CO2 and heat externally, instead of having an open pond heated by the sun. Forced CO2 and added heat results in an order of magnitude faster algae doubling-time this way. This is how and why the various companies making the bioreactors can claim biodiesel outputs of over 10,000 gallons per acre per year. I have seen one claim of 20,000. OTOH - An open pond in a northern latitude without forced CO2 will be lucky to return 1000 gallons per acre-year. If this high figure were true in practice, and with a value to the algae-farmer of ~$2 gallon (near future) - how long will it be before many in rural areas will be poised to convert a few acres of land into biodiesel production? - especially once the techniques for active CO2 removal become perfected and disseminated? That may be the big follow-on advantage of the Branson Prize and other similar incentives. We may well be just now, in 2007, on the cusp of this massive change in how we will fuel the USA in the coming years - pending as an alternative - a breakthrough in LENR or ZPE conversion (magnetics) etc. If any of those comes along, biofuel will still be a sensible stopgap measue. CO2 is presently being removed in mega-tonnage from natural gas pipelines by a wide variety of technologies including absorption processes such as the Benfield process (hot potassium carbonate) and various Amine processes (formulated solvents); cryogenic processes; adsorption processes, such as pressure swing adsorption (PSA), thermal swing adsorption (TSA) and iron sponge ... and ta-da: specialty membranes. Only a variety of the membrane process is likely to be cheap and simple enough to be developed for removing CO2 from air for use in aquaculture by small farmers. Don't forget that in the South (USA) before tobacco became a no-no, there perhaps 100,000 small farmers in a handfull of states with so-called "allotments" of a few acres. They were not making nearly as much money on that addictive drug back then, as they could be in the near future- making biodiesel. Lets see: if and when these farmer convert their 5 acre plot over to biodiesel - that is 5 billion gallons worth $10 billion which stays at home instead of letting our Saudi friends use it to reinvest in American companies or else kill young American soldiers in Iraq and Afganistan. If you remove enough CO2, using a diesel engine to power the process, you can easily imagine a self-powering process where some of your biofuel powers the diesel engine which pumps air through a "Branson Membrane" and recovers tons of CO2, which together with its own emission and waste heat is recycled into the bioreactors. This may become so popular in rural Appalachia, for instance, that it becomes necesary to put small algae farmers on some kind of "biofuel allotment"... yeah ... in my dreams... Jones
