>>Maybe we should de-politicize DoE - make it closer to a private entity, >>and fund it independently by forcing an excess-profits tax on the oil >>companies, to pay for a completely independent department, which oil of >>partisan politics cannot influence in either staffing or in decision making.
Yeah! You mean like the Postal Service (USPS? ;-) -----Original Message----- From: Jones Beene [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 12:34 PM To: vortex Subject: [Vo]:Missed Opportunity Ever heard of BioTen? (not to be confused with the vitamin, biotin) The "Cyclonic Combustion" process invented and patented by the US DOE and Tennessee Valley Authority, also known as the "Bioten process" was all but abandoned, even though testing showed that it operated at a cost of $0.027/kWh on cellulose waste. That cost was slightly higher than TVA spends at its coal plants, BUT - it is for renewable carbon-neutral energy - and yet the geniuses at DoE abandoned it anyway. This is, almost by definition, the way that bureaucracts manage to "compound" errors. The best estimate for power from "hot fusion" is three to four times more (~$0.075/kWh) - but only IF it were ever perfected, and after $20 billion of wasted funds - it is far, far away from making its first megawatt. Why do we not write-off the entire hot-fusion boondoggle as a massive mistake, and forget about it? Instead DoE makes another compounded error. They did make one good choice: an actual 10 Megawatt Renewable Energy Power Platform, using the BioTen process, which was built and successfully operated for two years in Tennessee, and tested by NREL. It worked fine- above expectations. Tests show the system can produce either power or ammonia as a transportation fuel (or fertilizer) from renewable energy resources such as agricultural wastes, municipal biosolids, begasse, rice hulls, corn cobs, etc. It is done with limited emissions, and is CO2 neutral. It can be combined with algae ponds (for algoil) or greenhouses for food- to then become CO2-negative, and to actually significantly reduce CO2 and the toxicity of coal burning. But no. It was abandoned. The $64 question - how could DoE and the Bush Administration (before they got "green-religion") give up on this promising process !?! BTW the equipment was sold at auction in 2002 to Brazil at a $25 million loss to DoE, even though it could have been operated at nearly breakeven with only slightly more funding IF DoE had forced TVA to pay slightly more for the power than it cost them to burn coal. If there ever was a Brain-dead decision in alternative energy, from a Brain-dead Department of Energy, this was it. Maybe we should de-politicize DoE - make it closer to a private entity, and fund it independently by forcing an excess-profits tax on the oil companies, to pay for a completely independent department, which oil of partisan politics cannot influence in either staffing or in decision making. Yeah. In my dreams.... Jones
