(no subject)

[xiphias]

What would we need to figure out in order to make solar energy panels using chlorophyll? Plants on Earth have developed the most efficient method to turn photons into another form of energy -- what would we need to figure out in order to use that for our energy needs?

That's just one of the things that keeps popping into my head. There isn't an "energy crisis" on Earth -- what we've got is a "specific form of energy" crisis. We have TONS of energy -- it's coming from that fusion reactor 92 million miles away. Now, OIL is getting short, and natural gas will, too, but that doesn't mean we have an ENERGY shortage -- it just means that we need to start using the energy we are getting.

And, well, after all, the solar radiation is the source of most of the energy on Earth. Sure, we've got some energy from tidal forces, radioactivity, and so forth, but, still, the biggest and most tempting source of energy is that mass of incandescent gas.

And the problem of turning that energy into useful forms while on the surface of the earth? Was solved three billion years ago.

Comments

[dianavilliers.livejournal.com]

A way to turn sugars and cellulose into heat? I think its been done.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well. . . yes, which is sort of my point.

The question is, how can we do this more efficiently, without having to go through all that stuff with letting lots of carbon wandering around and stuff. . .

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I think the route under consideration is photosynthetic algae tanks.

We don't have an energy shortage; we have a petroleum products shortage. Or, if you want to be cynical, a "rich-person-controlled energy production" shortage. A "profit" shortage, if you will.

Be assured if solar panels generated money at the rate oil mining does, they'd be everywhere and we would be complaining about the glare and how roofs all look black from airplanes and how companies had strung solar panels over all the sidewalks and parks to maximize their profits, and now you couldn't see the sun any more.

[bimmer1200.livejournal.com]

I think you overestimate the efficiency of plants. there's a reason they don't tend to move much, unless the wind does the moving, and part of that has to do with the very low levels of energy that they are able to produce via photosynthesis.

Solar panels are a very, very long way from being cost-effective. They are inefficient compared to petroleum products at the moment, and the chemicals used in their manufacture are far more dangerous than those released by burning hydro-carbons.

You are right that we don't have an energy crisis though. We have a clean, efficient source of energy that also happens to be the most cost-effective method available with current technologies. It is called nuclear power. But because we have a logic deficiency, we don't make anywhere near enough use of it, which is a shame. Build enough nuclear power plants and hydrogen fuel cells become practical. Until environmentalists get over their knee-jerk, caveman fear of nuclear power and stop the NIMBYism, we're stuck with hydrocarbons.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I consider nuclear power to be a very good medium-range solution. But fissionable materials are a limited resource, just as fossil fuels are. So it makes sense to start thinking about what we'll do after those go, as well. Fission only buys us another couple of centuries, I figure, and if energy consumption increases exponentially, as it often seems to do, we're going to want to be thinking NOW about what to do AFTER.

But, that would be another interesting question: what is the smallest, most efficient you can make a fission plant? And what are the security considerations thereby? I mean, in some ways, I like the idea of distributed power production -- get a nuclear power plant to be the size of a house, and stick one in each town or neighborhood of a city, and I think that would reduce grid-overloading problems -- I like distributed networks in general, because they're more robust.

But that means that you pretty much GUARANTEE that fissionables will go missing, and I think that's probably . . . um . . . less-than-ideal.

Still, how small and cheap can you make a fission plant, and have it be safe, both from accidents and deliberate action?

And, has there been any progress made on extracting energy from nuclear waste? Way I see it, nuclear waste is only dangerous if there's still energy coming from it -- and if there's energy coming from it, there's GOT to be a way to use it.

[bimmer1200.livejournal.com]

My dad works at a nuclear facility here in NC in security (Duke Power's MacGuire Facility.) And one regular size plant provides a large part of the power for the region. I don't know that you can make them much smaller and still get the efficiency, but if we simply replaced the coal burning plants that we have with nuclear ones it would be a big start.

And as you say, it's not a permanent solution, and fissile materials aren't infinite either. But I too think it could buy us a century or two, which should be time enough for room temperature fission or the discovery of some other energy source.

As for the waste, that's why nuclear power is so 'clean'. Currently, we can take the waste from a reactor and recycle it so that about 90% of it is reusable, leaving only 10% as actual 'waste'. And while that waste is hot, you're talking a few pounds a year after the recycling. Compared to the literally tons of waste produced by coal, from which we get 60% of our power, that's easily dealt with. It can be stored until we have the means to get rid of it safely or find a way to wring the power out of that. While it is hazardous, it is far less dangerous than propane and many other hazmats that we transport every day.

As far as security concerns...waste products aren't, from a rational prospective, that dangerous. Even the threat of a dirty bomb is overblown. Dirty bombs, like chemical weapons, are temporary area denial weapons. And, of course, about fear. I'm not sure about using fissile materials for energy production in bomb-making. I think they are different isotopes, but I'm uncertain. Either way, I don't think you can get it too distributed for both security and economy of scale reasons.

HOWEVER, what nuclear power does allow are HFC vehicles with home based refueling stations. Honda has one developed already that is seeing limited use in homes. With their hydrogen car having a range of 300+ miles that is more than enough for daily commuting purposes for most people. And that does decentralize things a bit.

[geekosaur]

I don't know that you can make them much smaller and still get the efficiency

Nuclear subs, anyone?

[bimmer1200.livejournal.com]

Let me clarify. I don't mean you can't make the reactors smaller. But the stuff that goes with it to make it safe and secure benefits from economies of scale. For example, say you have an area that you mark out into a 5 x 5 grid. Now, you can provide25 different nuclear facilities and each one has to have a bare minimum infrastructure that costs $10,000.00. total cost is $250,000.00 If, however, you build 5 facilities, you only need the base cost + some smaller number (say, 2K for each grid it covers) to handle the infrastructure. That'd save a total of $50,000.00 for the entire grid.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Also -- I agree that solar panels aren't there yet. But that's one reason to start looking at chlorophyll. Sure, the amount of energy you get from just standing in one place, having sunlight fall on you, is limited, and plants aren't the most active living things around -- but chlorophyll itself appears to extract energy from photons at an efficiency which is within sight of theoretical maximum. (By which I mean a couple of percent of theoretical maximum, of course. But still . . . ) In other words, if solar panels are EVER going to be useful, that's one place to start looking.

[bimmer1200.livejournal.com]

I see what you're saying. It may be that efficient solar power, possibly through chlorophyll, is one of those things that we can use nuclear power as a stop gap for until we figure it out. I admit biology is not my strong suit, and maybe I'm gunshy on this simply because of the debacle with ethanol.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether I'd count ethanaol as a full-fledged debacle -- on the whole, I'd rate it merely as a "failure". Although I AM willing to grant that the way the United States is CURRENTLY doing ethanol IS a debacle. Using food crops for ethanol, not such a good idea. And, of course, the way that we handle farm subsidies makes it that much worse.

Yeah, if you want actual efficient energy production, you kind of want to eliminate the actual plants from the process. At least, any plants more complex than blue-green algae. I've heard some possibly-promising stuff with growing blue-green algae, and then just turning the pond-scum into biodiesel, which looks like it would work better than ethanol, at least.

In my ideal world, we'd have solar power generation plants inside the orbit of Mercury which would somehow transmit that power back to Earth (I'm thinking maybe low-energy transfer orbits shuttling capsules of water to them, and capsules of hydrogen and oxygen back), and we'd then be able to use the space elevator to get the hydrogen and oxygen capsules to earth, where we'd plug them into our vehicles and whatever, then ship them back to the space elevator, once they were burned back to water, where they'd make the trip back to the power plants to recharge.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

My dad's involved as a consultant on some algae-to-energy projects. I can ask him what looks promising the next time I call him.

He had a big government grant (under the auspices of the Solar Energy Research Institute, which was part of the DOE) in the late 1970s/early 1980s to look for algae that could be mass-cultured in a harsh environment and had a high lipid content. (Many of the desert pond algae fit these criteria.) The ultimate idea was to produce algae-based fuel oil; Israel was especially interested. But SERI was gutted due to politics around 1985 or so. Now, 20 years later, some people are picking it back up because it could actually become a profit=making venture.

[ckd]

I also vaguely remember hearing about a project that used exhaust-bubbling-through-algae as a combination CO2 "sequestration"[1] and biodiesel feed stock generator.

[1] Not really, because you're going to burn it later anyway.

[bimmer1200.livejournal.com]

I'd say it goes from failure into debacle because of the increase in staple food prices. Those are up 5% the last quarter and that is almost entirely attributable to the subsidies for ethanol. Other core prices (excluding energy) are up 2.5%. Energy prices are up. That does squeeze the bottom two quintiles of income earners. And while I don't think it is the government's place to be helping the poor, it damn sure shouldn't be hurting them. Esp. for a program that doesn't do what it is specifically designed to do.

I'll stop before I start frothing at the mouth.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's why I said that the debacle comes from the fucked-up-edness which is our farm subsidy program. I think that, without the extra governmental income coming from that, farmers would be growing more food and less ethanol, since, as you point out, ethanol is actually not that useful.

[zachkessin.livejournal.com]

Of course the other problem with Solar power is that it only works half the time and there is a maximum power density you can reach. There are only so many watts of energy per square meter.

That being said my house (like all houses in Israel) has a solar hot water system. Its great in the summer and we have an electric boost for the winter.

[brooksmoses]

I'm not convinced that chlorophyll is that much more efficient, really. (The Wikipedia entry saying that it uses 90% of the light that falls on it is incorrect, based on an article that has since posted an erratum -- it only uses 90% of the light that it absorbs, which is a small fraction of what falls on it.) Commercial solar panels are getting equivalent overall efficiency as far as conversion from the light that falls on them, and so that just means that chlorophyll is better at reflecting the light it doesn't use.

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

Solar panels aren't really that far from being cost-effective.

That company has managed to make thin-film solar cells based on inkjet printing techniques. They're already in manufacturing, with a *lot* of capital, and plans to ramp up production as rapidly as possible. Eventual goal is solar panels at 99 cents a watt, which is cost-competitive with coal-based power plants. They've got the technology to do it, and I'd wager it's only a year or two before they have the manufacturing capacity to start selling them on the open market.

Nuclear power is vastly underutilized, true. But it comes with it's own problems. Most notably, it requires a *much* higher level of technology and capital investment. Nuclear is great for solving *our* power problems, because we have a well-developed infrastructure. Solar power can solve the *world*'s power problems, because the cost-to-install is so very much lower, and the power-load is distributed.

You can't build a nuclear power plant in the Sudan, because nobody will ever want to foot the bill to install the power grid, and the security problems are infinitely magnified. If you can sell them solar panels for $1 a watt, and just roll them out in sheets on rooftops, you can get more power, to more places, more quickly.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't consider my fear of nuclear power to be irrational when I think of the dozens of people I know from eastern Europe who are now developing rare cancers. Some families I know have 2 or 3 people getting a course of chemotherapy at the same time.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

There is CERTAINLY a reason to be afraid of the kind of shoddy nuclear reactors the old Soviet Union put together. But that's not the same as being afraid of ones that are actually built the way they are supposed to be built.

One question is how to make sure that any reactors that are built are done CORRECTLY, rather than as environmental and health disasters.

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

I've had the same thought! But I agree with the poster above that uh, if there was enough energy efficiency in photosynthesis triffids would not be carnivorous :P

interesting link?

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=when-it-comes-to-photosynthesis-plants-perform-quantum-computation

just thought this link might be of interest...
Duzzy

[dancing-kiralee.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, the energy crisis isn't as bad as all that... when oil etc. gets hard enough to find and get out of the ground, it will become more expensive, and solar panels will become more economical in comparison. That's sucks in the "energy is getting more expensive stage" but it isn't the kind of problem that will end the world as we know it.

On the other hand... however you do it, converting energy from the sun will require some kind of material to do it with. Currently, solar panels still use non-renewable materials, so ultimately they still have the same as oil and nuclear power - what you need to get power can run out.

What you want is a self-sustaining system, where energy from the sun is automatically used to create more of whatever materials you need to produce power; and the rate of replacement is as fast, or faster, than the rate of use.

Chlorophyll isn't a bad idea of where to start, but it does have at least one disadvantage. A lot of things on Earth eat it; if you did use it as a base for your power system, you might lose efficiency to "pests" eating your fuel, or the machines that convert your fuel into power.

Kiralee