Solving the World Energy Problem
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Did you know that if you fart constantly for 6 years and 9 months, you’ll create as much energy as an atomic bomb?
If only you created a fart capturing widget, you would become a multi zillionaire (Ha!)
The point I’m trying to make with this silly useless fart fact?
The energy problem has never been: scarcity of energy. We have energy in abundance*! The problem is: controlling the energy’s usage. At the lowest cost possible. Lets look at some of the possible solutions to this problem.
* In one hour, more solar energy hits earth than is used by our entire population in one year!
Perpetual Motion / Energy Machines
Only a handful of people know this. One of the things that interests me a lot is perpetual motion/energy machines! In fact, some years back, I’d even tried to create a perpetual motion machine of my own using magnets. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out.
Shouldn’t the magnets’ constant attraction force make the wheels go round-and-round?
Most perpetual motion widget ideas surround around using magnets or gravity. The idea behind perpetual motion machines is not to create energy out of nowhere. But to create a mechanism that doesn’t stop ever. Can’t we leverage the energy forces that never cease - for our benefit?
Sure we can. In fact, it’s already been done too!
1. The Cox Clock
Its 1760 and James Cox has made a grandfather clock that never has to be wound. Its an awesome breakthrough! Is it the world’s first perpetual motion machine?
James Cox sincerely thought that he had created a perpetual motion machine and his clock worked without energy! Of course, he was only half right. His clock was perpetual. But it did require energy.
The clock worked on a perpetual source of energy!
How did the clock work? It worked because of the difference between the day temperature and the night temperature! As the temperature changes, the barometer in the clock drives a ratchet mechanism. Which keeps the clock wounded and in motion!
2. Refrigeration Using Noise Energy
If the difference in temperature can create energy (as in the Cox clock), can energy create difference in temperature too? Thats the question professor Orest Symko asked himself. And came up with an ingenious solution! He has managed to use the noise energy for refrigeration!
a_?The beauty of this is that you have heat that is so disorderly and you have sound which is orderly and one frequencya_? - Symko explains.
One of the many uses of this new technology? It’ll be added to all the computer devices. As your computer functions, it heats up. Symko’s technology will convert this heat into sound waves. And then re-convert the sound to produce cooling! In effect, the computers will cool themselves and thus become much more efficient!
Read more at: The temperature of sound
3. Solar Vending Machines
Solar energy is being used since a long time now. But its always been very expensive to use it. Yet, because many governments provide subsidies, many people have installed solar panels on their roof tops.
SEV (Solar Energy Vending) also used solar panels on vending machines. So that vending machines can be installed anywhere - on top of hills, in golf courses etc. To make these solar panels affordable, SEV came up with an idea: display advertising on the vending machines too!
Solar Vending Machine
4. Solar Windows
But the coolest news regarding solar energy has been the research done by Professor Vivian Alberts. He has gone a long way in reducing the price of solar panels!
Instead of using expensive silicon, the solar panels use cheap customized glass! (Glass is made out of sand.) Pretty soon, we’ll see all the windows being made out of solar energy powering glass! The windows of all the houses and buildings will help generate its electrical energy!
5. Perpetual Windmills
When solar energy has seen such tremendous advances, can wind energy be left behind?
Norsk Hydro has plans to create floating wind turbines in seas!
Wind Turbines in Water
By installing wind turbines in water, its prices can be reduced drastically (and its almost always windy over the waters). And other benefits include: birds won’t interfere with these wind turbines!
Another idea that has come forward is converting express ways into wind farms! By installing wind turbines over the passing cars, the wind energy generated by the movement of cars can be used to generate electricity! This idea doesn’t look too cost effective though.
Expressways = Wind farms
6. Windbelts
But perhaps the most interesting advancement in using wind to solve our energy problems comes from Shawn Fraye. Shawn proposes using of thin membranes instead of huge turbines to generate electricity out of wind. Let the wind vibrate belts. And at the two ends of the belt - attach magnets that oscillate between metal coils as the belt vibrates - creating electricity.
This windbelts technology brings the cost of using wind energy down enormously! And makes it possible to use wind energy in household devices like radios!
7. Leveraging Bacteria to Produce Ethanol (and Energy)
Professor Pengchen Fu is using cyano-bacteria to produce ethanol from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide! This ethanol can then be burned cleanly to produce energy, water and carbon dioxide!
Cylinders containing bacteria that create ethanol
Its a cool idea for a renewable source of energy. And there are plans to construct kiloliter tanks that create a lot of ethanol everyday!
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Isn’t it wonderful to think that we might all be saved by alternate energy sources?
Unfortunately that is not the case.
Why?
Because we will not slow our consumption of resources or human reproduction. We keep consuming resources like issues such as “peak oil” are not real. We - Americans as a whole - are living in a state of blissful denial.
Sadly, the only thing that is going to solve the worlds energy problem is
A) the collapse of the American way of life/economy. Thereby allowing the exhorbitant amount of resources to be distributed more evenly across the globe. And allowing us more time to come up with a VIABLE alternative fuel and “reprogram” the masses.
B) a massive human die off (which will occur as a direct result of extreme world wide oil scarcity). Nature has a way of derastically re-adjusting the supply and demand ratio.
I do think the alternative presented here WILL be useful and required… I just think it will be in a local economy environment.
And, here in America, it will happen after a complete collapes. I believe that is unavoidable at this point. War machine be damned.
But, honestly, I don’t think the fall of America and our greediness, will ultimately have that great of an impact. The new big boy on the block - China - will simply eat up the spoils of our fall.
Side note: I also think that we, as marketers, should be learning a great deal about local economies and geographically restricted marketing. The longevity of the global economy/marketplace is questionable.
Posted 16 Oct 2007 #
Everyone can make a difference! If you are passionate about stopping global warming and the environment you should check out this website http://www.nvisioncfl.com . Changing to CFLs is a great way for individual people to really make a difference! You should also check out this site http://www.youtube.com/user/helpourworld for more ideas on how to help our world!
Posted 16 Oct 2007 #
this is a waste of time….half the items here have no technical merit or value whatsoever…perpetual machines. etc….you really need to get down to the laws of entropy, and then all this garbage will not make sense anymore…
Posted 16 Oct 2007 #
Shaun: Thanks for your opinion. If only you would have read the post properly before commenting, you would have realized that the post talks about inventions that seem perpetual - but are not. They don’t create any energy out of nowhere, but use perpetual energy already available (like temperature change and sunlight and wind and bacteria reproduction.)
Posted 16 Oct 2007 #
Sean: Thanks. Is it ok if I don’t agree with you? Years ago, most people thought that there can be no protection from earth quakes. But today, we have 100 floor buildings that aren’t affected by earthquakes at all. Humans are ingenious because they find ways to overcome whatever nature throws at us.
As I stated at the very beginning - scarcity of energy is not the problem. Controlling of the energy at the lowest cost is. Because scarcity is not the problem, we won’t see a massive die-off. But if we don’t find a good cheap alternative to oil before we run out of oil (highly doubtful) - we could see recessions and adjustments all over the world. Which would only be temporary though. Because the more acute the pain, the quicker inventions will happen. And the quicker the world will get back to where it was.
Posted 16 Oct 2007 #
Yep. It is perfectly fine if you don’t agree with me. Most folks don’t. Heck, just 6 months ago I wouldn’t have agreed with me. But, I’ve spent some time watching the numbers - both oil and the markets - and have consequently migrated towards the Doomer Camp.
It has become one of those topics I tend to get all worked up about. lol
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my little tangent.
Posted 16 Oct 2007 #
Love the title of your post! I get tired of all of the doom and gloom–not that it might not be warranted, but who knows, things just might swing the other way. Your writing seems better every time I pop over here.
Posted 17 Oct 2007 #
I think that by castrating humans that have more than 1 kid will solve the energy problem. Think about it! One kid only watches a limited time of tv. Start seeing the savings. If you want to save the planet, start by going to my blog and posting comments. If you comments suck, I will promise to turn my computer off for a WHOLE MONTH.
Here is the site:
The benjamins 101 dot blog spot dot com.
Use your brain and do not put the spaces and replace the word dot for ..
Thank you! And help the planet by making me shut my computer off!!!!!
Posted 23 Oct 2007 #
the wind belt is great but i think another interesting way of creating energy would be from temperature change. an atmos clock can function for 2 days on a 1 degree change in temperature. James Cox’s pendulum clock worked for years without human interference and he built that in the 1760’s.throw a little technology into that.
Posted 01 Feb 2008 #
A week spent with a pint of Guinness, some Twitter…
I am starting to round up my week with some interesting collection of posts from around the blogosphere covering a variety of topics. The topics and the authors are hand-picked by me on the basis of my personal admiration of their previous content an…..
Posted 10 Feb 2008 #
That wind belt info is very interesting. I have been interested in alternative energy sources for some time now, but that’s the first I’ve heard of it. Hopefully with the support that wind energy has been getting recently from the likes of Pickins, that kind of technology will receive a little more attention.
Posted 30 Jul 2008 #
ETHANOL-PRODUCTION WITH BLUE-GREEN-ALGAE
University of Hawai’i Professor Pengchen “Patrick” Fu developed an innovative technology, to produce high amounts of ethanol with modified cyanobacterias, as a new feedstock for ethanol, without entering in conflict with the food and feed-production .
Fu has developed strains of cyanobacteria — one of the components of pond scum — that feed on atmospheric carbon dioxide, and produce ethanol as a waste product.
He has done it both in his laboratory under fluorescent light and with sunlight on the roof of his building. Sunlight works better, he said.
It has a lot of appeal and potential. Turning waste into something useful is a good thing. And the blue-green-algae needs only sun and wast- recycled from the sugar-cane-industry, to grow and to produce directly more and more ethanol. With this solution, the sugarcane-based ethanol-industry in Brazil and other tropical regions will get a second way, to produce more biocombustible for the worldmarket.
The technique may need adjusting to increase how much ethanol it yields, but it may be a new technology-challenge in the near future.
The process was patented by Fu and UH in January, but there’s still plenty of work to do to bring it to a commercial level. The team of Fu foundet just the start-up LA WAHIE BIOTECH INC. with headquarter in Hawaii and branch-office in Brazil.
PLAN FOR AN EXPERIMENTAL ETHANOL PLANT
Fu figures his team is two to three years from being able to build a full-scale
ethanol plant, and they are looking for investors or industry-partners (jointventure).
He is fine-tuning his research to find different strains of blue-green algae that will produce even more ethanol, and that are more tolerant of high levels of ethanol. The system permits, to “harvest” continuously ethanol – using a membrane-system- and to pump than the blue-green-algae-solution in the Photo-Bio-Reactor again.
Fu started out in chemical engineering, and then began the study of biology. He has studied in China, Australia, Japan and the United States, and came to UH in 2002 after a stint as scientist for a private company in California.
He is working also with NASA on the potential of cyanobacteria in future lunar and Mars colonization, and is also proceeding to take his ethanol technology into the marketplace. A business plan using his system, under the name La Wahie Biotech, won third place — and a $5,000 award — in the Business Plan Competition at UH’s Shidler College of Business.
Daniel Dean and Donavan Kealoha, both UH law and business students, are Fu’s partners. So they are in the process of turning the business plan into an operating business.
The production of ethanol for fuel is one of the nation’s and the world’s major initiatives, partly because its production takes as much carbon out of the atmosphere as it dumps into the atmosphere. That’s different from fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which take stored carbon out of the ground and release it into the atmosphere, for a net increase in greenhouse gas.
Most current and planned ethanol production methods depend on farming, and in the case of corn and sugar, take food crops and divert them into energy.
Fu said crop-based ethanol production is slow and resource-costly. He decided to work with cyanobacteria, some of which convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into their own food and release oxygen as a waste product.
Other scientists also are researching using cyanobacteria to make ethanol, using different strains, but Fu’s technique is unique, he said. He inserted genetic material into one type of freshwater cyanobacterium, causing it to produce ethanol as its waste product. It works, and is an amazingly efficient system.
The technology is fairly simple. It involves a photobioreactor, which is a
fancy term for a clear glass or plastic container full of something alive, in which light promotes a biological reaction. Carbon dioxide gas is bubbled through the green mixture of water and cyanobacteria. The liquid is then passed through a specialized membrane that removes the
ethanol, allowing the water, nutrients and cyanobacteria to return to the
photobioreactor.
Solar energy drives the conversion of the carbon dioxide into ethanol. The partner of Prof. Fu in Brazil in the branch-office of La Wahie Biotech Inc. in Aracaju - Prof. Hans-Jürgen Franke - is developing a low-cost photo-bio-reactor-system. Prof. Franke want´s soon creat a pilot-project with Prof. Fu in Brazil.
The benefit over other techniques of producing ethanol is that this is simple and quick—taking days rather than the months required to grow crops that can be converted to ethanol.
La Wahie Biotech Inc. believes it can be done for significantly less than the cost of gasoline and also less than the cost of ethanol produced through conventional methods.
Also, this system is not a net producer of carbon dioxide: Carbon dioxide released into the environment when ethanol is burned has been withdrawn from the environment during ethanol production. To get the carbon dioxide it needs, the system could even pull the gas out of the emissions of power plants or other carbon dioxide producers. That would prevent carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere, where it has been implicated as a
major cause of global warming.
Honolulo – Hawaii/USA and Aracaju – Sergipe/Brasil - 15/09/2008
Prof. Pengcheng Fu – E-Mail: pengchen2008@gmail.com
Prof. Hans-Jürgen Franke – E-Mail: lawahiebiotech.brasil@gmail.com
Posted 17 Sep 2008 #