enki
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- Name: enki
enki’s Recent Comments
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Unfortunate
I agree that this story is an unfortunate blur of the reality involved. This is the fault of the scientist who is making the claims more then the author. Check out my rebuttal to the story on the Nature magazine news site for a more complete analysis.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080731/full/news.2008.996 ...On With research breakthrough, solar power could work when the sun don't shine posted 1 year, 3 months ago 49 Responses
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Great Story
I think that the availability of careers in the wind industry will be the key to getting "average" people to become more active in supporting alternative energy.
On Wind power industry hiring in huge numbers posted 1 year, 3 months ago 8 ResponsesClick here to view comment in original post
Clarifying Clean Coal
I would like to offer some more info on this topic to further clarify the Clean Coal subject. I am not a fan of coal but I like to be accurate when describing something and coal can be confusing. Of the many types of clean coal technologies out there the only one that really interests me is the one being promoted by FutureGen.
In that setup coal and water are combined and the products are CO2 and H2. The turbines that turn the generators are fueled by the hydrogen so produced. This means that the FutureGen plants will be the world's first large scale hydrogen energy plants and for that reason I can't help but support them. All that remains is to find a better way to produce the hydrogen fuel.
What I don't like about them is the whole CO2 "sequestration" concept. Since a hydrogen from water via coal plant should produce less than half the CO2 of a traditional coal fired plant the whole sequestration thing is unnecessary. Here is a link to a story I wrote explaining the process:
http://current.com/items/89061252_what_is_clean_coal_and_ ...
Here is a link to a graphic from FutureGen so you can see what I mean above:
http://www.futuregenalliance.org/images/integrated.jpgOn Umbra on clean coal posted 1 year, 3 months ago 17 Responses
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Think about it though...
Pickens wants to reduce our dependence on foreign petroleum by supplanting it with domestically produced fuels. His plan offers natural gas as the likely candidate and I totally agree that it is the most readily available fuel source with a distribution network already in place.
In addition, we could produce natural gas from coal and water and this would essentially give us hydrogen from water fuel which is stored on carbon atoms (oh wait that is what hydrocarbons are anyway).
Also, by switching to gaseous fuel systems we could have the technology in place to go to straight hydrogen fuel in the future and for these reasons I am totally supporting the Pickens Plan.
On His energy plan is half brilliant, half dumb posted 1 year, 3 months ago 21 ResponsesClick here to view comment in original post
why I like this
Switching vehicles to run on gaseous fuels would at least open the door to hydrogen or Synfuel run engines just like building FutureGen plants opens the door for large scale hydrogen fired electric plants. Once the technology is in place the remaining job is to find better ways to produce hydrogen fuel.
On His energy plan is half brilliant, half dumb posted 1 year, 4 months ago 21 Responses
