SYNTHETIC FUELS IN OUR FUTURE?

The gas Hydrogen is a very energy rich, non-polluting fuel whose only combustion by-product is water.  Also it is plentiful since it is the most abundant element in the universe.  On Earth, it is mostly tied up as a constituent of water--remember H2O.  As a fuel, automobile engines can easily be made to run on it. Unfortunately though, hydrogen is a very explosive gas that does no lend itself to be easily containerized. This means to become a practical transportation fuel a new storage system as well as a whole new automobile service station infrastructure would be required.

Happily, engineers and scientist have at least one solution to the problem*.  Chemically combine hydrogen and carbon dioxide to make synthetic hydrocarbons like our current gasoline of diesel fuels. This well known technology produces what are referred to as synfuels.

The total production of CO2 in the U.S. from coal-burning power plants is about 1875 million tons a year (2002).  If this CO2 were captured and combined with hydrogen to make synfuel, it would provide all the hydrocarbon fuel needed for our transportation economy. Shifting from a fossil fuel based transportation economy to a synfuel one could reduce our petroleum use by about 70% and reduce our carbon dioxide production by about 33% with no increase in coal use in power plants.

Such a shift to synfuels, however, would require about 23 times our current production of hydrogen that would have to be produced by the electrical decomposition of water.  Some of this hydrogen could come from other chemical processes, and some from using the excess capacity of our current electrical generating plants to split water.  However, the bulk of the new hydrogen would have to be produced by 100's of new non-fossil power sources like solar, wind, and nuclear.

As Dr. Uhig concludes in his article: "The advantage of using synthetic fuels are that neither the transportation vehicle engines nor the fuel-distribution infrastructure of the United States would have to be altered.  A synfuel hydrogen economy can be a bridge to a true hydrogen economy in the future."

*Implementing the "Hydrogen Economy" with Synfuels, by Dr. Robert E. Uhrig, et al, The Bent of Tau Beta, Vol.98, No. 5, Summer 2012.

WE HUMANS ARE SOLAR POWERED

You may not have thought about it, but the energy you use for all your bodily activities and functions are fueled by second hand solar energy.  We, like all other animals, cannot harness solar energy directly, but must rely on plants to capture it and store it in a form 'palitable' to us.  Through a process called photosynthesis, molecules of carbon dioxide from the air and water from the soil are captured by plants and are taken apart.  They are then re-assembled into molecules of a simple sugar called glucose consisting of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.  It takes six molecules of carbon dioxide and six of water to make one molecule of glucose. The breaking down and re-assembing of the molecules is powered by solar energy, some of which is stored in the electrical bonds that hold the glucose atoms together.  Luckily for us, there is some leftover oxygen in this process--a waste product that plants excrete into the air serving to replenish our oxygen supply. 

Of course, plants are not doing all this work just for us.  Some of the glucose they make is used to fuel their own life styles.  In fact, they link some one thousand glucose molecules together to form starch which they stash away for their future energy needs.  Although plants are rather good at converting solar energy to sugar, the process is not 100% efficient.  Nature demands that with any energy conversion some energy must always be lost as heat.  In we humans, this wasted heat is what keeps our bodies warm.

Human cells, like those of all animals and plants, can reverse photosynthesis by burning glucose in a slowly, controlled manner, a process called metabolism.  The stored solar energy is released to power their own growth and development.  Like any combustion, the process gives off two by-products, water and carbon dioxide--the original substances consumed by the plants.  To carry out this chemical reaction, cells need some additional oxygen atoms.  In the case of humans, the oxygen is obtained from the air we breath and is carried by our blood stream to all the cells of our bodies.

To sum it all up then:  Nature stores solar energy in a sugar that when metabolized powers all living things on Earth.

THE TRUTH ABOUT NUCLEAR ENERGY

Journalist, novelist, Gwyneth Cravens, was an active opponent of nuclear power plants until she began doing research for her book, Power to Save the World.* As with many other technological issues facing society, a lot of miss-information has been promulgated about this subject. She addresses these in her book and seeks to show that nuclear power is the only efficient and clean way to meet our energy needs for the foreseeable future. Here are just a few interesting tidbits that I gained from reading her book:

In 2006, more than 435 nuclear reactors in 32 countries supplied 16% of the world’s electricity with a safety record far superior to fossil fuel or hydro-generation--and that is including the Chernobyl fatalities.

The US Navy has operated some 254 reactors in naval vessels and has never had an accident.

Worldwide about 39% of electricity is obtained from burning coal. Lets say that you obtained all your electricity from coal over your lifespan of 77 years, your mountain of solid waste would be 68.5 tons. If you obtained all of your electricity over the same lifespan from nuclear, your waste would weigh 2 lbs and fit inside a coke can.

A nuclear power plant producing 1000 megawatts takes up about ½ square mile. A wind farm would have to cover 200 square miles to obtain the same result, while solar arrays would need to cover over 50 square miles.

The annual exposure of a human anywhere on earth to background radiation from natural sources averages about 240 units (millirems) per year. In some places it is much higher like in northeastern Washington State where the annual average dose is about 1700 units. The annual exposure to the public permitted by the EPA for nuclear facilities is 15 units--less than a chest or dental x-rays. If you want to learn more, check out Power to Save the World.

*Alfred A. Knopf, NY 2007.

ANOTHER SCIENTIST'S VIEW OF HOW SCIENCE WORKS

Dr. Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988), an American physicist and multi-faceted scientist, said the follow about how science works in a lecture given in 1964: “Generally we look for a new law (of Nature) by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if the law we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation with Nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is--if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.”

ONE MAN'S VIEW OF SCIENCE

One scientist, Franklin M. Harold, gave an interesting view of science in the Epilogue of his book, The Way of the Cell*. I would like to quote him: "I have come to think of science as a kind of game, whose object is to make sense of the world. Players are bound by strict rules: the imagination must ever be disciplined by reason, observation and experiment, and no cheating, please! It is the most engrossing game ever invented, one to which I and many others have happily dedicated our lives; and it has revealed much that is new, true and important. But we must never forget that the game of science is played on a board, and most of what matters most to human beings lies off the board. Science has little useful to say about good and evil, right and wrong, justice and oppression, and the strange ways of the human heart. Science can often explain what is happening, and it can sometimes forecast the future and distinguish wisdom from folly. But it provides no basis for ethical choice, nor the will to act. About what it means to be human, individual scientists often hold strong opinions; but science must be silent."

*Oxford University Press, New York, 2001

A VERY MUCH MALIGNED GAS

With our almost religious fervor to embrace the idea of global warming, carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is getting a bad rap. Rarely mentioned are the other so-called green house gases: water vapor and methane. With about three-quarters of the Earth covered by water, water vapor is tough to do much about. And methane is emitted by many living things notably we humans, cattle and termites.

Carbon dioxide occupies less than 0.04% of the air we breath, but has admittedly a profound effect on our planet. Without it, the average temperature of the Earth would be well below freezing. Our distance from the Sun, makes its warming effect not enough to keep us toasty. Even more importantly, carbon dioxide keeps us from starving. It is the crucial source of all our food. Plants use the sun's energy to break apart carbon dioxide and turn it into the carbon-based molecules that make up our food. Every year some 100 billion tons of carbon dioxide are converted into plant material. This provides the foodstuff that feeds every animal and human on Earth.

Unfortunately, when anything is burned for energy to drive our world--be it wood, oil, coal or natural gas, carbon dioxide is produced as a by-product. Even the slow burning of food in animal or human metabolism creates carbon dioxide. Plants convert water and carbon dioxide into sugars and starches and give off oxygen as a by-product. We and other animals eat plant tissues and burn them with oxygen for energy while exhaling carbon dioxide. This is how nature preserves the cycle of life.

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What Do Calories Taste Like?

Many weight conscious people are concerned about their daily calorie intake. But what does a calorie taste like--sweet, sour or salty? This, of course, is a redicules question because a calorie doesn't have a taste because a it is not a substance, but a unit of measure. In this nutritional context, it is the measure of the energy content of a food. Technically, a calorie is defined as the amount of heat energy it takes to raise the temperature of one gram (about 1/30th of an ounce) one degree Celsius. A nutritional calorie is defined to be 1000 times bigger (kilocalorie) than the standard one and is frequently capitalized Calorie.

All forms of energy can be converted from one form to another--heat to electrical, for example, or electrical to light or mechanical energy. Take a jelly bean, for example. It weighs about 3 grams and is almost 100% sugar. If one gram of sugar is completely burned, it would produce 4.1 Calories of heat energy. Therefore, one jelly bean is equivalent to 12.3 Calories. This is enough energy to keep a 60 watt light bulb operating for 14.3 minutes. By comparison, a can of beer or a donut will keep the lamp lit for nearly three hours. The Calories and thus the energy in a quarter pound hamburger will keep the lamp burning for almost 20 hours.

All human activities expend energy--some activities more than others. Just sleeping uses some 1.2 Calories per minute, standing 2.0, walking 3.7, bicycling 7.7 and swimming a walloping 13 Calories per minute. As food is metabolized (burned) in our bodies, the energy released drives the chemistry of our muscles to produce mechanical motion. Some of the energy, of course, is lost to the environment in the form of heat.  That is why we are harm.

SCIENCE--What's It All About

It is often asked what is science and how does it work. Lots has been written on this subject, but the clearest and most concise explanation I have run across is by Dr. Eric Chaisson in his recent book, Epic of Evolution*.

He says “The scientific method normally works like this: First, gather some data by observing and object or event, then propose and idea to explain the data, and finally test the idea by experimenting with Nature. Those ideas that pass the tests are selected, accumulated, and conveyed, while those that don’t are discarded. In this way, by means of a selective editing or pruning of ideas, scientists discriminate between sense and nonsense. We gain an even better approximation of reality. Not that science claims to reveal the truth--whatever that is--just to gain an increasingly accurate model of Nature."

*Colombia University Press, 2006.