22 replies to this topic

[eacao]

Considering the hype over algae's ability to create crude oil chemically identical to the mineral counterpart, I've been thinking about the next step. What's going to be more energy dense than oil while still being a liquid at room temperature and relatively safe to handle. Oil is great but it's been fueling our civilisation for a good 100/150 years. It's not going to be enough later on. Hydrogen/oxygen reactions are the most energetic known, but liquid nitrogen has 7% the density of water making it a bad replacement for oil. Even more so considering you have to keep it as a liquid to even get that.

A quick google search has shown me octanitrocubane and its cousin, heptanitrocubane are expected to be 1/4 more energetic than HMX and twice as energetic as TNT. It also doesn't require atmospheric oxygen for a reaction and its byproduct is non-toxic, although it does release CO2. At the moment, it's so difficult to manufacture, not enough has been produced to even determine its explosiveness, but if the theory goes, its pretty damn explosive. Oh, and by the way, it shock-insensitive so it's safe to handle, even if you're dumb enough to smack it with a hammer or kick it.

So, mix ONC into a liquid slurry and you're good to go. Electric cars may well be powering me down the street in a decade, but some things need a fuel like oil. If microbes could be engineered in the future to produce this stuff the same way that algae produces crude oil (out of sunshine, fresh air and happiness), could it be the next big thing? of course, ONC isn't where I've bundled all of my hopes and dreams. What do all of you think, What else comes next?

[Alric]

We don't need liquid energy to fuel stuff. We just need very efficient batteries. Batteries that can hold larges charges for very long periods of time and puts out just about as much as they take it. Why do some things need liquid fuel? If the battery is smaller than your gas tank, then there is no reason.

[Shimmy]

As with every other problem the future holds, this will be solved by swarms of self-replicating nanobots.

[Guyverman1990]

Two words :

NUCLEAR FUSION.

It is completely unlimited and much safer than Fission.

[kjaggard]

The problem a lot of people miss when they talk about electric this, and battery that, is those are storage devices, not energy production devices. You still have to make the energy to store. That goes for manufactured fuels too. Yes we could use hydrogen fuel cells but where are you going to get the hydrogen? Yup it's in water but you need energy to get it out.

That's why algae is popular. It produces a fuel by using sunlight and carbon dioxide. A renewable energy source to power conversion of a pollutant into a fuel. Byproducts? only ethanol, oxygen, and edible proteins and vitamin sources.

Fusion would be awesome but seems so very far away. and I rather doubt it would be able to power cars and home generators in the next 200 years.

I imagine we will see some growth with The liquid fluoride thorium reactor, especially withe the growth of India and it having begun it's thorium nuclear power programs with sights set to expand since they have a quarter of the worlds thorium reserves.

[Raklian]

The problem a lot of people miss when they talk about electric this, and battery that, is those are storage devices, not energy production devices. You still have to make the energy to store. That goes for manufactured fuels too. Yes we could use hydrogen fuel cells but where are you going to get the hydrogen? Yup it's in water but you need energy to get it out.

That's why algae is popular. It produces a fuel by using sunlight and carbon dioxide. A renewable energy source to power conversion of a pollutant into a fuel. Byproducts? only ethanol, oxygen, and edible proteins and vitamin sources.

Fusion would be awesome but seems so very far away. and I rather doubt it would be able to power cars and home generators in the next 200 years.

I imagine we will see some growth with The liquid fluoride thorium reactor, especially withe the growth of India and it having begun it's thorium nuclear power programs with sights set to expand since they have a quarter of the worlds thorium reserves.

Look up Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR). It is the next big thing when it comes to energy production.

[MarcZ]

Fecal fuel, we shall poop our way to efficiency.

http://www.futureoft...gen-cars-121535

[eacao]

The problem a lot of people miss when they talk about electric this, and battery that, is those are storage devices, not energy production devices. You still have to make the energy to store. That goes for manufactured fuels too. Yes we could use hydrogen fuel cells but where are you going to get the hydrogen? Yup it's in water but you need energy to get it out.

That's why algae is popular. It produces a fuel by using sunlight and carbon dioxide. A renewable energy source to power conversion of a pollutant into a fuel. Byproducts? only ethanol, oxygen, and edible proteins and vitamin sources.

That's sort of what I was trying to get at. In some ways. But I'm thinking of a liquid fuel (alric, a jet engine, for example can't run on batteries) that is more energy dense than oil while having similar or even better physical properties. A portable energy source.

Edited by eacao, 08 July 2012 - 03:42 PM.

[eacao]

Look up Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR). It is the next big thing when it comes to energy production.

I know it seems like salvation has come, but please stay objective and sceptical with LENR. If it happens to be real and true and powering our civilisation in a few years, I'm not going to complain but don't rest your faith on it.

[Raklian]

Look up Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR). It is the next big thing when it comes to energy production.

I know it seems like salvation has come, but please stay objective and sceptical with LENR. If it happens to be real and true and powering our civilisation in a few years, I'm not going to complain but don't rest your faith on it.

If you don't have faith in anything, how can you make any progress?

Think of all the greatest technological breakthroughs we've had in our history - is there a lack of faith in the part of the inventors that made this happen?

Objectivity by itself isn't enough but it is not to say it isn't important.

Also, it doesn't hurt to have faith in anything. I just choose to have faith in something that has the potential to uplift humankind out of its cradle rather than in something that may not serve any purpose.

[Alric]

I bet you could build a jet that works on a battery. I know it wouldn't really work now, but that is why I am saying we need better battery technology and I think we will see that in the future. If we get really good batteries could be far more portable than anything else, and they can run anything. The reason I didn't go into direct energy sources is since the original post seem more interested in portable energy that will replace oil. If you got batteries that can do that, then any energy source will work. Hopefully it will be renewable energy like solar.

[eacao]

I bet you could build a jet that works on a battery. I know it wouldn't really work now, but that is why I am saying we need better battery technology and I think we will see that in the future. If we get really good batteries could be far more portable than anything else, and they can run anything. The reason I didn't go into direct energy sources is since the original post seem more interested in portable energy that will replace oil. If you got batteries that can do that, then any energy source will work. Hopefully it will be renewable energy like solar.

I'm not sure what you mean by a battery-powered jet engine. I'm assuming you know how a jet engine works, have you heard about a battery powered jet, how does something like that operate? Obviously completely different to a conventional jet engine.

Edited by eacao, 09 July 2012 - 10:43 AM.

[eacao]

If you don't have faith in anything, how can you make any progress?

Think of all the greatest technological breakthroughs we've had in our history - is there a lack of faith in the part of the inventors that made this happen?

Objectivity by itself isn't enough but it is not to say it isn't important.

Also, it doesn't hurt to have faith in anything. I just choose to have faith in something that has the potential to uplift humankind out of its cradle rather than in something that may not serve any purpose.

I see where you're coming from, and it's not that I lack faith in technologies that could better the lives of people everywhere, and I'm not criticising you for having faith, it's just LENR. The whole thing isn't convincing and considering the history of cold fusion, I'm very sceptical and I believe I'm in the right to be so.

Edited by eacao, 09 July 2012 - 10:53 AM.

[kjaggard]

I bet you could build a jet that works on a battery. I know it wouldn't really work now, but that is why I am saying we need better battery technology and I think we will see that in the future. If we get really good batteries could be far more portable than anything else, and they can run anything. The reason I didn't go into direct energy sources is since the original post seem more interested in portable energy that will replace oil. If you got batteries that can do that, then any energy source will work. Hopefully it will be renewable energy like solar.

I'm not sure what you mean by a battery-powered jet engine. I'm assuming you know how a jet engine works, have you heard about a battery powered jet, how does something like that operate? Obviously completely different to a conventional jet engine.

well I could see it as possible if somebody combined a EHD (Ion) based thrust propulsion with some of the advancements sure to come in ramjet design via nano materials. The biggest hurdle to that are zero thrust starting problems with ramjets, and high voltage needed to achieve ionized air thrust sufficient to move heavy objects.

It's not likely to be very efficient at first, but with nanoscale surface effects, controlled filtration and air channeling, mixed with semiconductors and ionization techniques. It's plausible to develop something that could fly as a non-liquid fuel jet engine. But I see that as more likely to be applied to land to space craft and military craft.

In the future I think in order to be conscious of fuels and energy the trade off for air travel will have to be speed. This means that how we travel the world will have to change. If your goal is going around the world fast, you may take high speed rail cross continents and then board lighter than air (or at least neutrally bouant on air) ferries that bridge the shortest routes across the oceans, and then continue by train. It gets the job done reasonably. For less urgent travel trans global lighter than air craft and their cousins will provide air cruise ships and cargo hauling. Sea ships will still do the majority of the cargo haul and cheaper cruises.

This means that we rethink a lot of our travel around the world. If you absolutely must meet sombody from another country fast, your best bet is telepresence. If designs need exchanging send the CAD files. If objects need swapping, 3D fax. Basically ways around getting there faster will be found using things that pretty much exist already. Getting there slower will be the other option for when nothing else will do. Though I can't think of anything that couldn't be gotten around through other methods.

[Alric]

A jet engine basically sucks air in, compresses it, then the fuel burns and the air goes back out the back while turning a turbine, and the turbine is in turn used to power the compressor. With a battery you wouldn't need a turbine at all. You would just have the battery power the compressor and shoot the air out of the back.

Now the way the engine is designed does play a part in it. Some engine they rely mostly on the compressor and air flow and some they rely more on the air rapidly expanding due to the combustion(which would probably be harder to convert in that case).

It is obviously possible, it is just a matter of efficiency. Currently our batteries are not really good enough to provide all the energy and so it isn't even an option and no one gives it real thought. Which makes it kind of hard to tell how efficient that might be. Though there are some toys that work that way, when size isn't really an issue. If batteries were good enough to provide all the energy needed then I think we would see a lot more discussion on how to make jets without fuels but the price just isn't there today.

[Alric]

I don't think people mind going slower if the price is right and its comfortable. If you have a cramped airplane where you are packed in and you are stuck just sitting there and you get some where in an hour, and its compared to a luxury plane that has a lot of personal space, and you got satellite TV, and the internet and all the games, or movies or work you want and the cost is cheaper but it takes 3 hours, it is really tempting to take the second.

In the future as computers get more mobile and stuff, and you can basically bring everything along with you I think time will be a much smaller factor, especially if its a comfortable experience. Currently most people hate flying and stuff, and if you hate it you want it done as soon as possible.

[EVanimations]

Alric makes a good point.

If we strive to improve any aspect of technology, they will eventually reach a great degree of advancement and efficiency. Look at us and phones... cell phones now do more stuff than we'll ever actually need, and can't get much smaller without people accidentally swallowing them. And all this came from something that looked like a brick just 20 years ago. And thousands of changes made to our society revolved around this communication revolution.

I was going to bring up computers, but we still have a LOOOOOONG way to go until they're perfect.

If we follow a similar path with battery technology, we could refine it and refine it until batteries are as good as we need them to be. At that point, they could run on any kind of energy source and could maybe even go so far as to power their own little generators, effectively creating a hand-held perpetual energy machine that charges itself. I think that could work, at least in theory.

[Alric]

They already got those batteries you can power by shaking them, or even some things that you wear on your body and your movement powers them. Currently not very efficient and a pain in the butt(I mean who wants to sit there shaking something to get it to start?). However, in the future we might get super efficient to the point that we are capturing and storing every last bit of energy.

[EVanimations]

What if they refined that technology even further by making it so that power could be made for a phone by simply having it in your pocket? The movement of your legs while walking and your body heat would charge it.

[kjaggard]

At that point, they could run on any kind of energy source and could maybe even go so far as to power their own little generators, effectively creating a hand-held perpetual energy machine that charges itself. I think that could work, at least in theory.

No. Just, no. The basic laws of thermodynamics do not allow you to extract more energy from a system than you put into it. Even if you got an 'ideal' system that does not have to spend energy to overcome inertia and friction and doesn't have any other outside forces changing it's use of energy you still would only get continued motion indefinately, any attempt to draw off any of it for powering something outside would remove energy from the cycle that would slow it and it wouldn't speed back up because that would require input of more energy. You are essentially talking about a perfect electro mechanical battery. Put energy in and store it in an endless loop of circulation and draw it off until you can store more energy in it from another outside source.

It does not generate it's own power. and that setup cannot be used in the real world either because there is always an outside force acting upon things that sap energy over time. Gravity, light pressure, air friction, friction of contact points, ect.