Re: Major scientific breakthroughs required for the Hydrogen Initiative to succeed

From: Rene Tschaggelar (none_at_none.net)
Date: 08/24/04 

Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 18:32:08 +0200

puppet_sock@hotmail.com wrote:

> "robert j. kolker" <nowhere@nowhere.net> wrote in message news:<2p0c05Ff4e83U1@uni-berlin.de>...
> [snip]
>
> I've wondered about that for some time. Plants get something like
> 1% or 2% efficiency converting sunlight to chemical energy. Is there
> in fact no chemcial process that does remarkably better? Is it a
> question of nothing being nearby to chlorophyl? Or is there some
> kind of thermodynamic issue that makes doing better much harder?

The chemistry and physics aroung chlorophyll is pretty complex
and currently being researched. It is not neccesarily that
chlorophyll is the best in regards of efficiency. It is the
infrastructure around that matters too, in this case the
plants. They grow this stuff from nothing, and it decays to
nothing. It is easily thinkable that with some other metall, say
Cobalt, a better receiver could be built. Since plants tend to
wander over the milleniums togther with climatic changes,
they couldn't leave these spots where cobalt is found and would
become extinct.

>
> I do not believe we will ever get much useful energy from magma heat.
> Rock is too good an insulator. Several places around the world have
> done demonstration projects on hot spots. They have found that the
> amount of energy available drops steeply after a few years. It's a
> question of heat flux, only being a few tens of killowatts per square
> kilometer. You are not going to get a lot of cooperation at making
> collectors that are thousands of square kilometers.

You don't need magma. Here, we successfully install thermal
heatings. The rock becomes hotter towards down, and in the
order of 200m are sufficient for a family home togther with
a heatpump, pumping the temperature from some 6 degrees to 20
degrees. Hmm, yes, compared to oil, the electricity used for
the heat pump is more expensive.

Rene

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