Comment by chubs
16 hours ago
I'd love to see a 'manhattan project' to get off of oil, in any way possible eg batteries or algae-produced diesel, whatever works, for geopolitical purposes.
16 hours ago
I'd love to see a 'manhattan project' to get off of oil, in any way possible eg batteries or algae-produced diesel, whatever works, for geopolitical purposes.
This was the original mission of the Department of Energy…
In a very concrete way China has basically been running it. It's given us EVs, a massive PV cost reduction, cheap hydropower, cheap wind power, lots of battery cost reductions, and perhaps even enhanced competitiveness in the nuclear market. Also modern high speed rail which is readily fueled by non-ICE methods.
Algae diesel would be amazing.
Honestly not really. Insolation energy is not that high, and photosynthesis tops out at around 10% under best conditions, and that's energy out the end of photosystem (solar cells are pushing 30% and perovskite might go to 40 or 50%), so doesn't take into account inefficiency in your sugar (much less hydrocarbon) conversio. The care and feeding of algae is annoying, they grow really slowly so contamination is a constant problem, and they self-shade, so the suface area to volume of growth conditions must be high. And a high surface area means awful evap problems... The list goes on
None of those things change the fact that you're growing your own diesel, which is really cool
Well we could just use the original manhattan project. Nuclear works, it is just expensive.