[Vision2020] Big news from MIT

[Ted Moffett]

There already are methods to store vast amounts of solar energy via thermal
storage...The technological options for a renewable low carbon energy future
are abundant...Read below...
-----
If this MIT process can efficiently generate large quantities of hydrogen
that can be stored and distributed to internal combustion vehicles, it has
applications far beyond fuel cells... I wonder if I misunderstand this new
technology, given this potential is not mentioned, that I read, in this
article.  Is this also a new kind of fuel cell under discussion?  Any
electric source, from what I read, could generate hydrogen via this
process.

Nuclear electric power could generate hydrogen via this process to power
fuel cells or internal combustion engines for cars and trucks... Maybe this
technology is not scalable to this size...

Of course it is already known that in the high temperatures inside nuclear
reactors there are methods of more efficiently generating hydrogen, and
nuclear fusion, if finally made practical and affordable, could greatly
solve the energy/climate change problem... We construct little suns for
energy, with abundant fuel, deuterium/tritium... Seems too good to be true,
but nonetheless long term ten billion or more dollars will be spent
(unless...) on one of the greatest technological construction projects in
history, ITER:

http://www.iter.org
------------
NASA can afford to launch the shuttle with exorbitant inefficiently
generated quanties of hydrogen, because the taxpayers foot the bill...
Efficient hydrogen generation is a breakthrough...
--------------
Actually, we don't need miracle new technologies to power many homes in the
US via renewables.... Solar by day, wind by night; this could be business as
usual now for millions of consumers, if only the marketplace or government
or both had invested earlier.

T. Boone Pickens, with his "Pickens Plan," is already pushing a
wind/solar/natural gas combination for immediate (next ten years) roll out
on a massive scale, using natural gas now used for electricity generation,
for internal combustion engines, rather than oil sourced gasoline (get the
US off foreign oil!), while electricity that was generated via natural gas
(Avista uses significant natural gas for electricity) is generated by large
scale wind and solar roll out... New electric power distribution systems
would need to be constructed...  Think WWII scale mobilization of private
and public institutions..
--------------
Solar energy in large amounts can be stored to use at night, via thermal
storage (molten salt, or?), discussed below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/earth/15sola.html

"You take the energy the sun is putting into the earth that day, store it
and capture it, put it into the reservoir, and use it on demand," said Terry
Murphy, president and chief executive of SolarReserve, a company backed in
part by United Technologies<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/united_technologies_corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
the Hartford conglomerate.

---------
At Black & Veatch, a builder of power plants, Larry Stoddard, the manager of
renewable energy consulting, said that with a molten salt design, "your
turbine is totally buffered from the vagaries of the sun."
-----------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett

On 8/5/08, Kai Eiselein <fotopro63 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> How many people think big power companies, coal producers and oil companies
> will allow this to come to market?
>
> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html
>
>
> My guess, they won't and they will either use legislation to stop
> individual users, or they will purchase the patent and bury the technology
> until they can exploit it after they've bled the country dry of current
> sources.
> If MIT really cares about the good of mankind, rather than the almighy
> dollar, they will just put the instruction/process on the web for
> anyone/everyone to use and improve upon.
>
> ------------------------------
> Got Game? Win Prizes in the Windows Live Hotmail Mobile Summer Games Trivia
> Contest Find out how.<http://www.gowindowslive.com/summergames?ocid=TXT_TAGHM>
>
> =======================================================
>  List services made available by First Step Internet,
>  serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>               http://www.fsr.net
>          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> =======================================================
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20080807/0fee519f/attachment.html