[extropy-chat] cheap alcohol

[The Avantguardian]

--- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> Not really a bioreactor. You'd waste a lot of joules
> for bug metabolism, and you'd still need to destill
> the
> alcohol.

Well thermodynamics pretty much guarantees you will
waste a lot of joules no matter what you do. The
joules the bugs use to keep alive, I think would be
pretty efficient compared to the heat loss in most
chemical processes. Moreover, they should be able to
extract all their energy needs right from the input
biomass. The beauty of bioreactors is that they don't
require lots of input energy to get over any
activation energy humps. There will still need to be
some though, to grind the biomass into tiny little
bits to maximize surface area exposed to the bugs.


> 
> If you want to go hi-tech, there's an new process
> which
> catalytically hydrogenates starch/sugar at about
> 200C
> and relatively low pressure, and produces hexane.

This sounds fairly cool, is it n-hexane or
cyclohexane? The two extra hydrogens on n-hexane would
make for slightly more energy output upon combustion. 


> 
> A low-tech version would just pellet the straw,
> and use a modern pellet burner. 

Well this doesn't sound very clean. I don't how you
would power an engine with a pellet burner except for
a return to steam engines. And we would have a huge
brown cloud hanging over our heads the way the Chinese
do. 

> 
> Do you have a working process prototype, or are you
> just thinking of starting to develop one?

No, although I have had the idea for years, it hasn't
progressed much further than a few schematics in my
notebook. Developing it further would require a bit
more time and money than is afforded by being a
graduate student. But things change and I may get a
shot at building one in the next few years.
 

The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson


		
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