Saturday, March 10, 2007

A More Perfect Union



Here is a not so oldie, but a goodie with some updated links.

My Perfect World

T
here is a story out that Saudi Arabia produced less oil last month.

If it is true, and if their excuses are exactly that, excuses,

then Mathews Simmons may have accurately predicted our future

in his book Twilight in the Desert.

This morning, while in a meeting, we discussed the need

to offset the use of oil in our transportation sector with electricity.

We believe the best way to do this is with a plug in hybrid vehicle.

Another way is with an electric scooter, or electric assisted bike.

Segways would be pretty cool, if they weren't so dang expensive.

There are a lot of folks who are touting all kinds of biomass solutions,

but except in the case of cellulosic ethanol,

there is very little energy actually gained.

In a perfect world,

we need to use the sunlight to crack water into hydrogen and water.

We can do that with a photovoltaic panel and an electrolysis process.

We can do that with wind power and actually get a fuel

that we can afford.

But in a perfect world, we do away with the energy transducer,

and the electrolysis unit.

This process, which I call heliohydrogen,

can be biological or photochemical.

Here is an exciting announcement of a nano photochemical discovery.

The research group, led by Professor Kazunari Domen at Tokyo University and Professor Yasunobu Inoue at Nagaoka University of Technology has apparently succeeded in developing a photocatalyst that efficiently decomposes water to produce hydrogen under visible light.

The researchers reported their findings in the March 16, 2006, issue of British science journal Nature.

Photocatalyst releasing hydrogen from water
Nature

"Direct splitting of water using a particulate photocatalyst would be a good way to produce clean and recyclable hydrogen on a large scale , and in the past 30 years various photocatalysts have been found that function under visible light .

Here we describe an advance in the catalysis of the overall splitting of water under visible light: the new catalyst is a solid solution of gallium and zinc nitrogen oxide (Ga1-xZnx)(N1-xOx), modified with nanoparticles of a mixed oxide of rhodium and chromium.

The mixture functions as a promising and efficient photocatalyst in promoting the evolution of hydrogen gas."

In my perfect World,

there is no coal, no nuclear, and no oil.

Everthing is powered by the light that surrounds it.

When we must have a fuel,

we create heliohydrogen either biologically or photochemically,

without any inbetween step.

In my perfect World,

the World runs on clean, inexhaustable renewable energy,

much of it stored in a new generation of ultra capacitors.

Our cars are faster, lighter, and more reliable.

Our homes are cooler, better illuminated, more pleasant.

Our towns are reconfigured into a patchwork of village squares.

And these towns are connected by high speed mag-lev trains,

or carbon reinforced translucent tubes,

with super-fast corpuscular contact capsules

slipping through them at trans-sonic speed.

We tele-work from the park because Wireless IP is everywhere.

Food is grown locally and within easy transport of its end use.

Macro and Micro Cooperations compete to serve the Citizens,

while governments work locally to provide and protect.

In my perfect World,

the world of corporate consumption and consumers,

dies into a world of human cooperation and responsiblity.

In my perfect world,

the world of the Disunited Nations,

becomes something else.

An Earthfamily.


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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

come on, oz, is it too "dangerous" to ask people to simply drive less?? if GW is as serious as we all say it is, then why is this obvious, cost-free, serenity inducing contribution that each of us can make starting right now not at the top of the list instead of completely absent from the discussion in austin?? this simple goal is a key component of the seattle plan but some kind of fear factor keeps this necessary and obvious action item the "earth love that shall not be named"

bill bunch

11:43 AM  
Anonymous jtiemann@jonsplace.com said...

just a quick question about the "perfect world" photo you have at the top of this blog entry. I would like to use the photo and wondered if it is copyrighted and if so, who has it?

thanks

11:46 AM  

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