Fr Robert Ballecer, SJ 's story on e-diesel seems to have peaked my interest during some down t...

[G+_Jason Perry]

Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ's story on e-diesel seems to have peaked my interest during some down time at work.

 

If anyone else has any links to how different parts of the process works please share.

http://carbonengineering.com/

[G+_Eddie Foy]

'green' is a false economy.  You can not create nor destroy energy.  You can not get more out of a medium then put into making it.  Oil/Fossil fuels are a renewable source (you are just impatient. )

[G+_Jason Perry]

Eddie Foy You are right, you cant make energy out of nothing. I personally wonder what the long term concequences are from green technology. What are tge concequences of harvesting geothermal energy? What are the adverse effects of solar and wind energy? You cant say nothing, we just dont know the full extent of it. There is the issue of the toxic production of producing solat panels and the "health hazard" of the vibrations from a wind turbine; but, I am not convinced we know the full effect. My current interest in the subject is that of the parts of the process. You cant nock something, or put your faith in it, if you dont understand it.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

I agree with Eddie Foy, that process can't possibly be efficient.  That said, it looks like it might be a good way to produce fuel when combined with the new low waste and no possible meltdown nuclear plants.  I haven't take a long look at it yet, did they ever state how much fuel they get out of per square foot/meter of that equipment pictured?

[G+_Jason Marsh]

Does nothing for the other byproducts of combustion. The only real solution is to vastly reduce how much we burn to power our stuff. Sure, oil and coal are "renewable", but they're pretty filthy when used. We can't create energy, but we have plenty of it beaming at us from the sun and we can harvest that in a few ways. The question of whether we should continue building a carbon rube goldberg or harvest free energy by the most direct method seems pretty easy to answer.

[G+_Akira Yamanita]

Eddie Foy I understand your point, but that's not 100% accurate. The total output simply can't exceed the total input. Solar and wind energy are part of that input so it's possible to (and we do) manufacture solar panels and wind turbines using less energy than they will generate (thanks to the external sources of energy) than used to manufacture them.

 

Green is a pretty meaningless term but sustainability makes sense, even though it's a rat race. Everything eventually runs out if you consume it faster than can be replenished. The reality is that we're just looking for ways that are more sustainable than what we have now and we will deal with each new sustainability challenge (raw materials, land, etc.) as they come along.

[G+_Jason Perry]

Travis Hershberger the process doesn't produce fuel just CO2 that then can be combined with H2 to produce fuel. Because energy cant just be created I would imagine even when combined with hydrogen the potential energy is nothing more than the sum of the energy that went in to make it minus the energy wasted due to inefencies like heat produced in the reactions used to create it. I take this as nothing more than an admirable effort to clean up the environment while producing a useful biproduct.

[G+_Jason Perry]

Akira Yamanita I think you hit the nail on the head with your point on sustainability. We will never be 100 sustainable but the challenge is to become more sustainable. Look at fossil fules, do you think we truely understood their impact when we started using them? My guess is someday we will learn how sustainable wind and solar really are and we may not like what we find out.