Re: [Amc-list] Anything into oil

[Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>]

Dave McCombs wrote:
> I remember that. Thermal depolymerization looks good on the surface, but a)
> it looks like a violation of the Laws of Thermdynamics to me and b) even if
> it works as advertised, can it operate on a large-enough scale basis to do
> us all any good?

I can't comment on this technical process, but a general problem with 
convert (a -> b) is the amount of energy required. There will be good 
results from many processes (butanol, some ethanol, etc) but none are 
gonna be the single magic bullet that replaces all petro sources.

It's safe to say, conservative even, that there will never, ever, in our 
thinkable human history, be one "fuel source" that does so many things 
as petroleum did. We might as weill just get over it now.

This "fuel" idea has got to go. I know I sound like a broken record 
(CD?) but other than "recovering" what is previously stored from the 
long past (oil) or wasted (eg. the energy dissipated as heat in brakes 
should be stored for later use instead) there is only energy STORAGE or 
TRANSPORT. It's gotta come from somewhere!

Oil (coal, NG, etc) is old energy, and with it's release comes Stuff 
(carbon, etc). That's "fuel" in the sense that someone else did the work 
long ago, we're just pumping it and burning it.

Nuclear fission is also "fuel" in that sense of the work to make the big 
atoms was done long ago, and we crack 'em to release the energy within. 
There's side effects there too that would probably be tolerable if you 
kept cheapskate corporate-growth bean counters from making decisions on 
how to run it.

Other than that, I can't think of a single "fuel" in all of the earth.

The smart, but hard to do, and "not cost effective" to people who wanna 
profit quarter to quarter (reality? time to change that "reality"), is 
to use the energy that just literally drops on the ground, a few 
kilowatts per square yard, about half the day.

That, plus consume less, which really just means stop wasting, and 
zillions of niche solutions, instead of this 19th century idea of one 
solution for all problems.
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