E=MC^2... Part II

If we develop a means to produce a great abundance of energy, we can solve many of the world’s problems ranging from increasing agriculture production by making to cost of owning equipment negligible to decreasing our involvement in the Middle East. But first once we attain that level of energy production we need to develop a way to store and transmit this energy more effectively. There are many proposed solutions to this challenge, but the most discussed are ethanol, hydrogen, and batteries.

Ethanol has already been used effectively and has proven to be rather economically viable when the correct crop is chosen to produce the ethanol. Currently in the US we use mostly corn ethanol which is a highly subsidized industry and also protected by several tariffs against foreign ethanol. However corn is actually not a very good crop to produce ethanol with as it only gets 1.3 times as much energy out as we put in to produce the ethanol. In comparison Brazilian sugar cane ethanol gets 8.3 times the energy. You can read more on Brazilian ethanol from the New York Times here. Ethanol is ok for a short term solution as it is carbon neutral, meaning that all the carbon that is released by the combustion came from the air when the crop was growing. However it does have the draw back that it is increasing food cost and also that we would expand our agricultural areas which would further destroy native habitats, but this could be mitigated if we switch to more efficient plants which would not require as much area.

The hydrogen economy is an intriguing idea. Currently it is not practical because of the amount of energy required to produce the hydrogen gas, but with an abundant source of energy it could become viable. One of the most interesting methods which could be used to produce cheap hydrogen is Artificial Photosynthesis. The chemical process of photosynthesis is actually a two step process, first the water molecule is separated to produce hydrogen and oxygen and then that hydrogen is combined with CO2 to produce sugar. If we can stop the photosynthesis process at this first step we could harness an efficient cheap and clean source of hydrogen. There are many approaches which are being tried; most do not involve plants at all but use homorganic molecules like titanium dioxide. There are two interesting programs first is at Penn State and the second is an organic system at Australian National University. There is a problem with the storage of Hydrogen as it requires really high pressure and low temperatures, but I believe that this is just an engineering challenge which is almost worked out. If we can develop a cheap way to manufacture H I think it could be the answer for our mobile energy needs, most likely first through combustion and then with fuel cells.

Another important area of research that I do not think gets the credit it deserves is batteries. This is something that I think we should devote a lot of research money to as technology is moving toward being totally wireless and thus efficient batteries are going to be essential very soon. Electric cars are also a very possible solution, but they are currently limited by their batteries. There would not have to be many infrastructure changes with electric cars as all of us have electricity at our home, unlike hydrogen, and thus they could very quickly be phased in once we develop great batteries.

Overall I think all of these are part of the solution, we begin with flex fuel cars using efficient ethanol and migrate toward electric cars. Then as we develop the infrastructure for the hydrogen economy it gradually gets implemented over the next half century.