Fab you need to get this
 

Instant Bio
it's in your neck of the woods too.

Erick; Funny you should mention this. Professor Jovanovic is one of the people at OSU that I've been working with on my hydro-cyclone experiments!

I actually visited with him and saw the unit you are talking about. Unfortunately, this nano-technology is 3-5 years away. He still has not been able to get around the need for the catalyst.

You wouldn't believe the number of people working on biodiesel world-wide. The japanese have found away of using crystalized sugar as a medium for a solid catalyst.

The use of algae as a scrubber for coal fired power-plants is proceeding at a fast pace. MIT has a pilot project now that reduces CO by 80 percent and the by-product is Biodiesel. Some strains will produce upwards of 10,000 gallons per acre!

This is an exciting time for alt-fuels.

FABMANDELUX. :-X25 :-fire

Neither internal combustion nor external combustion (steam) engines will ever be the final answer to power requirements, there are just to many negatives associated with the combustion aspect. However, at this point in time, there are few readily available practical alternatives. Electricity generated by nuclear plants has its own significant negative side. Wind generated electricity is being fought tooth and nail by environmentalists because it may be hazardous to birds, there are years of litigation ahead. Fuel Cell technology is years away from being safely and reliably usable in the massive quantities needed. Hydrogen as a fuel is extremely dangerous, hydrogen burns rapidly at extreme temperatures and almost invisibly (remember the Hindenberg).
Current trends toward Hybrids, gasoline/electric, leaves some unanswered questions: how long will the battery packs last and what will you do with all the used packs (old batteries are a serious environmental problem).

I am sure that in time the problem will be solved, in the interim we need to move to cleaner burning fuels that do not depend on a resource that is limited in supply and requires major environmental disruption to obtain.

While ethanol is seen as a replacement for gasoline it isn't the best fuel choice internal combustion engines, it is nearly an energy deficient fuel source (it takes almost as much energy to produce ethanol as can be recoverd from using it as a fuel) and most existing engines will require modification to burn it as fuel.
Diesel has always been a better choice of fuel for internal combustion engines: it is easier to refine, does not give off as many polluting waste products, contains 17% more energy per unit volume, and is safer (less flamable).
Now consider Bio Diesel: cleaner burning than Petro, does not require major powerplant mods to use as a fuel like ethanol, made from a renewable non polluting resource, and the kicker it frees us from dependancy on foriegn not necessarily friendly governments.

I believe we will see a gradual movement to diesel driven vehicles. Mercedes (Daimler) seems to be leading the way the way presently but I expect to see others jump on the bandwagon if they are successful.

The great energy debate.

Phydeaux88 you are correct about the deferent types of sources of energy and the issues we have with each. The problem Hydrogen is not the flammability. We are lacking the delivery system to the end user. Hydrogen is no more and no less dangerous than compressed natural gas or propane. To get liquid hydrogen it takes a lot of energy to produce and store it. The other issue is mot of the hydrogen produced in the USA is from cracking natural gas.

There is a new nuclear plant that can produce electricity and has a byproduct of hydrogen.

What gets lost in this debate is the storage of energy. We use gasoline and diesel because they are easy to produce in large amounts and have a long storage life compared to other sources. In the Northwest we have large dams that produce electricity. During most winter months we can produce more that we need in our region. There is no cost effective way to store electricity but we can use it to produce other forms of fuel. One example is we grow crops that can produce vegetable oil and sugars to make ethanol and Bio-diesel in the winter months and use the excess electricity as the energy to produce and store for later use.

Bryan Will