Turning Carbon Dioxide Into Bioplastics

Hmmm, interesting. I don't know if it will be cost competitive or even scalable. He will probably need some luck with the sand blasting of the PVs. He is going to create quite a bit of ozone. At ground level in a completely barren desert, I am not sure what affect it will have on the environment. If placed in the areas where vegetation grows or upwind of those areas, the ozone is going to do a lot of damage.

If it is easy, and cheap, then it should be possible to make a prototype. When I see a hundred charcoal briquettes a minute being spit out of this machine, I'll take it seriously. (That is...I will supply money.) Until that happens, it sounds like a snipe hunt.

There is a chicken-and-egg problem here. Until serious engineers see a commercial device, it does not deserve their attention, but until serious engineers take a close look at it, this idea will never become a commercial device. It is presumed guilty of being a snipe hunt, without examination. And even a prototype will be dismissed as not scalable to deal with utility-scale emissions.

Let's see... The proposal calls for a set of these converters with the footprint 4% of the Sahara Desert.

So, one hundred forty five thousand square miles. 145,000 Mi². Possibly a rectangle 300 miles by 480 miles. The entire state of Montana.

A ten percent scale prototype would be the size of Rhode Island, Delaware, New Jersey and Connecticut combined. A one percent scale prototype would be about the size of Rhode Island.

That is not an inconsiderable chicken-and-egg.

I have a wood lot out back of my place. It converts Carbon Dioxide into burnable wood, with a remarkable amount of useful structural wood as a by product. We already have a bio-plastic...its called timber. Such a gaget would have to exceed this production. A swamp of only a few meters square can produce a huge amount of biomass, which again, can be turned into fuel, or an oil substitute, or can be buried to be used to create oil for future gerations. And ducks can nest in a well managed swamp.

That being said, I didn't suggest or ask for a prototype the size of Delaware, just one big enough to spit out charcoal briquetes faster than I could get them from a wood lot before I would bother to look at it. If it was as easy and as cheap as the OP suggests, that should be easy to do. And I still won't be interested in putting money into it until it could be shown to be "scaleable", "saleable" and commercially viable. At which time, you will have to fight off BIG COAL's patent lawyers. If you want chase down snipes, be my guest...there are plenty out there. Some of them even exist.

(water injected engines comes to mind, though hydrogen fuel cells and wave generators come in second and third.)

At least it is not an over unity device.

Yusef, I may not been clear in my comment.

It's true you didn't suggest or ask for a prototype the size of Delaware. The point of my comment really is: Why bother to prototype at all? This thing is not constructable at a 1% scale, let alone full size. What construction project on the face of the earth even begins to approach the size of the state of Rhode Island? I cannot think of one.

Just across the bay from here. They have secured some funds to go the extra mile and seem to be very optimistic about it. They claim it as a world first, go figure.

http://www.jcu.edu.au/blogs/atjcu/entry/innovative_algae_to_fuel_project

Good funding, Ky.

I wish I wasn't such a suspicious auld phart, but so many of these projects seem to exist only to get funding, and when the funding dries up, the power plants vanish. It is like SO NOT a world's first!

The University here in Peterboro was digesting water hyacinth which was dragged out of the trent canal over thirty years ago. They are still doing that. (that link was to ASTRA, an Indian development site which is doing great things!) Usually of course, it is mixed with cow manure to aid digestion, and it seems to be a way to get rid of garbage! (That has to be good!) There do seem to be some problems, but of course the basic idea is sound.

I wish them luck. I remember a lecture I attended which suggested that the entire Don River (so polluted that it once caught fire!) through Toronto could be made crystal clear in only a hundred meters by making beds of water hyacinth for it to flow through. But the resultant biomass would not be good cattle feed because the plant takes all the heavy metals and other contaminants out of the water.

It has occured to me since that lecture that if that can be done, then why is it NOT being done? That question MUST be answered to everybody's satisfaction before wasting time and money by either re-inventing the wheel or splashy new tech with limited potential.

They are not difficult questions. I only fear that the political will is missing....the technology is there now.

They had a local TV special and sold it as "the world first". Unless they are keeping the kernel secret nothing is new.

I could hop on a ferry, watching whales on the way and ask them? But without a chequebook in tow they are not going to open their books.

There is a fine line between scientific fraud and exaggerating to investors. I think, in this specific case, the journos have a lot to answer for, no surprise there though.

Nothing comes from everything, Ky.