New Chemical Process Produces Biofuel Strong Enough to Power Jets

This article is CR4P.

10 times more powerful than what? Here I was thinking that maybe someone had managed to polymerize cyclopropane (OK, the ring strain still doesn't account for near that much Δ, maybe it was nitrate esters of polycyclopropane!), or something else really neat. Instead we get this- condensing fermentation products (p.s.- last time I looked, "normal" ethanol or otherwise still has 2 carbon atoms!) which is fine, interesting and lots of other things, but at most may result in a doubling of available energy. 10 times more carbon atoms in a molecule does not give 10 times the energy density.

This could have been interesting with more fact and less headline. C'mon- the election's over, enough of the hype already.

Its all in how you juggle the numbers.

Years ago our local university spent several hundred thousand dollars changing out all of its campus lighting for new stuff that was supposed to be twice as efficient as the old stuff.

It was supposed to save several tens of thousands of dollars a year on electricity based on the assumption that they woud be spending half as much on lighting power. Well they went from an average system efficiency of 92% to 96% so in a way they did cut the system losses in half.

That said however the roughly 4% gain opposed to the 50% gain selling point worked out to have a estimated break even point on the investment that was about ten times longer than the lighting systems life expectancy was.

I'm sure that journalism these days is going from bad to worse. I thought it might be interesting to look up the author of this article. The following extract explains everything:

"Having trained at the San Francisco Clown Conservatory, she is excited to use her experience as performer and scientist to engage audiences and share her enthusiasm for the natural world."