

  (Source: Recharge News)
Could help the Caribbean island become independent from imported energy







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By Solandri on 8/18/2010 7:25:38 PM , Rating: 2
With sufficient low-cost energy, you can drive most exothermic chemical reactions backwards. There's probably some way to dump a bunch of energy into H2O and CO2 from the air to produce alcohol chains, which we could use as liquid fuel for internal combustion engines.

Plants do essentially that - they take H2O from the ground, CO2 from the air, and energy from sunlight, and combine them to form sugars (CH2O chains) which are very similar to alcohols. The same sugars, when linked in long chains, become cellulose - aka wood. Ferment them and they become alcohol. Cook them under pressure long enough and they turn into petroleum.

