Technology and Society

Carbon Neutral?

SciAm reports a potentially interesting breakthrough in biofuels:

Dreyer and his colleagues built a reactor capable of producing hydrogen from soybean oil, biodiesel or sugar water without any of the buildup that would have resulted from a conventional process. To get the reactor warmed up, the researchers ignited a mixture of methane and oxygen in order to bring the catalyst to a searing 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Addressing concerns about keeping the process carbon-neutral, Paul Dauenhauer, another graduate student working on the project, notes that while methane is a fossil fuel, there are other ways to heat the catalyst that don’t involve burning petrochemicals. What’s more, once the reaction is running, it’s self-sustaining, and methane and oxygen are no longer required.

A fuel injector like those used in a car atomized the biofuels into tiny droplets that landed on a hot rhodium-cerium catalyst, which converted the fuel to syngas. This reaction released energy and heated the catalyst. The heat and ratio of carbon and oxygen in the reaction kept the buildup from sticking to the catalyst. For each type of biofuel, nearly all the fuel was converted and about 70 percent of the hydrogen bound up in the fuel molecules was given off as gas, the researchers report in this week’s Science. “We find we reach the theoretical maximum,” says Dauenhauer.

Cool.

War Commentary

Cause, Or Effect?

From a comment in this post:

AQ thrives on war and chaos.

(Implying that we’ve actually empowered Al Qaeda by removing Saddam, and that all the other problems in the world as well are, as usual, Amerikkka’s fault).

This is a fascinating statement. The last time that I recall Al Qaeda “thriving” was in Afghanistan, under the Taliban. Then, they had training camps, were training people by the hundreds, and were able to plan and execute things like 9/11.

I don’t think that they’re thriving in Iraq today, unless by “thriving,” you mean losing hundreds of Hirabis monthly. Much is made of the loss of American troops, and the deaths of civilians, but there’s much less reporting of the deaths of the Al Qaeda types, or it’s mixed in with the “civilian” deaths. Their current losses aren’t sustainable, and I think that they’ve ramped up the action only in hopes of influencing the US election. The only place they’re winning, really, is in the western media (just as was the case for the North Vietnamese in Tet).

The fact that they’re capable of causing chaos (unfortunately, it’s much easier to cause chaos than otherwise–entropy’s a bitch) doesn’t mean that they “thrive” on it. Believe me, they’d much prefer a stable government that they controlled. They certainly don’t have that now in Iraq. In fact, the majority Shia government is starting to hunt them down and make their lives thoroughly miserable.

Is this a disaster for Iraq? Perhaps.

Is it a disaster for the US? Only if we’re unwilling to accept any casualties whatsoever–by any previous standards of war, they remain low.

Is it a victory for Al Qaeda?

Only if we elect the Dems, and pull out.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!