Inspired by the solar-hydrogen-home thread.....

OK here's a whacky idea I conceived while driving home from the grocery
store last night.... Maybe somebody's already thought of this, who knows.

OK so here it is. It's based around some type of little photosynthetic
critter / algae / bacterium etc.. Now the idea is to use the byproducts of
said creature to generate power.

Remember, photosynthetic critters!

1. The critter excretes hydrogen and directly feeds a fuel cell
2. The critter excretes methane or other more complex molecule from which H2
is extracted (most do-able in my opinion)
3. A fuel cell is developed that can utilize the chemicals directly
dissolved in the critter's tanks - H2, methane, hell, maybe even something
that can process the glucose electrochemically right out of the
chloroplasts - WAY out there and crazy.
4. Find a critter that can basically live in the "electrolyte" of a
"battery" and re-charge it with it's waste or other excretions.


Now this is just an idea, and I know a lot of these, especially the gas
producing ones are probably dangerous in the respect that little creatures
require oxygen. And a nice mixture of oxygen and H2 or methane can be
explosive, the glucose idea is probably chemically impossible, and any
decent electrolyte fluid will be way too much for any living thing to
handle....

BUT!! There are MANY people that know a lot more about this than I...


Let the opinions flow!

Andy

 

....

How about this...
Grow blue-green algae (photosynthetic critters) in a large pond filled
with the kinds of stuff they like to eat (a little fertilizer, some
sewage, that kind of stuff). Every now and then scoop out buckets of
them, dry them in the sun, press out the oil (use in diesel generator)
and press what remains into pellets that you load in your pellet stove
or furnace.

Anthony

 

Eh... kinda not the direction I was thinking. I was going more with the
bio-chemical rather than the bio-mass. Plus, hybrid poplar trees are a lot
better at making lots of cellulose fast.

Andy