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This Web-only article is a special rich-media presentation of the feature, "7 Radical Energy Solutions," which appears in the May 2011 issue of Scientific American (subscribe here). The presentation was created by Zemi media. Find all our other interactive offerings here
May 16, 2011 | 12
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12 Comments
Add CommentI love the graphics. For clean coal they have symmetrically aligned stack of molecules coming out of two cooling towers. Yeah, that's a big problem: we must clean up the water vapor coming off heated river water.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeautiful. These are really creative ideas. I wonder about the potential yield if some of these methods of energy production were to be combined - namely the Salt Scrubber which cleans the carbon dioxide from coal emissions and the Syngas generator (solar gasoline). The solar gasoline generator could use the waste from the coal scrubber!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTHe only way that we can do it forever is by using Gravity Control.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow, power at 1 cent per Kilowatt or less.
A Power Station can be nbuilt in the Micro, Mega or Gaga size.
No fuel needed after start up.
Wow, missed the most important energy source.. Thorium Reactors.. no meltdown, waste safe in 10 years, non-proliferation fuel, 1200 year supply at current energy levels in the u.s. No need for coal.. no need for oil.. out of the middle east and 2 wars.. We invented the technology in 50's and 60's. Google it! I was anti-nuke till I found out about Thorium reactors.. i urge you to check it out and tell your friends
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmazing graphics. I love the truly interactive format. It really illustrates the concepts in an interesting and easy to grasp manner. Great job.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo you too missed the most important form of new energy ...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLawrence Berkeley just held a week workshop 'AHIF' and it has some outstanding results. A new (old science) RF driver for Fusion was brought forward by FPC, it has 34 years of endorsements and "no show stoppers". 35 GW potential or 500,000 barrels of oil per day as a carbon neutral fuel ... visit www.fusionpowercorporation.com too much to put in this email! It is very exciting!!
CaliforniaHal
GRAVITY CONTROL is the system used by the Flying Saucer. I discovered and patented it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOriginally offered to Nasa, so that Shuttles would not need rockets anymore, it was rejected. It would make it possible to reach the ISS in one hour, the Moon in a couple of hours and Mars within one day, using a constant acceleration of ONE G, but it would make the Rocket Industry obsolete.
These spheres under a Flying Saucer are the Propulsion Units (PU).
They can lift a 10 or 100 ton vehicle off the ground and beyond, using a very small amount of power.
A PU can also lift a weight of that size 300 feet in a Silo.
When it comes down, it can activate a generator.
A Power Station would consist of two Silos, working alternating. Power at 1 cent per Kilowatt or less.
A Power Station can be built anywhere in the Micro-, Mega-or Gigawatts size in a few months.
No fuel needed after start-up. It can even be used in ships.
Look at : One Terminal Capacitor Joseph...
The solution offered for coal is anything but radical, just a gradual amplification of what we are already doing. A radical solution: We should stop trying to clean the exhaust, after we burn coal, and, instead, refine coal, before we burn it. The Haber-Bosch process produced liquid fuel from coal for the Nazi war machine, in about 1937. A difficulty with the process, is that it is endothermic. Canadians make the mistake of burning a premium fuel, natural gas, to endothermically refine heavy crude oil. We should, instead, burn refined tar, and pure carbon, produced by the process, and route the exhaust, carbon dioxide and water, to irrigate and feed algae, putting oxygen into the atmosphere, and producing still more liquid fuel.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree. Society needs to be using Thorium. Unfortunately, governments seem to avoid the issue of nuclear energy like the plague. When a large amount of the population isn't science literate, it's hard to have an actual discussion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo add to your beautiful ad: solution that affects at least two radical issues;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGiven the genuine concern of messing with carbon, until recently buried, the atmosphere of our planet, and fear, also genuine, and especially of those who already have more than enough until his death, to dismantle the infrastructure of the current economy; arise the discovery in Panama of the RADICAL "OCEANOGENIC POWER" which Third World rulers of Panama, and therefore of the world, fail to recognize, in obedience to the popes of pseudo religious groups, as ever but with different names, full of envy and jealousy, which determines the extent of progress of the countries, and as well controlled as a result of bad past experiences in first world countries, by contrast, in the third world seeking to experience orgasms in their stupid theories.
This project wich, it seems, it is intended like business booking for after another world war, on the contrary, if we build it already RADICALLY, additional to give us enough clean energy, we definitely would test whether global warming is caused by humans.
And this is also to be radical
But for apocalyptic fans: �hurray the blah blah blah! What kind of serious scientists, and worse, rational animal, if our jealousy exceed our love for the Beauty of Truth?
Dear SA.My gratulations for the article. At least as interesting where for me the different comments. I studied only 2 semester at KU Lawrence Kansas. A member
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisof our family is financially evolved in the use of exhaust gases to get energy out of them. Never forget the primary laws of the theoretical thermodynamic. You cannot get around them !
Dr.Kamlander@aon.at