Elvis Hargrove wrote in a message to Craig Healy:
EH> Besides, I don't understand all this conversion of potential
EH> energy that everyone seems to want to get into.  Lessee, we
EH> take sunlight and apply it to dirt to produce foodstuff,
EH> then apply distillation to that, then internal combust it
EH> into rotation, then apply the rotation to generation to make
EH> electricity to do.....?
EH> Every process has some efficiency losses, makes our
EH> electricity awfully expensive in raw material terms, don't
EH> it?
   Good point by itself, Elvis, but don't forget the times where
   it can be waste conversion.  Like for instance, the town I live
   in has a couple of potato packing plants.  During the winter months,
   they're making up semi-loads of these sick, chemi-laden spuds for
   the city folk to "eat," and to do this they have to pick out all
   kinds of rejects that have gone kinda bad.  These all go to the
   city landfill, if you can imagine dumptruck loads of great biomass
   being used for methane generation in the wrong way like this.
   I thought of getting a few loads into my compost pile for a microsecond
   or two, the first time I saw it, but then I thought of the chemicals
   they use for fertilizer/pest control, and said no thanks.  But I've
   often thought that the waste here could fuel a small ethanol plant,
   and if you burnt the potato champagne in a ic engine, the chemies
   would just go "harmlessly" away into the air we breathe.
   Anyhow, in this way, some use would be made of biomass that would
   otherwise just be more problems for our overloaded ecosphere.
  ... http://www.angelfire.com/biz/snwvlly/  : 50% less car pollution!
--- timEd-B10
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