One of the Brickmuppet's crack team of science babes informs us of a rather large breakthrough in low pressure propane storage.
Specifically, 180 times their own volume and 1/7th the pressure of normal tanks!
This makes car storage much more viable. Note that a somewhat less energy dense natural gas (syn-gas)can be made unnaturally via biomass reactors so a good portion of garbage, especially organic waste could turn into energy rather than landfill fillings. Here , in fact is a proposal for turning hog farms into syn-gas factories!
The potential for sewage treatment plants is obvious in fact very simple syngas plants are now in operation in India for off the grid fuel production. With a solar array and windmill they could make fully off-grid housing considerably more practical I would think.
This doesn't even require new engines, in Europe, natural gas cars are not unheard of and propane is also used on forklifts here, natural gas is quite similar in its properties.
This is a little story, not getting much coverage, but it has the potential to be quite big.
2 comments:
ACtually, according to the recycling episode of Penn and Teller's "Bull###t!", they already pipe methane out of landfills for use powering homes in California....
Great blog I enjoyed reading
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