Bio-diesel is probably NOT the right word, since it has nothing to do with anything “Bio”.

There’s this little outfit in New Mexico called Los Alamos National Laboratory. You may have heard of them? They KNOW energy. They’ve done “stuff” in regards to energy…..lots and lots of stuff.
They’ve come up with what they call “Green Freedom”. Believe it or not the idea is to make fuel from air.

Riiiiiight!

Actually it’s for real. Conceptually it’s no big deal. Motor Fuel, be it gasoline, alcohol or diesel is basically long carbon chains intertwingled with hydrogen. Usually this combination of carbon chains and hydrogen ,(and other less desirable stuff), is “mined” in the form of crude oil and then refined into various types of petroleum products including gasoline and diesel.


Crude oil is not the only source of those carbon chains though, not even the only fossil source. There’s also coal. The US has a LOT of coal. There’s a process to convert coal to diesel. It’s not a new technology. The bad guys used it in WWII. It’s just currently more expensive than crude oil.

Carbon chains can also be grown (corn, etc) and then converted into biodiesel. Anything organic can be converted to an alcohol which can then be used as a fuel or converted to another form (diesel or gasoline) which is THEN used as fuel. With the one of the cellulose to alcohol processes even grass can be turned into fuel. Some of those processes might actually be economically viable.

Were not about to run out of fuel. It’s abundant. The only question is how “messy” are we willing for it to be and how much do we want to pay for it.

Fuel-from-air is NOT messy. According to the article if put into commercial operation today with a nuclear reactor for the prime energy source then the resultant gasoline would retail for about $3.40 a gallon.

……and the bad news is?