If you learned that someone had invented a car that runs on water, you’d probably be thrilled. But if you found out that the car consumes 50 gallons of water for every mile driven, you might wonder if it’s worth it.
Of course any vehicle that requires 50 gallons of any liquid fuel is a nonstarter given the volume and weight of the fuel, but for the purposes of this thought exercise the issue is using up all that water.
Something very like this scenario is rapidly becoming a reality, and is even mandated by law. It turns out that producing ethanol from corn uses an awful lot of water, and the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requires the U.S. to produce 15 billion gallons...
Ghosts of NREL Algae Programs Past The basement of the marine biology department at the University of Hawaii has a hallway lit by a dim incandescent bulb. At the end of the hallway is a cardboard sign with the faded letters “ASP�? written on it. A creaky door leads to a dank-smelling room crowded...