Have you read the idea in Discover about the Hydrocarbon synthesizer? It uses pressure and heat to turn anything (excepy nuclear waste) into various hydrocarbons, water and minerals.

If this is for real, I think we could be opening up a Pandora's Box. Ok, it would be good because gas would be cheap, but that would essentially stop the desire for people to design new clean fuels (fuel cells/ hybrid cars). Efficency would essentially be thrown out of the window (they said gas could be like 50 cents a gallon or cheaper) and people would pollute even more than they do now.

Any comments?

Click on Anything into oil by Brad Lemley
[URL=http://www.discover.com/current_issue/index.html]Discover

Pure hydrocarbons produce water and CO2 when burned, so i guess we are ok

:D

Pure hydrocarbons produce water and CO2 when burned, so i guess we are ok Ideally. Using air in the combustion introduces nitrogen and other impurities.

No combustion reaction is ideal. All of them always produce a varying amount of Carbon monoxide. It's inevitable.

The problem with it is that in most cases it is not energy positive: it takes more energy to make hydrocarbons from waste then you get out of it. This makes it useless as a energy source.