Great innovation
December 19th, 2012 at 2:00 pm by David FarrarA reader writes:
Aquaflow (http://www.aquaflowgroup.com), an organisation competing in the GE: Ecomagination Energy Challenge. Aquaflow is partnered with New Zealand Trade & Enterprise and the United States Department of Energy. Their focus is renewable hydrocarbon fuels made from polluted municipal water.
Low-carbon emission fuels, clean water and all that good stuff.
I know there’s some big, and very different camps pitched for the Climate Change and environment debates, but I think most would agree Aquaflow’s work is the sort we want to see out there succeeding in the market. The waterways in this country could be cleaner, and addressing this issue is good for primary industries as well.
That’s great innovation. Turning polluted water into fuel!
You can vote for Aquaflow’s project in the Ecomagination Energy Challenge.
No tag for this post.
December 19th, 2012 at 2:10 pm
As an idea, great, the economics of the idea, sounds dodgy ? Sounds like someone angling for whacking great government subsidies to me.
Almost anything is possible, given enough cheap energy to achieve it. So why aren’t we headed flat out down the path to the only current viable large scale energy generating mechanism that is possible with technology we have today, nuclear, most especially non-U235 dependent nuclear, which means some form of breeder technology, and thorium based molten salt reactors are probably the most currently well understood and safest version of this. FYI, I’m calling Thorium a breeder cycle as it is actually U233 that fissions in the reactor, and that is formed from Th232 in situ.
Vote:December 19th, 2012 at 2:30 pm
“Turning polluted water into fuel!”
That’ll cause a few Greens’ heads to explode.
Vote:December 19th, 2012 at 2:44 pm
I just wish they would hurry up an commercialise their process – something they’ve been promising is just around the corner for about 5 years now…
Vote:December 19th, 2012 at 3:08 pm
Hmm. Removing algae from water is the same as removing pollution? Perhaps, but sounds like a bit of greenwash over top.
Vote:December 19th, 2012 at 3:31 pm
Ed – from their website:
Vote:December 19th, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Sounds bogus to me.
Vote:December 19th, 2012 at 8:19 pm
Would be better if they could make fuel straight from the dairy shed effluent and avoid polluting any waterways at all. Dung powered milk tankers! Don’t worry about them getting government subsidies though, in the NZ energy strategy the Nats said they weren’t into ‘picking winners’ . Nope, the Nats are into funding fossil fuels not innovation.
Vote:December 20th, 2012 at 9:09 am
Green wash for sure, as pointed out above, why wait for the pollutants to get in the water where it costs (taxpayer grants no doubt) to extract them when you could get them straight from the source?
Vote: