Citizens:

I am moved to comment on the recent piece on the Canadian tar sands.

High school chemistry:

Our basic inputs are water, air, and natural hydrocarbons of various
degrees. Given these, we can make any hydrocarbon fuel we like; the problem
is the energy required to do so and the sources for that energy.

The ideal fuel would be hydrogen, because we get a lot of energy when we
combine it with oxygen and the product is water. Problems: hard to store,
expensive to make, and no infrastructure. (Industrial hydrogen is made from
natural gas, CH4, and so is a cop-out.) I know of no serious proposal to
electrolize H2O directly to get the hydrogen the hard but clean way. (Nukes?
Wind farms in Patagonia?)

Next would be any fuel with the most hydrogen and the least carbon - like
natural gas, where four hydrogens are carried by a single carbon. But hard
to store and carry. Closed-course vehicles like cabs, garbage trucks, and
school buses use it just fine.

Next down would be the whole spectrum of gasoline-like liquid fuels, where
more carbon and less hydrogen is involved as you move down the scale.
Refining the
"heavy" stuff, like Venezuelan oil, requires that energy be supplied to pry
hydrogen from water and attach it to carbons as needed to make the lighter
product we know and love. The byproduct of "refining", of course, is lots of
CO2. ("Heavy" is a misnomer, referring to viscosity; the stuff all about the
same weight per cubic foot.)

Canadian tar is next down. Same problem, but worse. Lots of carbon, not much
native hydrogen.

At bottom is coal, nearly pure carbon. Same deal. Water, carbon, and energy
can
make hydrocarbons, but the energy price is high. This is what the Nazis did
in WWII. Gotta burn a lot of carbon to do this. They were motivated by war.
The
governor of  Montana needs jobs and likes to make hydrocarbons this way.
He has the carbon and water, but must use the public atmosphere. Real-life
coal contains a lot of bad stuff besides carbon, which is dumped in the
atmosphere when it is burned to make the reaction go. Anybody been near the
big Navajo power plant near the Four Corners in the last few years? Remember
the acid rain thing in the eastern US?

Alcohol is a carbohydrate, where water is attached to carbons, not
hydrogen. That means we can't get energy from the hydrogen-oxygen reaction
and we just
have the carbon to burn. Plants make carbohydrates, a lot of cellulose, in
addition to sugars and starches, but we don't know
how to make commercial alcohol from cellulose yet, so we basically put food
in our gas tanks and accept the inefficiencies.

No easy answers. Like with many tough questions, where you stand depends on
where you sit.

Zeke Smith

Well done Zeke.

OK I think we are done with this. People signed up for rotary information.

Paul Lamar

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