Power Q&A: Jamie Hyneman
The Discovery Channel mythbuster and weird-energy aficionado tackles algae, grape juice, dirty diapers, and seven other wacky energy-source ideas.
On the Discovery Channel's MythBusters, Jamie Hyneman slays urban legends with the greatest of ease. Since he's also a weird-energy enthusiast (he once powered a small rocket with a salami), we asked him to help us separate the big ideas from the duds on the energy frontier.
ENERGY SOURCE: Cow manure
HOW IT WORKS: In an anaerobic digester, bacteria break down manure and produce methane, which is trapped and used to generate electricity.
PLAUSIBLE: It's already being used in California. "nasa actually investigated this, because if you're going to Mars and you've got people on board, you've got poo," says Hyneman.
ENERGY SOURCE: Human motion
HOW IT WORKS: Create a "crowd farm" like the Sustainable Dance Club in Rotterdam.
BUSTED: JH: "Go for the babies. Just put them on a little treadmill and let 'em rip."
ENERGY SOURCE: Magnetic motors
HOW IT WORKS: Evangelical entrepreneur Dennis Lee claims his 500%-efficient motors will bring free energy and "an abundance of wealth for worldwide end-times evangelism."
BUSTED: There's no sign the technology actually works, but Lee has gotten rich selling dealerships to true believers. JH: "I've gotten so that I can smell these things a mile away."
ENERGY SOURCE: Unicellular green algae
HOW IT WORKS: Deprived of sulfur and oxygen, they produce high yields of hydrogen.
PLAUSIBLE: JH: "Algae are such basic, simple organisms. If you optimize them, they are going to produce massive quantities of whatever you have tailored them to."
ENERGY SOURCE: Raindrops
HOW IT WORKS: The Atomic Energy Commission uses special plastic to convert raindrops' falling motion into electricity.
BUSTED: JH: "A when-pigs-fly kind of scenario. It's millions of times more efficient to collect hydroelectric power through a dam than raindrop by raindrop."
ENERGY SOURCE: Old tires
HOW IT WORKS: Microwave enthusiast Frank Pringle found that nuking tires in a vacuum creates diesel fuel, combustible gas, carbon black, and high-strength steel.
BUSTED: JH: Tires do contain hydrocarbons, but "it requires a relatively huge amount of energy to do that conversion. I'm a little suspicious of using microwaves."
ENERGY SOURCE: Empty space
HOW IT WORKS: Thomas Bearden says he can use vacuum energy to power a generator.
BUSTED: JH: "The universe is filled with energy, but pulling energy out of a vacuum or something—there's no substance there as far as I'm aware."
ENERGY SOURCE: Grape juice
HOW IT WORKS: NanoLogix uses bacteria to convert Welch's sugar runoff into hydrogen.
PLAUSIBLE: JH: As with algae, "with microbes there is no bottleneck to slow you down."
ENERGY SOURCE: Dirty diapers
HOW IT WORKS: A British company turns poop and plastic from diapers into gas and oil.
BUSTED: JH: "Are you really going to be able to isolate diapers in such huge volumes that you're running your entire country off of gasoline powered by diapers? No."
ENERGY SOURCE: Greenhouse gases
HOW IT WORKS: Los Alamos scientists propose exposing air to potassium carbonate, which absorbs carbon dioxide that is then converted into methanol, gasoline, or jet fuel.
PLAUSIBLE: JH: "How do you come up with the energy to do this conversion? If you can get it from something like sunlight, then there is your free lunch."
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Can you have Jamie do a review of Focus Fusion? They seem to be onto something, but is it as plausible as it seems?
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A lot of these ideas are really plausible. The trick is to think outside the box and fix the problems (why it won't work). Human motion might not be practical but car motion might (little levers imbedded in the road, geared properly, attached to motors, and voltage regulated/conditioned). Efficient magnetic motors - friction is the problem. Reduce friction and motors are more efficient. Direct energy conversion from rain might not be a good idea, but look for large rooftops/surfaces where rainwater collects and convert the runoffs into a bunch of mini hydroelectric plants for local energy use. Old tires are being used right now to turn raw cement into klinker. Heat is energy. Dirty diapers - A diaper manufacturer can create a dirty diaper collection service and collect the diapers (think hospitals and families with a zillion kids). Turn the collected diapers into gas and oil to help run the plant. Paper manufacturers use their pulp waste (lignin) to create fuel to help in the manufacture of paper.
The only bad idea is to poo-hoo ideas. Many great inventions were originally seen as follies.
Love the show, too bad they wrecked the caddy, 'cause it would have been great to prove you could get an old beast like that to get 30MPG, plus older high- compression engines can get more power out of E10 fuel(10.5:1 and over, I think it is). Caddies of that vintage had the 472-500CID v-8's with higher compression, would've been a great testbed. The ethanol ate the carb seals and fuel pump diaphragms, but with some neoprene here and there, and overdrive, even a 70's deville could achieve good emissions and mileage. It's a thought...
Jamie's comment re solar energy reminds me of a documentary I saw years ago (devices to use free fuel -solar, wind, wave action, temperature gradients, etc.). Some were better than others, but ALL of them required more energy to make than they would pay back in their usefull lives.
Thank you Mr. Cheney. If it can't be done without benefiting the oil company, it can't be done. You're not thinking LONG TERM on the economic viability side of the equation.
Regarding the "empty space" energy source, you should really use its proper name: zero-point energy. It is not actually using energy from empty space, but is taking advantage of a strange artifact of quantum mechanics. Check the wikipedia entry for zero point energy and the Casimir effect for details -- it is all still just nanoscale lab experiments and may actually go nowhere, but the energy is created and can be demonstrated to have a real effect on physical components but it is decades away from any sort of practical tool.
Raul, you suggest using the motion of cars as a source of energy - are you sure that's a good idea? Bear in mind that it takes energy to move cars in the first place. I suppose you might get away with using it at the bottom of a hill, but even then you're taking energy from the cars, which they have to make up with engines far less efficient than a larger power plant would be, and as always, in such conversions a lot of the energy you do gain will be wasted.
Such a scheme has very few, very specialised applications - most of the more obvious ones turn out to be spectacularly bad ideas after a little thought, and the rest end up with a minuscule gain for a lot of time, money and effort, which could be put to better use in another form of power generation.
The local energy use from large rooftops might power a lightbulb or two, but again would be minimal unless the weather was really bad, and so you wouldn't want it hooked up to anything you might want to use in normal conditions. Again, the cost and complexity would involve a lot of waste - you'd be better off just using a more common source, and probably less polluting once you consider the infrastructure required for the scheme.
Diapers... again, the sheer effort involved would make the scheme ludicrously impractical - if nothing else, the pollution and energy required to transport the things would be less than the energy gained. You'd be using a large amount of oil or gas and a lot of man-hours to get a tiny amount back.
Thinking outside the box is good, but you really have to start considering scale.
nl, that's not ALWAYS a bad thing. There are many applications in which such a system would be useful. They're just specialised, small-scale and uncommon.
Mel Phistopheles, you want long term? Solar power is the way to go.
Oh, no, not for the planet. That's not practical at all. No, the way to go in the extremely long term is a dyson sphere - a sphere of solar panels (more or less) surrounding Sol, powering habitats and manufacturing facilities in space, so that we don't have to mess up the ecosystems of any more planets or moons. Hey, with that much energy, we could make a decent start at terraforming somewhere that doesn't currently have one.
Thank you for your diligence about energy policy. Many could benefit from it. I invite you to view my campaign page at www.WilliamBunker2008.blogspot.com and MythBust my platforms. I'd love to see what you have to say about the Business Plot or the Battle of Los Angeles.
Energy Source: Water
Lots of scam artists are selling "power your car with water" systems.
Busted: They "work" by using the car's battery to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, burning that in the engine, and using the engine to move the car, and charge the battery. Another failed perpetual motion machine scheme.
and the inverse idea is also around:
Energy Source: "Clean" Coal
Coal burning powerplants that scrub the carbon dioxide from their emissions, leaving only clean air behind.
Busted: A Powerplant generates its power by burning: oxidizing the carbon in the coal into CO2. Turning the CO2 back to carbon and oxygen is a chemical reaction that will take as much power as released by the original burning. So, this one too, is just a complicated, failed, perpetual motion machine.
On the raindrops one, hate to tell you, but the Atomic Energy Commission ceased to exist in 1974, replaced by the Energy Research and Development Administration, which was replaced in turn by the modern Department of Energy in 1977.
I don't understand why people go to such lengths devising elaborate ideas for alternative energy, but seldom discuss the simple harnessing of tidal or wave energy. The oceans and the Great Lakes are in constant motion, and the technology has been developed to harness that motion and generate electrical energy. The capital cost doesn't appear to be much greater than solar or wind energy, and unlike those two, which are variable with weather, wave and tidal energy are available for use 24/7. The Spring 2008 edition of Catalyst, a magazine put out by the Union of Concerned scientists, has a great article discussing wave power generation. If the government were to commit some R&D funds to this energy source, a lot of metropolitan areas on both coasts as well as cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and New Orleans might be able to tap into this resource to supplement their electrical grids with a clean, relatively constant flow of power that has minimal environmental impact. Surf's up dude!
Hey Jamie...here's the first new energy source since the dawn of nuclear power. Seriously. Hydrothermal energy.
www.marshallsystem.com. Check it out.
Potassium Carbonate? That doesn't absorb carbon dioxide. And even if the CO2 is captured, turning it into "methanol, gasoline, or jet fuel" would require hydrogen from someplace and energy. Shouldn't those two be used first? Perhaps they were thinking of a "plant" which functions similarly.
Get your chemistry straight.
Suppose I had a...device/working model...that could show how a small spinning object could be kept in motion with no loss of speed and no input of fuel substance? How would I present this item without loosing its rights and monetary worth (given that I haven't patented it due to lack of loot and a lot of other personal issues? ) Google my name. You'll see I am a person of substance, creativity, and some degree of ambition.
@ janet bratter
Apart from the fact that that is impossible (even in a frictionless vacuum), what does it have to do with alternative energy?
janet bratter, even if you had such a physically impossible device, what good would it be? You can start it moving (using energy) and it'll keep moving forever, but you can't get any more energy back out of it than you put in in the first place. A neat toy, and its existence would destroy our current understanding of the laws of thermodynamics, but ultimately not much use as a source of power.
Surely you can get energy out of a vacuum because there's a potential difference in air pressure of 14.7 pounds per square inch at sea level.
Nothing wrong with getting some information out there, but Jamie and his pal are real amateurs. Their stuff is barely edutainment. If you are going to present scientific information, you should do a better job of it. Science can be entertaining, even when done professionally. Try it sometime!!
Jim Preston - A long time ago, in a world less jaded, existed such a show. Donald Herbert, Mr Wizard, showed us how to pull an egg into a milk bottle; how to break a board in half with nothing by a sheet of newspaper holding down the other half; how to turn a teaspoon of flour into a ball of flame; etc. And he taught actual science by explaining how those "magic" tricks worked. This was entertaining science. But no more. Donald Jeffry Herbert died of multiple myeloma on June 12, 2007.
I am pretty put off by the complete fluff off of some of the ideas mentioned. Bearden is pretty credible to me. Based on ideas and concepts of Tesla, Jaimie here just comes off as yet another "gate keeper", quick to trivialize, and dismiss, but based on nothing substantial. No more valid than a typical coporate apologist imho.
Jamie,
I've been reading about Hypercapacitors that store huge charges in a few minutes and then 'leak' the discharge at a controllable voltage for hours. Indications are that it can be scaled up to run an automobile. If this is legit, this could be the oil-economy killer. Yep, you'd have to go nuclear and solar thermal to generate the electricity to make this work but if the point of alternative fuels is to power the engine in a car which then is converted to electricity to run most of the appliances then wouldn't it make sense to bypass the 'middleman' (the fuel burning engine) and go straight electric. It's where everything is going anyhow so shouldn't we be investing a few eggs in this basket?
Hyneman is the guy who wanted to release compressed air underwater so it "would have something to push against" to propel a boat. That rates an F in high school physics. Why should I believe this guy? I assume you have someone vetting the answers. Point us to some real experts in your answers, please.
Funny I've been getting virtually endless energy from technology as old as us
muscle.
I use my common bicycle to get around all over the city and across the country.
What's that? You NEED a car to carry big stuff?
You should see me carry a bed, a bookcase, a couch-swing, or a chipper/shredder on my cargo trailer.
Hey Jamie, can you beat 1500mpg?
http://www.yourbodypower.org
I believe solar steam units I call steam stacks would use the heat from a concentrated beam of sunlight to make steam to run a generator. The steam would be condensed into either a liquid or gas and pushed up to the turbogenerator to be heated again into steam. A million steam stacks in an assembly might generate more electricity than a nuclear power plant that costs the same amount of money to build and there will be no waste to dispose of.
If stacked flywheel units which would have a motor/generator sandwiched between two flywheel chambers that would be sealed to keep in the vacuum with a liquid or forced air cooling system for the armature of the motor/generator were built and the flywheels were made from either rock quartz or an ultra-stressed crystalline molecular solic material, how much kinetic energy could the spinning flywheels store and how many times could the flywheels be respun before they need to be replaced? If 100 watt/hours of energy per cubic inch of material could be stored and the flywheels could be respun 5000 times, a sedan that used two primary stacked units with a total storage capacity of 1.5 megawatts could travel from New York City to Chicago nonstop.
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