News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Solar Impulse lands in California after Pacific crossing by cmsmith on Sunday April 24, 2016 @11:32AM (#11559967)
We've been synthesizing one liquid hydrocarbon fuel for thousands of years; ethanol is pretty similar to jet fuel in energy density and combustion. I think the possibility that in the future we'll have cheap solar/wind grid power and use that to produce ethanol, rather than charge batteries, is more likely than people think. Ethanol production isn't terribly efficient, but if your input power is sustainable it doesn't really matter.
Re:Solar Impulse lands in California after Pacific crossing by elithrar on Sunday April 24, 2016 @08:39PM (#11561978)
Ethanol is about 70% of the energy density of Jet A-1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
Re:Solar Impulse lands in California after Pacific crossing by toomuchtodo on Monday April 25, 2016 @04:19PM (#11567014)
You'd want to produce methanol. Ethanol does not have sufficient energy density.

http://phys.org/news/2014-11-artificial-photosynthesis-fuel-...