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by bluGill
744 days ago
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> Unless we want to go back to hunting whales for things like lubricants. Having useful plastics We know how to make both from many other process. PLA plastic (commonly used for 3d printing) is commercially made from plant sources as well (I wasn't able to find a source for if it all is or just some). There are plant based oils that are biodegradable that you could put into any transmission today (meet OEM requirements) - they cost about 6x what regular oil costs though. If that isn't good enough the process to make synthetic oil just need carbon (ideally in the form of CO, but we could use CO2), water, and energy and from there we can engineer any hydrocarbon you want - again at much high cost. Pumping oil from the ground is cheap though, so it is hard to compete with something else. We know how to do it though. If you are a chemical engineer there is a lot of money in reducing costs (though I'm not making any claim this is possible, only if you can there is money) |
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We dump fertilizer made from petrochemical on the plants to grow them.
And that's the rub. I have to wonder how much oil we use, to grow corn, to make ethanol, to save oil...
EDIT: I Had to do the math I needed to know!
173.3 Bushels of corn per acre: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Iowa/Publicati...
140 gallons of fossil fuel per acre of corn: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Iowa/Publicati...
A bushel of field corn can produce 2.77 gallons of ethanol:
Assuming these numbers are right, it isnt so bad...