Mesozoic Warmth

[Roland Deschain]

That may work, Bob. Methane, as you know, is CH₄. All you'd need is for the grass to either utilise the hydrogen as well as the carbon, as you don't want the more inflammable hydrogen floating around in that quantity, or to release the hydrogen as it does with the oxygen from CO₂, it being lighter than air and being sucked out for storage.

This hydrogen, if not used by the grass, could be used to power hydrogen fuel cells. Now i'm not sure of power usage, as you point out above, but if there's enough of the stuff released and collected, these hydrogen fuel cells could power the extraction equipment, or at the least offset a large percentage of the running costs of the exercise.

I'm not completely sure if we're setting ourselves up for something akin to a perpetual motion machine, what with not knowing figures or logistics for this endeavour, but it's certainly intriguing. A quick trip to the patent office, anyone?

[Swatopluk]

The technical problem is the short life expectancy of fuel cells. They need very clean input to start with (CO and any sulphur compound will render them unusable in a very short time) and to keep the huge specific surface necessary while having electrolysis resp. reverse electrolysis is tricky too. Those very processes will over time reorder the structure towards denser states (i.e. surface reduction). It's damn difficult for that not to happen during the production already.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I'm not completely sure if we're setting ourselves up for something akin to a perpetual motion machine, what with not knowing figures or logistics for this endeavour, but it's certainly intriguing. A quick trip to the patent office, anyone?

Does it count, if part of your "perpetual motion" comes from sunlight? 

Don't forget, all plants utilize photosynthesis, which is basically sunlight via a catalyst, cracking water and CO2 to make hydrocarbons for the plant's use.

[Roland Deschain]

These are all things i'd not taken into consideration. We need an engineer, a biochemist, a botanist/biologist (?), and a physicist. Basically we need new technological breakthroughs to increase the efficiency of hydrogen collection, maintaining its purity, and more efficiency in the solar cells, maybe even developing transparent ones which can live on the top of the tent to further add power.

I think cost effectiveness is lowering dramatically here, but if they are developed by those involved in the project, they can be sold for profit. We could even forget about the tent, and live off of the proceeds from the transparent solar cells and other technology.

[Sibling DavidH]

We also need a load of cows.  They're in a shed near me at the moment.  Unless the farm people go for a second cut of silage, they'll be parking them in the field opposite me any time now.