What do you get when you combine sun, water, rust, and CO2? A: hydrocarbon fuel

[Bread and Circus]

I think this is very interesting technology:

http://www.eetindia.co.in/ART_8800494913_1800008_NT_44459c35.HTM

In the hydrogen economy, automobiles would be powered by the simplest element on the periodic table, leveraging the element's abundance. But as the Hindenburg disaster demonstrated, hydrogen is the also most difficult element to compress into a safe, usable form. Why not instead synthesize a hydrocarbon-based fuel, such as methanol or even gasoline?

Sandia National Laboratories is building such a fuel synthesizer in a bid to harnesses sunlight to reverse the process of combustion. The reactor would use reclaimed carbon dioxide emissions to create renewable synthetic fuel by combining the CO2 with water.

"Rather than make hydrogen for people to use in fuel cells, we think it might make more sense to make a synthetic fuel that is already compatible with our existing infrastructure," said Rich Diver, inventor of the Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5). "Others are working on ways to make liquid synthetic fuels from natural gas, but we are going back a step further and looking at ways of thermochemically making the precursors for synthetic fuel using solar energy, carbon dioxide and water."

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[Another Bill C.]

1. hydrogen did not bring down the Hindenburg

http://encarta.msn.com/sidebar_761595294/new_information_on_hindenburg_disaster.html

The varnish used on the covering caught fire, presumably from static electricity. Once the covering caught fire, the hydrogen burned. There was no explosion. The ship would have burned up even if an inert gas was used.

Ironically, the original plan was to use helium but the U.S. was the only source of helium at that time and refused to supply it for fear the Nazis would use it for military purposes.

[Ghost Dog]

2. For the evolution of this approach

(& more "open" sources) see:
1. (Feb 2006) http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Supppage4553.html
2. (Dec 2007) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071208150135.htm