How about ATP itself?

[questionposter]

ATP is basically a naturally rechargeable battery, why not just manufacture that? It completely solves the problem of storing energy and it already makes use of the energy the Earth already recieves. Just let ADP sit out outside during the daytime so that it becomes ATP, then just put it in an car designed to use it little bits at a time to transform the energy released from it into mechanical energy.

Edited September 27, 2011 by questionposter

[InigoMontoya]

Sounds great... So do you have any proposals as to how this may actually be done?

[CaptainPanic]

You're proposing we use nature and sunlight to create a form of energy that can easily be stored and used to make mechanical energy in a car?? Can I propose that this already exists for hundreds of millions of years, and that it's called a "plant", and that the resulting stored energy is called a biofuel?

 

The most efficient way to utilize ATP / ADP is to do it in a cell... why re-invent something that already works at peak efficiency?

[Greg Boyles]

You're proposing we use nature and sunlight to create a form of energy that can easily be stored and used to make mechanical energy in a car?? Can I propose that this already exists for hundreds of millions of years, and that it's called a "plant", and that the resulting stored energy is called a biofuel?

 

The most efficient way to utilize ATP / ADP is to do it in a cell... why re-invent something that already works at peak efficiency?

 

 

Good point Captain. It is probably far more practical than solar voltaics etc on a large scale.

[Enthalpy]

[shortened]...use sunlight to create energy easily stored and used in a car?? It's called a "plant", and the resulting stored energy is called a biofuel Why re-invent something that already works at peak efficiency?

 

Plants are little efficient at creating biofuels, under 1% of the incoming Sunlight. So while plants make a good use of their production cost, their use of farmland can be improved a lot.

 

Up to now, untaxed ethanol or oil or biodiesel from farming are competitive against taxed gasoline. A truly sustainable scheme would need biofuels to be as good under fair conditions. (Please don't misunderstand me, I use biofuels).

 

Our farm plants are optimized for food production, so better choices will improve this quickly. Maybe single-cell plants are better at producing chemicals. But if ATP or some part of a plant works better than a complete organism, fine!

 

Very useful as well: if we could feed them with seawater, and grow then in glass tubes in deserts. Taking only unused space, they would just need to be cheaper than Solar thermal energy for instance, which is stored and produces affordable electricity ("affordable" is not: "as cheap as coal").

[CaptainPanic]

Enthalpy, you have good points... plants are relatively inefficient.

But the main issue in this thread is still the use of ATP / ADP. As the OP already said, ATP is just energy storage... like a battery. The organisms need something else to 'charge' the ATP, and it's that something else that is the bottleneck.

 

Btw, I strongly oppose the use of tubes for algae in a desert. I don't believe that the energy balance would be positive: I think you need to put more energy in than you get out in the form of algae. Because I think this is too much off topic, I just link to this thread in which I have explained this better.