The Fusion Solution is the name of this Sunday’s Science in the Pub event where I’ll appear with Wilson da Silva, Stewart Brand, and Jordan Morelli. But fusion isn’t on my agenda.
Instead, I’ll outline a little-known program by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA) that I believe has much greater potential to solve some of our energy problems in the near term. It’s called BioFuels, but that prosaic title belies what may be one of the most important projects DARPA has undertaken since it created the Internet 40 years ago.
EERC research manager Tom Erickson with carbon sequestration system
While I was researching my book The Department of Mad Scientists (released yesterday), DARPA program manager Douglas Kirkpatrick told me that an obscure group at the University of North Dakota was developing some of the most innovative technology he had ever seen. High praise from a guy who works at an agency pushing such diverse technologies as quantum computing, jet propulsion, artificial intelligence, and biomedicine to the limits of possibility. Naturally, I had to see for myself what he was talking about.
During my visit to the University’s Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC), I met with the managers and engineers developing DARPA’s biofuel, and caught a glimpse of a future in which we as a society are no longer subject to the tyranny of King Oil, as Kirkpatrick likes to put it.
The group has already created the world’s first completely renewable jet fuel. In goes straight vegetable oil into a processor, out comes military-grade JP-8, packing enough energy per cubic centimeter and remaining fluid enough at low enough temperature (-47 C) to safely power jet aircraft.
Last summer, DARPA shipped some of the stuff to Flometrics, which successfully used it to launch a rocket from the Mojave Desert. Next up for DARPA and EERC: develop the means to manufacture it in volume at less than $3 a gallon.
Flometrics green fuel powered rocket launch
If all goes as planned, the green jet fuel could power much more than military jets. JP-8 already powers generators and ground vehicles as well as aircraft, and there’s no reason why it couldn’t do so for the civilian world as well. For an encore, DARPA has already launched its Cellulosic and Algal Biofuels program, which seeks to create renewable fuels from non-food sources such as grasses. Now we’re cooking!
I can’t wait to hear what my fellow panelists have to say about fusion. But I’m not holding my breath waiting for practical fusion power to arrive. Not with the BioFuel solution growing in our own backyards.
Michael Belfiore is a writer focused on breakthrough technologies poised to change our world and is the author of “The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs”. He writes for Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Air & Space, and for emerging technology companies.
Watch Michael’s sessions online, live and demand at q2cfestival.com:
Thursday, October 22, at 8:00 PM
The Agenda: Robotics Revolution and The Future of Evolution
Saturday, October 24, at 7:00 PM
There’s no free lunch… there’s still energy, there’s still the planting and the harvesting and the co2 going up into the air…
We need to ride the existing energy.
Funny, we talked about all that alien stuff, about how they do surgery thought some micro slit, and how they ride the planetary gravity waves… well, we’ve got the first one going quite well… lets consider something else.
And then, lets consider NOT everyone going everywhere all the time by plane…
Give people some time, and we can sail, take the train, bike, walk…
This poor earth is just getting walked on like a welcome mat at the elephant tent…
And it’s brilliant, and all that, really. But even brilliance with only a little bit of mess gets horrendous when you raise it to the 10th power, and that’s what we do….
Too. Many. People.