Hey Col. Cathcart and other vorticians, Are you ready for a major, major development in the field of baking ?
Ha, here's the "catch" ... and it reads more like biomimicry "reflux" than "redux". Begin with baking soda. Yup. Good-old sodium bicarbonate- NaHCO3- which is the natural salt found worldwide in vast desert deposits of soda ash or in the mineral "natron" or trona. Although it will not burn, and seems fully oxidized, that conclusion could be a bit hasty, due to new R&D from China (RoC). BTW NaHCO3 is also a candidate mineral for CO2 capture (and in facilitating Algoil production) but that is another story.... (albeit the story which actually led to this posting). Often this mineral trona is found in dry lake beds- in places like "Death Valley"... but if you read on, the case can be made now that this desolate place is more like "Life Valley" in that in the numerous hot springs there, we find a mirror image of the way life may have begun on earth ;-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inyo_County%2C_California This spot in the West has enough of the stuff (trona) to supply the US demand for oil for centuries ... "fonly" (fonly = if only = ~Catch-22). How so? Next we must add-in the factor known as "relfux" (hydrothermal chemistry)... It all goes back to the basic class of carbohydrate chemicals called 'phenols' and the natural process known as 'hydrothermal chemistry' and the fact that phenols can be formed from soda directly in certain natural conditions !! (that is the new claim) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflux If you think about the implications, this is huge .... Four billion years ago, it now seems likely that life on earth (or the 'feedstock' for life) began from phenols and from derivative proteins which them self were first made naturally in hot springs from natron via the process of hydrothermal chemistry. Thus the biomimicry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol#Hydrothermal_chemistry BTW: Phenols -or more precisely: fuels easily derived from them, burn like diesel oil but are just as valuable for plastics and other products. Now down to the nitty-gritty. Here is the recent journal article (letter) of interest (from Taiwan): http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/orlef7/2007/9/i10/abs/ol070597o.html "Hydrothermal Reactions from Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate to Phenol" Tian, Yuan, et al. Now- you tell me- am "I reading too much" into the energy implication of this development ? Maybe. This is NEW R&D- possibly groundbreaking- possibly even of Nobel caliber, and yet as of now NOT widely accepted (or even widely known among biochemists) in the USA -- (part of the 'not invented here' syndrome?). Even the authors do not seem to comprehend the implications. Anyway- If the article and experiment are accurate - and is soon duplicated, then this could be a MAJOR MAJOR development towards energy independence... in the end, it all gets back to 'supply-and-demand' right? And no one knew that M.O. better than a fictional opportunist ... speaking of which (Major Major): where is Joseph Heller when we need him? It's been 47 dry years since we have had reading material of that caliber ... which for some of us is a greater national disgrace than the anemic official response at DoE to the energy crisis (and the snubbing of LENR) .... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Major_Major_Major Happy Baking, Jones
