Energy Independence for the USA (2009)

Recent efforts to use solar energy are shown to be insufficient for large scale projects, due to the use of inefficient converter cells, low insolation values, and heat losses Optimized schemes allow for a rather limited size of the structure. Values are given which show that decisive energy can be gained in desert areas and that the use of hydrogen allows for a valuable chemical conversion to useful hydrocarbons in connection with CO2 sequestration. Key Words: Energy via solar hydrogen; High efficiency conversion to electricity via concentration and the use of Ill- V-hard solar cells with spectral separation; Use of solar hydrogen and concentration heat to convert carbon dioxide to useful hydrocarbons; Sufficient solar energy to make the US independent from oil. All organic life depends on the intake of energy in the form of organic material and its conversion to basic compounds, for structural support and the production of heat via oxidation. The gas C02 is the endproduct, as it is for all burning of carbon, wood, gas, biomass or in other, heat-producing energy generators. Human existence and the growth of industrial societies in particular depend on the availability of the basic materials for this process. All coal, gas and oil residues in the earth have been formed from organic materials which had been submerged and cut off from oxygen, aeons ago during the movements of the continents and occasional meteroric impacts, earthquakes and volcanic events. The development of industrial societies became possible only due to the utilization of the accumulated, organic material under the surface, where carbohydrides had been conserved with no contact to the atmosphere. The sun was and is the basic energy source for all these materials and for all present organic life. Life is an entropie process in which energy-rich materials are degraded to basic carbon compounds of a lower energy content. All agricultural activity depends not only on suitable land and ground in the sun, but also to a high degree on supplied energy in the form of fertilizer, water, transport, irrigation, machinery, ground tilting, processing, treatment etc. The energy needed for advanced and productive agronomy has increased constantly since the beginning of the industrial age and the exponential growth of humanity has caused the ratio of energy contained in the agrobusiness output versus the energy input to fall below one! It is indeed a problem to find more usable earth for further agriculture of the growing mass of people in the Third World. The process of conversion of valuable energy to a dissipative carbon-oxide compound, is called entropie. The energy gained from such a process cannot be regained back without a new energy input. The sun, directly or through wind, ocean waves or geo-thermy and hydroelectricity, remains a source of energy when palaeocaibon materials such as coal, oil, natural gas etc. are exhausted.1 Fortunately, there are remnants from earlier times of the formation of the planet, available in the form of radioactive materials. As nuclear energy yields a million times higher energy per unit mass than the burning process, this type of energy source will help mankind overcome some of the difficulties while renewable sources of energy are being developed.2, 3 Unfortunately the atom bomb and nuclear accidents Czernobyl and Three-Mile-Island have made it difficult to persuade sections of the public to accept the use of atomic energy aside from the usual normalized light-water reactor in hightemperature reactors and breeder reactors (LMFBR = Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor)3 with a 60 times higher yield. Only French and Japanese industries have so far been able to build this line of generators. German researchers who had developed an especially high-temperature reactor4 had to abandon their work in Germany and were forced to continue this work outside of Germany. The reluctance to pursue the Fast Breeder Reactor type in the USA, is also due to the unsolved problem of the disposal of the nuclear waste material. …