ENERGY OF THE FUTURE.

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15361, 9 October 1923, Page 9

ENERGY OF THE FUTURE.

HARNESSING THE SUN, MICROBES IN HUMAN SERVICE. GREAT ELECTRICIAN'S IDEAS. One of the greatest practical seienti;*3 In the world is Dr Charles P. Steinmelz. chief consulting engineer of the General Electric Company, of Schenectady, U.S.A. In an interesting article Dr Steinmetz discusses possibilities in the way of more fully utilising solar energy to meet the growing demand for power and food. These are the two great problems of the future towards which the world is driving, he writes —'the problem of energy and the problem of food supply. The one energy source which is available to-day is the light of the sun, in comparison with which the total energy supply of all the fuel we burn and the hydraulic energy available is nothing. While the total energy of all the coal and all the water power we have and use in a year does not amount to more than a billion kilowatts, the energy of the sun, which shines only upon that part of the United States which is arid and cannot be used for agriculture, is about 800,000,000,000 kilowatts—nearly 1000 times as much as all the coal and water pow.er together. So there is a source of energy vastly greater than anything that we are using now, or that we could possibly use. There would be no scarcity if we could open up this source of energy, but we have no means of utilising this solar energy economically, because it is so widely distributed, or diluted. The real problem here is one of concentrating this energy.

Solar Heat Engines,

There have been solar heat engines built, in whioh the solar heat has been ■concentrated by . reflectors. These are all very ingenious devices, and if some rich man somewhere in the wilderness wants to run a little pumping station in connection with his house, he might be able to afford it, but economically, in considering- the world's energy supply, it is out of the question, because the cost of installation is so enormous, compared with the amount of energy you get, that it is economically impossible. But that brings me to a new field—that of biological engineering. While this field is not entirely new,.yet relatively little has ben done in it. Men like Burbank have done wondreful things in evolving new plants. .His work is real engineering, but the materials with which he works are living plants. When we first began to use the sugar beet in sugar production, not only was the beet very much smaller than its present average size, but it contained less than half the percentage of sugar that is contained in the sugar beet of the present time. So, in this case, biological engineering more than doubled the content.

Coal is Bottled Light.

The energy which we use now, after all, is solar energy, because when we burn coal we are using the sunlight which was stored millions of years ago by the plants In the primeval forests during the coal age. When you use water power you are using solar energy which evaporated the water and was carried up into the clouds, w-hence it was condensed and deposited on the highlands, and now runs in the rapid river, to be collected by us and made to turn the wheels. How could we collect this energy and concentrate it? The only solution of the problem that I ean see lies with the biological engineer. The leaves year after year collect the energy of the sunlight, absorb at through the chlorophyl, and produce chemical compounds. We have all around us the collections of solar energy by plant life, but it takes a lifetime for a forest to srow and collect energy.

New Vegetation Forms,

Why could not the biological engipeers of the future develop new forms of vegetation which would collect the sunlight at a' pate hundreds of times more rapid than our present vegetation collection scheme? Perhaps the tall grasses might be the starting point from which, by a process of selection, during generation after generation, we could work toward new varieties and find new spectos which would grow at such a rapid rate that we could raise energy crops and so collect energy from our lands to supply our needs, especially if we can obtain high-grade energy directly, without going through the transformation of heat.

In the production of food we use two classes of compounds, the carbonhydrates and the nitrates, the first of which are essentially heat-producing, and the second life-giving. The carbonhydrates will be taken care of by the energy crops already mentioned. Then there would remain the problem of the nitrogen supply of the world, the protein supply. The Wast© of Meat-Growing.

As we get it from cereals and meats, it is a wasteful process; it is extremely extravagant. Only a very small part of plant is protein, and it takes a whole year to grow. Then we may feed it to animals to get animal proteins, but the efficiency of the production of animal proteins is certainly very small. Considering the amount of food the animal eats during its life snd until it is slaughtered, only a small part is represented by animal proteins. The question of feeding future populations opens a new field for the biological engineer. In the past there has never been any systematic method of producing proteins. The natural protein-producers are the micro-or-ganisms, which develop most rapidly. Now you see what an advantage we would have by developing or creating new species of micro-organisms which reproduce at an economically rapid rate.

We have done much in i producing new plants, but where each generation takes about a year, in micro-organisms wo may have a generation a day or several generations. Therefore variation with the production of new varieties and new species can be carried on when dealing with microorganisms at a rate of a hundred times more rapid.

Not Hopeless TasK. So through biological engineering the production of proteins by microorganisms does not appear to lie a hopeless task, and it may be accomplished within a reasonable time. Within a century or two or even a shorter time, we could supply the food demands of the world, not through the cultivation of new areas for the growing of wheat, but by producing it through micro-organisms which would be held by suitable mineral products without" depending upon sunlight. So you see these are the two problems—the production of energy from the sunlight and the production of food by new means which are not as limited as our present ones. It has been stated that during the economic blockade of Germany during

the war considerable advance was made in producing proteins by the growth of bacilli and micro-organisms. Various products are being made in which micro-organisms play a part. The synthetic production of rubber and other similar material it is alleged arc developed by the work of microorganisms.