[Gibbon1]

Solar farms produce 50 times more energy per acre than corn grown for ethanol.

A rabbit hole I started working down was how much ammonia would cost is the hydrogen was from electrolysis power by solar. It's sort of competitive.

Whack bit. 2200 calories a day is 2.5kwh. That's what a 400W solar panel puts out.

Which made me wonder about just synthesizing amino acids directly. Why make ammonia and spray it in crops that use sunlight (2% efficient) to turn it into protein.

You start digging an there are two dozen companies working the bioreactor angle. Hydrogen + N2 to feed nitrogen fixing bacteria.

I find this way more interesting than using AI to replace MBA's and code monkeys.

[pfdietz]

The easiest food to synthesize is probably fatty acids. Orca Sciences (the people who incubated Standard Thermal) have had a project on this.

https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/food-without-agricultu...

https://savor.it/

[Gibbon1]

I stumbled on something also interesting. The oxygen from photosynthesis comes from water not CO2. So all the energy from food is essentially from splitting water.

Also I think I read in a book on aeronautics which was published in the 1950's that more energy is required from oil to grow food than the food itself. Trying to look that up again just now the internet spits out an efficiency as low as 10%.