New source for engergy

Industrial revolution is one of the landmark historical events in human history. The primary accomplishment is to use steam power or stream of water as power source instead of human or animal pulling the wheels. It improves the efficiency of industrial production and faster the speed of human society development. Back then, the power come from coal. Burning it to boil the water, and use the steam to power turbines. Thus we get the mechanical energy needed for production. But the problem start with pollution, the sulfur in the coal would also react in the combustion process and the primary cause for acid rain, sulfur dioxide a produced. So the process of getting mechanical energy lays one of the great problems for future generation. Combustion process produce pollution. London, the capital of industrial revolution became one of the world dirtiest cities. In 1952, the smoggy weather in London traps the pollutant for five days hundreds of people died due to respiration illness.

People in the industrial country start to be aware and they solved this problem by install scrubber to the exhaustion pipe. Everything seems to be perfect. And human dependence on fossil fuel grows to an unexpected level. Our living standard today would be crushed if suddenly fossil fuels are gone.

A lot of scientists today are focusing on the origins of fossil fuel, the sun and the plants. Because most of the alternative energy is not easy obtain or limited to certain environment. People came out of the conventional believes that energy production needs to be on a large scale, like a power plant or river dam. Engineers created small scale instrument that can harvest energy on household bases. I visited a graduate student in agricultural and biological engineer last week. He works on build a small plastic tunnel that use household wasted water as fertilizer for algae. Grow the algae in the plastic tunnel and use it a potential power source at the same time treat the water pollution. So he makes me believe that new ideas can solve some of our society greatest problems.