CHON Philosophy

 by Ian Page

As we have a new member, I thought a quick reprise of what CHON is about would be helpful. The primary context is that there are two parallel scenarios of the future covered in this blog. 

REN: the transition to renewable everything, but particularly energy materials and industry. REN covers energy production, storage, grid integration, transmission, usage, new opportunities, the rapid elimination of 95% of fossils and the collapse of fossil economics, and the hydrogen and ammonia economies. It also covers the "energy desert" where there is insufficient spare fossil energy to drive renewable volumes up to the point where they replace fossils in time. 

CHON: the end state when an element cascade has happened, where expensive rarer elements become too energy intensive to use, are used in smaller units per product, and thus recycling also be too energy intensive to be of much use. At this point, only infinitely recyclable elements are usable, in particular, Carbon Hydrogen Oxygen, and Nitrogen, with support from aluminum and sodium. These, with small quantities of iron, sulfur, and phosphorus (and some even smaller quantities of some other elements) are the main components of life. The hypothesis is that nature has managed to cover the earth with massive quantities of structures composed of these elements, but even so, has only explored a tiny proportion of the chemical and biochemical opportunity space. Products and services are seen from the point of view of energy economics and financial economics. which results in predictable social and structural changes. As a result, the long-term future differs from the stone age not because of new resources but because of the vastly smarter use of these resources. 

By analogy with proteins, CHON is assumed to be based on "chemical Lego" or green goo, which can be assembled locally with something like a 3d printer into products, which in turn can be digested back to green goo, retaining most of the energy incorporated locally 

The blog picks out technologies and changes that encourage or contradict one or other of these scenarios often individually, but occasionally within a framework or pattern that appears. 

Green chemistry and biology cross both topics. 

It also contains anything that seems obliquely important! 

While supportive of many other valuable contributions to the survival of the species, the above seems quite large enough in scope! The gaping omission of food and water is due to a lack of capability to investigate.