July 21, 2008
Solar Hydrogen
This seems interesting. He [Stanford Ovshinsky, inventor of the nickel metal hydride (NiMH) technology used for building batteries] points out that by storing hydrogen reversibly in disordered solids, this solves the problems of storage, kinetics (speed of uptake and release) and cycle life. To this end, Ovshinsky and his colleagues have created a family of hydride compounds capable of real-world applications. Underpinning this is the vast catalytic surface area found in these materials, which means that when fabricated into thin film, continuous web, multi-junction devices, they can use the entire spectrum of sunlight to break up water to generate hydrogen, which is stored within the material ready for later use. Instead of a solar cell which generates electricity it generates hydrogen, from water, and stores it internally. I wonder how long it takes to refuel itself after hydrogen depletion? That's not the only question that comes to mind....
July 13, 2008
Mass Confusion
A chief defect of the environmental movement is that it is a movement, a political approach to environmental issues. Problems that need to be analyzed with insight into physical reality are subject to the whims of those having no useful grasp of the issues but who have all manner of ungrounded beliefs. To them, scientific factoids are talking points, ammunition for a virtual war between competing factions and fractions. Entrepreneurs take this as their market reality and pander to the various fantastical notions. Some entrepreneurs are bureaucrats, some are capitalists. Some are both. Since physical reality plays almost no part in this drama we can find posers who claim to care for the environment who advocate organic agriculture, biofuels, and carbon reduction credits though these things are antithetical. The classic case is the "engineer", "designer", or other politicized urban denizen advocating the use of corn stover for energy production, but the confused notion that there is excess biomass crops...
July 11, 2008
Think On It
"blaming speculators for high prices has always seemed to me like blaming the thermometer for how hot it is"...
June 19, 2008
Flash Carbonization
The earlier post Fast Pyrolyzers discussed an interesting paper, The Charcoal Vision: A Win–Win–Win Scenario for Simultaneously Producing Bioenergy, Permanently Sequestering Carbon, while Improving Soil and Water Quality, that advocated a superior method of generating bioenergy in more environmentally benign ways. The technologies involved were only briefly mentioned. Fast pyrolyzers rapidly (~1 s) heat dry biomass (10% H2O) to ~500°C and thereby thermally transform biomass into bio-oil (~60% of mass), syngas (~20% of mass), and charcoal (~20% of mass). The energy required to operate a fast pyrolyzer is ~15% of the total energy that can be derived from the dry biomass. Modern systems are designed to use the syngas generated by the pyrolyzer to provide all the energy needs of the pyrolyzer. Bio-oil is an energy raw material (~17 MJ kg–1) that can be burned directly to generate heat energy or easily shipped to a refinery for processing into transportation fuels and various co-products (Bridgwater et al., 1999). Charcoal...
May 29, 2008
Biofuel Savior
A little over 3 years ago I discussed high oil algae, noting that it's one of the very few biofuel ideas that made any sense. However, there's still no output. But after all the hype—and there's been plenty of it—the fact remains that nobody has yet proven they can cheaply and reliably transform the stuff from a thick, green slurry to a finished fuel capable of making a dent in America's 870 million–gallon-per-day petroleum habit. "I get a lot of people telling me that they've got thousands of gallons, but when I actually ask for a sample I can get maybe two," says Jennifer Holmgren, director of the University of Phoenix (UOP) renewable energy and chemicals division, which is working to refine jet fuel from feedstocks that include algae. "Google some of the numbers, and you've got people claiming that right now they're producing 35,000 gallons per acre per year, and they'll be producing 100,000 gallons—and that's just impossible,"...
May 26, 2008
Soil Mining
Tad Patzek, who along with David Pimentel has been a scourge of airy-fairy ethanol schemes, does an interview. “Okay, grass, we are going to cut you every year, year after year. Remove everything that we cut and burn it elsewhere.” Unfortunately, when you do so not only do you remove carbon, but you remove nutrients with the grass and these nutrients are gradually depleted from the soil and of course the whole system stops producing. There is a fundamental problem with removing all biomass from an ecosystem because that ecosystem stops functioning and in order for you to make it function, you have to resupply it back with the nutrients and that of course takes an enormous amount of fossil fuels. So we are back to square one. This is a basic problem with many of the cellulosic ethanol schemes that tout the productivity of grasses with low fertility requirements compared to highly domesticated grasses such as maize. The...
April 28, 2008
Take II
Green is the new gold. Mendel will make use of Monsanto’s crop testing, breeding and seed production to develop high-yield, low-input perennial grasses to serve as a feedstock for cellulosic biofuel production. . . Monsanto is able to aggressively invest in next-generation biofuels as first-generation biofuels have created windfall profits for the company. Monsanto tripled its profits last year, due in large part to the corn ethanol boom. Now Monsanto needs to move into cellulosic ethanol, as food-based biofuels, especially corn, have taken a beating. There have been numerous frozen ethanol refinery projects and the public backlash in the food vs. fuel debate has further dampened food-based ethanol investments. Though it will probably take a few years to develop and pay off, Monsanto’s play into cellulosics will likely further increase that profit growth. Then, after a while, there will be a new round of frozen ethanol refinery projects and public backlash when people finally grok the consequences of growing...
April 22, 2008
Techno-Pessimism
Those who oppose progress do their best to prevent it, and have done so for decades. They now use the lack of progress during those decades as an argument against the possibility of future progress. It's worth noting that if we had to build today's energy infrastructure working under the current regulatory and NIMBY burden, it probably could not be done. So it shouldn't be surprising that building a new energy infrastructure is proving so hard. There's a reason why many of us think deregulation is a big issue and it's not because we want to see people poisoned by Chinese botchagaloop. Opposition to nuclear energy is one glaring example of the problem cited here in the past, but there's a general drag on progress from a crufted up bureaucracy. Each petty fiefdom diligently pursues its regulatory opposition to everything it can grab, since that's what pays the wages. They make careers out of obstruction and delay, and use...
April 19, 2008
Cartridge Reactors
A.K.A. nuclear batteries. Hyperion Power Generation, a startup based in Santa Fe, N.M., is working on a self-contained compact nuclear power reactor unit that it says is “about the size of a typical backyard hot tub” . . . Because the device is small, portable and self-contained, the company says it can be delivered where it is needed and then sent back to the factory for refueling every five years. That makes it a good fit for remote, rural locations that are disconnected from the power grid. The technology can also bring down the cost of nuclear power significantly, says the company — a 30 percent reduction over traditional nuclear in capital costs and a 50 percent reduction in operating costs. It's good to see some nuclear progress. Toshiba's talk about nuclear batteries two or three years ago was interesting, but seeing VC money go to new ventures is more so. Hyperion says the device’s self-contained and portable design...
April 17, 2008
No Picnic
Not enough sandwiches. The first annual BioMass conference, attended by biofuels researchers, manufacturers, equipment suppliers, and farmers, is underway here at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Do you suppose that they have interest? Yes, he acknowledges, the demand for biofuels derived from traditional food crops like corn has contributed to a rise in global food prices, but so has increasing demand for food from burgeoning populations in China and India. Clearly those Chinese and Indians need to eat less. No, wait . . . The large rise of world food prices came after food prices had been either stable or declined for many years. Although incomes in China and India, countries that account for almost 40 percent of the world's population, did grow rapidly during this decade as well as during the 1990's, global consumption of corn, wheat, and rice grew more slowly since 2000 than during the five years earlier. But continuing, with interest . . . Nobody plants...
April 10, 2008
Fast Pyrolyzers
Philip is excited again. Crop residues, although often referred to as agricultural waste, are in fact a vital component of soil agroecosystems. Crop residues contain substantial amounts of plant nutrients (primarily C, N, K, P, Ca, and Mg), and if crop residues were harvested every year these nutrients would have to be replaced by increased fertilizer use. Many soil organisms utilize crop residues as their primary substrate, and these organisms are responsible for nutrient cycling, building of biogenic soil organic matter, and maintaining levels of soil organic C. Crop residues are critically important for building and maintaining soil structure, which facilitates root penetration and the movement of both air and water in soils. And, crop residues on soil surfaces enhance water infiltration, which increases available water to growing plants, and decreases the destructive effects of raindrop impact and surface runoff, which are the dominant causes of soil erosion. If all aboveground crop residues were removed year after year, the...
April 08, 2008
Better Ethanol
No, really. But not soon. Ethanol is not great. Even Al Gore had to eventually concede he had made a mistake in promoting it for almost two decades once it became common knowledge that driving food prices up for a costly, energy-negative alternative to gasoline that didn't improve the environment was a bad idea. . . Wrong. Again. And not for the last time. Isn't his teflon getting a little thin by now? Researchers are tinkering up what seem to be Goldberg (Robinson?) contraptions to keep the faith. Cows, with help from bacteria, convert plant fibers, called cellulose, into energy, but this is a big, expensive step for biofuel production. In the commercial biofuel industry, only the kernels of corn plants can be used to make ethanol, but this new discovery would allow the entire corn plant to be used – so more fuel can be produced with less cost. . . “The fact that we can take a...
March 20, 2008
Hot and Juicy
In the nanotech thermoelectric sense. Using nanotechnology, the researchers at BC and MIT produced a big increase in the thermoelectric efficiency of bismuth antimony telluride — a semiconductor alloy that has been commonly used in commercial devices since the 1950s — in bulk form. Specifically, the team realized a 40 percent increase in the alloy’s figure of merit, a term scientists use to measure a material’s relative performance. The achievement marks the first such gain in a half-century using the cost-effective material that functions at room temperatures and up to 250 degrees Celsius. The success using the relatively inexpensive and environmentally friendly alloy means the discovery can quickly be applied to a range of uses, leading to higher cooling and power generation efficiency. “By using nanotechnology, we have found a way to improve an old material by breaking it up and then rebuilding it in a composite of nanostructures in bulk form,” said Boston College physicist Zhifeng Ren, one...
February 29, 2008
More Heat Mining
A year ago an MIT-led study of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) was discussed. See full report: The Future of Geothermal Energy (pdf). Things are progressing. last week, the DOE tapped Ormat Technologies of Nevada to test MIT's conclusions. To build the nation’s first commercial-scale EGS site and demonstrate its viability to power America. And not just in regions blessed with bubbling-at-the-surface, energy-rich geysers. But all over. It may be worth repeating part of that old press release from last year. the electricity produced annually by geothermal energy systems now in use in the United States at sites in California, Hawaii, Utah and Nevada is comparable to that produced by solar and wind power combined. And the potential is far greater still, since hot rocks below the surface are available in most parts of the United States. Even in the most promising areas, however, drilling must reach depths of 5,000 feet or more in the west, and much deeper in...
February 28, 2008
It's Bob's Fault
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. The cold weather drove residents to crank up the heat, but the lack of wind to turn turbines pushed the state’s electric grid into emergency mode. On Tuesday night, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas cut off power for 90 minutes to those customers who had agreed to accept power interruptions. And it was a full three hours before everything was back to normal. All of which proves that while, cheap, clean and renewable, it’s pretty hard to know which way the wind will blow. Or, if the sun will shine etc. The CO2 to liquid fuel conversions discussed in Mutant Tupperware, which need added energy to function, seem a better way to use intermittent power sources than connecting them to the grid. When the grid gets starved all sorts of havoc ensues. It may be that the CO2 to liquid systems can't tolerate interruption well either,...
February 18, 2008
Mutant Tupperware
No, it's not about eco-moms. Klaus Lackner, professor of geophysics and director of the Center for Sustainable Energy at the Columbia University Earth Institute, once said: "Technology in general and energy at its base ultimately define the carrying capacity of the Earth for humans" . . . Lackner and Sachs, however, see vast room for progress in meeting the world's growing energy needs without threatening to destabilize the Earth's climate. In particular, they identify carbon capture and sequestration as an important part of any future plan to address the problem. Even better . . . The idea is simple. Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel. This process could transform carbon dioxide from an unwanted, climate-changing pollutant into a vast resource for renewable fuels. The closed...
January 15, 2008
Natural Lubricants
Speaking of bio-fuelishness Soybeans produce about 50 gallons of oil per acre per year, and canola produces about 130, he said. Algae, however, produces about 4,000 gallons per acre a year, and he predicted it will go far beyond that. He said algae requires only sunshine and non-drinkable water to grow. If, as stated in the previous post, it takes 450 pounds of corn to fill an SUV with ethanol, then using average US yield data (140 bushels/acre @ 56#/bushel) you can fill that SUV 17 1/2 times or so per acre per year. The fuel tank size of that SUV isn't stated, but 22 or 23 gallons is common. Using those assumptions that's 400 gallons of ethanol per acre. That seems small compared to 4,000 gallons of oil from algae per acre. Ethanol and such oils aren't the same, there's still a lot of data massaging needed for a precise comparison, but algae looks pretty good by comparison,...
January 12, 2008
Figure Of Merit
I noted my fascination with thermoelectrics in Ambient Energy. Not for the first time. Run over to Introduction to Thermoelectrics if you want to brush up. An intriguing thread of the history of thermoelectrics is the switch from metals to semiconductors since they have a prized attribute: a higher ratio of electrical conductivity to thermal conductivity than metals. It seems that they are very much better than we knew before. The Nature paper describes a unique “electroless etching” method by which arrays of silicon nanowires are synthesized in an aqueous solution on the surfaces of wafers that can measure dozens of square inches in area. The technique involves the galvanic displacement of silicon through the reduction of silver ions on a wafer’s surface. Unlike other synthesis techniques, which yield smooth-surfaced nanowires, this electroless etching method produces arrays of vertically aligned silicon nanowires that feature exceptionally rough surfaces. The roughness is believed to be critical to the surprisingly high thermoelectric...
January 11, 2008
Bigger Pictures
Advocacy is the dark art of misinforming by omission. Advocates seek factoids and narrow analyses that support their biases, then trumpet their biases as factual. Ronald Bailey quotes researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The US is the world's leading producer of soy, but many American soy farmers are shifting to corn to qualify for the government subsidies. Since 2006, US corn production rose 19% while soy farming fell by 15%. The drop-off in US soy has helped to drive a major increase in global soy prices, which have nearly doubled in the last 14 months. In Brazil, the world's second-largest soy producer, high soy prices are having a serious impact on the Amazon rainforest and tropical savannas. "Amazon fires and forest destruction have spiked over the last several months, especially in the main soy-producing states in Brazil," said Laurance. "Just about everyone there attributes this to rising soy and beef prices." High soy prices affect the Amazon...
January 10, 2008
Power Drinks
The illusion of action and competence is what politics is about. Offering a tangible plan that promises this tax incentive, that fact-finding commission, this reinvestment project, this funding for retraining doesn’t reach people who perceive the present as a slum left behind by a low-rent version of Benjamin’s angel of history. In fact, all it does is convince them that the candidate with the plans is one of those folks with his hands on the levers, one of them who always seems to come out on top. . . There isn’t a policy package that can straightforwardly address some of the underlying structural changes in the global political economy that affect Peoria as surely as they affect Shenzen. Your wonkish arms are too short to box with that god. I don’t think anyone is the master of these changes, even though some people and social classes and systems have way more power to direct what is happening than others....
December 30, 2007
Beautiful Horses
The previous post contained an incidental assertion that several developing world nations were "on a fast track to surpassing the West as economic powers". Perhaps not. China's economy, said the [World} bank, is smaller than it thought. About 40% smaller. China, it turns out, isn't a $10-trillion economy on the brink of catching up with the United States. It is a $6-trillion economy, less than half our size. For the foreseeable future, China will have far less money to spend on its military and will face much deeper social and economic problems at home than experts previously believed. India's economy is also 40% smaller than previously thought. This is significant for the long running discussion of ways for the world to deal with the implications of GHG emissions. Emissions from those large but not so prosperous nations are still growing, but they have less ability to clean up than we thought. We didn't think they had much emissions wiggle...
December 20, 2007
This Is Hot
But not too hot. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs. The 200 kilowatt Toshiba designed reactor is engineered to be fail-safe and totally automatic and will not overheat. Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction. The new revolutionary technology uses reservoirs of liquid lithium-6, an isotope that is effective at absorbing neutrons. The Lithium-6 reservoirs are connected to a vertical tube that fits into the reactor core. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 40 years, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy. Toshiba expects to install the first reactor in Japan in 2008 and to begin marketing the...
December 18, 2007
Light Sponge
The theoretical limits of solar cell efficiency seem to keep increasing. I discovered a perfect crystalline structure. That is a very rare sight. While being a perfect crystalline structure we could see that it also absorbed all light. It could become the perfect solar cell, says Martin Aagesen. The discovery of the new material has sparked a lot of attention internationally and has led to an article in Nature Nanotechnology. I've read fictional stories about conflicts between groups about "light stealing". Buildings that are powered by solar cells in building exterior surfaces are vulnerable to being shaded by new construction. Such buildings were also unpleasant if not dangerous to be around since they sucked both heat and light from the environment to an extent that people outside found distressing. What does "absorbed all light" really mean? I suppose they'd be dead black. It would seem that dust, dirt and other things would mar the perfection and decrease efficiency. Maybe...
December 11, 2007
Ambient Energy
One of my foundational perspectives is that we live immersed in a simmering soup of gasses, liquids and particles. When I walk my pastures each day I have a strong sensation of being submerged, like a lead booted diver on the seabed, but less so. The simmering bit is important. It's hot, even when it's cold. The world sizzles with energy. A big focus here at the IEEE’s IEDM conference has been on devices for energy harvesting—sometimes called energy scavenging. Essentially, they can produce their own electricity from ambient sources. This “free energy” comes from solar, vibration, pressure and temperature gradients, as well as human power . . . The repurposing of motion energy for devices is hardly new—self-winding watches have been using human movement for years . . . The real heady stuff came in the form of nanogenerators. Two types were discussed at the conference, and required putting on your physics thinking cap for full impact. The...
November 23, 2007
Equated Falsely
I think that the main source of confusion about fossil fuels and agriculture is that so many equate energy with fossil fuels. They aren't the same thing. You can string together a series of factoids that purport to show that food is oil, but all you have really shown is that food is energy. Duh! I became fascinated with the connection between our food supply and energy when I first learned of the problems that North Korea was having feeding itself. (see here). This data showed me something amazing about modern society, we don't live in the information age, we don't live in the industrial age, we live in the agricultural age. Without food, we have no industry or information. Unfortunately many don't understand this. Nor do they understand that today the modern farming system is merely a means to turn petroleum into food, via mechanized planting and harvesting, and the use of petroleum based insecticides and fertilizers which...
November 21, 2007
About Nitrogen
Perhaps it would be useful to unpack some of the claims made in the earlier post More Snakes The real issue is energy. Birkland-Eyde used hydro-electric power from remote Norwegian hydro facilities. They had plenty of electricity but no grid to get the power to population centers. Using it on site to make industrial chemicals which could be more easily shipped to town was smart. We have other such situations. Geothermal energy in Iceland is an example. They can make plenty of electricity but can't ship it to customers. They also have plenty of water and air so they could make nitrates if the price is right. In short, the energy issue and the nitrate issue are linked, as environmentalists claim in their muddled way, but fossil fuels are irrelevant except in an economic sense. A dearth of cheap and abundant fossil methane will not result in a decline in agricultural production, it will result in yet another change...
November 08, 2007
Snake Oil
Did you ever wonder where that term came from and how it came to mean a phony miracle cure? Snake fat was considered a remedy for various ailments by some Native American tribes. Enterprising and often itinerant peddlers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, especially in the west, concocted a variety of miracle cures boasting snake oil as the primary active ingredient, though the special preparation was a patented secret. In 1917 the US government tested Stanley's snake oil, the creation of one Clark Stanley aka "The Rattlesnake King", and found it to a mix of mineral oil, beef fat, pepper, turpentine and camphor. In the "old world" snake oil has been used for centuries. Richard Stoughton's Elixir was patented in England in 1712, and the Chinese have used it for even longer. There's some possibility that the Chinese version actually had some value since it was derived from water snakes whose fat was high in eicosapentaenoic...
September 16, 2007
Fantasy Land
Politics isn't about reality, it is peurile struggles between interest groups. IN the debate over global climate change, there is a yawning gap that needs to be bridged. The gap is not between environmentalists and industrialists, or between Democrats and Republicans. It is between policy wonks and political consultants. Among policy wonks like me, there is a broad consensus. The scientists tell us that world temperatures are rising because humans are emitting carbon into the atmosphere. Basic economics tells us that when you tax something, you normally get less of it. So if we want to reduce global emissions of carbon, we need a global carbon tax. Q.E.D. The idea of using taxes to fix problems, rather than merely raise government revenue, has a long history. The British economist Arthur Pigou advocated such corrective taxes to deal with pollution in the early 20th century. In his honor, economics textbooks now call them “Pigovian taxes.” Neither taxes nor trading systems...
August 11, 2007
Semi-Sensible
A fatal flaw for the biorefinery concept, discussed a bit in Boutique Fuels, is that to produce significant quantities of fuel would require huge amounts of space, and that space is premium space that has more important tasks to do. There are other flaws. Chief among them is that the processes are inefficient. That can be improved. “Critics of corn ethanol like to say the process isn’t very efficient,” Mr. Brown said. “Part of that is because your products aren’t just fuel.” Finding other high-value applications, he added, lets producers “justly say, this is not a waste stream; it adds to the profitability of the plant.“ Back in Peoria, Mr. Vaughn is also looking at making products from distillers’ dry grain, including another biofuel. The grain is more than 10 percent oil, and one ton of it can yield 30 gallons of biodiesel. Interest in the biorefinery model is not limited to research scientists and start-up companies. Archer Daniels...
June 14, 2007
Chemistry . . .
is starting to get interesting. Glucose, in plant starch and cellulose, is nature’s most abundant sugar. “But getting a commercially viable yield of HMF [hydroxymethylfurfural, a promising surrogate for petroleum-based chemicals] from glucose has been very challenging,” Zhang said. “In addition to low yield until now, we always generate many different byproducts,” including levulinic acid, making product purification expensive and uncompetitive with petroleum-based chemicals. . . The solvent, called an ionic liquid, enabled the metal chlorides to convert the sugars to HMF. Ionic liquids provide an additional benefit: It is reusable, thus produces none of the wastewater in other methods that convert fructose to HMF. Metal chlorides belong to a class of ionic-liquid-soluble materials called halides, which “in general work well for converting fructose to HMF,” Zhang said — but not so well when glucose is the initial stock. In fact, attempts at direct glucose conversion created so many impurities that it was simpler to start with the fructose,...
May 22, 2007
Better Biofuel
OK, ethanol sucks, but there may be a better way to use all that corn and cane. Using synthetic biology approaches, Zhang and colleagues Barbara R. Evans and Jonathan R. Mielenz of ORNL and Robert C. Hopkins and Michael W.W. Adams of the University of Georgia are using a combination of 13 enzymes never found together in nature to completely convert polysaccharides (C6H10O5) and water into hydrogen when and where that form of energy is needed. . . Polysaccharides like starch and cellulose are used by plants for energy storage and building blocks and are very stable until exposed to enzymes. Just add enzymes to a mixture of starch and water and "the enzymes use the energy in the starch to break up water into only carbon dioxide and hydrogen,"Zhang said. A membrane bleeds off the carbon dioxide and the hydrogen is used by the fuel cell to create electricity. Water, a product of that fuel cell process, will...
May 20, 2007
Biofuel Offsets
Lars Smith makes an interesting point. The demand for biofuels is driving the destruction of forests and the emission of greenhouse gasses. . . If CO2 offsets make sense in aviation (a rather large “if”), then people who use biofuels in their cars should buy offsets to make up for the CO2 emission caused by the deforestation taking place when biofuel plantations are established. This is, as Lars notes, absurd. All of the convoluted carbon wheezes - subsidies, mandates, credits, taxes etc. - are making things worse. Lars has a better idea. A sensible first step would be to get rid off all subsidies for biofuels....
May 04, 2007
Cheaper Solar
No deposit, no return. UNSW researchers have devised a way to deposit a thin film of silver (about 10 nanometres thick) onto a solar cell surface and then heat it to 200° Celsius. This breaks the film into tiny 100-nanometre "islands" of silver that boost the cell’s light trapping ability, thereby boosting its efficiency. . . "Most thin-film solar cells are between eight and 10 percent efficient," says Dr Kylie Catchpole, a co-author of the study, "but the new technique could increase efficiency to between 13 and 15 percent." . . . [R]esearchers . . . have reported a 16-fold enhancement in light absorption in 1.25-micron thin-film cells for light with a wavelength of 1050 nm. They have also reported a seven-fold enhancement in light absorption in the more expensive wafer type cells light wavelengths of 1200 nm. Though this is a solar energy story I was struck by the nano nano aspect. It seems that we continue to...
March 31, 2007
Hot Rocks
Lars Smith wonders: Is geothermal energy the next big thing? On Iceland, an investment fund, Geysir Green Energy, was recently established with an initial $100 million investment for the purposes of investing in geothermal energy. Given Iceland’s experience in this field, this can been seen as an initial step towards commercializing Icelandic experience and technology worldwide, e.g. that of the company Enex. Other companies in this field, Calpine Corporation Ormat Technologies It isn't clear if the technologies will be adopted with enthusiasm since money often flows to projects that are subsidized whether they make any sense or not without subsidies. Geothermal makes sense, but may not capture political minds and hearts. I think it will eventually come into its own, but perhaps not soon. See Heat Mining for some discussion of recent work on enhanced geothermal systems (EGS)....
March 17, 2007
ABCs
For several years now there have been some who have noted the consequences of development in the world's large population centers such as China, India and Indonesia. Their spew, especially particulates and aerosols, has been changing the climate and weather patterns in the southern hemisphere. By affecting insolation the rain patterns are changed, and there are global implications. More than three-quarters of the particulate pollution known as black carbon transported at high altitudes over the West Coast during spring is from Asian sources, according to a research team led by Professor V. Ramanathan at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. I poached this link from Randall who sums up. The Kyoto Accord and similar climate change agreements will not accomplish much as long as the fossil fuels are cheaper than non-fossil fuel energy sources. The Asian economic juggernaut is radically reshaping the old world order where the United States and Europe were the two biggest users of energy...
March 04, 2007
Simon Says
People are ingenious. They seem to have a real knack for finding and making stuff. Within the last decade, technology advances have made it possible to unlock more oil from old fields, and, at the same time, higher oil prices have made it economical for companies to go after reserves that are harder to reach. With plenty of oil still left in familiar locations, forecasts that the world’s reserves are drying out have given way to predictions that more oil can be found than ever before. In a wide-ranging study published in 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that ultimately recoverable resources of conventional oil totaled about 3.3 trillion barrels, of which a third has already been produced. More recently, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consultant, estimated that the total base of recoverable oil was 4.8 trillion barrels. That higher estimate — which Cambridge Energy says is likely to grow — reflects how new technology can tap into...
February 21, 2007
Cobbled Together
I can imagine several circular systems using this technology. Using corncob waste as a starting material, researchers have created carbon briquettes with complex nanopores capable of storing natural gas at an unprecedented density of 180 times their own volume and at one seventh the pressure of conventional natural gas tanks. . . The briquettes are the first technology to meet the 180 to 1 storage to volume target set by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2000 . . . Standard natural gas storage systems use high-pressure natural gas that has been compressed to a pressure of 3600 pounds per square inch and bulky tanks that can take up the space of an entire car trunk. The carbon briquettes contain networks of pores and channels that can hold methane at a high density without the cost of extreme compression, ultimately storing the fuel at a pressure of only 500 pounds per square inch, the pressure found in natural gas...
January 24, 2007
Real Reality
Understanding how democracies really function, and the constraints this imposes on grand schemes, was discussed a bit in Staying Alive. This is the problem with the current enthusiasm for Pigou taxes. As Don Boudreaux said last month: Even if global warming is a reality, another reality -- one with a much more consistent track record throughout history and across different countries -- is the perversity of political incentives. Given these perverse political incentives (not to mention the inevitable scrawniness of government's access to information and knowledge), I don't trust government to impose and administer a Pigouvian tax with sufficient disinterestedness and skill to make such a tax a plausible policy option. After the recent SOTU and the expected increased convolution of regulation, Greg Mankiw, the grand high Pigouvian, asks: . . . if this tangle of regulation is the alternative, isn't it time for them to reconsider? Boudreaux once again clarifies the issue. I'd be happy to replace all...
January 24, 2007
Shades of Grey
You might be thinking about ethanol again today since it is being hotly pursued by power and money, even more so than yesterday. Tiffany Groode sets us straight. Using a technique called life cycle analysis, she looked at energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions associated with all the steps in making and using ethanol, from growing the crop to converting it into ethanol. She limited energy sources to fossil fuels. Finally, she accounted for the different energy contents of gasoline and ethanol. Pure ethanol carries 30 percent less energy per gallon, so more is needed to travel a given distance. While most studies follow those guidelines, Groode added one more feature: She incorporated the uncertainty associated with the values of many of the inputs. Following a methodology developed by recent MIT graduate Jeremy Johnson (Ph.D. 2006), she used not just one value for each key variable (such as the amount of fertilizer required), but rather a range of values...
January 24, 2007
Heat Mining
We're sitting on a lot of energy. A comprehensive new MIT-led study of the potential for geothermal energy within the United States has found that mining the huge amounts of heat that reside as stored thermal energy in the Earth's hard rock crust could supply a substantial portion of the electricity the United States will need in the future, probably at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact. . . The study shows that drilling several wells to reach hot rock and connecting them to a fractured rock region that has been stimulated to let water flow through it creates a heat-exchanger that can produce large amounts of hot water or steam to run electric generators at the surface. Unlike conventional fossil-fuel power plants that burn coal, natural gas or oil, no fuel would be required. And unlike wind and solar systems, a geothermal plant works night and day, offering a non-interruptible source of electric power. . . Toksöz...
December 06, 2006
Moon Struck
First, go to the moon. NASA is betting on the Moon after the agency announced last night its plans to build a permanent lunar base—one that may be used to prepare a manned trip to Mars. Despite a lack of resource-stocked ice sheets at the Moon's top and bottom, NASA hopes to send manned missions by 2020 to the the open-sourced outpost at one of the lunar poles, where the base can harness increased sunlight. . . “The agency is betting that on the Moon, we’ll find not only scientific but economic opportunity: extracting water from lunar ice for rocket fuel, even processing lunar dirt to find oxygen to breathe,” says Jones. “The big question is: Can we locate those resources and get at them in time to show there is a payoff waiting on the Moon? Proving the answer is ‘yes’ is the key to staying on the Moon once we go back.” Well, how about helium-3? Researchers...
November 28, 2006
Winterlude
The days are short and temperatures have dropped. It almost freezes at night now. I know that's not very impressive for those in colder climes, but it makes life harder. I'm not a big weather wimp, but it finally broke me down. I lit a fire in the wood stove this morning, the only source of heat. It was a revelation. I had forgotten the simple pleasure of radiant heat, the contrast of facing a heat source, being warm on the front and cold on the back, making the heat all the more precious for its obvious scarcity. It gave me an unexpected and arguably unjustifiable sense of well being. Even the smell of dust burning off the stove as the iron heated up seemed comforting. It isn't that it is a good smell, it's that it's friendly. I know that by spring I will be far more than tired of it, and that there will be exasperating times...
September 19, 2006
Fertilizer Engine
We've heard lots about fertilizer bombs since the federal building in OK city blew up, but not so much about fertilizer as a fuel for internal combustion engines. Hydrogen Engine Center will work together with Sawtelle & Rosprim to design and build the world’s first Ammonia-Fueled Irrigation Pump System . . . Plans include integrating HEC’s ammonia-powered engines with Sawtelle’s pump technologies and expertise . . . Ammonia (NH3), also known as anhydrous ammonia, which the agricultural industry has relied on as a fertilizer for many years, contains no carbon, stores like propane and is the second most prevalent chemical in the world. Ammonia contains more hydrogen per cubic foot than liquid H2. . . An infrastructure for ammonia is already in place, as transporting and storing the fuel is much like that of propane. Usage and safety regulations for ammonia are already in place, therefore, the process of obtaining a permit to use ammonia is usually relatively simple....
July 15, 2006
More Anti-Corn
Add this study to the ones cited in the previous post. American imports of oil could be eliminated by 2030, a new study by an interstate consortium asserts, if the nation turns to an aggressive program of energy efficiency and commercialization of four already-demonstrated technologies for making transportation fuels. . . But for the strategy to work, the study said, an expansive investment of private funds would be required, with encouragement from “appropriate fiscal, regulatory, and institutional support mechanisms” for 20 years. The study also suggested that the current push to produce ethanol from corn as a fuel supplement is largely misplaced. "Encouragement"? Subsidies, mandates and regulations in other words. We would be wise to eliminate such encouragement in order for more sensible decisions to be made about energy, but businesses would have to have confidence that the "encouragement" would not be resumed at some point, so that they could formulate long term plans and make investments that would...
July 15, 2006
STFU
Pseudo-environmentalists and other dingy greenish confused types get tetchy when you point out that their ideas are nonsense. It has become dead common to see posts insisting that critics stop criticizing lame ideas. University of Minnesota researchers published a paper saying that "even if every acre of corn were used for ethanol, it would only create 12 percent of the ethanol needed for U.S. motoring fuel. Researchers at Magleve Research Center of the Polytechnic University of New York wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post that went even further, stating that even if all U.S. farmland were used to produce ethanol, we couldn't produce enough fuel for transportation. . . Instead of wasting your keystrokes slamming biofuel for not being panacea, talk about the other solutions to the problem -- conservation through increased use of mass transportation, better fuel efficiency, other alternative fuels (Fischer-Tropsch diesel, tar sands oil), and possibly producing hydrogen from renewable resources. No answer is complete,...
July 12, 2006
Cool Power
This won't be cheap, easy or quick but it's an exceedingly interesting idea. Cryogenic, superconducting conduits could be connected into a "SuperGrid" that would simultaneously deliver electrical power and hydrogen fuel. . . A five-gigawatt Super-Cable is certainly technically feasible. Its scale would rival the 3.1-gigawatt Pacific Intertie, an existing 500-kilovolt DC overhead line that moves power between northern Oregon and southern California. Just four Super-Cables would provide sufficient capacity to transmit all the power generated by the giant Three Gorges Dam hydroelectric facility in China. Because a Super-Cable would use hydrogen as its cryogenic coolant, it would transport energy in chemical as well as electrical form. Next-generation nuclear plants can produce either electricity or hydrogen with almost equal thermal efficiency. So the operators of nuclear clusters could continually adjust the proportions of electricity and "hydricity" that they pump into the Super-Grid to keep up with the electricity demand while maintaining a flow of hydrogen sufficient to keep the...
July 06, 2006
Bio-Fuelish, Again
Last year, and many times before, I took issue with the idea of bio-fuels. Several posts (see Lose-Lose for a recent one) have excoriated bio-fuels since they are produced from crops, adding more pressure to an already troubled world agricultural system that must double its production in the next few decades to feed a couple of billion more people and raise the nutrition of a billion food insecure people already here. The continuing degradation of environments from industrial agriculture and the biodiversity losses from expansion make it pretty clear that "dirt burning", as bio-fuel use is sometimes called, is self-punking. This cure for the various symptoms of fossil fuel use is as bad or worse than the disease. That was far too gentle. . . . as we've looked at biofuels more closely, we've concluded that they're not a practical long-term solution to our need for transport fuels. Even if all of the 300 million acres (500,000 square miles)...
July 04, 2006
Waste Not
The idea of regulating behavior, either with blue laws or taxes, just seems dumb. Looking at the activity from a broader perspective often reveals opportunities for increased benefits. When you are concerned about a negative consequence of a behavior, look for those opportunities rather than reaching for the hammer to force behavior change. You'll get willing cooperation rather than surly resistance. The coal in the ground in Illinois alone has more energy than all the oil in Saudi Arabia. The technology to turn that coal into fuel for cars, homes and factories is proven. And at current prices, that process could be at the vanguard of a big, new industry. . . But there is a big catch. Producing fuels from coal generates far more carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming, than producing vehicle fuel from oil or using ordinary natural gas. And the projects now moving forward have no incentive to capture carbon dioxide beyond the limited...
June 25, 2006
Bag Brides
A newly important part of the a-maize-ing story is ethanol subsidies. [Insert usual subsidies rant] It's been somewhat amusing to see many of the old critics go buns up for ethanol given that it makes no difference to the environment or the economy if the maize subsidies end up feeding pigs or making ethanol. Some main stream push back has begun. A few agricultural economists and food industry executives are quietly worrying that ethanol, at its current pace of development, could strain food supplies, raise costs for the livestock industry and force the use of marginal farmland in the search for ever more acres to plant corn. "This is a bit like a gold rush," warned Warren R. Staley, the chief executive of Cargill, the multinational agricultural company based in Minnesota. "There are unintended consequences of this euphoria to expand ethanol production at this pace that people are not considering." Mr. Staley has his own reasons to worry, because...
June 12, 2006
Nuclear Madness
One of the starkest examples of the foolishness of climate poseurs is their wheezing opposition to nuclear power. It is arguable that to some extent anti-nuclear ideologues created the climate problems we have by derailing scientific and social progress on energy generation for decades. But it isn't just climate impacts that were exacerbated by this muddle headed opposition since the environmental impacts of fossil fuel reliance are legion. Continuing opposition to nuclear power at this late date is intellectually dishonest. The two most frequent issues cited - and lied about - are waste disposal and fuel aqusition. First waste disposal. "There are engineering questions about the massive storage repository proposed for the Nevada desert. Certainty about its ability to keep groundwater supplies safe falls off after about 10,000 years—while the facility needs to function as planned for several hundred thousands of years." The quote is from an interesting article on global warming and ways of dealing with it in...
May 31, 2006
A Miracle
I once saw a cartoon, perhaps a Larson, with an older man in a white lab coat at a chalkboard explaining a long equation with many terms, pointing at a section of the (nonsense) equation. The caption read "And then a miracle occurs". It often seems that there are many white coated folks who expect miracles. Ecosystems containing many different plant species are not only more productive, they are also better able to withstand and recover from climate extremes, pests and disease over long periods of time. . . "This is exciting because it shows that biodiversity can be used to produce a sustainable supply of biomass for biofuels," Tilman says. Gee, that's all there is to it? Fertility, moisture and all that don't matter? Biodiversity of global ecosystems has decreased as global population has increased because diverse ecosystems such as forests and prairies have been cleared to make way for agricultural fields planted with monocultures, buildings and roads....
March 31, 2006
Fire Down Below
I'm fascinated by odd-ball energy systems; geothermal, gravitational, and even nuclear though it is well developed in some places and seems poised for a comeback from a prematurely presumed death. The focus on solar energy in all its forms - everything from fossil fuels to bio-fuels as well as wind and PV - neglects some massive pools of energy that seem almost available. Some recent news about geothermal energy caught my eye. Some 90% of all homes in Iceland are heated by geothermal energy; and a number of power stations are also producing electricity from steam at around 240C, extracted from boreholes between 600 and 1,000m deep. But now, the plan is to go much deeper. Omar Friedleifsson of the Iceland Geosurvey is leading the consortium of energy companies in the Iceland Deep Drilling Project. Last year, they drilled down to a depth of 3,082m and since then have been conducting flow tests. Later this year, they will put...
March 15, 2006
Bridge to Nowhere
One of the stories wind power sceptics love to tell is about how Germany invested so much in wind without considering how to get the power from remote sites to consumers. When the dust settled Germany had spent so much on power transmission infrastructure that it would have been cheaper to burn their abundant coal and plant trees to reduce GHGs. This isn't a unique situation, it is common. Some entrepreneurs have made a proposal to address it. Last month a Dublin-based wind-farm developer, Airtricity, and Swiss engineering giant ABB began promoting a bold solution to the continent's power grid bottlenecks: a European subsea supergrid running from Spain to the Baltic Sea, in which high-voltage DC power lines link national grids and deliver power from offshore wind farms. When the wind is blowing over a wind farm on the supergrid, the neighboring cables would carry its power where most needed. When the farms are still, the cables will serve...
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