Aug
7
The Competition of Energy and Fuel Demands
August 7, 2008 | 1 Comment
At this writing the energy and fuel demand for transport fuels in the developed nations is declining. Gas-guzzlers get parked, trucking gets better organized, and airline flight routes get cancelled. Consumption demand goes down. Special interests sue, lobby in Congress, bureaucrats regulate and investment is increased non-productively and paybacks are strung out over a longer periods of time. Investment demand goes down.
In places like China, the largest developing market is the least transparent about information that can be used by everyone for analysis and forecasting. What is known is some basic and rather dated material. China has come into rapid development without much concern for the long term reinvestment needed to control things like pollution which may well wreck their joyous Olympic hosting. We do know that the policy was to skip efficiency and pollution efforts at worst and at best use U.S. or European standards and equipment that are quite old.
The result is that China is at one fifth of the efficiency of a leader like the U.S. Moreover they now have an installed base of this quality of energy and fuel using tooling. Growth has its problems in tradeoffs, and the appetite for energy in the growth has been an important part of the demand that pushed prices higher. What are China and others are doing about this?
In China’s case the government has prioritized improving air pollution by closing hundreds of small coal fired electrical generation plants and steel mills. The fuel economy standards are on the rise, as well as consumption taxes on their versions of gas-guzzlers. They have started to push building operators to install florescent lighting. This is getting a bit done, but as with any government it runs at cross-purposes.
The government has issued the famed communist “decrees” for reducing the amount of energy used while it remains subsidizing gasoline, diesel and electricity. China’s gasoline prices equate to about U.S. $3.40 a gallon, close to the mandated 18% increase from a few weeks ago. But consumption and auto sales are not slowing. (An aside – In Hong Kong gas runs better than $8 and shows poor results in driving down auto sales in a place where there is almost no place left to drive or park. So it isn’t so easy, even for a single party, dictatorial system.)
In contrast to this is the industrial sector trained to work with subsidized prices. Lifting price controls on energy and fuels can force companies to move to lower cost competitors such as Vietnam. Losing thousands of jobs is not good for a one party state.
Perhaps the most bewildering issue is the power generation field. Here China leads the world with 152 gigawatts of renewable sourced power equal to 15% of U.S. capacity. But 80% is still fueled by coal that is both mined in country at an annual cost of about 4000 deaths and since 1992 imported, too. China’s coal fired electrical generation is likely the largest air polluter in the world with a growing bad reputation and at any time we could see the acid rain issue reform on a never before seen scale across the Pacific Ocean. This plus the underground coal fires burning an estimated 20 million tons per year are spilling more effluents into the air. China’s answer is use diesel – an incredibly inefficient method abandoned in the U.S over forty years ago that moves more pressure to the transport fuels sourced from oil.
That’s just China. India is going through a similar set of issues and while developing more smartly and more intellectually vs. manually work, still is increasing price pressures. The list of developing counties has grown since the demise of the Soviet Union and the change in China from hard communism to one party socialism. The countries are at various stages of development each making choices for energy supplies and fueling options based on the national circumstances.
While the U.S. and others in the developed world look to move on with level or declining oil use and perhaps a drop in coal use China is increasing electrical demand by about 10.3% annually since 1990 with no slowing down in sight.
Its clear that for supporting the current economic status in living standards in the developed world and feeding the growth in the developed world much more energy will be needed. But more important is to get competition going to drive energy and fuel costs lower.
Not only does the U.S. and the other developed countries need to add to the support in research and development, but also the governments need to answer the issues of the investment costs of every source. Long delays, huge regulatory expenses and other government sourced expenses for actions and inactions need addressed.
For consumers and investors it matters a great deal because in the end that money will be non productively invested and paid back over time with higher ongoing prices and longer term payouts that limit the turnover rate of capital. It may come to pass very soon that the needs for capital will not be answered because the rate of technological change may add risks to investments that could be profitable in shorter terms but are not viable when considering barriers, delays and extra costs leveled from bad government policy.
The competition in demand is two fold, the prices for the products and the competition for the investment. Demand is falling off for both, and this is a disaster in progress for everyone. Here’s the shortest list I can come up with for meetings with Congresspeople:
Get anything, everything, oil, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, renewables, alternatives – all of it adequately incentivized to overcome the tax code disaster.
Get the regulatory system fixed to get investment quickly in and out. The faster in the cheaper, the faster out capital can recycle into new technology. Better, faster, quicker!
A short list, I know. But we’re dealing with Congress people remember? If it’s too long or complex, it won’t fly at all. The individuals might get it, but by the time it comes from you to Congress on to the media then to regular voters the mains points will be lost. Its time to make some demands for good government before government destructs our living standards our nest eggs and hopes for our children.
Aug
6
Here Is Where to Get Plenty of Biofuel
August 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Al Fin collected a few pages about biofuel sources that just beg a little closer look. (Monday August 4, 2008) That and I’m adding a research result from the University of Illinois to do first.
Professor Stephen P. Long at U of I has run a field trial of miscanthus and compares it to switchgrass and corn for the yield of ethanol. Long’s team set up fields scattered across Illinois. Both miscanthus and switchgrass are perennial so they need only planted once for several years of harvest; require fewer chemical and mechanical inputs than a crop like corn. The differences are in the biomass that can be made into ethanol. With the current technology switchgrass and corn yield about the same ethanol. But miscanthus gets going earlier and grows for a longer season; it seems to like “poorer” quality soils so may be used on land not suitable for food crops and locks up more carbon in the soil.
Thus to meet the current political goal of offsetting 20% of gasoline with biofuel would take 25% of the current land used for crop production. The same land allocation to miscanthus yield would net something on the order of 53% of gasoline use. Keep in mind that some part of the acreage would likely come from land not currently used for crops like corn or soybean. There is a lot of unused land and highly erode able land available to grow alcohol feed stocks. There are lots of details to be worked out, but note that the Europeans have been at this for over a decade and more than 12 U.S. firms are propagating test versions of miscanthus for U.S. production.
On the land front the Russian federation has millions if not tens of millions of hectares (about 2.5 acres) available for fuel crops. The farm situation in the Russian Federation has been so dismal that much of the planet’s best soils are simply grown over by weeds as in some cases the entire population has migrated to the cities. The Bioenergy page links to a BBC story of two Brits that went to Russia and set themselves up on vacant land and are busily farming quite successfully. The only downside is that the best soils lie rather far to the north making for shorter seasons. But the yields for short season crops are the envy of farmers worldwide.
The same Bioenergy page notes that Russian situation has similar potentials in Sub-Saharan Africa. Again due to politics or genocide if you like, great swaths of highly productive land is simply out of production, so much so that there isn’t enough food to eat as we seem to see starvation regularly in one of the best food and fuel producing continents of the planet.
Make no mistake that the Russians don’t get it. Former president Vladimir Putin has called on the country’s former farmers to look at biofuels in hopes of reviving the agricultural sector. The Russian Ministry of Agriculture calculates that Russia’s vast lands could reach production equivalent to 7.7 million barrels of oil per day.
The Reverend Giok Se Tjiong of Lakeland Florida has cross-bred a specific species of the afore mentioned miscanthus or elephant grass with sugar cane. With a high carbohydrate level the Reverend has been feeding cattle with his crossbred grass. Now get this – the grass Tjiong has is 71% carbohydrate for converting to simple sugars like glucose and sucrose that work best in making ethanol. Tjiong figures he can harvest in Central Florida twice per year with each getting 1,365 gallons or 2,730 per acre per year. Top corn yields about 500 gallons. That’s nearly a 5.5 fold increase - quite a difference. Professor Long, let me introduce Reverend Tjiong.
Back on the land topic the Caribbean nations had a meeting to look into what should be done to get out from under the oil price dilemma. Like the U.S. and other countries that have comparably lower taxes and fast market impacts on prices these nation are completely dependant on oil imports for transport and electrical generation. While not having a lot of land they have the widest possible choice in crops from sugar cane, jatropha, on to the diesel tree.
While we watch with increasing interest and hopes for the algae guys to get us to alternative diesel, another plant called the diesel tree just drips the stuff out of its bark. Native to Brazil the diesel tree is under close development by Chhandak Basu at the University of Northern Colorado and C. Neal Stewart, Jr. at the University of Tennessee. Basu got his sample species from Puerto Rico and hopes to clone the genes into species such as algae, weeds and other plants. Way early in the research these gentlemen have a tree that offers oeloresin a compound with similar properties to diesel fuel for further development.
This is the short list. A really short list about land and genetics. For all the harm, suffering and distress from high oil prices there is a bright light at the end of the journey. There will be competing sources of alternatives that will over time pull down the cost of powering life with fuels. My Lord, thanks for nature and the mind of man. It’s quite an interesting time to be alive.
Aug
5
The Hydrogen Economy Might Have Gotten Real Legs
August 5, 2008 | 4 Comments
I have been quite unimpressed by the “hydrogen economy” concept because of the difficulty in storing and transporting the smallest atom. I can live with the other attributes as careful engineering can cope. I still have reservations about regular folks handling such a volatile fuel. This is moderated by the reports out of MIT from Professor Daniel Nocera and Matthew Kanan. These men have allayed my worst fears by thinking through a closed loop system that would not have normal people handling hydrogen. The loop is a new way to crack the hydrogen out of water and within a day feed it into a fuel cell for generating electrical power. I can live with that, barely.
Now not to enthuse or frighten folks, but Professor Nocera is quoted as saying, “I’m open-sourcing this to let everybody run with it. My plan is that when people see it, they’ll see it’s easy to do and they’ll start working it.”
The story begins in the effort by many in chemical research to create an artificial photosynthesis, so getting the plant kingdom’s technology into humanity’s hands. The MIT team’s results have gathered acclaims like “This discovery is simply groundbreaking,” from Karsten Meyer, a professor of chemistry at Friedrich Alexander University, in Germany.
The innovation it seems from looking at this after the fact is the research was driven not to electrolysis of water, but to drive off the oxygen as in plants leaving the hydrogen behind. From the news information that’s out the team developed a catalyst that’s powered by electricity, which does drive off the oxygen and leave hydrogen behind in ion form. This solves the problem of splitting out hydrogen and getting an increasingly rich stock of hydroxide left behind. It also solves the separation issue of the two gasses.
Then as Professor Nocera put it in the (pdf) podcast, (media) podcast. “You take water plus these catalysts and light from the photovoltaic and you make hydrogen and oxygen. You store the hydrogen and oxygen, then when you combine it back over, say, a fuel cell, you get water back and electricity out. So in this sort of design, you don’t need to worry about where you’re going to get the water from except the initial time. You get the initial water, then you’re in a closed loop, and it’s just humming away with light as an input from a photovoltaic. You’re taking water to hydrogen and oxygen and then hydrogen and oxygen back to water.” You might note that the electrical input could be from any source.
Using little more than a conducting material Nocera is making up a solution of cobalt ions and phosphate ions and forming a film on the conductor making his electrode. The conductor Nocera uses is indium 10 oxide glass. Nocera then explains, “Once you make that electrode, you can take it out. And you don’t need the cobalt anymore but it’s good to have the phosphate around. And the reason for that is, remember when we started it was just a clean piece of glass, and then when we put the positive potential on it, it oxidizes cobalt. It takes it from what’s called cobalt 2+ to cobalt 3+ and the cobalt 3+ and the phosphate form this thin film. Now in the natural cycle of this catalyst working, it goes back to cobalt 2+ and then it can redissolve. But then when the electrode’s under a positive potential it goes back to cobalt 3+ and then the phosphate in solution will capture it and bring it back to the electrode. And so we call that self-healing or a repair mechanism. So what you can do is make the catalyst out of cobalt and phosphate, get your thin film, it’s like a darkish, blue-black film on the conducting glass, take the conducting glass out and put it on a shelf. Then when you’re ready to make O2 you can take that conducting glass, put it into a solution of phosphate, just phosphate and water now, phosphate’s a mineral anion. And then the thing just hums away making O2. And the reason you want that phosphate is because in the natural cycle of the catalyst performance, the cobalt can redissolve in solution and then the phosphate escorts it back to the electrode.”
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Watch Daniel Nocera explain how his catalyst can be used to store sunlight. |
That leaves you with an ionic hydrogen rich water that can have the hydrogen extracted using a platinum catalyst. Professor Nocera expects that within months there will be a working alternative as he has one working experimentally now in preparation for the next paper that could tie the whole process into a neat whole.
The title has the word “might” as there is a missing element – efficiency. Just how much hydrogen is the new process going get vs. the electrical input? That goes unsaid. But by no means is this a non-event, the new take, to get out the oxygen then extract the hydrogen is a worthwhile path that has just seen the first concrete results. If it is efficient, yielding high returns of hydrogen the prospects are stunning. Imagine you are an organic chemist with an abundant and cheap supply of hydrogen.
You might revolutionize oil refining, or simply use coal at the mine to make methane (natural gas) or use hydrogen in oil reservoirs for enhanced recovery, or find a way to extract heavy oil, tar sand oil, oil shale and other sources into a clean burning, pipeline transportable fuel that can be in business, homes and vehicles.
Might. Yet the prospects in this field are amazing with incredible potential. But there is an early issue yet to resolve – Nocera is quoted as above in going to open source the technology, while the MIT lawyers have filed patents. There had to be a problem! But keep in mind; the MIT team is only the first to publish. For the dreamy but possible version of the future try the Science Daily version of the story. The future looks good.
Aug
3
The Energy Problem is Really a Political Problem
August 3, 2008 | 1 Comment
Last Friday saw the members of Congress, again for the several hundredth time, exit their jobs with the work undone. This again leaves the United States, for more of an indeterminate period of time, without any governmentally founded basis for working to a solution for expanding energy and fuel supplies. Its as if they don’t work for the American People. That may be closer to the truth than many are willing to face.
With resources in supplies and know how that can easily overcome the problem, and the reality of new efforts leading to a bigger and stronger economy along with a reduction in exporting capital - people have to wonder where the sense is in it all. With billions of barrels crude oil, billions if not trillions of oil equivalent in nuclear, an inexhaustible supply of sun powered systems and biology processes for alternatives and the innovative and creative intelligence to put it all on the markets, Congress recessing, like spoiled elementary kids with the job not finished is not just irritating – it is harmful to everyone.
The situation is not new, it’s a development over decades that’s seen society push more responsibility for managing things like the land, sea and air into the grip of a slow, easily subverted and self interested system called government. Its our own, and our preceding generations fault. We have come to believe that government has a useful role in getting the big issues of common concern to everyone compromised and set into a workable system or process. The reach of government from something seemingly so simple as financial reporting and everyone paying taxes has become a huge burden for some, a means to get a free ride for others, and special advantages for many has regressed into a corrupting influence that permeates the whole of the economy. As much as we have pushed responsibility on to government – we remain responsible to solve our own problems – which is getting more difficult as government has only made it more costly and difficult to be responsible for ourselves.
The wish to protect our environment mutated into a battle over resources. The effort to get new oil supplies, keep the wind industry growing, and other alternatives fed incentives to overcome the tax burden noted in the last paragraph has almost everything stopped, stalled or in deep confusion. All while gas just a couple of weeks ago was over $4.00 and we haven’t even seen what home heating costs will do this winter.
It’s a near certainty that oil will go down, as demand destruction has taken hold. But by no means have the consumption tools like SUVs and light trucks been junked by the tens of millions – cheaper oil at this time will mean more gasoline sales – which means the demand destruction won’t stay destroyed, it going to come back- and when it does we’ll go through the whole cycle again with an even higher peak. Both of the two previous massive price run-ups were artificial – embargoes by suppliers. But this time its different, demand has over run supply. This will cycle endlessly unless the useful things get done. The sooner the facts are answered with action, the better – and the longer we put off acting the more grievous and expensive the needed changes will be.
I’m bringing this up today because I’m miffed that those elected, high paid and high status members of Congress forgot what is important – the job. I will be at a certain meeting in a few evenings and make myself understood as one who is completely dissatisfied and expects the official to do what’s expected, just as you and I are when we work and have responsibilities to our job and the results the work brings to us and our loved ones.
Last weeks display of contempt to us, the employers and payers of government, is too much to ignore. There must be some “heads roll” for so completely and determinedly ignoring the business of American and free world economics. Not allowing a vote puts small and wickedly selfish interests ahead of everyone else – which is almost everyone. Enough is enough.
Its time for demand destruction to be applied to Ms. Pelosi’s career.
Aug
1
Will EEStor Move The Earth?
August 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment
This week saw EEStor CEO and president Richard Weir, who is also a co-inventor, announce that its processes and equipment have apparently been verified by Ed Golla, lab director of Texas Research International, a multidisciplinary research, development and testing company in Austin, Texas. EEStor added that Ian Treviranus of Horiba Instruments says the company’s technology helps maintain sufficient voltage at ideal temperatures. That makes two independent certifications of its ultracapacitor electrical energy storage equipment.
A little due diligence suggests that TRI in Austin and Horiba Instruments are competent to test the EEStor technology. One wonders though, at the bleeding edge of technology if the chemical aspects are understood well enough for competent testing of the EEStor technology and hard verification. The instrumentation would not be an issue. In any case these two certifications jump up the credibility of EEStor dramatically.
Just to amplify the probabilities the competition isn’t laying down. Maxwell Technologies, a known to ship product manufacturer of ultra capacitors, in the past month has seen them sign two new bus-manufacturing deals. Maxwell’s capital burn rate is decreasing while ultra capacitor sales grew a reported 64% 1st quarter ‘08 from 1st ’07.
Ultra capacitors are for real. It looks more and more that the EEStor technology will be real soon too. The EEStor justifiable penchant for secrecy and security may have to give way to shipping product soon. The early claims have suffered since the purification of the capacitor powder and chemical purification work got intense last year.
Canada’s Zenn Motors has a deal for the rights to EEStor technology for automotive applications. Lockheed Martin announced a deal for licensing the technology for use in defense and homeland security applications. This week saw another patent application filed and the executives remain unavailable for comment.
Meanwhile – a blogger has a site dedicated to the EEStor story called “Bariumtitanate.blogspot.com.” As with the story so far even the blogger is anonymous. He/she has gone so far as to interview Mr. Weir and report in part on the blog site. It’s interesting even as it triggers native suspicion, skepticism, and cynicism. One wonders what is true there.
It’s either getting amazing or bewildering. Something. It’s a big deal because of the energy storage values and charging and discharging rates. The company expects its barium titanate ceramic ultracapacitor, which it said uses no hazardous materials, to have a charging time of 3 to 6 minutes, with a standby discharge rate of only 0.02 percent over 30 days. EEStor said that compares to more than 3 hours to charge a lithium-ion battery and a discharge rate of 1 percent over 30 days. “It’s all certified,” Mr. Weir says, “No bullshit in this.”
EEStor said the enhancement of its chemical purification processes is one of its most critical technical milestones, but EEStor has yet to release the results of the permittivity testing (aka dielectric constant), which will trigger the next milestone payment from Zenn. The automaker said permittivity is a measurement of how much energy can be stored in a material. Their press release confirms the press release announcement of EEStor. Zenn must be confident; Zenn has already made three milestone payments to EEStor totaling $1.3 million. Another $700,000 is payable after the permittivity testing, with a final $500,000 due when EEStor ships its ultracapacitors.
Where does that leave consumers? The confidence level is getting higher now that the Texas lab and the instrumentation people have been in for a look. What is of some concern are the license terms that may make the products way more expensive than huge market volumes and dominance might suggest. Maxwell is nowhere close to the claims EEStor makes in price and performance. EEStor has information bits out suggesting that the costs vs. lithium ion will be more than competitive, even cheaper.
Against all of this is the lithium industry really hasn’t applied itself to competitive growth as the technology is superior in many ways to others like nickel metal hydride. NiMh is itself cornered by the patents, a huge management mistake that can be laid at the feet of big oil. These points illustrate that as consumers, the technology may well rush past the intellect and business acumen of the principles.
In countering that, one has to give credit to Richard Weir for keeping a lid on the development progress, not making great claims, focusing on the milestones of the process of getting to commercial scale.
At the end of a reanalysis, the technology itself is getting to the point of certainty of something really good. From which the next stage is coming into view, do the people has the qualities needed to make such a technology actually a market disrupter? Will they drive the costs down as fast as possible and make products irresistible? Actually “move the earth as we know it?” No one is saying they are driving to cost competitiveness with lead acid, a sure earth shaker.
The facts strongly suggest we have a new set of interesting concerns coming up that may be more incredible than the technology or a disappointment to rival any in history. We’ll see.
Jul
31
A Look At the Road of Nuclear Power
July 31, 2008 | 5 Comments
The U.S. Department of Energy through a competitive process announced that it has selected teams led by Idaho National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory to advance the technology of nuclear fuel called “Deep-Burn.” This revolutionary technology in which plutonium and higher transuranics recycled from spent nuclear fuel are destroyed while generating energy not only advances nuclear power production but also reduces the amount of radioactive waste produced in the end.
DOE Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Dennis Spurgeon says, “Deep-Burn R&D is valuable and it has the potential to greatly reduce the amount of long-lasting waste produced by the nation’s next generation of nuclear power reactors. At the same time this technology could greatly increase the amount of safe, economical, carbon-free electricity generated by advanced nuclear fuel.”
The goal is to establish one of the prototype reactors being researched under the Department’s Generation IV Nuclear power program the technological foundations that will support the role of the Very-High-Temperature, gas-cooled Reactor (VHTR) in the nuclear fuel cycle. There are two parts in the process: Advanced Modeling and Simulation Capability for VHTR Development and Design at a cost of $1 million led by the Argonne National Laboratory; and Transuranic Management Capabilities of the Deep-Burn VHTR at a cost of $6.3 million led by the Idaho National Laboratory.
The mission of the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) is the production of high-temperature heat to use for generation of electricity. Another goal of this work is to enable a quantitative assessment of the scope, cost and schedule implications of extending the NGNP mission in the future to destruction of plutonium and other transuranics. The Deep-Burn R&D effort will be coordinated with the ongoing Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) programs to ensure synergism and to avoid duplication of efforts. The R&D that will be carried out is a part of DOE’s Generation IV program, which aims to further the fundamental R&D to ensure the viability of the next-generation of nuclear energy systems.
As Brian Wang points out on his site “Next Big Future,” the world is using 64,000 tons of uranium per year at only 5% efficiency whereas using deep burn technology the fuel use would drop to 3200 tons, a reduction to 5% of the fuel used today. As noted above the deep burn offers a huge reduction in net waste of dangerous materials. Brian also points out that several reactors designs along with designs incorporating thorium fuel are options, too. He also notes accurately that thorium is more common than uranium in the earth’s crust.
As consumers interested in lower costs, Brian notes that back in 1972 the U.S. completed 12 reactors. This illustrates what could be done if the regulatory framework worked for the citizen’s needs. In passing, as Brian is wont to do, he runs the numbers on oil equivalent out to 2030 for the deep burn and uranium fuel sourced from seawater recovery using the technology we have at hand right now that equals 8500 trillion barrels of oil. He says that’s 850 times the estimates of total coal, oil and natural gas.
Just to poke the American eye that’s not paying attention, China has 100 AP-1000 nuclear reactors ordered, building or scheduled for completion by 2020. That’s the kind of thing that makes a citizen want to throw the chairs at the dopey politicians.
On the waste issue Brian does a little comparing and example making to put the curious at ease. 60,000 tons is less than the weight or displacement of a container ship and would handily stack up on a basketball court. Once deep burned, the remainder has a half-life of less than 30 years and has valuable constructive and economic uses. It’s burned down to an atomic weight lower than thorium – no bomb grade material remains.
Brian’s post is a list of observations, quotes, and links to a wide array of information on nuclear power. Brian obviously rushes his posts as he’s has to be extremely busy, so the navigation is up to the reader. It’s as if one is reading headlines, and many of the listing have links to the deeper explanations. It’s a blog page well worth reviewing and bookmarking. This link is a data rich site, it should be required reading for anyone that’s interested, writing for others, making policy, or in the business. I hope Brian keeps it up.
Nuclear fission power is accelerating; some politicians like the governator, candidates for president and other offices realize the transition to electrical energy is inevitable. There is a national, worldwide and distinctly humanity wide opportunity here. The only thing stopping it is ill-informed, misleading and over funded hysteria. For the industry the risk is political and the opposing players, the development of fusion, BlackLight, and other innovations that may simply undercut the price of the saleable power. For consumers, the enemy to your family, home, job and lifestyle security isn’t atomic fuels, it’s the opponents to economic growth playing in the political arena against your best interests. Their weapon is fear – your weapon is knowledge.
Jul
30
A New Method to Extract Hydrogen Everywhere
July 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I don’t spend much time on hydrogen production methods, as they are so far stunningly expensive even though some new ones are very efficient. One thing is certain; humanity will need free hydrogen to make good use of the planet’s resources and work responsibly with the carbon cycle. Another point made to me about hydrogen is that letting H or H2 out into the atmosphere isn’t a great idea. One, being the planet’s systems expect H to be locked up with oxygen or involved with carbon and many times both. Second is the free hydrogen really will just rise into the upper atmosphere and be blown off by the solar wind if not combined with the ozone. Earth’s mass will be reduced, gone forever.
This brings us to the latest innovation in splitting water. Professor Craig A. Grimes at Penn State has a new process that uses light for power. While I’ve seen proposals before, Professor Grime’s method isn’t stunningly expensive. It is not especially efficient, but it looks affordable.
The clever innovation is a “photoelectrochemical” diode that does a “photolysis” of water. New words now. The diode part comes from the light entering on one side, doing one part of the job, continuing across the substrate and energizing the other side to do the other part of the job, a one way only process. A light wave thus stimulates the light facing side, which is titanium dioxide with a doping of iron soaking up the ultraviolet light in the 300-to 400-nanometer range. Passing over to the other side the light in the 400 to 885 nanometer range energizes the copper titanium side. The two materials thus use the full spectrum of the light segment of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The titanium dioxide layer produces oxygen and the copper titanium layer produces hydrogen. Very neat indeed. So when you hear its only 0.30% efficient one isn’t so disappointed as it’s from a very wide range of light, it’s a first effort, and very low cost. Grimes suggests that perhaps as high as 10% efficiency is possible as no optimization has taken place. But the proof of concept works; the materials and construction offer that the devices are photo stable so lasting a very long time.
The other outstanding point is the device separates the oxygen and hydrogen in the course of operation. Grimes’ process is far more sophisticated than just the innovative materials and construction. The building up process itself is quite interesting. In Grimes’ photoelectrochemical diode, one side is a nanotube array of electron donor material – n-type material – titanium dioxide, and the other is a nanotube array that has holes that accept electrons - p-type material – cuprous oxide titanium dioxide mixture. P and n-type materials are common in the semiconductor industry. Grimes has been making n-type nanotube arrays from titanium by sputtering titanium onto a surface, anodizing the titanium with electricity to form titanium dioxide and then annealing the material to form the nanotubes as used in other solar applications. He makes the cuprous oxide titanium dioxide nanotube array in the same way and can alter the proportions of each metal.
There aren’t any graphics on the Penn State news release, nor a comment about a paper. On the other hand the U.S. Department of Energy supports the research and the team members are Gopal K. Mor, Oomman K. Varghese and Karthik Shankar, research associates; Rudeger H. T. Wilke and Sanjeev Sharma, Ph.D. candidates; Thomas J. Latempa, graduate student, all at Penn State; and Kyoung-Shin Choi, associate professor of chemistry, Purdue University.
This might all seem a little under the level of what is usually covered, but it’s a large team from Penn State. I do wish they thought to offer a little more, but its early in the research. What grabs attenteion is the low cost and the separated elements. This could be a very important development.
Jul
29
A Compressed Air Energy Storage Reality Check
July 29, 2008 | 1 Comment
A guest author going by Libelle posted a piece titled “Compressed Air Energy Storage – How Viable Is It?” Sunday at TheOilDrum, Canada. It’s a top-flight review of the physics and explains the thermodynamics in a quaint, easy to grasp way.
Libelle suggests that raising the elevation of water might be more effective. From here on Libelle examines the mathematics in measuring out the process of compressing the air and releasing it again in the losses of the energy inputs. While not a total loss, compressing air for later release is better than a gasoline motor but not by far. The facts behind the numbers and the calculations make the case that compressing air in a simple form isn’t particularly useful form of storage.
The basic run through offers the lessons that make up the second part of the piece. Here Libelle looks into the effects that staging the compression process might have. The advantage in doing the energy input in steps or stages of partial increases with smaller heat gains each has a considerable positive impact on the efficiency. The heat loss during compression and the heat needed to maintain volume to support pressure in releases are then the prime problems. For this article Libelle only looks to the solution of adding back fuels like natural gas to burn and expand the volume, which makes for a gas turbine drive solution.
Thanks for the math and a nice explanation of the problems. But –
Science is well on its way to using heat sources for direct to electrical generation. The nano antennae and thermoelectric researchers both have ways producible and in development that can harvest a part of the heat energy lost in compression. The thermal solar research is showing worthwhile paths to using heat sinks for storing energy for later use that could be charged in compression and discharged in depressurization. Many locations could use the cooling during depressurization as a form of energy, too. To call the whole thing off isn’t looking into technology and cross applications in any depth.
Then there is the cross to geothermal. Rather than be concerned with the heat loss, just store the compressed air with its heat in a geothermal location and add the geothermal heat, too. A look at the map of the geothermal potential across the U.S. shows a huge energy supply. Using air instead of water might prove to be a boon to many locations where water, depth, mineralization, the available latent heat and other properties would preclude a water heating solution. Moreover a hot air chamber would go far to leveling the production of wind turbine output. What added energy from geothermal heat could achieve is a study begging for research. It may also be engineered to be a closed loop system, thus becoming a nearly environmentally neutral solution.
I for one am not at all discouraged, rather I see a great potential. Viability in compressed air is only limited by the imagination and engineering prowess that is applied. It may prove to be the thing that offers a bigger output from wind than anyone had previously thought. Horizontal deep well drilling is getting better by the day. What 35,000 feet of bore looping through hot dry rock could offer a compressed air stream might surprise, very pleasantly, in the resulting energy output. With some thought others will come up with more ways to use air in harvesting heat energy for work. Just imagine, a wind turbine compresses, geothermal heats further, the flow goes through a solar array and then you have a very very hot supply. There is a lot of opportunity in compressed air geothermal energy production.
Jul
28
Innovating the Organic LED to High Output
July 28, 2008 | 1 Comment
Stephen Forrest at Michigan University and Yuri Sun at Princeton have their paper describing their new method of building organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) available in Nature Photonics. Like the semiconductor light emitting diodes (SLEDs) from Purdue’s researchers we looked at last week these scientists are driving to a highly efficient LED based on the organic materials for construction rather than metals on silicon. As for which is best, time will tell, but today the actual paper can be read, the technology examined, and some interesting conclusions reached.
The white organic light emitting diode, or WOLED, is another take on LED that is made with organic sourced materials which offers some advantages over metal and silicon, that has until this breakthrough had very similar problems. For both LEDs, the issue is getting the light out of them as producing the light efficiently to begin with isn’t the problem. One has to remember LEDs are very small. The little lights we see so many of are usually mounted inside a transparent “holder” just to get them big enough to work with. Naked of the holder they are very tiny. This aspect is part of what allows them to be efficient. It also shows that one needs a LOT of them to illuminate instead of simply signaling activity.
Like in SLEDs an OLED is a layered up build of materials. The innovation here is that one of the layers is a grid, which in the OLED is a set of “walls” if you will, that keep the light directed up and out rather than trapped within. The next innovation is to drop a polymer micro lense on the glass layer to direct the light out into the surrounding space.
Starting with a clean glass substrate the scientists coated the glass with 120 nm of transparent indium tin oxide, then applied and formed (see the paper at “Methods”) the low-index grid that controls and directs the light. Next is applying the organics that convert the electrical input to light and finally the electrodes that introduce the electricity are applied. That’s massively simplified, yet the construction yields a simple device once made.
I suspect that this technology has quite a way to go to reach commercial production. On the other hand should a producer get to a competency for volume the costs should get quite low as the materials are inexpensive organics, glass and a tiny bit of aluminum. It’s the process that looks like a matter to master. The innovation here is in skills over any “new” materials. And that is what is so impressive – the skill and the intellect used to develop it.
The conclusion for me is the surprise of innovation in skill whereas last week’s saw an innovation in materials. Two different approaches to a similar problem in devices made with very different materials. LEDs offer an interesting story that’s getting more so each few months. As they close in on compact florescent for efficiency and costs drop the switch over to LED offers a huge release of generating to do other things. Lighting is said to be as much as 22% of the load for electrical generation, so every reduction is power to do something else. I’m looking forward to the results. For an example of the prowess that LEDs can bring, check out high definition LCD TVs, one with florescent and one with LED. Then you too will share my excitement!
Jul
26
Too Good To Ignore - or $60 Trillion Is Getting Away
July 26, 2008 | 2 Comments
OK, it’s Saturday and I’m going to throw something extra out at you. It’s a (gasp) politician or more accurately a college professor taking a run at the U.S. Congress from Maine. John Frary wrote the following piece for the Village Soup a kind of “Beyond print and online news for community based discourse, debate and commerce.” A sort or kind of highly sophisticated bulletin board.
The article is titled “Peak Oil or Peak Stupidity?” which caught my eye. John writes a fun to read piece and gets some interesting points of view expressed in a gentle if humorous way. I just about fell out of the chair at his revenue observations, something everyone else has overlooked. He has some utterly stunning numbers to consider. There is huge gut check in the last line. John is welcome here anytime.
The article is just a rip roaring slap at the establishment. With great pleasure (and a sense of relief such a ‘politician’ exists) I give you – John Frary:
Peak Oil or Peak Stupidity?
By John Frary
FARMINGTON (July 21): “If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t stupidity get us out?”—Will Rogers.
THE MESS: Over 50 years ago a geologist named M. King Hubbert accurately predicted that US oil production would peak in the 1970s. The arrival of peak oil inspired our political leadership to unleash all their resources of stupidity. They curbed the development of nuclear power, closed most of the American coastline to exploration and extraction of oil and gas, placed a moratorium on the exploitation of our huge shale oil resources out west, put an end to refinery building for thirty years, and forbade the oil companies from disturbing Alaska’s sacred caribou. The development of hydroelectric power and wind power have been unsystematically impeded by tangles of environmental regulations and law suits.
Even this was not enough. Republicans and Democrats have collaborated in deficit spending financed by foreign borrowing which have depressed the value of the dollar, increasing the price of the foreign oil, which we must buy to keep our economy going.
STUPIDITY TO THE RESCUE? Will stupidity get us out of this mess? We’ll soon find out. Washington has mounted a massive Stupidity Surge to address the problem.
We have new CAFE standards obliging domestic auto manufacturers to increase miles per gallon performance. Very helpful. GM reports a 37% drop in SUV, pick-up and van sales in May. Did its executives really need Congress to tell them what 4-dollar gas means for their product line?
A gaggle of senators have written a letter to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission requesting them to raise margin calls on futures contracts. Sounds like a good idea, but what’s the point? Do they really think the commissioners haven’t been considering that step for weeks? Or that they have greater knowledge of the commodities market? The CFTC, of course, is trying to figure how to quell speculative exuberance without creating a crisis in a half-trillion dollar financial market.
Windfall profits taxes? Everybody who hates Big Oil (that’s just a little short of everybody) will feel good about that, but it won’t lower anyone’s fuel bills. The government’s take from this profits tax are intended to support the clean energy schemes contained in HR 6049. I refer my readers to Subtitle A, Part I, Section 101, subsection (b), sub-sub section (1), Paragraph B, clause (iii) “PRELIMITATION CREDIT- The term `prelimitation credit’ with respect to any facility for a taxable year means the credit determined under subsection (a) with respect to such facility for such taxable year, determined without regard to subparagraph (A) and after taking into account any increase for such taxable year under clause (ii).” All clear now?
While we wait for our congressmammals to figure out what they voted for, the government reckons that we have 96.4 billion barrels of oil under ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf. But we are told that we can’t drill our way out of this crisis. That means we must buy our way out. It costs us $600 million of our $700 million trade deficit to supply our fossil energy needs, which are 85% of our total energy needs.
Do the math. At a hundred dollars a barrel our reserves are worth nearly ten trillion dollars. At two hundred dollars they will be worth nearly twenty trillion dollars. Do we really want this money used to finance in-door ski slopes for Arabs?
Caught me off guard, you too? I haven’t heard comments on this from my good friends at the API or the press, media, or the business community. It’s an observation off the radar. But I would point out that when we look at investments and spending there is always a multiplier effect in the communities, often a multiple of about 5, which would make the value to our economy something over $60.25 trillion at $126 per barrel. I’ll bet its lots more than that.
Just a little something for the water cooler talk on Monday . . . . . .
Republished by permission, Copyright 2008 John Frary, all rights reserved.
