Aug
29
A New Leading Process For CO2 to Methanol
August 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Mitsui Chemical Inc. of Japan has decided to begin construction of a pilot plant for continued development of producing methanol from industrial CO2 effluent and photocatalyst produced hydrogen. Due to build starting in October of 2008 with completion next February the plant is expected to go into use in March of 2010, the plant’s annual [...]
Aug
28
Checking Up On Thorium
August 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment
It’s been most of a year since I had a look at thorium in the details about reactors. The news in the interim has been good with the thorium reserves in the U.S. proven up with confirmed discoveries, primarily in the Lemhi Pass area that Thorium Energy, Inc holds.
The most interesting thing is the U.S. [...]
Aug
27
Methane (aka natural gas) In Your Tank
August 27, 2008 | 1 Comment
Utah is seeing a “boom” in natural gas i.e. methane fueled automobiles sold and converted from gasoline entering the local fleet. With gasoline still well beyond $3.00 and the local natural gas equivalent at $0.87 the motive is strong. With the incentives from the State of Utah up to $3,000 for a new vehicle and [...]
Aug
26
Making Some Sense of Biomass
August 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Robert Rapier who writes the R-Squared Blog offered up a useful post yesterday that describes Mr. Rapier’s thinking in two important areas. All of us can use Mr. Rapier’s quick and easy guides in forming thoughts about where to invest, have expectations and judge how to save for future investments in tools that use energy. [...]
Aug
25
A Case To Ditch Energy Independence
August 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Politics and the attending sound bites, slogans and dim thinking are soon to be laid on the Americans with a vengeance. One top slogan is “Energy Independence” that sounds good to the American mind but does, well, nothing for consumers, business or government. It’s nothing more than politicians and the press playing off of public [...]
Aug
22
Is Biomass to Gasoline Ready?
August 22, 2008 | 2 Comments
Probably, and it is rushing to a sure thing. The news broke that Byogy Renewables has licensed the methane to liquid fuels technology from Texas Engineering and Experiment Station (TEES), a part of Texas A&M University.
The Byogy process is a stack of processes starting with pre-treating the “energy crop” such as municipal waste in the [...]
Aug
21
Nuclear Hot Tub Reactors $25 Million Each
August 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Hyperion Power Generation’s nuclear reactor licensed from Los Alamos National Laboratory has customers for likely six to start and perhaps as many as fifty. About the size of a hot tub, well actually two stacked up or 1.5 meter cubed or cubed at less than 5 feet, these units are quite small. Manufactured and sealed [...]
Aug
20
Go Where the Heat Energy Is
August 20, 2008 | 1 Comment
The U.S. alone has an estimated 19,000 square miles of asphalt paved roads and parking lots. As essentially everyone can attest, asphalt is a great infrared absorber and being very dense holds a lot of heat thus toasting bare feet with slight sun and barely warm temperatures. Now 19K square miles is a lot of [...]
Aug
19
A Look A Lithium Accumulators
August 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Many of us are familiar with accumulators in gas and hydraulic systems as a vessel that stores a volume usually with an internal diaphragm that has a spring force by a compressed gas. The result is a cell that can buffer the system gases or fluids smoothing pressure spikes.
As a practical point though, a lithium [...]
Aug
18
Renewables Grow Up From Being a Carrot to Carrying a Whip
August 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Congress can’t get the alternative energy credits renewed and on the books for the (I’ve lost count) time. By itself the missing tax credits will be a problem. But the price of coal, oil and natural gas will still be their own undoing as primary fuel sources.
It’s about the money. Alternatives such as solar thermal [...]
