Algae Driven Batteries.

Taking the potential of algae into another dimension of energy production, research workers at Uppsala University have produced a novel lightweight battery by taking cellulose fibres from algae and coating them with a 50nm thin layer of polypyrrole.

The batteries have demonstrated charging capacities of between 25 and 33 mAh g⁻¹ or 38−50 mAh g⁻¹ per weight of the active material, can be charged with currents as high as 600 mA cm⁻², and lose a mere six percent of their charging capacity after 100 charge/drain cycles. To quote from the link below, "In layman’s terms, these batteries are extremely light and can be charged in “11.3 seconds at 320 mA”.

The algae batteries have yet to be incorporated into a robust packaging which is another challenge for the team who have now made a battery that can take 1000 charges.

The batteries are of interest particularly because they should be cheap and amenable to mass production. However, as a consequence of their “low storage capabilities” they are unlikely to find application in e.g. MP3 players or laptops and certainly not in electric cars.

Prof. Maria Strømme said:

With the technique fully developed, I believe that we may see applications that we cannot really dream of today. Try to imagine what you can create when a battery can be integrated into wall papers, clothes, the packages of your medicines, etc.

At any rate it is interesting, as a cyborg device which does not require metals to make its essential working component, and even the polypyrrole conductor could be produced from biomass. That noted, I don't honestly see this as a saviour technology to obviate the energy crunch, but nor is it promised to be. Probably the most impacting use of algae in this respect is to make synthetic fuels, to replace increasingly scarce and costly oil and natural gas.

Related Reading.

"Green rechargable batteries are made from algae." http://green.blorge.com/2009/09/green-rechargeable-batteries-are-made-from-algae/

Russian Oil Production Peaks.

Since the year 2000, Russian oil production has increased by practically 50%, but this growth appears to have now peaked. The supply on Non-OPEC oil peaked early in this decade and it was only Russia, returning to force from the prior financial crisis that could offset the fall in the remaining parts of this sector. Non-OPEC accounts for about 60% of world oil production, but within the sector it is Russia alone that has maintained the plateau, providing almost one quarter of its output. Without Non-OPEC it will not be possible to raise world oil supply, and without Russia it would have already fallen. Russia alone could not maintain growth in Non-OPEC, and the peak in Russian supply means that it and world oil volumes must begin to decline.

The unavoidable fall in world oil production has excited the potential for exploration in extremely inhospitable regions of the world, particularly the Arctic. As a kind of dry-run for exploration above the Arctic circle, the Nordic Explorer vessel has "sailed" for Cape Farewell on the southern tip of Greenland. I cannot avoid thinking that the term "Farewell" is an ironic coincidence for the future of a world powered by oil, and the desperation to grab whatever of it is left to be grabbed; wherever that may be. According to the US Geological Survey, there could be as much as 50 billion barrels worth of oil under Greenland, which is around eighteen months worth for the word as a whole and can be compared with the 38 billion barrels produced in the North Sea since development of the region began in the 1960s.

Exploration of Greenland is not new, but so far the few wells that have been drilled there proved to be dry. However, with an inevitable long-term rising price of increasingly scarce oil and rising demand for it, further exploration projects there begin to look viable, on the basis that sooner or later someone will strike lucky. Global warming may prove an ally in this intention, since hitherto ice-blocked waterways will become open, thus rendering greater access to whatever oil and other mineral wealth may lie there. In the past two years, seven companies including Exxon Mobil, Chevron and the UK-based Cairn Energy have bought exploration blocks of southern and western Greenland.

In consequence of the long-term production of North Sea oil, the reserves there are notably depleted and it will require considerable investment and new technologies to get out what remains. The low price of a barrel of oil in consequence of last year's economic crash has discouraged many putative exploration projects, and now the US based Noble Energy has put its North Sea business on the market for $350 million. The firm thus joins an exodus of UK based oil-companies from the region in a move where long-established fields are sold-off in order to fund exploration in new regions, including deepwater projects and indeed the Arctic.


Related Reading.
[1] "Oil Supply: As Russian Production Tops Out, World Supply Will Continue to Slip," By Gregor Macdonald. http://seekingalpha.com/article/161119-oil-supply-as-russian-production-tops-out-world-supply-will-continue-to-slip
[2] "Oil giants zero in on untapped Greenland." http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article6832247.ece
[3] "American oil group Noble Energy joins UK exodus from North Sea," By Danny Fortson. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article6832263.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1185799

Solar-Powered Oil.

This is a nifty idea: an oil field which employs solar energy to generate steam for enhanced extraction technologies. This particular innovation is due to Brightsource Energy who are using a 29 MW solar thermal power plant at a Chevron oil field based in Coalinga, California. The method of CTSP (Concentrated Thermal Solar Power), sometimes abbreviated further to CSP, uses an array of mirrors to focus sunlight onto a central boiler and so generates steam which can be employed to drive a steam turbine and generate electricity in the usual manner. This is a more efficient process currently than photovoltaic technology, but in the present example, rather than the steam being fed into a turbine, it is to be pumped down the oil-wells to help fluidise the oil.

The oil is thick and sticky at normal temperatures but when heated it flows more easily and can be pumped-out more readily. Oil companies often use steam for this purpose of so called enhanced extraction, but normally it is produced using fossil fuels such as gas, for example in the Fresno and Kern counties of California where the oil is particularly "heavy and gooey" to quote from the article cited below. Since this region also collects some of the most intense sunlight in the state, a happy marriage is to use some of it to get the oil out. Indeed, there are a number of other CSPs planned to be built in this region.

Brightsource has investments from Chevron, BP and the Norwegian Statoil Hydro (from a merger of Statoil and Norsk Hydro) and it has signed contracts to provide some 2,610 MW of electricity generating capacity from the CSPs. The solar-powered oil scheme is more important in view of the fact that a significant part of the costs of oil extraction relies on the cost of the natural gas. Presently, gas prices are around $3 per million Btus (British Thermal Units) and it is thought that once the price reaches $8.5 per Btu the solar steam system will prove competitive with the gas-fired units. Gas prices will rise as indeed will the price of oil and so in the longer run this could be a lucrative investment. I suppose there is less carbon emissions too, although since oil is being produced which will be burned overall it is not so environmentally friendly.

The rider is that the solar steam plants only work when the sun is shining and hence back-up units will be needed, which still use gas; the perennial problem of most renewable energy sources - that the power supply is not constant, be it solar, wind or wave.


Related Reading.

"A Solar-Powered Oil Field?" By Todd Woody. The New York Times, Green Inc. Energy, the Environment and the BottomLine. http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/a-solar-powered-oil-field/?hp

Mexico Cantarell Oil Field Dead by End of 2010.

The giant Cantarell oil field, the world's eighth largest will be dead by the end of next year. Output peaked in 2004/2005 at around 2.2 million barrels a day (mbd) but will be well below the 0.5 mpd predicted by the end of 2009 - and extrapolating its apparently linear decline, it will be around zero by the end of 2010. Cantarell was a late field, since it was discovered in 1976, by which time there was a host of new technology available to make sure it kept pumping out oil, and by pressurizing the field, oil was pumped out at around 2 mbd for several years, when without this help a field would normally be expected to fall into decline.

However, a well only has so much oil to begin with and the faster this is recovered the quicker it becomes exhausted. It is likely therefore that the depletion side of Hubbert's peak will be a far steeper decline than the incline that rose to it, for many fields around the world, and it is debatable just how much recoverable oil there is all told. It has been suggested that the use of enhanced recovery techniques - i.e. pumping millions of barrels of seawater per day into e.g. the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia has damaged the geological structure, meaning that less of its oil will ultimately be recovered.

Added to that it is debatable how much oil there was in Ghawar or in that region in general since the figures have been described as a "state secret". I have talked before [1] [2] on the subject of oil reserves and there may well be more than is typically accounted for. However, the limiting factor in avoiding an oil gap is how much can be recovered of a required quality (heavy or light; sour or sweet) in competition with the prevailing demand for it. The recession has put on hold many new oil recovery projects and the consequences of this will be brought forth as the world economy begins to smile once more. It will be a short-lived expression, however, as without enough oil there is no economic growth possible, but rathermore a terminal decline of all of the economy that is underpinned by oil, and that includes pretty much everything, even producing food.

The world's biggest, the Ghawar field is estimated [3] as having 66 - 100 billion barrels [Gb = Giga barrels] left which is around 2 - 3 years worth for the entire world. I doubt it will be evenly distributed though in the final analysis nor will any of the world's remaining oil for that matter, and even the putative 2250 Gb [3] world total is highly misleading since there is a tendency to simply divide it by 30 billion barrels a year or some projection of up to 40 billion barrels a year based on economic growth models and say, "we have decades worth of oil left so don't worry." We do have decades worth of oil left but we won't be able to pull it out fast enough to match such colossal demands and the oil peak is just that "a peak" beyond which decline in oil on the world markets is a matter of simple definition.

Even in its heyday of 2.2 mbd or 800 million barrels a year the Cantarell complex amounted to under 3% of present world oil consumption. Put thus it doesn't seem a big deal, except to the poor Mexican economy which depends considerably on its oil revenue from Cantarell. The Mexican people will undoubtedly suffer, as will we all since the decline of Cantarell is just what is happening elsewhere, and almost all of the giant fields which together account for 65% of the world's remaining oil have already encountered their production peak. In effect, world oil production has peaked or is so close to doing so that it is a matter of mere semantics to talk otherwise.

Meanwhile I am researching Forest Gardens and Permaculture, since without oil and such alternative means to grow food, especially in a country like Britain which imports 40% its food as carried-in by oil-based transport - and relies on oil to farm the rest of it, we are going to starve.


Related reading.
[1] http://ergobalance.blogspot.com/2008/12/oil-reserves.html
[2] http://ergobalance.blogspot.com/2008/12/peak-oil-postponed-dr-richard-pike.html
[3] http://seekingalpha.com/article/157824-mexico-s-declining-oil-production-clarion-call-for-cantarell

"World Challenge 09" Announces its 12 Finalists.

For the fifth year running, BBC World News and Newsweek magazine have joined Shell in a programme to support groups that provide benefit and support for local communities. "World Challenge 09" is a global competition which seeks to reward projects and businesses which bring economic, social and environmental benefits to local communities through grassroots solutions. The winner will get $20,000 and be announced at an awards ceremony in The Hague in December 2009, while the two runners-up will each get $10,000.

To quote E.F.Schumacher, "think global act local" which was the basis of his 1973 bestselling collection of essays, "Small is Beautiful - a study of economics as if people mattered." Indeed, this will become a paradigm for the entire world, not only developing nations, since industrialised societies will be forced to re-localise and rely on local production of food and energy as much as possible, as cheap resources of energy, especially oil, and other materials, notably metals begin to peak in their production, and the shelves of global "supermarket" begin to run empty.


The finalists are (listed alphabetically by country):

• Afghanistan: ‘Patterns of Change’ – Afghan Hands – assisting and educating women who have been widowed or are unable to provide for themselves as a result of conflict, economic desolation and erosion of serviceable infrastructure.

• Kenya: ‘Fuel Cell’ – Kenya Biogas – promoting an environmentally friendly way of tapping biogas as a clean source of energy.

• Haiti: ‘Love n’ Haiti’ – South-South Co-operation – a multi-dimensional effort to reduce violence and gang clashes in the Carrefour Feuilles district in Haiti, stimulating local economic activity and improving living conditions in the neighbourhood.

• India: ‘Solar Sisters’ – Barefoot Women Solar Engineers of Africa – improving the lives of people living in rural parts of Africa by training them to make clean, renewable and low cost sources of energy.

• Indonesia: ‘Nothing Wasted’ – Danamon Go Green, Danamon Peduli Foundation – converting traditional market waste into organic compost to be distributed amongst local farmers.

• Israel: ‘Off Grid Aid’ – Comet ME – providing basic energy services to off-grid communities in occupied Palestinian territories, in a way that is environmentally and socially sustainable.

• Namibia: ‘No Beating About The Bush’ – The Cheetah Conservation Fund Bush Project – harvesting thornbushes to restore farmlands, using environmentally and socially appropriate means and providing much-needed jobs to locals.

• Sri Lanka: ‘A Bright Idea’ – Safe Bottle Lamps – producing a simple, safe lamp that can be easily mass produced at low cost, using recycled glass. It is an effective, inexpensive and quick solution to serious burn problems encountered in many developing countries.

• Thailand: ‘Old School Thai’ – Andaman Discoveries – began as a tsunami relief effort and is now a leader in sustainable travel and development. It allows visitors and volunteers to directly support community education, village-led conservation, and cultural empowerment.

• UK: ‘Emission Control’ – Mootal – reducing methane emissions by up to 94% with the use of a simple garlic extract, while also improving the efficiency of livestock production.

• UK: ‘Jiko Rescue’ – Stoves for Survival – reducing reliance on local natural resources through the production and distribution of fuel-efficient ‚ ‘Jiko’ stoves, which reduce the consumption of firewood and charcoal by at least 55%.

• USA: ‘Fungi Town’ – BTTR Ventures – turning one of the largest waste streams in America and the vast quantities of coffee ground waste generated daily, into a high-demand, nutritious, and valuable food product for local consumers.

BBC World News will broadcast six 30-minute programmes profiling each of the World Challenge 09 finalists, showing how their projects and businesses are changing lives and local communities. In addition, Newsweek will detail the projects in six advertorials. The audience and readers are then invited to vote online www.theworldchallenge.co.uk - for their favourite project or business from 28 September.

For further information:
BBC World News Press Office
Tel: +44 208 433 2419
E-mail: bbcworldnewspressoffice@bbc.com

Jan Angilelia, Newsweek
Tel: + 1 212 445 5638
E-mail: jan.angilelia@newsweek.com

World Challenge 09 will be broadcast on BBC World News from October 3rd, 2009. Full schedule details can be found at: bbcworldnews.com/schedules