A group of German scientists based at the University of Kassel has carried out a pilot-study which suggests that nuclear and fossil-fuel based energy can be phased-out and substituted by renewables, without interrupting the output from the national grid. As they point-out, renewable energy has certain limitations: e.g. cloudy or windless days are no good for solar or wind-energy. However, their innovative "combined power plant" draws its energy from 36 different kinds of plant, including solar, wind, biogas and hydroelectric designs, in an effort to prove that such a mix of renewable energy can yield a consistent and reliable output of power, under a range of prevailing weather conditions and according to non-constant demand for electricity as is the reality.
This has indeed been achieved on a relatively small scale so far, enough to power 12,000 homes, or enough for a small town/village. The village of Caversham, where I live, has a population of around 9,000 inhabitants (maybe 4,000 homes), if you include the effectively accommodative developments, i.e. with no shops or other amenities, and hence are pretty much dependent on car ownership. One significant aspect of the German design is that excess energy is used to pump water uphill into a large reservoir, which can be used during times of peak demand to drive hydroelectric turbines as an additional source of energy. The ability to thus store energy is a vital component of the overall scheme to provide a constant supply.
If this approach can be scaled-up, it is calculated that a total of 448 TWh/year might be produced in Germany, which breaks down to: 37.5% from 10,000 onshore wind turbines, 26.8% from 5,000 offshore wind turbines, 13.4% from photovoltaics (covering 20% of roof surfaces)and 22.3% from biogas, involving 17% of agricultural land. It is suggested that 40% of Germany's electricity needs could be thus met by renewables by 2020 and 100% by 2050. I append a link to the full technical report below.
A very interesting approach. Of course there is around another 40% of total energy to be found for space-heating etc. and another 40% for transportation in the form of oil, assuming that the German break-down of energy use is similar to that in the UK. However, a relocalisation of German society, as will be the case across the entire world as oil supplies begin to fail our demand for them, substantially eliminates the latter component and Germany has substantial reserves of coal, which can underpin heating etc., even if its use can be avoided in electricity generation. The scheme will doubtless require a massive investment of money, energy and other resources to expand it to the future levels of electricity provision that are proposed, but such an integrated mix of supply sources may well be the best way forward, even at a local level.
Ultimately, in order to survive, all societies will have to be sustainable in terms of energy, food and all else they consume.
Related Reading.
http://www.kombikraftwerk.de/fileadmin/downloads/Technik_Kombikraftwerk_EN.pdf
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Britain goes for Sea-Power.
We British live on an island - or strictly a set of closely spaced islands - which colours our judgement about many things, for good and for bad. Nonetheless, in regard to using the surrounding seas to generate electricity, if this can be done, we could not be better placed in the world. The term "sea-power" covers various technologies, but can be roughly sub-categorised into tidal-stream turbines and surface-wave "rockers". Undersea rockers have been devised too but none of this technology has as yet been implemented on a serious scale. There are related hydro-schemes too: for example, it has been proposed that a barrage (dam) could be placed in the Severn Tidal Estuary - and in the Bristol Channel - (between England and Wales) whose geography constrains relatively large displacements in sea-levels from high to low tide and hence considerable amounts of energy could be extracted there, allowing that various kinds of water-borne traffic need to pass through the estuary too.
Such ideas have been around for some years now, but it looks that the U.K. is poised to begin the extraction of this potentially large source of power. A novel device described as looking like an "upside-down windmill", left from Belfast yesterday, and is expected to launch a revolution in sea-power, ultimately providing for one fifth of Britain's electricity demand. The device is due to be installed near the mouth of Strangford Laugh, in Northern Ireland, and appears to usher-in an alternative but truly renewable technology to the nuclear "new build" for which Gordon Brown and his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, have agreed the joint construction of a new generation of nuclear-reactors for "home-use" and as saleable technology for the rest of the world. We may well witness both kinds of energy production as part of the energy-mix that is expected to provide energy in the U.K. by 2050.
The new tidal device is named SeaGen and has a capacity of 1.2 MW, and though four times as powerful as its prototype, SeaFlow, is still small in its output, compared to a typical coal, gas or nuclear power station which is closer to 1,000 MW (1 GW), but it does represent the first commercial scale power system ever that is "fuelled" by the renewable forces of the sea-currents. Hydropower schemes use dams and are always criticised for their likely detrimental impact on local ecology, because they impede the natural flow of water, its fauna and its nutrients and associated flora. The proposed scheme in Northern Ireland has a radically different design from barrages and hence avoids these problems. In effect, SeaGen simply sits in the water and uses the ocean currents to turn its turbines, in contrast to a dam/barrage, which is a massive and permanent structure that takes years to build and is there for good. The SeaGen device will be installed at the mouth of the Strangford Lough, in the "narrows" with a width of just 500 metres, where the currents move at above 7 knots (nautical miles per hour), but it will be closely monitored to see whether the spinning turbine blades cause any injury to swimming mammals such as seals. However, it is thought that such creatures are too quick to suffer harm in this way.
A feasibility study of the Severn Barrage has been instigated by Mr Brown, which is expected to last until the year 2010, and if the full construction is made the project will cost £14 billion (costs always escalate on building projects, and so it might be considerably more expensive that that, especially as the full project is thought impossible to complete before 2020). It is said that the Severn Barrage could provide 5% of Britain's electricity.
In contrast it is thought that SeaGen could be constructed relatively easily and the turbines installed in the most suitable locations in a far more flexible way and at much smaller capital cost. Exploiting ocean currents is reckoned to hold the potential of supplying 5% of the nation's electricity (coincidentally the same as the Severn Barrage). The rest of that hoped-for "fifth" (20%) would presumably come from other kinds of sea-power, e.g. wave-power "rockers" etc.
A wave-energy power station off Cornwall is expected to begin feeding its output into the national grid, and the Severn Barrage has already begun a two-year feasibility study. It is thought hat around the coast of Scotland, with its strong currents (and rough seas, it must be said, especially the North Sea, among the roughest in the world and mechanically fretting to whatever is built there) could provide a number of energy-rich locations from which to extract sea-power based electricity. Britain has around half of Europe's tidal-stream potential and about 10 - 15% of that identified in the world as a whole, making it uniquely placed.
The capacity factor of a hydro-turbine is thought to be around 40%, and so each SeaGen would produce 1.2 MW x 0.4 = 0.5 MW. The average amount of electricity drawn in the UK amounts to about 40 GW, or 40,000 MW. Hence if the technology is to produce 5% of that, we need 0.05 x 40,000/0.5 = 4,000 of them. I wonder how quickly this amount of engineering can be fabricated and installed? Let's say, 1 a week; that's about 50 a year, and so it would take 80 years to put the lot in place. To make a serious impact we will need them (and that's just to produce 5% of our electricity, 95% coming from other sources) in say 25 years and so they need to be installed at a rate of 160 a year or 3 a week. It could be done, I'm sure, but what about the rest of it? If nuclear can be maintained to provide around 20%, we then have 25% and if they do build the Severn Barrage (another 5%), we have 30% from nuclear plus "water"-power and the rest from coal and gas. If other ways to extract the grand total of 20% of our electricity from sea-power is managed, on that same time-scale, we have matched about 45% of our present demand for electricity. My point is that it is going to take a long time before we are weaned-off fossil fuels and nuclear power, and even then, if all the engineering can be done (this is big-scale stuff) we might still only have 25% of the amount of electricity we enjoy currently (from combined sea-power plus the Barrage).
I try to remain optimistic about the survival of humans, but to my sight of the horizon, there still beckons a collection of localised societies that not only cannot travel very much, in consequence of depleting and hugely expensive oil supplies, but which have to get by with maybe a quarter of current electricity supply. It is also worth noting that electricity is not the same as energy, but about one fifth of the total. If 40% of our total energy is used in the form of transportation fuel and about 20% as electricity (both of which will be curbed significantly within this putative 25 years), that still leaves another 40% for heating buildings etc. to be found. There are many conclusions that can be drawn even from such approximate numbers as these.
Related Reading.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severn_Barrage
[2] "The rise of British sea power." http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/
the-rise-of-british-sea-power-799630.html
Such ideas have been around for some years now, but it looks that the U.K. is poised to begin the extraction of this potentially large source of power. A novel device described as looking like an "upside-down windmill", left from Belfast yesterday, and is expected to launch a revolution in sea-power, ultimately providing for one fifth of Britain's electricity demand. The device is due to be installed near the mouth of Strangford Laugh, in Northern Ireland, and appears to usher-in an alternative but truly renewable technology to the nuclear "new build" for which Gordon Brown and his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, have agreed the joint construction of a new generation of nuclear-reactors for "home-use" and as saleable technology for the rest of the world. We may well witness both kinds of energy production as part of the energy-mix that is expected to provide energy in the U.K. by 2050.
The new tidal device is named SeaGen and has a capacity of 1.2 MW, and though four times as powerful as its prototype, SeaFlow, is still small in its output, compared to a typical coal, gas or nuclear power station which is closer to 1,000 MW (1 GW), but it does represent the first commercial scale power system ever that is "fuelled" by the renewable forces of the sea-currents. Hydropower schemes use dams and are always criticised for their likely detrimental impact on local ecology, because they impede the natural flow of water, its fauna and its nutrients and associated flora. The proposed scheme in Northern Ireland has a radically different design from barrages and hence avoids these problems. In effect, SeaGen simply sits in the water and uses the ocean currents to turn its turbines, in contrast to a dam/barrage, which is a massive and permanent structure that takes years to build and is there for good. The SeaGen device will be installed at the mouth of the Strangford Lough, in the "narrows" with a width of just 500 metres, where the currents move at above 7 knots (nautical miles per hour), but it will be closely monitored to see whether the spinning turbine blades cause any injury to swimming mammals such as seals. However, it is thought that such creatures are too quick to suffer harm in this way.
A feasibility study of the Severn Barrage has been instigated by Mr Brown, which is expected to last until the year 2010, and if the full construction is made the project will cost £14 billion (costs always escalate on building projects, and so it might be considerably more expensive that that, especially as the full project is thought impossible to complete before 2020). It is said that the Severn Barrage could provide 5% of Britain's electricity.
In contrast it is thought that SeaGen could be constructed relatively easily and the turbines installed in the most suitable locations in a far more flexible way and at much smaller capital cost. Exploiting ocean currents is reckoned to hold the potential of supplying 5% of the nation's electricity (coincidentally the same as the Severn Barrage). The rest of that hoped-for "fifth" (20%) would presumably come from other kinds of sea-power, e.g. wave-power "rockers" etc.
A wave-energy power station off Cornwall is expected to begin feeding its output into the national grid, and the Severn Barrage has already begun a two-year feasibility study. It is thought hat around the coast of Scotland, with its strong currents (and rough seas, it must be said, especially the North Sea, among the roughest in the world and mechanically fretting to whatever is built there) could provide a number of energy-rich locations from which to extract sea-power based electricity. Britain has around half of Europe's tidal-stream potential and about 10 - 15% of that identified in the world as a whole, making it uniquely placed.
The capacity factor of a hydro-turbine is thought to be around 40%, and so each SeaGen would produce 1.2 MW x 0.4 = 0.5 MW. The average amount of electricity drawn in the UK amounts to about 40 GW, or 40,000 MW. Hence if the technology is to produce 5% of that, we need 0.05 x 40,000/0.5 = 4,000 of them. I wonder how quickly this amount of engineering can be fabricated and installed? Let's say, 1 a week; that's about 50 a year, and so it would take 80 years to put the lot in place. To make a serious impact we will need them (and that's just to produce 5% of our electricity, 95% coming from other sources) in say 25 years and so they need to be installed at a rate of 160 a year or 3 a week. It could be done, I'm sure, but what about the rest of it? If nuclear can be maintained to provide around 20%, we then have 25% and if they do build the Severn Barrage (another 5%), we have 30% from nuclear plus "water"-power and the rest from coal and gas. If other ways to extract the grand total of 20% of our electricity from sea-power is managed, on that same time-scale, we have matched about 45% of our present demand for electricity. My point is that it is going to take a long time before we are weaned-off fossil fuels and nuclear power, and even then, if all the engineering can be done (this is big-scale stuff) we might still only have 25% of the amount of electricity we enjoy currently (from combined sea-power plus the Barrage).
I try to remain optimistic about the survival of humans, but to my sight of the horizon, there still beckons a collection of localised societies that not only cannot travel very much, in consequence of depleting and hugely expensive oil supplies, but which have to get by with maybe a quarter of current electricity supply. It is also worth noting that electricity is not the same as energy, but about one fifth of the total. If 40% of our total energy is used in the form of transportation fuel and about 20% as electricity (both of which will be curbed significantly within this putative 25 years), that still leaves another 40% for heating buildings etc. to be found. There are many conclusions that can be drawn even from such approximate numbers as these.
Related Reading.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severn_Barrage
[2] "The rise of British sea power." http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/
the-rise-of-british-sea-power-799630.html
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Shell Feels Rising Costs of Oil-Sand Exploitation.
Extracting bitumen from materials variously called tar-sands or oil-sands, is highly demanding in terms of energy costs, specifically natural gas and also in the amount of water that the process uses. In Shell's annual report published on Monday, it is noted that the operating costs of the Athabasca Oil Sands project in Alberta, Canada have risen by around 50% since 2005, and yet the actual production of bitumen has no more than levelled-off and may have fallen to some extent.
The profits fell sharply last year as a result of a fire which caused a temporary decline in the output of a degrader - an apparatus that turns the crude bitumen into synthetic crude oil. This led to a decrease in earnings from the project from $651 million to $582 million, and overall production was down from 95,000 barrels a day in 2005 to 81,000 barrels in 2007. The operational costs of the project have risen from $664 million in 2005 to $967 million in 2007.
Oil-sands represent 10% of Shells' total holding of 11.9 billion barrels. Shell is keeping quiet about the development costs of the oil-sands, which also include an enlargement of the operation to produce another 100,000 barrels a day from them. Shell's finance director, Peter Voser, has commented that there was an overall internal inflation of around 10% per year, imparting an operational cost of $20 - $25 a barrel of synthetic crude oil.
Shell has stated that it has managed to replace entirely its oil and gas production from 2007 with new reserves, which remain at 11.9 billion barrels according to its Chief Executive, Jeroem van der Veer. The company added 1.5 billion barrels to its holdings last year, which amounts to a reserve replacement of 124%, and is higher than the average for five other major oil players, which is 108%. A considerable amount of that increase is from gas-reserves, particularly in Qatar, a nation with huge reserves of natural gas, and which Britain aims to provide 20% of its gas-requirement from, in liquid form and transported to the giant gas-depot at Milford Haven in South West Wales.
Other sources are from the Australian North West Shelf and the Norwegian Ormen Lange field in the North Sea.
Related Reading.
"Shell counts rising cost of squeezing oil from sand in Canada," By Carl Mortishead, Timesonline. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article3572646.ece
The profits fell sharply last year as a result of a fire which caused a temporary decline in the output of a degrader - an apparatus that turns the crude bitumen into synthetic crude oil. This led to a decrease in earnings from the project from $651 million to $582 million, and overall production was down from 95,000 barrels a day in 2005 to 81,000 barrels in 2007. The operational costs of the project have risen from $664 million in 2005 to $967 million in 2007.
Oil-sands represent 10% of Shells' total holding of 11.9 billion barrels. Shell is keeping quiet about the development costs of the oil-sands, which also include an enlargement of the operation to produce another 100,000 barrels a day from them. Shell's finance director, Peter Voser, has commented that there was an overall internal inflation of around 10% per year, imparting an operational cost of $20 - $25 a barrel of synthetic crude oil.
Shell has stated that it has managed to replace entirely its oil and gas production from 2007 with new reserves, which remain at 11.9 billion barrels according to its Chief Executive, Jeroem van der Veer. The company added 1.5 billion barrels to its holdings last year, which amounts to a reserve replacement of 124%, and is higher than the average for five other major oil players, which is 108%. A considerable amount of that increase is from gas-reserves, particularly in Qatar, a nation with huge reserves of natural gas, and which Britain aims to provide 20% of its gas-requirement from, in liquid form and transported to the giant gas-depot at Milford Haven in South West Wales.
Other sources are from the Australian North West Shelf and the Norwegian Ormen Lange field in the North Sea.
Related Reading.
"Shell counts rising cost of squeezing oil from sand in Canada," By Carl Mortishead, Timesonline. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article3572646.ece
Monday, March 17, 2008
Digging Diesel.
It has been said that there is more carbon in the form of coal under the state of Illinois than exists under Saudi Arabia in the form of oil. Given the massive hike in oil prices, which over the past week have oscillated slightly but did reach a maximum of $111 a barrel, economically it might appear an opportune time to convert some of this coal into diesel. The technology certainly exists, and indeed it was via such means that Germany manged to fabricate its own fuel for the military actions during WWII. It was thought initially by the Allies that their efforts in a fuel blockade would effectively starve its opposing nation into surrender, but German ingenuity prevailed, and mostly through the Bergius Process, and later the Fischer-Tropsch Process, abundant supplies of coal were converted into fuel to keep that sphere of history going.
Rudoph Diesel, of the same name as the engine he invented, had thought that coal-dust could be used as a fuel for the latter, but decided against this after a number of his engines thereby exploded - he thence decided to use oil from plants e.g. sunflower oil as a fuel. It is interesting that Henry Ford, the inventor of the Model T Ford, the first car to be produced on a production-line, believed that petroleum was in limited supply and developed his first cars to run on ethanol as a fuel. It is quite salutary that we are now considering similar alternatives to oil (biofuels), as the latter falls into declining provision. Ford was right that there is only so much oil in recoverable form, but only after a trillion or so barrels were discovered especially under the lands of Russia and the Middle East. Now this bounty will appear as a mere spike on the record of history, but for our own experience the consequences of its depletion will hit hard.
I have just read a novel by James Howard Kunstler, entitled "World Made By Hand." It is very well written and alarming in a disarming, down-played kind of way. He describes, through the medium of the novel form, a subsequent region of Albany, New York State, which has been reduced to practically medieval times as a result of oil being a rare commodity. There are gangs - one driven by religion and the other by brute force - who act in control of much that still exists there, although the "New Faith" group are tougher than the biker/gangsters, as the latter find to their detriment. What is instilled through the reading is a subtle sense of slowness, that literally the way of life is restored to pre-oil fashion, and emphasis is placed necessarily on food, salvage and repair, as will become the truth in the absence of alternative sources of energy.
I am "into" technology, don't get me wrong. I was a (Full) Professor in Physical Chemistry until I decided to set-up my own consulting business five years ago, and hence I am quite aware of what is involved, but in truth until I began this (blog) project a couple of years back, having attended as an "expert" on the UK government's programme to solve the problem of providing "UK Energy to 2050", at the Geological Society and witnessed its conclusions unveiled at The Royal Society, I didn't quite realise the enormous amount of energy the world uses, and matching that by other means than fossil fuels will not be readily accomplished, if at all. My fear and suspicion is that we have left it a bit too late. If we had began alternatives to petroleum thirty-five years ago when OPEC launched the first artificial oil-crises, we might be somewhere close to achieving alternative and renewable energy provision, but we are a long way off as things stand.
Kunstler has written a number of books including "The Long Emergency" which relates specifically to conditions in the US, where life depends almost inextricably on cheap oil, given the necessary large distances that need to be traversed in daily life around urbanized America. I remember during one of my lecture tours of the US, having to cross an eight-lane highway to get to the only shop in the area to buy a carton of milk. Being car-less in America is not easy! In Europe our likely problems are similar, but our nations are smaller and a relocalisation of society will be more easily accomplished, although it will not be a voluntary event.
So, back to the coal. As noted, the technology exists in proven form. Not only the Germans during WWII but also the Sasol company in South Africa, a nation that was also starved of oil, for various political reasons of sanction, have turned coal into fuel - the latter still do, and a friend of mine in SA tells me that it is thought there is 30 years worth of coal left there to do so. There are two essential methods for coal-to-liquids (CTL) technology, the direct, i.e. the Bergius Process which involves the hydrogenation of coal powder as dispersed in a high boiling fluid under pressure and the indirect, Fischer-Tropsch method which involves the conversion of solid coal into a gaseous mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide which is then reacted over a cobalt catalyst (iron works too) to form a mixture of hydrocarbons. High molecular weight "waxes" are a predominant component of the FT process, but these can be "cracked" into smaller molecules that find better use as a fuel for conventional transportation.
If this is going to take-off, in Illinois and elsewhere, including Yorkshire and the South-Wales of my boyhood, UK, where there are still some considerable reserves of coal, a huge capital investment will be required, and as with all putative "oil-dearth-era" technologies, construction needs to be started as soon as possible. Even the CEO of Shell reckons that world supplies of oil will not be able to keep up with demand for it by 2015, and I would guess that it will take considerably longer than that to match the oil-decline that will thence occur. There are necessarily issues of CO2 emissions, i.e. if the overall production of carbon is considered from well-to-wheel, the CTL strategy is heavier in CO2 emissions than conventional production from oil-wells, by about 50%. However, I think that CO2 emissions, while thought influential to climate change etc., are the least of our worries. As we begin to run-out of fossil fuels we will put less CO2 into the atmosphere per se, and it is really the challenge of energy provision that is the most confrontational issue for humankind to address and solve, if it can.
Related Reading.
"Mining for Diesel Fuel; The Search for New Oil Sources Leads to Processed Coal."By Matthew T. Wald. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/business/05coalfuel.html
Rudoph Diesel, of the same name as the engine he invented, had thought that coal-dust could be used as a fuel for the latter, but decided against this after a number of his engines thereby exploded - he thence decided to use oil from plants e.g. sunflower oil as a fuel. It is interesting that Henry Ford, the inventor of the Model T Ford, the first car to be produced on a production-line, believed that petroleum was in limited supply and developed his first cars to run on ethanol as a fuel. It is quite salutary that we are now considering similar alternatives to oil (biofuels), as the latter falls into declining provision. Ford was right that there is only so much oil in recoverable form, but only after a trillion or so barrels were discovered especially under the lands of Russia and the Middle East. Now this bounty will appear as a mere spike on the record of history, but for our own experience the consequences of its depletion will hit hard.
I have just read a novel by James Howard Kunstler, entitled "World Made By Hand." It is very well written and alarming in a disarming, down-played kind of way. He describes, through the medium of the novel form, a subsequent region of Albany, New York State, which has been reduced to practically medieval times as a result of oil being a rare commodity. There are gangs - one driven by religion and the other by brute force - who act in control of much that still exists there, although the "New Faith" group are tougher than the biker/gangsters, as the latter find to their detriment. What is instilled through the reading is a subtle sense of slowness, that literally the way of life is restored to pre-oil fashion, and emphasis is placed necessarily on food, salvage and repair, as will become the truth in the absence of alternative sources of energy.
I am "into" technology, don't get me wrong. I was a (Full) Professor in Physical Chemistry until I decided to set-up my own consulting business five years ago, and hence I am quite aware of what is involved, but in truth until I began this (blog) project a couple of years back, having attended as an "expert" on the UK government's programme to solve the problem of providing "UK Energy to 2050", at the Geological Society and witnessed its conclusions unveiled at The Royal Society, I didn't quite realise the enormous amount of energy the world uses, and matching that by other means than fossil fuels will not be readily accomplished, if at all. My fear and suspicion is that we have left it a bit too late. If we had began alternatives to petroleum thirty-five years ago when OPEC launched the first artificial oil-crises, we might be somewhere close to achieving alternative and renewable energy provision, but we are a long way off as things stand.
Kunstler has written a number of books including "The Long Emergency" which relates specifically to conditions in the US, where life depends almost inextricably on cheap oil, given the necessary large distances that need to be traversed in daily life around urbanized America. I remember during one of my lecture tours of the US, having to cross an eight-lane highway to get to the only shop in the area to buy a carton of milk. Being car-less in America is not easy! In Europe our likely problems are similar, but our nations are smaller and a relocalisation of society will be more easily accomplished, although it will not be a voluntary event.
So, back to the coal. As noted, the technology exists in proven form. Not only the Germans during WWII but also the Sasol company in South Africa, a nation that was also starved of oil, for various political reasons of sanction, have turned coal into fuel - the latter still do, and a friend of mine in SA tells me that it is thought there is 30 years worth of coal left there to do so. There are two essential methods for coal-to-liquids (CTL) technology, the direct, i.e. the Bergius Process which involves the hydrogenation of coal powder as dispersed in a high boiling fluid under pressure and the indirect, Fischer-Tropsch method which involves the conversion of solid coal into a gaseous mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide which is then reacted over a cobalt catalyst (iron works too) to form a mixture of hydrocarbons. High molecular weight "waxes" are a predominant component of the FT process, but these can be "cracked" into smaller molecules that find better use as a fuel for conventional transportation.
If this is going to take-off, in Illinois and elsewhere, including Yorkshire and the South-Wales of my boyhood, UK, where there are still some considerable reserves of coal, a huge capital investment will be required, and as with all putative "oil-dearth-era" technologies, construction needs to be started as soon as possible. Even the CEO of Shell reckons that world supplies of oil will not be able to keep up with demand for it by 2015, and I would guess that it will take considerably longer than that to match the oil-decline that will thence occur. There are necessarily issues of CO2 emissions, i.e. if the overall production of carbon is considered from well-to-wheel, the CTL strategy is heavier in CO2 emissions than conventional production from oil-wells, by about 50%. However, I think that CO2 emissions, while thought influential to climate change etc., are the least of our worries. As we begin to run-out of fossil fuels we will put less CO2 into the atmosphere per se, and it is really the challenge of energy provision that is the most confrontational issue for humankind to address and solve, if it can.
Related Reading.
"Mining for Diesel Fuel; The Search for New Oil Sources Leads to Processed Coal."By Matthew T. Wald. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/business/05coalfuel.html
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Old Soldier: Dedicated to Harry Patch, WWI Veteran, aged 109.
Old Soldier.
The old man could not
demonstrate the odd mechanisms
that drove his mind asunder.
His lips kept quiessitude among
the trenches of muddy secrets -
of the war and other great wars,
both then and now.
His hands, scarred as his memories,
of personal love and crucifixion;
among all ephemeral experiences.
Words, lacking volume in the
throat of an ageing voice,
collecting from bloody salad days,
vexacious in manner and thought,
and the sudden appeal of devout
truth, finds a frail resurrection,
admitting passion and appal,
in the face of the Almighty,
who's power did not intercede
as expected,
and that unlike those friends
whose dying hands he held...
for God knows what reason
he had alone survived beyond
one hundred,
and for this awkward fact had
never forgiven nor forgotten
any of it.
Christopher James Rhodes.
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