Rare Earth Elements and Thorium Power.

97% of world market supplies of rare earth elements (REEs) come from China and look to become insecure in regard to meeting "green" energy targets, since exports of REEs are scheduled to be retained for Chinese energy projects. REEs are essential raw materials for the fabrication of high-performance magnets in hybrid cars and wind-turbines. Monazite sands contain around 45 - 48 % cerium, 24% lanthanum, 17% neodymium, 5% praseodymium, along with minor quantities of samarium, gadolinium and yttrium. Europium concentrations tend to be low, in the region of 0.05%, and very low concentrations of the heaviest lanthanides in monazite accord with the term "rare" earth for these elements, with correspondingly high prices. The thorium content of monazite is variable and can be as high as 20 - 30 %, although commercial monazite sands typically contain 6 - 12% thorium oxide. In view of the radioactive nature of thorium, a hazard is posed from waste produced in the processing of rare earth oxides, which contains it.

A controversial REE processing plant is to be built by the Australian based mining company Lynas in Malaysia where it is argued that environmental protection laws are less rigorous than in Australia. The plant is predicted to produce one third of global demand for REEs in two years, hence breaking the Chinese monopoly. It is intended to bury the thorium in concrete, but a better option would be to use the material as a nuclear fuel in place of uranium the price of which has recently risen above $100/pound, in coincidence with the price of crude oil which is now also above $100/barrel.

Now thorium cannot be used directly as a fuel but must first be bombarded with neutrons and "bred" into uranium-233 as the nuclear fuel using slow neutrons, thus avoiding the liquid sodium coolant of uranium-plutonium breeder reactors, and which has the following additional advantages. (1) Plutonium and uranium could still be consumed in a thorium reactor, but without the need to manufacture more” plutonium. (2) While uranium-235 and plutonium-239 can be shielded to avoid detection in a suitcase to use that cliche, uranium-233 could not, because it is always contaminated with uranium-232, a strong gamma-ray emitter, which is far less easily concealed as a bomb.There is the final matter of the exact means for obtaining energy from thorium, for example using very large accelerator driven systems (ADS). A more modest alternative is the "Liquid Fluoride Reactor" (LFR), which is described and discussed in considerable detail on the http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/ blog, and it appears likely that the LFR may provide the best means to achieve our future nuclear energy programme.

Oil Reserves and Fracking.

Oil production is somewhat confounded by the reference more lately to “liquids” rather than “oil”, which includes hydrocarbons that are recovered, sometimes in great quantity, from natural gas wells, which condense from the gas in liquid form once the temperature drops below the dew-point. The latter are also called condensates, and to their volume may be added natural gas liquids, hydrocarbons that exist in fields as constituents of natural gas but which are recovered separately as liquids, including propane, butane, pentane, hexane and heptane, but not methane and ethane, since these hydrocarbons need refrigeration to be liquefied. Thus the production of oil per se may be falling worldwide but total liquids have so far held pace with demand.

Unconventional oil is a complex, vexed and multifarious subject, and strictly, the above liquids should be classified under this heading. More “conventional” oil will certainly be recovered, and we are in no sense running out of it. The world proved oil reserves are close to 1.2 trillion (1,200 billion) barrels, to be compared with 6,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.3 Since the commonly used conversion factor is that 1 barrel of oil has an energy equivalent to 6,000 cubic feet of natural gas, the remaining energy reserves of the two kinds of fuel appear nearly equal. There is almost certainly far more oil in the ground to be recovered than this, but I stress it is the rate of recovery that is the more pressing issue, not so much how big the reserve is in total. If the rate of recovery of oil remains too slow to meet (rising) demand, we will experience a demand-supply gap within the next decade, a situation that has been described as “gap oil”. At best the maximum in oil production, peak oil, might be delayed, a situation that will enlarge the gap.

There is also the issue of the quality of crude oil. Light sweet (low sulphur) crude is the most desirable as it can be easily refined into gasoline, which is burned in spark-ignition engines, world production of which peaked in 2005. Brands of light sweet crude include West Texas Intermediate, Brent oil from the North Sea, and of course that from Ghawar in Saudi Arabia. Heavy sour (high sulphur) crude requires removal of the sulphur and catalytic cracking of the longer carbon chain molecules to shorter species in order to recover petrol from it in quantity. This necessitates more complex and expensive refining methods to process heavy sour oil, for which there is presently insufficient capacity worldwide. Hence new refineries will need to be built as the oil recovered in the future tends more toward the heavy kind, which is better used to make diesel fuel, requiring further a greater production of diesel engines.

“Fracking” is a term that has been used frequently and condescendingly in the media recently, in the context of recovering gas from shale. It is claimed that 10% of Britain’s gas-requirements could be provided from shale and there is a pilot project about to be inaugurated onshore near Blackpool, otherwise famous as a holiday resort with its “illuminations”, “kiss-me-quick” hats, “sticks of rock” and “big-dipper” rollercoaster. The process of hydraulic fracturing (called frac’ing in the industry but fracking in the media) has been used since 1947 to fracture rock to assist the recovery of oil and gas. A hydraulic fracture is formed by pumping a fracturing fluid into a borehole drilled into the source-rock so that the downhole pressure exceeds that of the fracture gradient of the formation rock.

The pressure causes the formation to crack, so that the fracturing fluid may enter and extend the crack more deeply into the formation. To keep the fracture open once the injection is complete, a solid proppant, commonly a sieved round sand, is added to the fracture fluid. The propped hydraulic fracture then becomes a high permeability conduit through which the formation fluids can flow to the well. Since the fluid contains various toxic materials, including hydrocarbons, benzene etc., there are environmental fears that these may leak out and contaminate e.g. aquifers from which drinking water is drawn. There are cases reported too, where methane can leak-out further afield into wells and tap-water in sufficient quantity that it can be ignited! That such measures are being seriously considered appears as an abject demonstration of desperation. It seems clear that oil-supplies are going to fail at some point and sooner not later.

Given the limited timescale, it is improbable that unconventional oil can be implemented in sufficient amount to take up the slack from conventional production on that 30 billion barrel annual equivalent scale. Agreed that all of that quantity does not need to be replaced in one go, but the ramping-up of unconventional production as the former declines will be unable to meet the shortfall, leading to a rapid decline in the number of the 700 million vehicles that currently grace the world’s roads. There is a further impact on aviation and rising demand for it, which already consumes almost one quarter of all fuel used in the United Kingdom, and is also unlikely to be met. Globalism will fade while "localism", involving a way of life based around small communities appears an almost certain default outcome.

Middle East Tensions and Peak Oil.

Political tensions in the Middle East once again remind us of the fragile dependency of the Western nations on imported petroleum, which have driven the price of a barrel of crude oil to above $100, as was the case prior to the world economic crash in 2008. British motorists and owners of haulage companies flinch nervously in the face of rising prices at the pumps for fuel, feared to reach £2.00/litre if events fail to calm down, since supplies of crude oil from Libya, already cut by 500,000 barrels per day from 1.6million bpd, may fall to zero, leading to shortages and further hikes in oil and consequently fuel prices.

Saudi Arabia have “promised” to make-up the difference by pumping out more oil, but there is doubt as to whether they have in fact sufficient spare capacity to do so, certainly not the light crude which is exported to Europe for refining into petrol. There is, for that matter, some controversy over how much oil the kingdom does have in its reserves in total, which are thought might be far less than is claimed. The latter aspect is critical to the timing of “peak oil”, a phenomenon proposed as long ago as 1956 by Dr M. King Hubbert, a petroleum geologist working for the Shell Development Company. Hubbert’s predictions were made for the lower-48 states of America, that U.S. oil production would peak in either 1965 or 1970, depending on the volume of the reserve that he estimated, i.e. the total amount of oil that would ultimately be recovered given prevailing technology and oil-prices.

Western civilization has been built literally on sand – underpinned by the desert sands under which most of the petroleum lies. Our position is thus precarious, resting upon an ability to import ever greater quantities of crude oil, to furnish economic and material growth. In the case of the lower-48 U.S. fields, oil production did indeed peak in 1970, as Hubbert predicted, and by application of similar reasoning the peak in world oil production can be expected to be close to the present time. The CEO of Shell has stated that the world will be unable to meet its demand for oil by 2015, while other commentators think so as early as 2012.

Most of the major oil companies are investing in deep-drilling technologies to recover oil from less accessible regions of the Earth, including the Arctic, and it is likely that there will be further “accidents” such as occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, as new technologies and regions are developed to advance the map of as yet uncharted territory from which to slake our thirst for oil.

“Clean Tech Clean Profits," Book Review

I wrote the following book review for the British magazine Chemistry and Industry which I thought might be germane to the subject of this blog.

"The twin spectres of peak oil and climate change loom large, urging humanity toward a low-carbon future. Burning oil at the rate of 30 billion barrels a year contributes around 12 billion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere, or roughly 40% of the total quantity blamed upon humans for their extravagant use of fossil-fuel. Once world oil production peaks, the provision of cheap crude-oil on which the whole of modern civilization is based, will begin to shelve. Fuel-supplies will become increasingly expensive and unreliable and a state of instability will unlevel the world economy.

Since the other fossil fuels, gas and coal are also expected to peak within a few decades, it would appear a simple and dually beneficial strategy to stop burning all of them at the present excessive rate, and move to a low-carbon economy, thus reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and slowing climate change, while prolonging vital energy supplies while alternative “green” energy sources might be found and implemented. It is important to stress that not only does crude-oil fuel almost all of the world’s transportation, but is also the raw feedstock for virtually all chemical manufacturing, providing products ranging from plastics to pharmaceuticals. It is an instructive challenge to look around a room and find something whose production did not involve crude oil at some stage as a raw chemical feedstock.

Even the production of food, now undertaken mostly in modern industrialized farms, relies almost entirely on crude oil to fuel tractors and combine-harvesters, and natural gas as a source of artificial fertilizers to bring forth life from soil that would otherwise be barren, having lost much of its organic element. Finding a material with the same ease of handling, energy density and chemical processing power as petroleum, is an impossible task, and our clear and inexorable dependence on carbon overall to power the world is so innate to our identity and actions, that delivering a low-carbon future might appear an insurmountable obstacle. Nonetheless, either by design or default, we will end up using less carbon, as there will simply be less available fossil fuels. If we continue along the business-as-usual route, the default outcome will be anarchy and chaos. Hence we must design and plan.

There are possibilities for decomposing the global to the local, thus providing energy, food and economic and social currency at the level of small communities. Thus, not only would local farms become key agents of change and sustainability, but farming methods per se, moving away from high input methods that rely heavily on oil, gas and freshwater, toward regenerative agriculture and permaculture which follow more natural patterns and use less in the way of resources to yield their bounty. Perhaps sustainable business practices will encourage the next leg on the journey to this brave new low-carbon world."

“Clean Tech Clean Profits: Using Effective Innovation and Sustainable Business Practices to Win in the New Low-carbon Economy,” By Adam Jolly. ISBN-10: 0749461179 ISBN-13: 978-0749461171

Endangered Elements: Threat to Green Energy.

A list of "endangered elements" [1] has been published in a new report, including the rare earth elements (REEs) in particular neodymium, production of which, it is reckoned [2], will have to increase five-times to build enough magnets for the number of wind-turbines deemed necessary for a fully renewable future. Nonetheless, my rough calculations indicate that this would still take 50 - 100 years to implement, depending on exactly what proportion of the renewable electricity budget would be met from wind-power, and if the manufacturing capacity and other resources of materials and energy needed for this Herculean task will prevail.

Neodymium is a rare earth metal used extensively to produce permanent magnets found in everything from computer hard disks and cell phones to wind turbines and cars. Neodymium magnets are the strongest permanent magnets known, and a neodymium magnet of a few grams can lift a thousand times its own weight. The magnets that drive a Toyota Prius hybrid’s electric motor use around 1 kilogram of neodymium, while 10 - 15 kg of lanthanum is used in its battery [1]. Interestingly, neodymium magnets were invented in the 1980s to overcome the global cobalt supply shock that occurred as the result of internal warfare in Zaire (now Congo). Around one tonne of REE based permanent magnets is needed to provide each MW of wind-turbine power.

Of the other REEs, demands for dysprosium and terbium, which are harder elements to extract than their lighter relatives, are such that supply will be outpaced within a decade.The latter have been described as "miracle" ingredients for green energy production since small quantities of dysprosium can result in magnets with only one tenth the weight of conventional permanent magnets of similar strength, while terbium can be used to furnish lights that use as little as 20% of the power consumed by normal illumination. By alloying neodymium with dysprosium and terbium, magnets are created that more readily maintain their magnetism at the high temperatures of hybrid car engines [1].

However, far more dysprosium relative to neodymium is required than occurs naturally in the REE ores, meaning that another source of dysprosium must be found if hybrid cars are to be manufactured at a seriously advancing rate. 97% of REEs come from China, and it appears that China will run out of dysprosium and terbium within 15 years, or sooner if demand continues to soar. The joker in the pack, is that Chinese hegemony for its own future energy projects may mean that the current amount of REEs being released onto the world markets will be severely curbed.

Peak oil may already be with us, and peak coal in 10-15 years, while peak lithium remains a subject of speculation. Peak neodymium is the latest threat to green-energy, while doubt emerges over the security of many other element groups including the rare earths, the platinum group metals, and elements such as antimony, beryllium, gallium, germanium, graphite, indium, magnesium, niobium, tantalum and tungsten. Helium (used to cool superconducting magnets in hospital MRI scanners) and phosphorus (in agricultural fertilizers) are also under threat.

If even "renewables" cannot save us from waning fossil fuel depletion, the only solution is to begin seriously the deceleration of consumption to a lower-energy society based around local communities immediately, with vastly reduced inputs of energy and all kinds of "mined" resources. Recycling must be key to this most difficult transitional step, in hand with a new concept of a "circular economy", that aims to model nature where nothing is wasted.

Related Reading.

[1] "Critical Thinking," By Emma Davies. http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2011/January/CriticalThinking.asp

[2] "Going "All The Way" With Renewable Energy?" By Mason Inman. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2011/01/110117-100-percent-renewable-energy/