Incidentally, as part of the national earthquake resilience programme TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) will rent you a 0.5 kW propane fuel cell to run some basic lights and electronics. The fuel cell also produces around 500W of heat, which is connected via a heat exchanger to the house's hot water system. A smart idea.
LENR vs Solar/Wind, and emerging Green Technologies.
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Not sure if liquid metal batteries have been mentioned here but could be a game changer for grid storage, which could help smooth out the supply with wind and solar generation
Research by Professor Donald Sadoway has been recently recognised for an award.
MIT professor wins european inventor award for liquid metal batteries
The company is at ambri.com and sounds interesting.
These liquid metal batteries have a lot of advantages over lithium batteries for grid storage.
They are still at a relatively early stage; "The company will soon install a unit on a 3,700 acre development for a data center in Nevada. This battery will store energy from a reported 500 megawatts of on-site renewable generation, the same output as a natural gas power plant.
But scaling up to have a significant market share will likely take at least several years.
Plus there is one slight issue in that it requires antimony and the USA has no domestic antimony mine.
The USA imports most of its antimony from China and Russia.
China supplies 53% of the worlds antimony but processes 80% of it. Sounds similar to the situation with lithium.
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Propane is more expensive and more trouble than natural gas.
But, perhaps cheaper and less polluting than firewood? I wouldn't know. If you are having trouble cutting enough firewood, perhaps you could supplement it with propane.
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Propane has 2.5 x the BTU per cu ft than natural gas.
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A perspective on the use of ammonia as a clean fuel: Challenges and solutions
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/er.6232
It is a well-known fact that almost one-third of the total consumed energy in the world is used in the transportation sector where fossil fuels are primarily used to produce common transportation fuels, covering diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, etc. Their extensive use has been causing very high levels of greenhouse gases, ranging from 20% to 30% depending on the nation's development. Although there is a big attempt to transient to electrical and hybrid vehicles by manufacturer and governments, it seems that is not possible to complete this transition in a short time due to infrastructure, economical, and raw material issues. However, the current environmental indicators indicate the requirement for quick and effective actions. Moreover, the diesel- and gasoline-powered generators used in residential, commercial, utility sectors, and off-grid applications contribute to fossil-based fuel consumption and increase the CO2 emissions. The use of ammonia in combustion processes, such as internal combustion engines and gas turbines, can be a key solution in a faster transition to the hydrogen economy.
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I don't know why you people are hung up on propane when natural gas wins hands down in cost. Pipelines are more efficient in delivering the product than rail ever will be.
Because it is not economical to build a pipeline to deliver gas to rural areas where the population is low. The cost per customer would make natural gas more expensive than propane delivered by truck. In urban or suburban areas, the number of customers per mile of pipeline makes natural gas pipelines economical.
In rural Yamaguchi there are no sewers, never mind natural gas pipelines. They did not have off-island telephone service until 1968.
Along the same lines, telephone companies nowadays want all rural customers to use cell phone service. When landline telephone lines are destroyed in storms, the phone companies sometimes say they will not replace them, and they give customers cell phone service instead. Cell phones take less infrastructure per customer, especially in rural areas. That is why third world telephone companies in places like India can provide affordable cell phone service to millions of people who could never had afforded landline service.
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In rural Yamaguchi there are no sewers, never mind natural gas pipelines. They did not have off-island telephone service until 1968.
And unlike Europe most of Japan has few underground electrical supply cables except in city centers. There are two reasons for this, like most of Asia they copied US power systems (even the 100V bit) but the main reason why there is a relatively small amount of underground infrastructure is that the islands are mostly hard igneous rock prone to earthquakes.
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It is a well-known fact that almost one-third of the total consumed energy in the world is used in the transportation sector where fossil fuels are primarily used to produce common transportation fuels, covering diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, etc.
Yup. 28% in the U.S. See the LLNL flowchart:
https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2022-04/Energy_2021_United-States_0.png
Moreover, the diesel- and gasoline-powered generators used in residential, commercial, utility sectors, and off-grid applications contribute to fossil-based fuel consumption and increase the CO2 emissions.
Very little in the U.S. There used to be a substantial amount in Hawaii but I think it has mostly been replaced with solar. In other countries there is more petroleum based electric power generation. In rural Virginia there are some 1 and 2 MW diesel generators for peak demand, located in the middle of nowhere.
From 1970 to 1980, petroleum produced a significant chunk of electricity. At peak it produce ~365 billion kilowatt-hours. You can see it has been reduced since then, down to around 37 billion kilowatt-hours. On this page, click on the graph, "U.S. electricity generation by major energy source, 1950-2021."
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Geothermal Energy Project in Utah, USA. From AAAS 'Science' magazine.
Past efforts to coax geothermal energy from hot, dry rock deep underground have faltered. But new techniques could crack the problem
By Warren Cornwall, in Milford, Utah; Photography by Eric Larson/Flash Point SLC
Featured
The day started inauspiciously for John McLennan, as he tried to break the curse haunting a 45-year quest to coax abundant energy from deep within Earth.
First came news of an overnight accident that left one researcher recuperating in a hotel with a sore back. Then reports trickled in that seismic sensors dangling inside holes bored deep into the Escalante Desert here were malfunctioning. Repairs were delayed by gale-force winds that whipped the sagebrush-covered hills and buffeted a drilling rig that rose 50 meters from the desert like a misplaced lighthouse. Workers were already a day behind schedule, and each day burned an additional $350,000.
Finally, shortly before sunset, McLennan, a geomechanics engineer at the University of Utah, was ready to take a critical step in advancing a $218 million project, 4 years in the making, known as FORGE (Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy). If successful, FORGE will help show how to transform dry, intensely hot rock found belowground all over the world into a major renewable source of electricity—and achieve a technical triumph where many others, over many years, have failed.
Gusts no longer rocked the trailer where McLennan, eyes baggy with fatigue and wearing the same brown sweater as the day before, faced five computer screens. The trailer’s door opened and a co-worker—a giant of a man wearing a white hard hat— looked in. “You ready for me to go?”
“Yeah,” McLennan replied. “We’re ready.” With that, powerful pumps nearby sprang to life and began pushing thousands of liters of water down a hole drilled 3 kilometers into the hard granite below.
THE CONCEPT of using Earth’s internal heat to generate electricity is attractively simple. Temperatures in the planet’s core approach those found at the surface of the Sun, and the heat leaks outward. In places this geo-thermal energy emerges at Earth’s surface as molten lava, steaming vents, and hot springs. More often, however, it remains trapped in deep sediments and rock.
There’s plenty of it. By one recent estimate, more than 5000 gigawatts of electricity could be extracted from heat in rock beneath the United States alone. That’s nearly five times the total currently generated by all U.S. power plants. Geothermal energy is also attractive because it doesn’t burn fossil fuels, isn’t imported, and can run around the clock, unlike solar panels and wind turbines.
Tapping that heat, however, has proved difficult. Some nations—notably volcanically active Iceland—siphon hot groundwater to heat buildings and generate electricity In most places, however, the rock lacks the water or the cracks needed to easily move heat to the surface. For decades engineers have sought to coax heat from this hard, dry basement rock, which can reach temperatures of more than 250°C. But those efforts have largely failed, often at huge expense—and sometimes after causing damaging earthquakes. As a result, geothermal energy provides just 0.33% of the world’s electricity, little changed from 1990, according to the International Energy Agency.
In recent years, new hope for this renewable energy source has come from an unlikely source: new technologies developed by the oil and gas industry. The same methods that have boosted fossil fuel production in the United States, such as targeted drilling and fracking—artificially fracturing deep rock with high pressure fluids—can, it’s hoped, be put to work to efficiently and safely extract energy from hot, dry rock. Government agencies and private companies are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the approach, called enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), though it, too, has had setbacks. Now, FORGE, situated on a remote patch of land in southeastern Utah, has become a closely watched effort to demonstrate and fine-tune EGS technologies—and finally break the losing streak.
geomechanics engineer john mclennanOpen photo in lightbox
Geomechanics engineer John McLennan is part of the FORGE team. PHOTO: ERIC LARSON/FLASH POINT SLC
“Geothermal isn’t going to work if we can’t make this [EGS] work,” says geologist Joseph Moore of the University of Utah, who leads FORGE. “That’s really the bottom line.”
FOR MCLENNAN, FORGE brings a sense of déjà vu. In 1983, when he was an engineer at an oilfield company, he worked with scientists from the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Los Alamos National Laboratory on a pioneering attempt to exploit hot, dry rock in New Mexico’s Jemez Mountains. The scientists had hoped to create what amounted to artificial hot springs, by injecting water into deep fractures and then channeling the heated water back to the surface via a nearby exit well. But much of the injected water never resurfaced; researchers later concluded that they had misread the underlying geology, and the water disappeared into undetected cracks.
“It was a disappointment,” McLennan recalls. And it was one of many.
Much the same thing happened decades later to a $144 million geothermal plant in Australia’s arid Cooper Basin. Water pumped into the wells flowed into a previously unknown fault, and the project shut down in 2016, after just 5 years.
In some places, EGS projects had more dramatic failures, as high-pressure water injected for fracking caused existing faults to slip, setting off earthquakes. In 2006, engineers shuttered a project beneath Basel, Switzerland, after earthquakes caused minor damage. Eleven years later, a magnitude 5.5 quake struck Pohang, South Korea, killing one person, injuring dozens, and causing more than $75 million in damage. It was traced to a new, nearby EGS project where, despite a series of tremors, operators had injected fluid at high pressures near a previously unknown natural fault.
The high cost of drilling into hot, dry rock is also a challenge. Equipment designed for the softer, cooler sedimentary rock often found in oil fields falters in the extremes of hot, hard metamorphic rocks such as granite.
Today, just three EGS power plants—all near the border of France and Germany—produce electricity. In total, they generate less than 11 megawatts, enough to power about 9000 homes.
EGS “always has been fraught with technological challenges,” says Jamie Beard, an attorney and executive director of the new nonprofit Project InnerSpace, which is seeking donations to help geothermal startups. And “EGS in its pure form like FORGE is hard,” she adds.
Even as EGS projects have struggled, however, new techniques have emerged from the oil and gas industry. Engineers learned to drill horizontally instead of just vertically. Today they can create wells that can resemble rollercoaster routes, curving and doubling back on themselves. Sophisticated steering systems allow drillers to target their fracking to release oil and gas from veins of rock as narrow as 5 meters. The advances have prompted investors and governments to take a fresh look at EGS.
In the United States, more than two dozen geothermal companies have emerged since 2020, Beard says; that’s more startups than she counts in the previous decade. In Germany, the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers announced in June it is putting €35 million into a new underground laboratory dedicated to geothermal research in deep crystalline rock, including EGS. And DOE in April announced plans to spend $84 million on four EGS pilot projects. They’ll be placed in different geological settings in the United States to study the best ways to extract heat from different types of rock.
Those plants will build on the results of FORGE, which DOE launched in 2014 with a competition to create a laboratory for honing EGS tools. In 2018, DOE announced the University of Utah and partners had won the funding to build the facility near the small railroad town of Milford, Utah, where Earth’s feverish interior creeps close to the surface.
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Geothermal Energy Project in Utah, USA. From AAAS 'Science' magazine.
The rest is here:
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Future plays on new oil leases can take a decade before extraction sales.
Will these pay off with the advent of CMNS Energy Technologies entering the market now?
A slew of new US leases just opened up.
Biden administration to hold its first oil drilling lease sales on federal lands
BY RACHEL FRAZIN 06/28/22
Source
The Hill is an American newspaper and digital media company based in Washington, D.C. that was founded in 1994. In 2020, it was the largest independent political news site in the United States.
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Incidentally, as part of the national earthquake resilience programme TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) will rent you a 0.5 kW propane fuel cell to run some basic lights and electronics. The fuel cell also produces around 500W of heat, which is connected via a heat exchanger to the house's hot water system. A smart idea.
Do you know the make and model of the device, Alan?
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https://www.fch.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/ga2010/kiyoshi_okamura.pdf
This is the launch video.
This is more recent.
Why have I never heard of the Ene-Farm?While reading up on architecture in Japan recently, I came across a technology that I hadn’t heard of before: the Ene-Farm. It’s a domestic energy system that…earthbound.report -
Very interesting.
Now too bad they didn't add a numbered balance sheet for comparison.
Classic cost for heating and electricity vs their system.
Also the time needed to rebalance the initial investment.
Display Morehttps://www.fch.europa.eu/site…a2010/kiyoshi_okamura.pdf
This is the launch video.
This is more recent.
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My blue sky today...
There is not a cloud in the sky, only the stuff the planes leave behind, Is that normal I ask?!
West - Up - East in the morning
Not normal around here, where skies can be very blue. In Toronto we have a fair amount of air traffic around Pearson airport, and when the wind blows from a certain direction we get lots of passenger jets flying over our house to land, presumably into a headwind. Yeah they could be doing something 'special' in Europe there. It could also be a humidity/temperature/altitude/wind difference thing that makes the condensate tend to linger and spread in the skies there in Europe. But I haven't heard why Europe should be different that way. Occasionally we will see distinct contrails but nothing like the pics you show.
Here's a snapshot of air traffic right now :
Live Flight Tracker - Real-Time Flight Tracker Map | Flightradar24The world’s most popular flight tracker. Track planes in real-time on our flight tracker map and get up-to-date flight status & airport information.www.flightradar24.com -
About sequestering carbon : A college campus between our house and Lake Ontario has a new building under construction. It may get to be 8 stories tall. But the interesting thing is that it appears they are not using steel beams and concrete floors, but lots and lots of prefabricated laminated wood instead.
Here's two pics I took early this evening on a run on the way to the lake :
Here's an article on an 14 story tower made of glue - laminated wood under construction here in Toronto
Is wood the new steel and concrete?U of T’s Academic Wood Tower takes root in downtown campuswww.theglobeandmail.com -
This is the launch video.
Where? Did you forget the link?
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Apologies Jed, the link is there, but it's a pdf not a video. A slip of the brain.
https://www.fch.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/ga2010/kiyoshi_okamura.pdf
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This One ERCOT Chart Explains Why Texas Is Having Electricity Shortages | RealClearEnergy
Twice in mid-July, ERCOT, the state’s grid operator, was forced to ask the state’s consumers to reduce their power use. On the afternoon of July 13, the system had less than 3,000 megawatts of spare capacity as demand hit nearly 80,000 megawatts. That’s not nearly enough reserve capacity.
Since February 2021, when the Texas grid nearly collapsed during Winter Storm Uri, scads of reports and opinion pieces have been written to explain why the electric grid in America’s biggest energy-producing state is so shaky. But there’s no need for complex reports or in-depth analysis to understand why Texans don’t have enough juice.
Instead, Texas’ power woes can be understood by looking at a single chart published last week by ERCOT.
The chart shows that when power demand in Texas surges (the black line), wind generation (green line) often goes to Cancun with Ted Cruz. Indeed, when power demand zigs, wind production usually zags. That’s what happened during the middle of the day on July 13. As demand in the state was soaring, the output from the 35,391 megawatts of installed wind capacity on the ERCOT grid fell to less than 1,000 megawatts. That’s a capacity factor of less than 3%.
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A quick Google search suggests that wind accounts for around 20% energy on the Texas grid and clearly it can fluctuate.
It may be that wind is only suitable for a smaller contribution to the mix, as far as Texas is concerned.
Each country and each state has to determine what mix of energy supply is most suitable for its needs.
After 30 seconds of thought - obvious ways to solve this problem include;
* Rely less on wind and more on gas and/or nuclear and/or solar.
* Build more storage. This is starting to become a big thing, but USA does not have an active lithium mine and relies on China! However USA lithium mining should be on-stream in a few years.
* Link the Texas grid to the national grid.
* Individual building owners reduce their grid needs by installing private solar.
The people running the Texas grid must be aware of all this, so a bit of a political scandal how they they mismanaged it to this state where it is not fit for purpose.
Having said that, political decisions on the UK grid had been neglected for decades. And now the government has decided to bet big on nuclear, a large power station and millions of tax payers money invested into Rolls-Royce's modular nuclear reactors. Good British politics to invest millions into a British company but my concerns with this strategy are;
* Nuclear is the most expensive way to produce energy.
* Building and commissioning a nuclear power station will take many years - so in the short to medium term we are stuck with supply shortage.
* The Rolls-Royce modular reactors are a fantasy dream at the moment. They have not even built one. If they work then fine, but it is a big gamble.
* Modular nuclear reactors will likely mean small reactors that are placed local to the needs. Will citizens be happy with modular nuclear reactors placed within a few miles of their houses?
