LENR vs Solar/Wind, and emerging Green Technologies.

    Piezoelectric effect in liquids observed for the first time

    Piezoelectric effect in liquids observed for the first time
    A pair of chemists at Michigan State University has observed the piezoelectric effect in liquids for the first time. In their paper published in The Journal of…
    phys.org


    A pair of chemists at Michigan State University has observed the piezoelectric effect in liquids for the first time. In their paper published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, Md. Iqbal Hossain and G. J. Blanchard, describe accidently observing the property while studying ionic liquids.

    The role of the electrolyte in non-conjugated radical polymers for metal-free aqueous energy storage electrodes

    The role of the electrolyte in non-conjugated radical polymers for metal-free aqueous energy storage electrodes - Nature Materials
    Redox-active non-conjugated radical polymers are promising candidates for metal-free aqueous batteries but their energy storage mechanism in an aqueous…
    www.nature.com


    Abstract

    Metal-free aqueous batteries can potentially address the projected shortages of strategic metals and safety issues found in lithium-ion batteries. More specifically, redox-active non-conjugated radical polymers are promising candidates for metal-free aqueous batteries because of the polymers’ high discharge voltage and fast redox kinetics. However, little is known regarding the energy storage mechanism of these polymers in an aqueous environment. The reaction itself is complex and difficult to resolve because of the simultaneous transfer of electrons, ions and water molecules. Here we demonstrate the nature of the redox reaction for poly(2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidinyloxy-4-yl acrylamide) by examining aqueous electrolytes of varying chao-/kosmotropic character using electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring at a range of timescales. Surprisingly, the capacity can vary by as much as 1,000% depending on the electrolyte, in which certain ions enable better kinetics, higher capacity and higher cycling stability.

    Scientists Found a 'Leak' in Photosynthesis That Could Fill Humanity's Energy Bucket

    Researchers believe they've found a way to tap deeper into one of nature's most impressive, life-sustaining mechanisms.

    Scientists Found a 'Leak' in Photosynthesis That Could Fill Humanity's Energy Bucket
    Researchers believe they've found a way to tap deeper into one of nature's most impressive, life-sustaining mechanisms.
    www.cnet.com


    Scientists have studied photosynthesis in plants for centuries, but an international team believes they've unlocked new secrets in nature's great machine that could revolutionize sustainable fuels and fight climate change.


    The team says they've determined it's possible to extract an electrical charge at the best possible point in photosynthesis. This means harvesting the maximum amount of electrons from the process for potential use in power grids and some types of batteries. It could also improve the development of biofuels. While it's still early days, the findings, reported in the journal Nature, could reduce greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and provide insights to improve photovoltaic solar panels.

    The solar power boom continues. See:


    Why this gas-heavy utility is going (really) big on solar
    Entergy Louisiana CEO Phillip May joined the Factor This! podcast to share an inside look at a Southern utility's view on the energy transition.
    www.renewableenergyworld.com


    QUOTE:


    Entergy Louisiana asked state regulators in March to approve 3 GW of new solar resources. That's on top of its request from a few weeks earlier for 225 MW of new solar, which would have nearly doubled the state's existing capacity.


    Solar was big at the beginning of 2022:


    Solar power will account for nearly half of new U.S. electric generating capacity in 2022
    www.eia.gov


    It would be interesting to see how it is going now.


    Solar panel manufacturing is booming in Georgia. See:


    GDPR Support


    In other Georgia energy news, everyone's power bill will increase $17 to $23 per month thanks to our new nuclear power plants, which will produce the most expensive electricity in history. Rates have already gone up to pay for these monstrosities. I doubt that $23 will be the last increase. The average rate payer does not realize that solar is 10 times cheaper than nuclear power. People would be upset if they knew! To be fair, solar was not 10 times cheaper they started to build Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in 2013. I should also note that solar is particularly cost effective in Georgia because most of our peak demand is for air conditioning during the hottest and sunniest days, when solar output peaks. Solar is less cost effective in the dead of winter in Wisconsin.


    GDPR Support


    The Anthropocene Institute strongly supports fission reactors. I think they should qualify their support to say nuclear power should only be expanded if radically new, improved reactors can be developed, such as pebble bed reactors.

    'Nuclear hydrogen could be made in the US for less than $0.50/kg — cheaper than green H2': Lazard

    French bank estimates that upcoming tax credits will enable electrolysers powered by atomic power to deliver H2 at a cheaper price than grey hydrogen


    'Nuclear hydrogen could be made in the US for less than $0.50/kg — cheaper than green H2': Lazard
    French bank estimates that upcoming tax credits will enable electrolysers powered by atomic power to deliver H2 at a cheaper price than grey hydrogen
    www.hydrogeninsight.com


    This is a story we've heard many times before...

    OPINION: What most major mining houses have got wrong about lithium.


    OPINION: What most major mining houses have got wrong about lithium | Benchmark Source
    Major mining companies not active in the lithium space may be surprised to see the 2022 earnings figures reported by global lithium leaders SQM and Albemarle.…
    source.benchmarkminerals.com


    Major mining companies not active in the lithium space may be surprised to see the 2022 earnings figures reported by global lithium leaders SQM and Albemarle. At $5.8 and $3.5 billion respectively in terms of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), the amounts dwarf the most optimistic forecasts for new growth commodities such as potash, which BHP and Anglo American have invested in. To put these numbers in context, Anglo’s base metals division (several copper and nickel assets) reported an EBITDA of $2.6 billion in 2022 and BHP’s copper division annualised result published last month was $5.6 billion.


    Lithium’s theoretical “unattractiveness”


    Traditional assessments of commodity “attractiveness” usually involve a view on a set of attributes that would drive a sustainable steep cost curve, such as geological scarcity, capital intensity, and supply gap profile, among others. The hope is that, helped by superior financial capability, majors can establish themselves in the first two quartiles, leaving smaller high cost operators to set the price cycle (swing producers). Some sophisticated analyses may include “resilience” during the low part of the price cycle – which essentially informs whether uneconomic supply is too sticky and therefore prone to prolong low price periods.


    Don’t forget that the size of the industry must be large enough to deploy the heavy resources of major mining houses. Lithium has not performed well under this test – in particular five years ago when the lithium fever started. It failed very early on by not being geologically scarce – according to the US Geological Survey lithium ranks as the 30th most abundant element on earth. At 89 million tonnes, we have more than 130 years of 2021 production in known mineral resources (and resources have almost tripled from 2017). Many mining majors, driven by a “geoscience-first” approach, stopped right at that point. There may have been others with enough patience to look further, but they again found disappointment in size and capital intensity measures. The total industry size of lithium in 2015 was a mere $1.6 billion and was forecast to reach no more than $8-10 billion by 2020. “Why bother with a small-flat-cost-curve industry,” was the natural outcome of that traditional analysis.


    The attractive reality of lithium.


    The conventional industry analysis for lithium appears to have aged badly (and too soon). According to Benchmark’s leading price assessments, apart from 2020, lithium prices have been well above the marginal cost of production since 2017 and are forecast to stay at that level until early 2030s. To put this in context, if copper had the same price levels in 2022 as the “adolescent industry” (as some commentators have referred to lithium), it would have traded at between $30,000 to $40,000 per tonne!

    Furthermore, the industry is fully governed by a steep cost curve with first quartile and second quartile incumbents enjoying a juicy operating margin of 90% and 85% respectively last year. And this trend is likely to continue. According to Benchmark’s industry leading lithium cost models, by the early 2030s the long run cost structure is likely to support operating margins above 50% for Q1 and Q2 operators.


    Why the disparity between theory and reality? Our analysis indicates that there are two flaws in the traditional analysis.


    The first missing link is on the constraints that exist to extract and process lithium to keep up pace with breathtaking demand. In other words, yes there may be “almost-unlimited” lithium units on the ground but what sets the price is the actual quantity of units that reach the market relative to (very high) demand. The natural question is then: why is supply so constrained? There are two main bottlenecks: extraction and processing.


    For extraction the issue is the usual lag in permitting and getting the resource mature enough to attract funding for construction – so in a way similar to other commodities, but again no other major commodity has a 15-year CAGR of 20%.

    There are only so many geologists, engineers and permitting professionals that will be available to progress the extraction part of an “unattractive industry” at pace, even less when these capabilities are tightly held by the majors. If you are lucky enough to get your extraction part sorted, that’s when the real problem starts. Lithium units going into batteries must be qualified along the supply chain – and this involves achieving specifications at the ppm level very early on. As a result, the processing demands are enormous for “bulk chemists” ramping up new plants. Qualification processes take 12 months, can fail and add an enormous commercial risk to mine development via compounded project risk. The same applies for anyone setting up merchant lithium chemical plants – feedstocks would need to be qualified. It can become a classic “chicken-and-egg” situation.


    The second gap in the traditional analysis is paradoxically on geology. A long period of time with prices well above incentive price levels has enabled a scramble to get to market as soon as possible.

    That means it’s not the most efficient mineral resources that are being developed first. There are in fact plenty of previously thought uneconomic (now marginal) deposits that are entering the mainstream supply chain (lepidolite probably the most covered case). The result is therefore a cemented steeper cost curve than the traditional analysis would have suggested, leading to resilient and better than expected returns for low-cost incumbents.

    The result of very high prices has led to an industry many times larger to what was forecast in 2015 – at $48 billion in 2022, which is still a long away from copper ($160 billion) or nickel ($80 billion), but nowhere near the $8-10 billion most conventional analyses were indicating in the mid 2010s.


    What now for mining majors? While hindsight could be painful for those majors that may have contemplated entering the industry in the mid-2010s, the reality is that attempting breaking in today would not be easy given the very high price environment which will expose them to write-downs in the future. Majors should nevertheless refresh their views on the industry and explore areas in which they can play to their strengths (they do have large scale processing and project development capabilities).

    The classic opportunistic/countercyclical M&A play should also be prepared if and when prices get back to, or below, incentive pricing (if only for a very short period of time though). Finally, hindsight has a reputation as the only perfect science, but it is also a great source of learnt lessons. Geoscience is rightly at the centre of investment appraisal processes, but lithium has shown that while necessary, geoscience on its own is not sufficient to grasp the complexities of superfast growing commodity markets.

    Unfortunately for SQM, Chilean Government made an announcememt past week that is going to create a national lithium company, and SQM stocks plummeted.

    I certainly Hope to see LENR helping humans to blossom, and I'm here to help it happen.

    Recycling wind turbine blades by breaking them down into their constituent chemicals
    Thermoset plastics that normally end up in landfill can be selectively depolymerised using a ruthenium catalyst
    www.chemistryworld.com


    Recycling wind turbine blades by breaking them down into their constituent chemicals

    BY KIRA WELTER9 MAY 2023


    Epoxy resins used to produce wind turbine blades have been recycled using a method that can selectively break certain bonds, making the building blocks of these materials available to reuse again and again.1 ‘This was considered too challenging until now, due to the chemical inertness of epoxy polymers,’ says Alexander Ahrens from the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center at Aarhus University, Denmark. ‘Using a ruthenium-based catalyst, our method targets a specific C–O bond formed during the production of the resins.’ Epoxy composites are very robust, so they’re commonly found in a range of products like plane wings, cars and also wind turbine blades, but recycling isn’t easy, so these parts usually end up in landfills eventually.

    ‘That’s very undesirable due to the massive size of the structures and the loss of value,’ says Ahrens. Because of this and for environmental reasons, landfilling of wind turbine blades has already been banned by several European countries. ‘It’s also important to note that none of the large commercial wind farms have been decommissioned yet, so most deactivated blades aren’t there yet but coming soon,’ adds Ahrens.

    Epoxy composites are made by gluing glass or carbon fibre meshes together with a crosslinked epoxy polymer. ‘This crosslinking makes the materials extremely strong, but it also means that they can’t be melted or dissolved. Therefore, thermosets can’t be mechanically recycled,’ explains Ahrens. With the team’s approach, the polymers can now be completely solubilised to recover high-quality fibres that can be reused to make new materials. The method also recovers bisphenol A (BPA) from the resins. ‘The recovered BPA is of high quality too and could be reintroduced into existing production chains,’ notes Ahrens.

    To recycle the composites, the researchers added pieces of the material into a mixture of toluene and isopropanol, added a ruthenium catalyst and heated the reaction mixture to 160°C. ‘It’s a slow process, so it takes around three days, but in this time the polymer is completely disassembled,’ says Ahrens.


    Continues with more detail....

    Quote from JedRothwell

    U.S. renewable electricity surpassed coal in 2022

    How Bankruptcy Helps the Coal Industry Avoid Environmental Liability
    Jeff Hoops built Blackjewel into the nation’s sixth largest coal company by acquiring bankrupt mines. When it declared bankruptcy, he pivoted to other…
    www.propublica.org

    Repairing the Damage: The costs of delaying reclamation at modern-era mines


    What they leave behind is the classical image of the US state mafia at work.

    Take out all money. Total damage of environment, overwhelmed communities. Its the famous Sackler league people than run USA since the roaring twenties ...


    An offshore wind turbine leaves behind a new riff - biotope ...


    Original source https://www.infosperber.ch/umw…die-kohle-nach-der-kohle/

    Solar panels - an eco-disaster waiting to happen?
    A French factory is pioneering recycling of solar units as experts warn of a waste mountain by 2050.
    www.bbc.co.uk


    I think the blanket "25 year life" statement is a bit misleading. If you can keep the glass clean, prevent breakages, and keep the moisture out, the life can be a lot longer. Many have been generating since the 1970s,


    However, the environment will work against them (not to mention youths with air rifles), and maintenance will be awkward if the panels are not easily accessible (e.g. mounted on a roof) . So many never seem to get to 25 years before they are scrapped. There have also been a fair number of speculative solar farms (especially in the UK) that have run into financial difficulties, so have been dismantled after only a few years.


    Having said that, I've noticed that there seems to be a strong market for second-hand panels - judging by what turns up on eBay. So maybe we shouldn't be scrapping panels, but refurbishing them.

    "The most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making" - Douglas Adams

    Thanks 1 Like 2

    I learnt the hard way that you have to design solar panel installations with ease of cleaning and maintenance in mind. Any other way is disastrous.

    I certainly Hope to see LENR helping humans to blossom, and I'm here to help it happen.

    Like 3

    And wind, solar panels, and nuclear power plants - all this is very bad and you can’t let them go, you need to close such projects!

    Quote from Curbina

    I learnt the hard way that you have to design solar panel installations with ease of cleaning and maintenance in mind. Any other way is disastrous.

    I think it is interesting that a lot of PV development has been undertaken in countries where you need a decent slope on the panel (ie. well away from the equator), and where there is also reasonable rainfall to help wash the panels. Therefore the build-up of dust and dirt on panels can be underplayed in the literature.

    "The most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making" - Douglas Adams

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