The weather's finally looking up out here on the east coast, It's snowing here in New York, the Yankees are totally ridiculous this year, and New Energy Currents is back on its monthly grind, helping you keep up on the latest developments in energy technologies and their evolving applications. You'll notice that March's news included lots of press from the world of fossil fuels and carbon sequestration - a good reminder that some of the most likely near-term 'alternatives' to our current energy system may consist more of changes to the way we harness our resources rather than a change in the resources themselves. By John Atkinson and Peter Wolfgang - look for our follow-up post on policy and market trends on Monday.
- Renewable energy historians take note - Italian archaeologists have discovered evidence that ancient Cypriots used olive oil to fuel copper smelting furnaces, the earliest known use of vegetable oil as a fuel.
- The Watt notes that Philips is planning a pilot commercial launch of its new, highly-efficient wood stove in India this summer. The design utilizes a thermoelectric fan to burn at higher temperatures, increasing fuel efficiency by 80% and reducing hydrocarbon emissions by up to 99% compared to traditional three stone fires.
- Plans are underway to build the world's largest biodiesel plant in Claypool, Indiana. The biodiesel plant will be fully integrated with a soybean processing plant and will produce 80 million gallons of biodiesel a year - more than the 75 million gallons produced throughout the US in 2005.
- New ethanol projects are similarly growing larger and, increasingly, are funded by corporate investors, not local farmers, if these anecdotes coming from Minnesota are indicative. Rising oil prices and strong government support for ethanol production have made plants relatively solid investments for Wall Street, and the focus of the industry may be shifting away from the small farmer-owned facilities that were once at its center.
- More distressingly for environmentalists, Futurepundit notes that new ethanol plants in the US are beginning to be fueled by coal instead of natural gas due to high gas prices.
- The Pacific Northwest's Burgerville chain of fast food restaurants has announced plans for a new program that would recycle all the 39-location chain's restaurants' used cooking oil into biodiesel.
- Engineers at Virginia Tech have developed a pretreatment process for corn stover - the most abundant agricultural residue in the US - that could significantly reduce costs of cellulosic ethanol production (via Green Car Congress).
- Honda and Climate Energy's home cogeneration system is currently undergoing its first US residential test in Massachussetts. The compact unit, is combined with a furnace or boiler system to simultaneously produce about 1 kW of electricity along with 3 kW of heat, increasing overall efficiency to nearly 85% as well as providing a source of distributed electricity that be used at home or sold back to the grid. See this post from the Engineer-Poet on the considerable potential benefits from residential cogeneration.
- Meanwhile, Honda is working with Plug Power to develop an innovative hydrogen-era home cogeneration system that would produce electricity, heat, and hydrogen fuel from natural gas.
- Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory are attempting to develop low-cost, high-volume, renewable feedstocks for carbon fiber composites for use as a lightweight replacement for steel in automobiles. Carbon fiber is just as strong as steel but only one-fifth the weight, offering the potential of cars 60 percent lighter and 30 percent more fuel efficient. Green Car Congress has more details, and a good discussion in the comments.
- A quarter-inch corrosion hole in a pipeline at Alaska's Prudhoe Bay oil field resulted in the spillage of an estimated 201,000 gallons of crude oil over 1.9 acres of tundra over the several days it went undetected - the largest oil spill in the history of Alaska's North Slope. US DOT personnel are in the process of investigating the pipelines, and have found that the pipeline was dangerously close to springing other holes, and that (pipeline operator) BP's leak-detection system had not been sufficiently rigorous. The pipeline will remain closed while cleanup is in progress, reducing North Slope oil production by nearly 100,000 barrels a day, or 12 percent of normal output.
- Chevron, who already owns 20% of the Athabasca oil sands project in Alberta, has acquired an additional 75,000 acres of land nearby which are expected to hold 7.5 billion barrels of heavy oil. The DOE's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy newsletter adds links on environmental concerns attending the development of Canada's oil sands, plus a Google Maps link to satellite photos of existing oil sands projects.
- A new report by US DOE claims that state of the art enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques could add 89 billion barrels or more to US reserves, and a potential 430 billion barrels in the long run with advances in technology and increased sequestration of carbon dioxide from industrial processes. Green Car Congress provides an in-depth summary here, and Econbrowser's James Hamilton takes a skeptical look.
- Shell and Norway's Statoil are developing the world's largest offshore EOR project at an 860 MW gas-fueled power plant and methanol production facility. Approximately 2-2.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from the plant will be captured every year and reinjected into the same offshore gas and oil fields that supply its fuel, increasing production from the field while reducing the greenhouse impact of the facility to near zero.
- The USGS has just completed the first in-depth survey of Afghanistan's petroleum resources, and discovered 18 times the oil and 3 times the gas resources previously estimated. The mean estimate of oil reserves has risen to 1.6 billion barrels, and the mean estimate of gas reserves to 16 TCF.
- A team of researchers at the University of Nottingham are attempting to reduce the costs of coal gasification plants by reducing the wear and tear on turbines caused by corrosive minerals in the coal. Their work, which could help make coal gasification plants a commercially viable technology, is focused on developing a low-cost, environmentally benign process using (and reusing) hydrofluoric acid to leach the minerals from the coal before gasification.
- By suspending nanoparticles in water and other liquids, researchers at the University of Leeds have developed 'nanofluids' that transfer heat 400% faster than their conventional counterparts. Among the doubtlessly numerous applications of this technology would be much more efficient home heating.
- The Geothermal Energy Association claims that several new projects are set to increase US geothermal capacity by up to 75 percent, adding 1.8-2.1 GW capacity to the 2.8 GW already online. The group credits this 'renaissance' in US geothermal power to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which extended the full production tax credit from just wind to include geothermal energy and gave the Bureau of Land Management more authority and more resources to grant geothermal leases and permits.
- Meanwhile, a group of energy companies are collaborating on the Iceland Deep Drilling Project, which plans to drill holes more than 4-5 km deep in hopes of dramatically increasing the amount of energy harvested by geothermal projects (current boreholes are typically 600 to 1000 m deep). Their engineers estimate that the energy extracted from each hole could increase from 5 MW to 50 MW if the temperature of the borehole can be increased by 200 degrees and the pressure increased by 200 Bar, which could translate into an enormous energy boon for the already geothermally-endowed country (via Muck and Mystery).
- GE has figured out how to dramatically reduce the capital costs of manufacturing hydrogen via electrolysis - make electrolyzers out of plastic. A prototype design could lead to a commercial machine able to produce hydrogen for about $3 per kilogram, less than half of current costs of $8/kg (via AltEng).
- Eco-tech business developers GreenShift have formed a new company, General Ultrasonics, to develop technologies that use high intensity ultrasonic energies to catalyze chemical reactions, including the synthesis of hydrogen fuel. Current prototypes of the technology have used used ultrasonics to produce hydrogen via steam reformation at 25% lower temperatures than had previously been possible (via Green Car Congress).
- A powerful-but-tiny new gamma ray detector designed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is 10 times more precise than the conventional sensors currently used to examine nuclear materials. While the detector is currently only a prototype, it could significantly aid non-proliferation efforts by providing more detailed information about the composition and age of radioactive materials than is currently possible.
- Sandia National Labs's Z Machine - a key research facility in US nuclear fusion research - has successfully and unexpectedly produced plasmas reaching 2 billion degrees Kelvin - hotter than the inside of a star, and an amount of energy equivalent to as much as four times the energy invested in the process . No one's exactly sure why this happened, of course, but the results have held up over 14 months of additional testing, and understanding the phenomenon could help pave the way for smaller fusion reactors than originally envisioned. Via Peak Oil Rob, who also notes a skeptical assessment of the prospects for fusion research by the late William Parkins, a physicist who worked on the original Manhattan Project.
- Rob also looks into an investigation of Purdue scientist Rusi Taleyarkhan's apparently bogus research into sonofusion, the creation of fusion energy using sonic 'bubbles'. As Rob notes, Taleyarkhan seems to have been 'willfully deceitful' about the results of his work - 'his career is over,' and serious research into 'bubble fusion' probably is as well.
- I generally don't link to product press releases, but this is too cool and too closely related to last month's post on the link between renewable energy and physical security - check out the new MobileMaxPure system, a towable photovoltaic array that combines electricity generation and storage with water purification and emergency communications systems in one unit. An earlier version of the product (lacking the communications systems) has already been used to provide drinking water in post-Katrina Mississippi.
- US DOE has announced a partnership with GE to develop a 5-7 MW capacity 'next-generation' offshore wind turbine over the next 3-4 years. These turbines would be significantly larger than today's models (ranging from 2 to 5 MW for the largest) and reduce costs from an average of around 9.5 cents/kWh today to 5 cents/kWh.
Another good one, on an important topic.
I never see much mention of pellet stoves and/or corn stoves used for heating homes, industrial buildings, etc. These should take at least some space in your bio-fuels recaps. These technologies are much more common in Canada and the northern parts of the USA, but you can find them in Texas. And, you can find these on Ebay.
Thoughts?
From the synopsis of Mr. William Parkin's objections to fusion power, while there are very real concerns on technical limitations, I notice that he appeared to be ignoring the fact that many of these "problems" will require solutions in other fields (and that other ways may be found to overcome them). Heck, the only reason internal combustion engines beat out external combustion engines 100 years ago was directly related to technical limitations that have since been overcome.
hey Paul -
actually, we had a couple stories about wood and corn-burning stoves a couple months ago - http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/008038.php#bio (scroll down a bit). the articles covered each month depend completely on what is in the news/who is putting out press releases/etc, and home heating stories are pretty seasonal
GM's fuel cell car anticipates going 150 miles on 3Kg of H2. At $3 per Kg that is $9. For $9 of gasoline (with tax) you can go about the same distance in a high mileage car (40 mpg hybrid). BTW to compete with gasoline at the pump (with taxes and profit) H2 would have to be made for $1 to $1.50 per Kg.
Unfortunately the fuel cells cost about 100x per hp of what an IC engine costs. Even if GM can lower the cost by 10 by the delivery date (2010) it is still not an economically viable proposition.
And how will this H2 be stored? If it is held under pressure, sudden decompression could be very dangerous. And how much will a leak proof (for H2 which is very difficult) pump that can raise the H2 pressure from about atmospheric to 10,000 psi cost?
There are a lot of very important details that need to be worked out before an H2 economy is viable. One of the most important is price.
Well this is an important bit, but only a bit. Still years to a decade from mass production.
======================Much more efficient home heating? Current high end gas furnaces deliver 92 to 98% of the energy in the gas to the home. Not much room for improvement.
=====================BTW GE doesn't need the wind subsidy. It is in a race with all the other wind turbine producers in the world to increase turbine/generator sizes. As size goes up the price of electricity goes down. In this case GE has gotten the government to pay for something it has to do to stay in business. Just another corporate rip off.
In addition a growing number of wind proponents think the PTC ought to be eliminated within a few years because of its distorting effect on tthe market. I agree.
Wind electricity is a hedge against rising natural gas prices. In fact wind is strongest in the winter when natural gas prices are highest.
#3 Kamatu,
No one has yet beat the problem of cooling for the external combustion engine. It is a big weight penalty. Which is why the old steam locomotives just refilled their water tanks instead of using a closed system. Exhaust steam was either used for boiler draft or just exhausted to the atmosphere.
However open systems while weighing less require more maintenance. Especially of the boilers. Hard to keep them clean especially in hard water areas. Or else you have to have large supplies of distilled water available.
Steam engines are viable for boats. Autos not so much.
hey m -
the points on hydrogen are all true, and I'd tend to believe the more-pessimistic estimates of when these guys are gonna be ready for prime time (20-30 yrs at least). there are lots of interesting solutions (solids!) being developed to solve the problems you note, but they're all more or less purely experimental at this point.
and as far as the economics go, governments will obviously have to get involved to make a hydrogen economy happen, whether through setting the current EPA regs to zero, through the eventual adoption of a carbon tax or other CO2 regulation, or through big producer subsidies for hydrogen a la ethanol.
re: the nanofluid-enhanced home heating, there isn't much to go on from the press release and the nanofactory website, but I'm guessing that the savings the authors allude to would be from being able to improve the efficiency of the often-far-less-than-high-end furnaces in older buildings (as well as most buildings in developing countries) without having to replace the furnace itself - just treat the water.
"GM's fuel cell car anticipates going 150 miles on 3Kg of H2"
In about 6 hours.
The upside for the greenies is that all the hydrogen leaking into the atmosphere will give them a new cause- global fusion. Activists can take turns predicting just when the earth will ignite into a mini-star. Saving the planet is a neverending struggle.
What ever happened with depolymerization? Don't hear much about it anymore.
In Mesa County, Colorado the Bureau of Land Management has authorized another 55,000 acres of its holdings to go up for bid on oil and natural gas leases. These 55,000 acres are a natural and scenic buffer between the townships of the Grand Valley (Grand Junction, Fruita, Loma, Mack) and the Bookcliifs. The Bookcliffs are a natural feature of erosion cliffs outlining the northern edge of the Valley.
Producing another reason why responsible energy development is needed - anywhere oil development goes, drugs and crime follow like a Biblical plague. The Hell's Angels and the Sons of Silence normally will kill each other on sight, but two years ago they had a meetup in Palisade Colorado to establish who would control the meth business in this new oil development territory. Since then, our sleepy peaceful County has experienced astonishing levels of crack and meth related crimes, murder sprees like you expect to see in Bosnia, massive arrests and a wave of violent home invasions, bombings and child related crimes that is simply breath taking. That's not even taking into account how busy the Highway Patrol is clearing away vehicular debris from the number of accidents by sleep deprived oil workers, and oil field workers coming down off long hours and drugs. Then there's the Other Issue ... illegal aliens in frightening numbers.
Along with oil development and the kind of hooligans and crime it attracts, Mesa County has undergone a mind boggling real estate development crisis, fueled by energy development. The last time this happened - the oil shale years up the road in Parachute, CO - what was left behind when Exxon went bust on shale - was a shanty town of roughnecks with no jobs, unbelievable crime statistics, social services problems out the kazoo, drug and alcohol statistics through the roof, shattered families, broken children, you name it. Mostly centered in the boom town of Clifton, Colorado.
We need to quit calling responsible energy devlopment "alternative". Alternative presents shades of meaning that sound fishy, crazy, Rainbow Family, yurts and bean sprouts. The thing that is decidedly "alternative" is petroleum. Consider ...
Tesla was famous for driving a behemouth Pierce Arrow that he would happily demonstrate had no internal combustion engine under its hood. The energy needed to drive electric motors was freely available in the ethers. Tesla, as well as many others by now, invented stand alone generators able to deliver all your electrical needs right at your home, in an enclosure about the size of a modern heat pump. No wires, no grid, no power plants, none of the tedious, hideously expensive and criminally priced electrical distribution system we suffer under today. So name me the thing that gasoline stations and electrical power plants share in common when viewed in context with Tesla's free energy at the place of use ...
Addiction.
Addiction Marketing. The tactics used by drug cartels and street gangs are the same tactics used by "mainstream" energy suppliers. You ... are ... addicted ... to ... what ... they ... sell ... and how ... they ... sell ... it. Tesla technology ... you own the device and produce your own energy at the point of use. The Big Time Energy Companies? You'll never own anything, you pay through a meter and they control your access and costs.
What we call alternative is actually the Mainstream. What we're saddled with at the moment is alternative. As in shady, fishy and out from left field.
I have a whole additional set of links on how there will be a jump in energy technology over the next ten years and why $70/barrel oil is good for American in the long run
john,
If they are honest they can't set current EPA regs to zero. A lot of coal plants will have to be built to meet the electric demand. Or a lot of coal reforming plants. Or natural gas reforming plants.
Subsidies like those for hybrids and the wind PTC are ok if time limited. Long enough to set up a production base. No longer.
Other wise you get stuff like the GE boondoggle.
I'd prefer to have the government handle the long term research. Let companies pay for commercialization. Government capital expenditures should be through markets rather than directly to companies. It is more efficient.
Shiloh,
This might be of interest:
http://powerandcontrol.blogsp*t.com/2005/11/is-addiction-real.html
BTW you were going pretty good until you got to Tesla technology. I will grant you induction motors. However, I have read some of his engineering books and I must say some of his concepts are not exactly what is taught in engineering school. In addition what is taught in engineering school is consistient. Tesla's ideas are not. A pity. OTOH he did amazing work in the field when a lot of stuff was poorly understood.
m -
if we're just talking about hydrogen for vehicle fuel, then the EPA regs on mobile source emissions are the only ones that matter. and they wouldn't really have to push them down all the way to zero - just low enough so that, 20 years from now, it's cheaper to build hydrogen-fueled cars instead of gasoline-fueled cars with lots of expensive aftertreatment devices. + re: the coal example anyway, I imagine we'll be seeing zero-emission coal plants before we see hydrogen cars on our streets in significant numbers. while I definitely agree on the general role of government in markets, the slow and steady rise of emissions standards has driven a lot of the changes we've seen in the past thirty years, and I think it'll probably continue to be a more important influence than ill-conceived government 'crash programs', subsidy bonanzas, etc.
john,
One other point. Methanol may be the hydrogen of the future.
We ought not get so comitted to H2 in these early stages that we wind up going in the wrong direction.
It is way to early to force the issue with CO2 producing "zero-emmisions" vehicles through EPA mandates.
BTW your point that power plant emissions don't count for the EPA shows just how corrupt the regulatory system is. Systems thinking not allowed.
I'd rather not see more permanently corruptable government systems. What happens when you find out Exon is corrupt? It goes out of business. What happens when you find out government is corrupt? You get a tax increase.
john,
The emission rules killed the station wagon and brought us the SUV. Net gain? I doubt it.
Be aware that if electrolytic hydrogen really takes off, it will become very easy to make heavy water at very low marginal cost by the CECE process. This process involves monothermal counterflow exchange of hydrogen and deuterium between the incoming water and outgoing hydrogen stream, in effect filtering the deuterium from the outgoing gas and returning it to the electrolysis cell (until the concentration there becomes very high; this would work even if electrolysis itself did not show a large isotope effect.)
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KingKob,
When you can burn corn to get down the road let me know. Baring draft animals of course.
Your heating bill averaged over 400 dollars a month? Are you running a reptile house?
Even if it does i dont see myself lugging bags of corn around every day and cleaning out chimneys and filters weekly. Labor is valuable as well.
Renewable energy historians take note - Italian archaeologists have discovered evidence that ancient Cypriots used olive oil to fuel copper smelting furnaces, the earliest recorded use of biofuels.
Wouldn't wood have been the first "biofuel"? Charcoal was probably the first major technological advancement in biofuels.
Or by biofuel do you mean to limit the field to liquids?
M -
true nuff re: methanol. but re: regs, power plants are subject to their own set of emissions standards which, again, helped to establish natural gas as the fuel of choice for new plants over the past couple of decades (until gas supplies got tight, anyway). and re: cars, even though the fuel efficiency of the national fleet has gone down with the advent of SUVs, EPA regs have been responsible for removing the nastiest emissions from vehicle fuels - taken lead out of gasoline, is in the process of taking sulfur out of diesel fuel, etc.
and Mike KP -
so true! sloppy writing on my part - let's just be specific and change that to 'vegetable oil used as a fuel'...
john,
We could have applied the emissioins rules to station wagons without the CAFE rules that destroyed the station wagon segment of the market.
There is a new way to convert oil (SOV or animal fat) into biodiesel using ultrasonication. This process involves high intensity sonic waves generating cavitation. Due to the enhanced mixing, the need for catalyst is being reduced and the yield in biodiesel increased.
Link: Ultrasonication for Fast Conversion of Oil into Biodiesel
correctly formatted link:
Ultrasonication for Fast Conversion of Oil into Biodiesel