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Japan had virtually no indigenous energy resources but managed to become the second biggest economy on the planet with just 120 million people (at its height).
I wouldn't be surprised if China copies the Danish approach and we see islands being built for energy purposes in the South China sea - killing two birds with one stone.
The Chinese are now experiencing electricity supply disruptions due to inadequate coal supplies.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News … emand.htmlChina's coal reserves are substantially depleted. Peak production occurred around 2013. Average mine depth is now 600m.
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~rutledge/Ru … 18ACS.pptxThe Chinese have been replacing old and inefficient powerplants with more efficient super critical powerplants in an attempt to stay ahead of depletion. Australian imports have been banned in an attempt to keep coal prices high enough for deep mines to remain profitable. But over the past year, the Chinese have been forced to make withdrawals of coal from strategic reserves to prevent mass blackouts.
The end of Chinese economic growth may be closer than many economic analysts expect. Most of those analysts do not have a physics background and do not understand that an economy is a thermodynamic machine. I believe that the Chinese do understand this. Their efforts to railroad development of renewable energy and nuclear power, widely lauded as heralding a sustainable future, are more likely acts of desperation.
Video on the Danish Island Project.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GC3VcB0gLY
The Danes are no fools.
For Louis re #156
Thank you for the update on Danish thinking about shipping Hydrogen from offshore to land where it can be used directly for power, or in manufacturing.
For Calliban, your careful attention to efficiency of various processes has increased my awareness of losses in various processes. In this case, it sure ** looks ** to me as though cutting out the middleman would make a lot of sense.
The source of Hydrogen would (presumably) be sea water, so losses will inevitably occur in desalination and electrolysis.
On the other hand, engineers may be tempted to try to achieve Hydrogen production directly from sea water.
A system that could do ** that ** efficiently would be competitively advantageous.
One thing that bothers me (a bit) about the scenario Louis described, is that Oxygen is not mentioned as a valuable byproduct of the production of Hydrogen.
Oxygen is going to be increasingly valuable for space launches, and that is true regardless of the fuel consumed.
(th)
UN population estimates suggest Africa will have 4 billion people by 2100, 80 years away. The alternative to greening the Sahara, is browning the rainforest, with results that would be difficult to predict.
Are there grains or grain substitutes you could grow under this system? Perhaps you could grow two layers of rice (one with natural sunlight and one with PV lighting, three crops a year, as in many parts of the tropics).
The EU does have a plan to convert the North Sea into a green energy hub. Denmark has already announced plans to create an energy island some 80 miles off the coast. Making hydrogen obviates the need to lay cables from wind farms to the coast and, it seems, they think they can use existing natural methane pipelines to pipe hydrogen back to the mainland for use in power generation. Perhaps they are thinking in terms of upgrading the seals?
Hydrogen at 45MPa @room temp, results in some embrittlement of ductile low alloy steels, but they remain sufficiently ductile to allow for their continued use in hydrogen pipelines.
http://www.nlcpr.com/3878REV.pdfFor higher strength alloy steels, embrittlement is more of a problem. For carbon steels, it is important to avoid work hardening.
A more significant issue may be leakage of hydrogen through seals, leading to buildup of explosive atmosphere in pipelines not designed to carry it.
Conversion of hydrogen into anhydrous ammonia is a good idea, as ammonia is a storable liquid at modest pressure. The haber process is a steady-flow process, that takes place at 500°C and 200 bar, over an iron oxide catalyst. The alkaline electrolysis cells can be engineered to work at 200 bar pressure, such that hydrogen evolving at their cathodes can be vented directly into the reactor (it is much energetically cheaper to pump water at 200 bar into the electrolysis cells, than it is to compress the evolved hydrogen to 200 bar). Once full, the reactor will convert hydrogen and nitrogen into ammonia, which is a mildly exothermic reaction. The process requires substantial heat input to start.
One thing to note: At the temperatures and pressure at which ammonia synthesis is carried out, thermal cycling should be avoided. Thermal cycling will result in steady crack growth which will limit the life of pressurised components. To achieve low product cost it is also beneficial to run this expensive capital equipment at 100% capacity 24/7, as this achieves best amortisation of capital costs. Also note that running the process intermittently will substantially increase thermal energy costs. This has implications for energy source used to drive the process. Intermittent energy isn't a good idea.
Ammonia is combustible in air at concentrations 15-28%, but burns too slowly to build up the overpressure that is associated with explosion. In fact, ammonia engines may need a combustion promoter to operate efficiently at high speeds. Maybe less of an issue for big marine diesel engines. Not sure how ammonia would work in a gas turbine.
https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/articles/ … n-engines/
It is irritant and toxic at high concentration. This needs to be factored into how it is used for vehicle applications. Chemical compatability with steels is good, but polymers should be avoided.
Very impressive, especially the booster landing.
Felix's latest outlining Space X's recent stunning successes with the Booster and various developments at Boca Chica.
Well, another way of thinking about this is that fossil fuels are themselves a kind of energy storage system. Certainly they require a substantial infrastructure: drilling sites, pipelines, ports, roads and rail and storage facilities close to the power generation site before they can be used. Seen in those terms, in situ hydrogen storage, near a water source at a power generation site is not so crazy. It all comes down to cost.
The difference between me and a swivel eyed green fanatic is that I am a gradualist who says these things could and should happen as price allows. I also do think there is a role for the state in (a) assessing the overall economic benefit to the community and (b) subsidising development of new technologies and creation of economies of scale. Capitalism won't do (a) as it views profit at the level of the firm but energy independence can deliver real economic benefits in terms of domestic employment and balance of payments that can boost your economy and GDP. Re (b) some things just won't happen unless someone is prepared to make an investment. The state is good at creating opportunities for new technology e.g. look at NASA and its spin-offs. I very much doubt that solar or wind would be where they are now without a strong subsidy element at the outset.
Louis,
I love your creativity and I like the premise / theory behind a lot of it, but you have a very cavalier attitude towards spending other peoples' money, as well as resource consumption. The goal of sustainability is not to attempt to do it no matter the cost or complexity involved, or damage done to the environment in other ways, but to do it in an affordable and practical way that limits consumption and waste production. There's nothing particularly sustainable or environmentally friendly about consuming 10 to 1,000 times more resources, at a global level. As of right now, grid level storage at the scale required is every bit as expensive as nuclear power is here in America and then some. There's no feasible way to produce a power plant that costs 10 times more than a competing alternative does to simply construct, because it requires 10 to 1,000 times more resources, and then proclaim that to be "green energy".
When I evaluate a proposal and think to myself, "this could work because it uses well understood principles demonstrated at the scale required" or "this won't work using present technology or has yet to be demonstrated at the scale required". I approach it the same way I'd approach any other engineering problem. We can either demonstrate an affordably repeatable process at the scale required or we can't. I don't think I've seen anyone else ignore that principle quite so often as you tend to.
If you can generate power, then you don't have to store it. You don't need mega-scale engineering projects that consume resources at an alarming rate, only made possible by the cheapest and dirtiest forms of energy production. As with all other forms of energy generation, wind and solar have practical limits, but you're unwilling to accept that, because it means something that you don't personally agree with will have to play some part in the energy mix.
First successful static fire of the booster. No major issues.
Interesting, especially in the context of the Sahara. Also, you could have mylar strips to deflect light. If the PV panels overhead were used to generate electricity to dehumidify the air and operate cooling fans in polytunnels you would probably have a very viable system.
Put it all together and the vast expanse of the Sahara could become a huge food producing area.
I always like to remind people that the tiny Netherlands is responsible 17% of world food exports.
This lookes pretty good!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ue53mBUtNY
Per the video, of course other people have been thinking of associating Photovoltaics with agriculture.
In this case it is solar cells, but they are robotic.I of course like Heliostats, although I have no objection to robotic solar pannels.
Wonderful information is distributed here. Just as I suspected, plants have a saturation point for
light. After that they may "Sweat" to keep cool. So by shading them water may be consirved.In the case of Heliostats, I think that a better ability to manipulate rain may exist. Also, I think
they may do a better job of heat rejection into windows of the sky, or just stuffing energy into
storage devices. But I am very open minded. I like what is demonstrated here.So, I am quite comfortable with what is likely an emerging technology.
Forests of robotic solar pannels and Heliostats, where they shelter farm crops. In this case then it
is rather likely that the farm crops should be tended also by even more mobile robots.So, we have robots that manipulate sunlight, and even more mobile robots that tend crops.
I am going to suggest that the motors for these might use CO2. This could be dry ice, or liquid CO2,
but perhaps just compressed CO2. And so I will indicate why I think this could be a good thing to do.The Sahara is said to have "Greened" up by about 9% because of elevated CO2. And the reason is supposed
to be that the plants loose less water as they do not have to keep their stomata open as much to get
the CO2 they need. So, I speculate that it is reasonable to consider if it would be profitable to
Irrigate crops with CO2 in a safe proportion. This may consirve water. And the CO2, if avaiable will
in part become part of the crops.It may be recognized that it will take energy to provide water in any case, and if the plants need less
water, it may be justified to provide CO2.I think it merrits consideration.
Done.
As mentioned earlier in the thread, when you compare the amount of energy used in aviation and vehicular traffic on Earth with the amount used in space travel, the latter is tiny and even if Musk builds a million person city on Mars, will still remain tiny in comparison (over 4 billion people travel by airplane in a normal year!). So I would forgive her the omission.
For Louis re link to powermag in Post #143
Thanks for article by Ms. Patel ... this is not intended as a criticism, but more as an observation confirming current thinking ... the article did not foresee space travel as a possible market for hydrogen.
While Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin are currently the only space launch company (that I know of) that uses hydrogen, i expect that more launchers will find it worth while to master the intricacies of working with Hydrogen to secure the benefits.
NASA was a customer at one time, and they might be again.
(th)
louis wrote:Can't deal with all your post now but surely, surely you've got to be wrong on 1.2 GwH from 600 millon barrels of petroleuem!!!
Louis,
Good catch. That was supposed to be 1.02PWh, not 1.2GWh. I both fat fingered the numeric entry and wrote the incorrect unit behind it, and probably ran with it from there. If you've ever had children or a wife, then I presume you've also had numerous distractions while pursuing your free time hobbies.
Each barrel of crude oil represents ~1,700,000Wh of embodied energy, so 1.7M * 600M barrels = 1,020,000,000,000,000Wh = 1.02PWh, not 1.2GWh.
Yes, I am familiar with that scenario! lol
That little foible of mine wasn't quite as important as the following point, though:
Americans are presently driving 1.4 trillion miles in passenger vehicles per year, as of 2018. In 1975, they were already driving 1 trillion miles per year.
1,400,000,000,000 miles * 240Wh per mile = 336,000,000,000,000 Watt-hours of power = 336TWh
That's assuming that every electric passenger vehicle on the road, which must replace every gasoline powered vehicle on the road, is as energy efficient as Tesla claims their electric vehicles to be. That means we need to generate AT LEAST 920,547,945,205 Watt-hours of power per day, presuming 100% electrical efficiency, in order to provide enough electrical energy to power a nationwide fleet of electric passenger cars.
336,000,000,000,000 Watt-hours / 365 days per year = 920,547,945,205 Watt-hours of electricity per day.
920GWh PER DAY
That is equivalent to the output of 31 1.25GWe nuclear reactors.
That's an enormous amount of electrical power, even with nuclear power, but still seems doable using wind and solar thermal energy.
The diesel powered heavy duty trucks are using 2,020Wh per mile and Tesla is claiming that their big rigs will only use 1,890Wh per mile. The heavy duty trucks drove 1.85 trillion miles during the same year (2018).
1,850,000,000,000 miles * 1,890Wh per mile = 3,496,500,000,000,000 Watt-hours per year
3,496,500,000,000,000 Watt-hours per year / 365 days per year = 9,579,452,054,795 Watt-hours per day
9,579GWh / 9.5TWh PER DAY
In total, 10.5TWh PER DAY
The US generated 4,009TWh of electricity from all sources in 2020. That includes coal / gas / oil / hydroelectric / nuclear / wind / solar / geothermal / biomass, the whole shooting match. In 2017, total global electrical energy consumption was 21,372TWh and 20,900TWh in 2020 (20.9PWh). COVID was a speed bump. 30 years from now, I'll bet you it's more like 30PWh. Humanity has a voracious appetite for energy of all types.
4,009 / 10.5 = 381.8 <- This means the US would have to ALMOST DOUBLE its current total electricity output to power an all-electric fleet of vehicles. According to your plan, 100% of it would have to come from wind or solar, unless your plan is to simply keep burning fossil fuels, which is what we have been doing.
America would need 140 Solana Generating Stations to produce the electricity required to power our fleet of vehicles.
Solana Generating Station cost $2B to build over a period of 3 years and it covers 1,920 acres, which means a fleet of 140 Solana Generating Stations would cover 420 square miles and cost $280B to build.
80,000t of steel was used, so the total steel demand is equivalent to the displacement of 112 Nimitz or Ford class super carriers. The pair of A1B nuclear reactors in those carriers each supply 700MWt (Solana's nameplate power output, never achieved in operation, is 280MWe), and the whole A1B reactor and all subsystems weigh less than 1,000t. The reactor vessel itself weighs 110t and the total reactor cost was around $200M. It's refueled every 20 years or so. For the cost of a single Solana, we can have approximately 10 naval nuclear reactors that each produce the same amount of power output as a single Solana Generating Station. All 140 reactors would easily fit on a parcel of land approximately equal to the acreage of land that the Ford class super carrier occupies. $28B is still a crazy amount of money, but equal to the amount of money we'll spend on Gerald Ford and her two sister ships currently being built. Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates could easily afford to purchase all of those reactors, if they really wanted to, but the pair of them would blow through nearly all of their fortunes to purchase all of those solar generating stations, which is why they convince the peons to purchase solar power using public money, which all of us ultimately end up paying for in the form of higher electric utility rates.
They're naming aircraft carriers after Gerald Ford? That made me smile.
$280 billion would be an investment over probably 30 years so more like $9 billion per annum.
Lots of things need to happen before we can create a green energy infrastructure that is reliable and cheap but I remain optimistic and I do so on that basis that, as we have seen with price drops over the decades, technological innovation, robotisation of manufacturing and economies of scale can lead to huge price reductions. It's not me just saying things, all the leading analysts see continued huge drops in price.
As the price drops, lots of things become possible including hydrogen storage.
This article below suggests we might already be down to 14 cents per KwHe for electric power generated by hydrogen. If hydrogen produces 10% of your annual power requirement at 14 cents per KwHe, 60% is produced direct from wind and solar at 2 cents per KwHe, 10% from other renewables at 8 cents, and 20% from chemical battery storage at 10 cents. That would give an overall price of 6 cents per KwHe. Everything I read suggests that sort of scenario is achievable over the next decade or so.
https://www.powermag.com/how-much-will- … ower-cost/
I really think the construction times and use of materials for these big PV facilities, will need to change. Time for some creative thinking. Perhaps anchored inflatable balloons covered in ultrathin PV film would make more sense. When a hurricane's coming your way you deflate them and lock them away. This becomes much more possible if you have reliable hydrogen storage.
He was obsese, He's not that tall - seems to be around 5 feet 8 inches. Not a good idea to be carrying 17 stione plus at that height!
Well he got it before and it nearly killed him as U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson will self-isolate after being exposed to the novel Coronavirus at a meeting with his Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who announced on Saturday that he had tested positive for the virus.
They will self isolate
Can't deal with all your post now but surely, surely you've got to be wrong on 1.2 GwH from 600 millon barrels of petroleuem!!!
That would only fully power 14000 EVs.
No way can that be right!
You must be out by a huge factor because that petroleum reserve can power every motor vehicle in the USA for a month at least! So we are talking about probably 200 million vehicles not 14000 (I'm guessing by the way but can't be that far off).
Louis,
1. 1 barrel of crude oil is ~1.7MWh of stored energy, so 600M bbl is 1.2GWh. We're unlikely to store that much LH2, so we probably have to convert it to LNH3, and then back to H2 for use in fuel cells. 1 bbl of crude oil contains approximately 47.3kg of H2. H2 is 0.2679kg per gallon, so 176.56 gallons of LH2 is required to replace each bbl of crude oil. In other words, we need ~4.2 bbl of LH2 to replace 1 bbl of crude oil. That works out to ~2.522 billion gallons of LH2, assuming I did that correctly. It seems improbable that we're going to store that much LH2 at all times. Each gallon of LH2 consumes 10kWh to 20kwh per kg to liquefy.
28,354,536,000kg <- a LH2-based strategic reserve in terms of weight
283,545,360,000,000 <- minimum number of Watt-hours of electricity to liquefy all of that H2 using current industrialized processes
283GWh <- The output of a 1,250MWe nuclear reactor over ~9.43 days or ~1/3rd of the total yearly output of the Solana Generating Station
The US consumes 337 million gallons of finished motor gasoline per day. In total, ~750M gallons of petroleum products per day, or ~17,857,143 bbl per day. The US strategic reserve has a total capacity of 714 million bbl, so that represents a 42 day supply. Replacing all of that with LH2 over 30 years might be technically possible, but seems absurdly optimistic. We'd need to expand Solana by a factor of 283 to manufacture a daily working supply of crude oil replacement.
Americans drive around 3.25 trillion miles per year. 1.4T miles by passenger cars, the rest by freight vehicles, aka "big rigs". We'll presume that the Tesla type passenger cars consume 240Wh per mile and the big rigs consume 1.89kWh per mile. From 1975 to 2018, this has been remarkably stable. In 1975 it was 1T miles and in 2018 it was 1.4T miles. So, that's 336TWh for the passenger vehicles and 3,496.5TWh, or 3,832.5TWh / 3.8325PWh.
3,825,000,000,000,000 (A) / 10,950,000,000,000 (B) = 349.3(C)
A. Watt-hours of electric power required to run the US fleet of vehicles per year
B. Watt-hours of electric power provided by a 1,250MWe nuclear reactor
C. Number of 1,250MWe nuclear reactors required to run the fleet3,825,000,000,000,000 / 365 = 10,479,452,054,794 Watt-hours per day.
10.479TWh per day <- a couple of TeraWatt-hours shy of global annual energy consumption in 1999. This is what complete conversion of land transportation to electric power looks like for America alone. That does not seem feasible to replace over 30 years, given that it took a lot longer than 30 years to reach that level of coal / oil / gas energy output.
3,835,616,438 miles per day, or 9.589 miles per person with a population of 400M people. That means our entire fleet of vehicles powered by gasoline engines is achieving a paltry 11.38mpg, which really sucks if you ask me. We're averaging 22.5mpg in our Cadillac Escalade during our daily commuting, which is mostly highway driving. It's still a 6,000 pound SUV equipped with a 420hp V8, though. That makes me wonder about what my fellow Americans are daily driving that they're only averaging 11.38mpg overall (total fleet of gas powered machines)? My 318 V8 equipped 1971 Dodge Challenger was the last car I owned that drank that much gas, but it wasn't a daily driver. A 1970 Cessna 170B equipped with a Continental O-300 gets 15mpg but it's the weight of a small passenger car that flies at 120mph! A Wittman Tailwind would get around 21.5mpg from the same engine because it flies significantly faster.
We fill up once per week during a normal work week and once per month during the COVID lockdown. Over 10 years of driving, that amounts to $39,000 in gasoline assuming $75 spent per fill up. Since there are numerous LS equipped Tahoe / Suburban / Yukon / Denali / Escalade vehicles from 10 to 20 years ago that are still on the road, we can safely assume that our vehicle will last at least that long with proper maintenance. There are no 10 to 20 year old electric vehicles to compare with, so we have no way of knowing how comparable they will be in terms of maintenance costs. $29,000 in maintenance over 5 years doesn't bode well. There is zero aftermarket support for Teslas, so no hope of lowering maintenance costs through competition for replacement parts, either.
That is what you're proposing to replace using solar / wind / batteries. If you still can't understand how utterly ridiculous that is, even with nuclear power, then I guess your highly creative imagination is having another "failure of mathematics". Earth receives 84TWh per day, so you're talking about covering 1/8th of the Earth's surface with solar panels and wind turbines so Americans can drive their cars. This is a pipe dream, kemosabe, not a plan for anything except failure. I hope you know that.
2. It's not about a lack of Sun or wind, it's how many states does the solution need to cover to produce equivalent output as all the coal / oil / gas / nuclear power currently being used.
3. Burning paper and plastic is not "green energy". Good grief, man. Try harder.
4. No, you can't use vehicle batteries to deliver energy. They get depleted during the day and need to be recharged at night.
5. Pressurizing water in old oil or gas wells is a great way to fracture the rock, but not much else, so that doesn't seem feasible, let alone practical. I discussed that very topic with a petroleum engineer earlier this week, so I think it's safe to say that that's definitely out. If you pressurized the well enough for the water to naturally rise to the surface without expending energy (pumping power) to make that happen, then it would rupture the casing or fracture the reservoir or both. I suggest that you go talk to an actual petroleum engineer if you think this would work. We use weighting agents to adjust the hydrostatic pressure exerted by the column of heavy mud to bring cuttings to the surface and we still have to be careful not to fracture the rock formation or casing, so you'd be pumping a slurry with a weighting agent added, rather than liquid water. The liquid water would come rocketing out of the well one time, as the well bore implodes, but otherwise this simply doesn't work in the real world. So your proposal is a great method for expending energy, but not for storing it. Yet again, stop throwing stuff at the wall and do some silly research. Go talk to someone who designs oil wells for a living. That's what I did. You have to maintain both pressure and volume, or the Earth will fill it up for you. The max bore hole temperatures in most wells is at or below the boiling point of water, due to the hydrostatic pressure being applied by the column of weighted mud (the ppg of the heavy mud is adjusted using barite or hematite). If the bore hole was any hotter, then the water would likely diffuse out into the rock formation (hydrate the rock formation). The Earth is also an unpredictable layer cake of sedimentary rock, igneous rock, and salt.
If you tried to line the bore hole with steel, then the salt in the layer cake of materials we've drilled through would corrode the hell out of the steel, the way the salt (used to prevent the drilling fluid from seeping out into the formation if it contains salts by super-saturating the mud / slurry with salt) in the mud corrodes the drill pipe. Short term, there are mitigation strategies for this, but long term we use concrete to line the well bores. That's a process we refer to as "casing the well".
In geothermal wells, they use high grade stainless piping to limit corrosion, but still have problems with it, and they're tapping into naturally-formed reservoirs or caverns that are fairly close to the surface of the Earth. If the reservoir is deep enough, then you need pumping power to bring the hot water to the surface, which is why they locate geothermal power plants along tectonic plate boundaries or places where underground magma chambers are close to the surface. It's very expensive to do this properly, and even more expensive over time if you don't, although it can be done, just not with most oil wells, because we don't drill anywhere near underground magma pools. If you did some research into drilling for oil and gas, then you'd know that we studiously avoid drilling in locations containing lots of igneous rock, because we never find oil there. All of this information is publicly available if you look for it.
32 in the London area this afternoon. Not sure what the humidity was but I was happy enough with it! lol I like riding the bike in that sort of weather, as I did today, because your muscles are very relaxed, you can wear sandals and shorts. It all feels so effortless to me. What I can't do now but could do in my youth is just lie in the sun in this sort of temperature.
I think we had a bit of a breeze - nothing strong but that makes all the difference.
What's the highest you've experience in Winnipeg?
Before we go all "global warming", let's remember that parts of Australia have had their coldest weather in over 100 years:
http://www.markvoganweather.com/2021/06 … -54-years/
I can also vouch for UK weather being generally below average for most of this year.
33°C (91.4°F) with 50% humidity. No air conditioning. Is this hot or am I a woose?
Also to add to the previous two e mails:
I think you are building far too much on that one Tesla example of maintenance cost.
In general terms we know that tyre wear is far more with EVs containing heavy batteries than in petrol-driven automobiles. That's accepted. But 100,000 miles per annum is a huge mileage (about 300 miles a day! - maybe not so huge for Americans, but huge for most of the world). It's certainly way above even the American average daily mileage. So that is very unrepresentative. Then you had items like the seat adjustment replacement - clearly teething troubles with the design.
We know electric motors involve less maintenance than ICEs - that's just basic understanding of engineering
As soon as we get detailed fleet performances comparisons the truth will emerge. Incidentally I've seen YT videos that show v. low maintenace and fuel costs for EVs. They seemed pretty convincing but obviously we need proper performance testing to judge for sure.
Anyway, you ignored the point that with fossil fuel technology, the USA feels the need to keep a ONE MONTH MINIMUM storage facility.
Given your concerns about the impracticality of storing green energy over a few days why aren't you concerned about the fossil fuel storage?
It's a reasonable working assumption that whatever is grown on Earth can be grown on Mars either in Earth-replicating facilities or specialist high CO2 facilities, with or without hydroponic, aquaponic and aeroponic technologies. Pollination may be an issue - but gravity is unlikely to be, I feel, given how many different plants have been grown in zero G.
We should start with the things that we know have been grown successfully in farm towers and Antarctic bases e.g. lettuce and other salads. Nutritious bean shoots should also be an easy early win.
There's no big rush with at least 500 tons of supplies coming in on Starships every two years. Most of the basic food stuffs - grains, pasta, dairy produce, meat and so on - can be imported in for a few years, maybe even a couple of decades before it becomes necessary to supply the growing Mars population via Mars ISRU agriculture.
More data!
It's not just that the vaccinated are getting Covid but with milder symptoms, as the pro-vax propaganda would have you believe.
The latest data from Israel shows that the vast majority of people with severe Covid infection are either fully or part vaccinated and that people who have been vaccinated are the biggest group among those with severe Covid.
https://twitter.com/BenMarten/status/14 … 9775711233
This chart of course doesn't show the people who have been made ill by the vaccine, which is another key factor in judging vaccine performance.
The truth is the Pfizer vaccine is, along with the other Covid vaccines, just about the worse vaccine ever in the last 50 years in terms of adverse reactions.
To add to my previous post:
25 years from now not a single one of the wind turbines or solar panels presently in operation will still be in operation, because it's wildly too expensive to keep throwing more fossil fuel energy into something that's not "paying back enough surplus energy". The theory behind how it's supposed to work is what I like. How it actually works leaves a lot to be desired.
This is an absurd claim. Of course we will continue with these installations if economic. Wind turbines will be able to carry on producing huge amounts of energy, and even if the turbine itself needs renewing the likelihood is the blades and certainly the tower can continue.
More data. This time from Malta.
https://lockdownsceptics.org/wp-content … .0485.jpeg
Malta has high rates of vaccination. Even before the recent huge rise in Covid cases, 71% were double-vaccinated and 71% had at least one shot. But still they are seeing this huge rise - why?
Why should any healthy person have the vaccine? If they catch Covid they will recover well and be immune thereafter. The immunity we get from our natural system is far superior to that offered by the vaccine. This is gradually becoming apparent from the stats as the number of people fully vaccinated becomes the majority of people. Furthermore by not having the vaccine the avoid the risk of early death or serious injury from something like blood clots or heart disease, or a range of neurological disorders.
You should study some philosophy. The argument from authority (referencing someone's title as support for their argument) is a fallacious argument ie gives no support.
As far as I know the CDC and Surgeon General haven't contradicted the data coming out of Israel. So what to make of that data? That vaccination is a stunning success? It's the same with lockdowns and mask mandates. States like Florida and Texas that have junked them are doing no worse and in better cases better than states that have kept them.
You're indulging in emotive arguments that assumes your premises are correct when they are not.
Are you disputing the CDC and Surgeon General of the United States??
If so, what are your medical credentials?
Louis,
Sometimes I think you've built an entire alternate reality around this glittering new technology you love so much. I don't love it or hate it, I think it definitely has good uses, but it's not a silver bullet, nor anything close to it.
louis wrote:Do you accept that creating an effective storage system e.g. utility scale hydrogen (produced by electrolysis using wind and solar energy during times of surplus) will address your concerns over intermittency.
Show me a Hydrogen energy storage plant that's storing and generating at least 16 GigaWatt-hours of energy during the times that solar and wind turbines are not producing power. With 100% efficiency, that's 476,190kg of H2, at 33.6kWh/kg. You need to store roughtly 2.43 SLS tanks worth of LH2. At 70% efficiency, which seems more practical for an Alkaline fuel cell, you need 680,272kg, or around 3.48 SLS tanks worth of LH2. That equates to approximately 165 ChillZilla LN2 stainless vacuum thermos bulk cryogen storage tanks, so 3,787t of stainless steel. UK needs about 35 such plants. Larger units could potentially be built, obviously, but these units are truck-transportable.
The very best water electrolysis plants are around 80% efficient, so your overall energy conversion process is around 56% efficient. In real terms that, means you need a minimum of roughly 32GW of installed capacity devoted solely to making sure you have power storage for times when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. On top of that, you have to figure in whatever your daytime power requirements happen to be. I'd wager it's a 60/40 day/night split overall. Seasonal demand seems to vary between 30GW in the summer to 60GW in the winter. The 34.6GW I previously calculated is time-averaged power over the course of a year for the UK, given your total yearly energy consumption for last year.
Chart Industries - ChillZilla Bulk LN2 Supply Management System
How long do you think it's reasonable for me to wait for you to be able to show me that, since I already know that you can't?
10 / 20 / 30 years? Serious question. How long?
First let me point out that the USA has a strategic petroleum (fossil fuel) reserve of 600 million barrels - enough to keep the USA afloat with gas for at least a month at normal consumption levels. That's a requirement, it seems. of having a fossil fuel economy.
So, if we are talking storage that's probably a good benchmark. Will a green energy system require more or less. Clearly, a lot less.
For the UK from everything I've read on the subject there has never been a run of more than three or four days when the wind hasn't blown and the sun hasn't shone significantly. You'd probably approach this conservatively and look to have a reserve that lasts perhaps 3 days at 100% demand in order to cover those periods. You might go a little over the 100%, perhaps 140% to allow for recovery time before the next low point.
Remember as well that we can also rely on a contribution from other green energy sources e.g. you can use energy from waste, biofuels and hydroelectricity as a form of storage and wave, tidal and sea current for instance could all be used as contributors to the overall energy requirement. So for the period of low wind/solar perhaps 10-20% could be met from these sources.
In a mature green energy system, we can also use vehicles as battery storage to help deliver the system. That could be a reserve of 1000 GwHs in the UK, and you might be able to access 50% of it.
Chemical batteries will likely be dealing with a lot of the night load and cannot be considered as part of the solution to periodic intermittency.
There will be other forms of storage available (e.g. pressurised water in old gas or oil fields would likely be a useful form of energy storage). However, hydrogen is an atractive solution at utility scale I think. Yes, the storage is expensive compared with other gas storage but manufacturing the hydrogen from water is conversely very simple.
The hydrogen storage would be built up gradually.
I think 30 years is probably a realistic time frame in which to convert the whole of our energy system to green energy plus storage. None of this will happen overnight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5fsW1fcXY8
Latest from SpaceXCentric.
No let up from Musk in terms of the overall vision. Intending to make up to 1000 Raptor engines per annum to build (over a decade) the Starship fleet that can build the City on Mars, to be "completed" by 2050.
Could be a very empty city is still my view. But who would bet against Musk?
I guess we'll find out how realistic Musk's vision is when they start selling one-way tickets to Mars! More pandemic-lockdown misery could certainly help.
https://www.designboom.com/design/world … 7-16-2021/
That technology could be very useful on Mars!
Although there's almost no running water on the surface, there could still be a need to bring gullies and the like when creating road trails.
I am sure it could have many other applications...maybe greenhouse construction?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/3d-printed-b … 00692.html
Charles Hilu
Sat, July 17, 2021, 9:00 AMUpon its completion, the 3D-printed bridge won a Dutch Design Award for the category of design research.
“The leap in research into 3D printing opens the door, once and for all, to other (large and/or public) applications in architecture and the metal industry,” the awards committee said. “The jury is curious to see how this will be emulated, and where it will lead. Laarman has set the bar high, with an extraordinary choice of material: steel, a typically (conservative) construction material, known for its extremely static properties. The form and material freedom achieved by the design hint at almost unimaginable scenarios.”
The use of steel for this project caught my eye.
I wonder how the "printer" created the structure?
Simple welding is a possibility.
A continuous bead could have been laid under computer control.
(th)
I think the problem with that in terms of green energy storage is that with intermittency you don't have the green energy available in sufficient quantity to make the hydrogen when you need it With a green energy plus storage system, you have to produce the hydrogen when you have a green energy surplus (too much wind and solar).
I don't think storing hydrogen at utility scale will be problematic. But creating a hydrogen economy with hydrogen being used at all points within the economy would in contrast be a very challenging exercise.
Hydrogen is the hardest of elements to contain and we lose it as its got to have a very thick tank to slow that rate. It is easier to capture and contain water for direct electrolysis as do an on demand creation to lesson that rate.
Setup would be simular to the Tesla electric pump system where they are all over the place for a vehicle to refill there tanks when the customer needs.
Latest stats from Israel:
https://twitter.com/RanIsraeli/status/1 … 80/photo/2
This shows that among the most vulnerable group (the over 50s) the case rate (per million) is higher (not lower!) among the vaccinated, compared with the unvaccinated.
Remember, Israel is one of the most vaccinated countries on Earth and still they haven't got the pandemic under anything resembling control.
Whole populace mass vaccination is a crazily misguided policy that ends up killing perfectly healthy people.
