The EV Resource Problem

Calliban · 2021-11-09 07:09:18

Amidst the euphoria and hype surrounding the much promised transition of transportation to an all-electric future, this article highlights what would appear to be a difficult problem with this idea: metal resource limitations.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021 … alse-deal/

Providing sufficient BEVs to meet the transportation needs of UK (under present usage patterns) would severely strain the entire Earth's known resources of several metals. And the UK has <1% of Earth's population and represents a similar proportion of vehicle sales. Long-range BEVs are also energy intensive to produce, largely because of the mining requirements of the metals needed and the energy needed to manufacture the batteries. We are therefore attempting this transition, at a time when fossil fuel surplus energy is shrinking (oil production peaked in 2018) and disposable prosperity is shrinking. The EROI of new oil production appears to have declined gradually until 2000, but has experienced steeper declines since then. This is making oil production more expensive. But the use of oil as the master energy resource for global transportation, places a ceiling on the price that consumers can afford to pay. So higher costs can only partially be compensated by higher prices. This growing mismatch between production cost and sustainable prices, is gradually tightening the screws on the economics oil producing companies.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/ … .2013.0126

These factors suggest that unless there is a dramatic change in the technology, BEVs will never achieve the sort of mass ownership that we see with ICE vehicles. The need exists for an examination of what options are available and affordable, for maintaining sufficient mobility of people, materials and goods in an era where fossil fuel surplus energy is shrinking, the environmental consequences of their use imposes limitations and the wealth of the average person is shrinking.

One option is the continued development of more fuel efficient vehicles, including hybrids. In a hybrid, a much smaller energy store (maybe a battery, maybe something else) reduces fuel consumption by either capturing braking energy and using it for launch assist, or in some cases, provides enough stored energy to cover the propulsive needs of short trips, which often dominate the milage of a vehicle. As the energy store can be much smaller, a hybrid provides a good way of improving mpg (allowing higher cost oil to stay profitable) without the enormous resource requirements of a full BEV revolution at today's levels of car ownership.

Another interesting point to consider - The world has already had an electric transportation revolution. Electric vehicles have actually been the workhorses of human and goods mass transportation in many countries for a century, with large growth since WW2. But these vehicles draw power directly from the grid and run on rails. They do not generally attempt to store electrical energy in heavy and resource intensive batteries. They are mass transport systems, that achieve efficiency largely through the size of the vehicles. They are suitable for mass transit between predefined nodes. Is there a salient lesson here for the sort of EV revolution that we should be planning for, heading into the future?

Last edited by Calliban (2021-11-09 07:28:53)

tahanson43206 · 2021-11-09 08:07:05

For Calliban re new topic ...

First, congratulations on opening this (in my opinion) important new line of discussion!

My immediate reaction was to think of your Nuclear is Safe topic.

It is highly UNLIKELY that you had time (or the opportunity) to read my recent post on the article in Analog that estimates the total number of nuclear plants needed to take on the entire global energy supply challenge.

That is most definitely an interesting alternate future, with the caveat that the production of waste would require a solution to the disposal problem.

I am recommending use of the subduction process conveniently offered by the planet itself. Nuclear waste would flow into the mantle, where the natural process of radioactive decay would blend seamlessly into the existing nuclear reactions already occurring in the core.

This is a business opportunity for someone. However, the population of the Earth appears to be filled with individuals who are not up to the challenge.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2021-11-09 19:59:51

The battery drain and charge are the big issue for any Electric vehicle as the low point of a dead or fully discharged battery up to the fully charged is all you get to use of its potential. That low level dead voltage is dependent on the cell type and not what the device will take for a value. Then the typical rechargeable is going to take longer to charge than most want to do so we are then intentionally damaging a regular battery if its not designed for a higher level of internal heat while charging. The same high heat levels can also cause the battery to fail under loads which are to high as well.

louis · 2021-11-09 20:10:40

While resource utilisation is always a valid area of concern and discussion I have grown weary over the years of being told we were nearing the end of reserves of x,y, z. I remember news stories from the early 70s about oil running out within a decade. Still plenty of the stuff around.

I suspect this analysis underestimates the importance of new resource finds and also of recycling. Recycling has expanded hugely over the last 50 years.

Other responses will include provision of electric roads. With induction charging of BEVs the battery size could be maybe 10% to 20% of current measures. That would be a huge game changer. The technology works. Likewise overhead charging on motorways in the slow lane for trucks will hugely reduce battery requirements.

If BEV resource requirements rise hugely, then that doesn't mean we have to return to fossil fuels. Other technologies may come to the fore e.g. hydrogen power. Hydrogen is one of or the most widespread resources in the solar system.

Calliban wrote:

Amidst the euphoria and hype surrounding the much promised transition of transportation to an all-electric future, this article highlights what would appear to be a difficult problem with this idea: metal resource limitations.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021 … alse-deal/
Providing sufficient BEVs to meet the transportation needs of UK (under present usage patterns) would severely strain the entire Earth's known resources of several metals. And the UK has <1% of Earth's population and represents a similar proportion of vehicle sales. Long-range BEVs are also energy intensive to produce, largely because of the mining requirements of the metals needed and the energy needed to manufacture the batteries. We are therefore attempting this transition, at a time when fossil fuel surplus energy is shrinking (oil production peaked in 2018) and disposable prosperity is shrinking. The EROI of new oil production appears to have declined gradually until 2000, but has experienced steeper declines since then. This is making oil production more expensive. But the use of oil as the master energy resource for global transportation, places a ceiling on the price that consumers can afford to pay. So higher costs can only partially be compensated by higher prices. This growing mismatch between production cost and sustainable prices, is gradually tightening the screws on the economics oil producing companies.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/ … .2013.0126
These factors suggest that unless there is a dramatic change in the technology, BEVs will never achieve the sort of mass ownership that we see with ICE vehicles. The need exists for an examination of what options are available and affordable, for maintaining sufficient mobility of people, materials and goods in an era where fossil fuel surplus energy is shrinking, the environmental consequences of their use imposes limitations and the wealth of the average person is shrinking.
One option is the continued development of more fuel efficient vehicles, including hybrids. In a hybrid, a much smaller energy store (maybe a battery, maybe something else) reduces fuel consumption by either capturing braking energy and using it for launch assist, or in some cases, provides enough stored energy to cover the propulsive needs of short trips, which often dominate the milage of a vehicle. As the energy store can be much smaller, a hybrid provides a good way of improving mpg (allowing higher cost oil to stay profitable) without the enormous resource requirements of a full BEV revolution at today's levels of car ownership.
Another interesting point to consider - The world has already had an electric transportation revolution. Electric vehicles have actually been the workhorses of human and goods mass transportation in many countries for a century, with large growth since WW2. But these vehicles draw power directly from the grid and run on rails. They do not generally attempt to store electrical energy in heavy and resource intensive batteries. They are mass transport systems, that achieve efficiency largely through the size of the vehicles. They are suitable for mass transit between predefined nodes. Is there a salient lesson here for the sort of EV revolution that we should be planning for, heading into the future?

SpaceNut · 2021-11-09 20:44:38

The Prius uses a total 168 1.2-Volt nickel-metal hydride battery provides 36 volts and can deliver and receive 14.5 kW of power. Of course the hybrid vehicle uses an engine with its batteries. The Prius engages the electric motor at speeds under 15mph which draws its power from the large battery pack inside the car. The battery requires approximately 3.2 kWh of electricity plus 1.1 l; 0.25 imp gal (0.3 US gal) of gasoline to provide 40 km (25 miles).

The typical under the car to the road surface is about 5" and up for most so a charging current must bridge the air gap and supply the power that is required to move which requires it to be about the same as the power required to move. This is inductively coupled wireless power transfer (ICWPT) system. The switching of the power must be in a frequency to bridge the large air gap switching frequency up to 80 kHz and up will be required.

This is sort of the simple circuit that the road and vehicle would be creating a tuned or tank like rf reciever.

The magnetic coupling happens when the coils of wire are wrapped around a ferrite core and those still lose energy due to eddy currents with in them.

https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/wevj/ … -00332.pdf

Using a prius to make power in an emergency
Running Our House on Prius Power

The sine-wave electricity can run electronic devices
The inverter takes as input the DC current from the hybrid battery. As the hybrid battery loses its charge, the Prius’s gas engine turns on to recharge the hybrid battery.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this setup is that the inverter generates 240V/120V split-phase pure sine wave AC power. With it, we can operate both 240 volt appliances (well pump, HRV) and 120 volt appliances (fridge, lights, computers).
It was time to see our inverter in action — the inverter that we bought from Converdant Vehicles to turn our Prius into a backup generator.
The inverter works by taking energy from the big hybrid battery in the Prius and converting it to a pure sine wave AC current, no different from what we typically get from the power grid. (For more information on the Converdant inverter, see Backup Electrical Power for a Passivhaus Project.)
http://www.converdant.biz/home
https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/ar … us-project

Calliban · 2021-11-10 03:27:37

louis wrote:

While resource utilisation is always a valid area of concern and discussion I have grown weary over the years of being told we were nearing the end of reserves of x,y, z. I remember news stories from the early 70s about oil running out within a decade. Still plenty of the stuff around.

Mineral resource depletion doesn't really work in that way. Production grows to reach a peak, followed by a gradual decline. The question is how close we are to peak, given the limitations we face. The dynamics of depletion are a tug of war between several competing factors. The same is true of oil. We start off producing from the easiest deposits possible- near surface, highly concentrated, close to target markets, in politically stable areas with good transportation infrastructure, etc - basically technically easy and not too energy intensive to produce.

Over the past fifty years, mining has fought depletion and kept production volumes of most elements rising through a combination of greater economies of scale, greater geographical reach, greater use of energy to mine weaker ores, and new technologies assisting discovery, mining, transportation and processing. The problem is that we are hitting diminishing returns in all of these areas. Mining is now a global industry and the planet is only so big. Economies of scale are subject to diminishing returns. Most critically, the EROI of oil and gas, which power the entire global economy, are falling, reducing the surplus energy available to support all other activities. It will be difficult to support much greater rates of resource extraction on a shrinking energy base.

And this is the problem that we face. Our energy base is gradually weakening and yet the solutions that people want to adopt appear to require far more minerals and processed materials than we are producing right now. Low power density ambient energy, instead of high power density fuels. Transport solutions requiring dramatic production increases in rare elements. Something has to give.

The wireless charging system that SpaceNut has described looks very promising. Something like this would appear to be a necessarily innovation. You drive for 50 miles and then park, allowing the vehicle to recharge for an hour while you get coffee and stretch your legs. With a system like that, EVs could use inexpensive NiMH batteries. Maybe sodium-ion batteries?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery

I think that would work for most people, provided the recharging facilities are reliably available 24/7 wherever they go. That sort of innovation allows far more flexibility in battery technology. But can we afford it?

Last edited by Calliban (2021-11-10 05:14:38)

kbd512 · 2021-11-10 15:48:22

Louis,

If 5% of the passenger cars in the US were battery powered and all of their owners decided to fast charge their vehicles at the same time, it would exceed the total electric generating capacity of our entire electric grid. If 5% of the people in the US would consume more than 100% of the total available electricity to recharge / refuel their electric cars doesn't qualify as "excessive resource consumption", then nothing qualifies. I can guarantee that at least 5% of vehicle owners fill up their cars with gasoline at least once per week, in 10 to 15 minutes tops, and the true number is probably closer to 50%. If we force everyone to switch to battery vehicles with half the range through government edict, then closer to 100% of all vehicle owners will "fill up" at least once per week.

This "electric road" idea is utterly fantastic and impossible with current technology. Single major highways here in Houston can have at least 100,000 cars on them at any given point in time, especially during rush hour. If each car required a mere 15kWe (20hp) of energy to travel at highway speeds, that's 1.5GWe for a single silly little highway. The magnitude of the electrical resistance losses would easily match or exceed the thermal energy lost by combustion engines, which means more drastically more power generation and drastically more energy consumption required to produce more electricity.

All of that nonsense can't get around the fact that batteries remain an exceptionally poor way to power motor vehicles, even ones that only require as much power as a riding lawnmower to go 75mph, which is why we quit using battery powered vehicles about a century ago. Everything old is new again, but physics still doesn't care about our inability to produce a battery within 1 order of magnitude of the energy density of gasoline, so we're still using gasoline as a result.

We wouldn't even consider digging up all the major roads and burying millions of miles of Copper power cables below them if batteries could come anywhere close to matching gasoline's energy density on a per-unit-weight basis, now would we?

This is a debate without merit, in my opinion. Battery electric vehicles are still more than double the price of an equivalent gasoline powered vehicle, even with a government subsidy equal to 1/2 the purchase price of the gasoline powered vehicle, because battery powered vehicles require at least double the total energy input to manufacture, as compared to gasoline powered vehicles, and then double to triple the energy to recycle them, assuming that's feasible at all, but the solar panel and battery manufacturers have all indicated that it will never be cost-effective to recycle what they're currently producing, so that problem then requires another government mandate to rectify.

In short, you have to ignore every single very real problem with battery electronic vehicles and instead narrowly focus on ideological dogma that has nothing to do with the practicality of making / using / recycling them.

Calliban · 2021-11-10 17:50:04

The above assessment by Kbd512 makes sense to me. There is something like 10 times the horse-power in the US road fleet as the entire US electrical generating capacity. Of course, time averaged horse-power is much lower. But traffic varies greatly depending upon time of day. I suspect that if all major trunks roads were electrified, assuming that is an affordable capital cost, we would end up needing a lot of gas turbines to meet the rapid increase in electrical load at rush hour. That would essentially mean that your fleet of electric vehicles were natural gas powered vehicles, with combustion taking place elsewhere. So what honestly is the point? Why not use compressed natural gas in spark ignition engines to power the vehicles directly and cut out the expensive electrical infrastructure?

The urgent need for road vehicles is to improve overall fuel efficiency. The cheapest options for doing that are the ones that should be pursued first. The future we face will not be one in which fossil fuels are unavailable, but one in which production costs are rising as EROI falls. The more fuel efficient vehicles are, the more resilient the economy will be to the burden of falling EROI, because higher fuel prices will be more affordable to consumers and will therefore allow oil production to remain profitable. Synthetic fuels like biomass derived methanol, can fulfil a greater role if higher fuel efficiency allows higher fuel prices to be sustainable without inducing recession. So greater fuel efficiency not only reduces fuel consumption per mile travelled, but allows synthetic fuels like methanol, DME, biogas and ammonia, to reduce oil demand even further.

We need innovative approaches to reduce vehicle weight and drag coefficient. Consideration should be given to reducing speed limits and discouraging the spread of SUVs amongst urban users that do not need them. There are hybrid launch assist options that can allow a car with an under-sized single cylinder engine, to achieve good acceleration if compromises can be made on top speed. So reducing legal top speed will make the transition easier. Carbon steels are used in car chassis partly because they are less susceptible to fatigue than lighter alloys and are not vulnerable to rapid crack growth. However, carbon fibre and glass fibres can be used to cover much of the body of the vehicle. Changing seating arrangement can streamline a vehicle. A 2 or 3 seater can be arrange seating in a line instead of parallel arrangement, which reduces frontal area and allows a more elliptical vehicle shape. The optimal aerodynamic shape is a double ellipse, rather like a tear drop. The closer we can get to that ideal, the lower the effective drag.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-11-10 18:12:45)

louis · 2021-11-10 17:55:58

Calliban wrote:

louis wrote:
While resource utilisation is always a valid area of concern and discussion I have grown weary over the years of being told we were nearing the end of reserves of x,y, z. I remember news stories from the early 70s about oil running out within a decade. Still plenty of the stuff around.
Mineral resource depletion doesn't really work in that way. Production grows to reach a peak, followed by a gradual decline. The question is how close we are to peak, given the limitations we face. The dynamics of depletion are a tug of war between several competing factors. The same is true of oil. We start off producing from the easiest deposits possible- near surface, highly concentrated, close to target markets, in politically stable areas with good transportation infrastructure, etc - basically technically easy and not too energy intensive to produce.

Really?

https://peakoil.com/production/world-oi … ion-charts

Look at the chart since the early 80s - huge rise.

Remember there has been a huge decline in use of oil in heating. If that had not occurred I am sure oil production would have risen even further.

Over the past fifty years, mining has fought depletion and kept production volumes of most elements rising through a combination of greater economies of scale, greater geographical reach, greater use of energy to mine weaker ores, and new technologies assisting discovery, mining, transportation and processing. The problem is that we are hitting diminishing returns in all of these areas. Mining is now a global industry and the planet is only so big. Economies of scale are subject to diminishing returns. Most critically, the EROI of oil and gas, which power the entire global economy, are falling, reducing the surplus energy available to support all other activities. It will be difficult to support much greater rates of resource extraction on a shrinking energy base.

Over the last 50 years we've seen the biggest ever rise in World GDP and energy production compared with any previous 50 year period in absolute terms. So that is BS!

And this is the problem that we face. Our energy base is gradually weakening and yet the solutions that people want to adopt appear to require far more minerals and processed materials than we are producing right now. Low power density ambient energy, instead of high power density fuels. Transport solutions requiring dramatic production increases in rare elements. Something has to give.

So you say...on the basis of five decades of the greatest ever growth in GDP and energy production! Suddenly it's all going to stop.

The wireless charging system that SpaceNut has described looks very promising. Something like this would appear to be a necessarily innovation. You drive for 50 miles and then park, allowing the vehicle to recharge for an hour while you get coffee and stretch your legs. With a system like that, EVs could use inexpensive NiMH batteries. Maybe sodium-ion batteries?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery
I think that would work for most people, provided the recharging facilities are reliably available 24/7 wherever they go. That sort of innovation allows far more flexibility in battery technology. But can we afford it?

Now you're just joking! There will be no need for any of that. You simply have induction charging of your battery as you head allong the motorway! No need even to stop in at a service station for refuelling. If you want to go from London to Aberdeen without charging you can.

louis · 2021-11-10 18:01:34

This is just silly.

Of course if you don't expand your grid to meet the demands of EVs you will meet a brick wall.

But if you do, all the other stuff is easily met by differential pricing which will ensure enough EV owners power up their vehicles at times of low demand.

If we had electric roads, you would just price accordingly so EV owners were incentivised to top up their batteries at home overnight rather than relying entirely on electric road charging.

But you also have to look at this from the point of view of battery development. If we have cost effective iron-air batteries that can store energy cheaply for 5 days, then we don't have to be too concerned about this issue. It would be a different type of grid.

Calliban wrote:

The above assessment by Kbd512 makes sense to me. There is something like 10 times the horse-power in the US road fleet as the entire US electrical generating capacity. Of course, time averaged horse-power is much lower. But traffic varies greatly depending upon time of day. I suspect that if all major trunks roads were electrified, assuming that is an affordable capital cost, we would end up needing a lot of gas turbines to meet the rapid increase in electrical load at rush hour. That would essentially mean that your fleet of electric vehicles were natural gas powered vehicles, with combustion taking place elsewhere. So what honestly is the point? Why not use compressed natural gas in spark ignition engines to power the vehicles directly and cut out the expensive electrical infrastructure?
The urgent need for road vehicles is to improve overall fuel efficiency. The future we face will not be one in which fossil fuels are unavailable, but one in which production costs are rising as EROI falls. The more fuel efficient vehicles are, the more resilient the economy will be to the burden of falling EROI, because higher fuel prices will be more affordable. Synthetic fuels like biomass derived methanol, can fulfil a greater role if higher fuel efficiency allows higher fuel prices to be sustainable without inducing recession. We need innovative approaches to reduce vehicle weight. There are hybrid launch assist options that can allow a car with an under-sized single cylinder engine, to achieve good acceleration if compromises can be made on top speed.

Calliban · 2021-11-10 18:53:04

louis wrote:

Look at the chart since the early 80s - huge rise.
Remember there has been a huge decline in use of oil in heating. If that had not occurred I am sure oil production would have risen even further.

The growth in oil production since 1980 looks a lot less impressive if you extend the graph back to include the rest of the 20th century.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/file … 24x698.jpg

Until 1973, US oil consumption was growing at a rate of about 7% per year. In fact, global oil production was growing at a rate that could be described as exponential or parabolic. It was the years between the end of WW2 and the 1970s where the global economy experienced its record growth rates. Until the early 1970s, growth was routinely hitting 4% per year. This was driven primarily by rapid growth in production of cheap liquid fuels, which in turn allowed access to other resources. It allowed cheap transportation, which is in turn allowed economies of scale to build up in just about every productive human activity.
https://tradingeconomics.com/world/gdp- … -data.html

Since the 1970s, economic growth has become far more incremental. Not surprisingly, this has been driven by constraints in the growth of the world's primary energy supply - oil. Third world countries like China, are better able to withstand the effects of falling EROI, because they generally have fewer overheads and simpler economies. But EROI has now declined to the point where even China and India are struggling to raise living standards. In the West, we have been faking economic growth since the 1990s. Export volumes have declined and debt levels have exploded. That sort of irresponsible behaviour can only be sustained if energy remains cheap.

Energy is the master resource that allows all human activity to take place. Capital without energy is a statue. Labour without energy is a corpse. Everything that we call 'economic activity' is the result of energy acting on matter. And let us not forget what economic activity is. It is people making things and exchanging them. Simple as that. Cheap energy makes everything else cheap, because more available energy allows more matter to be reworked. And it allows for surplus resources that can be invested to enable even more production next year. This is exactly why high rates of economic growth tend to align with periods where energy is cheap. The economy is a thermodynamic machine that runs on energy. Abundant, low cost energy allows it to grow. Rising energy costs will result in shrinkage or even outright collapse. Ignore this reality at your peril.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-11-10 19:10:04)

SpaceNut · 2021-11-10 18:55:44

Here is the information on the wireless charging of cell phones which are pad to phone proprietary and are not compatible from one maker to the next.
Wireless Charging Is a Disaster Waiting to Happen, We crunched the numbers on just how inefficient wireless charging is — and the results are pretty shocking

Charging the phone from completely dead to 100% using a cable took an average of 14.26 watt-hours (Wh). Using a wireless charger took, on average, 21.01 Wh.
The first test with the Yootech pad — before I figured out how to align the coils properly — took a whopping 25.62 Wh to charge, or 80% more energy than an average cable charge.

Plus this is not a fast charge due to the coil coupling and alignment issues.

louis · 2021-11-10 19:23:59

Take a look at this graph then. World GDP just rises steadily (on a log scale!) since the industrial revolution, despite all your "resource shortages" BS.

Unless you can explain why this graph is wrong, I don't think anyone can accept your arguments.

Calliban wrote:

louis wrote:
Look at the chart since the early 80s - huge rise.
Remember there has been a huge decline in use of oil in heating. If that had not occurred I am sure oil production would have risen even further.
The growth in oil production since 1980 looks a lot less impressive if you extend the graph back to include the rest of the 20th century.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/file … 24x698.jpg
Until 1973, US oil consumption was growing at a rate of about 7% per year. In fact, global oil production was growing at a rate that could be described as exponential or parabolic. It was the years between the end of WW2 and the 1970s where the global economy experienced its record growth rates. Until the early 1970s, growth was routinely hitting 4% per year. This was driven primarily by rapid growth in production of cheap liquid fuels, which in turn allowed access to other resources. It allowed cheap transportation, which is in turn allowed economies of scale to build up in just about every productive human activity.
https://tradingeconomics.com/world/gdp- … -data.html
Since the 1970s, economic growth has become far more incremental. Not surprisingly, this has been driven by constraints in the growth of the world's primary energy supply - oil. Third world countries like China, are better able to withstand the effects of falling EROI, because they generally have fewer overheads and simpler economies. But EROI has now declined to the point where even China and India are struggling to raise living standards. In the West, we have been faking economic growth since the 1990s. Export volumes have declined and debt levels have exploded. That sort of irresponsible behaviour can only be sustained if energy remains cheap.
Energy is the master resource that allows all human activity to take place. Capital without energy is a statue. Labour without energy is a corpse. Everything that we call 'economic activity' is the result of energy acting on matter. And let us not forget what economic activity is. It is people making things and exchanging them. Simple as that. Cheap energy makes everything else cheap, because more available energy allows more matter to be reworked. And it allows for surplus resources that can be invested to enable even more production next year. This is exactly why high rates of economic growth tend to align with periods where energy is cheap. The economy is a thermodynamic machine that runs on energy. Abundant, low cost energy allows it to grow. Rising energy costs will result in shrinkage or even outright collapse. Ignore this reality at your peril.

Calliban · 2021-11-10 19:34:16

louis wrote:

Now you're just joking! There will be no need for any of that. You simply have induction charging of your battery as you head allong the motorway! No need even to stop in at a service station for refuelling. If you want to go from London to Aberdeen without charging you can.

Louis, did you read the paper that SpaceNut linked? It was all about charging by radio frequency coupling. Efficiency drops off rapidly as distance between the transmitter and receiver increases. Both are discs. That means you will need to follow a line running down the centre of the road very precisely, otherwise you get massive losses. And a moving vehicle would suffer eddy current losses as the transmitter induces current in the chassis. It is one thing having an RF power transfer device embedded in a parking space which you can line up with. Quite another having a continuous line of them running down a road for hundreds of miles, each with their own cable connection. I don't think you remotely understand the burden that grid powered cars would present to the grid. At peak traffic, the power requirements would be greater than the entire existing baseload power generation. Other times, it would be near zero. So we would need to build dedicated dispatchable power generation equivalent to the entire existing US generating capacity, just to meet the peak demands of these electric roads. And we would need to embed radio transmitters along thousands of miles of roads.

You really don't seem to know enough about these technologies to discuss them in an intelligent way. And you appear to suffer terribly from confirmation bias.

Calliban · 2021-11-10 19:48:29

louis wrote:

Take a look at this graph then. World GDP just rises steadily (on a log scale!) since the industrial revolution, despite all your "resource shortages" BS.
Unless you can explain why this graph is wrong, I don't think anyone can accept your arguments.

Louis, selectively interpreting data doesn't change underlying reality. Why do you think oil production stopped growing at the rapid rates that it had done up until 1970s? What changed during that decade do you think?

The trading economics link I posted, shows world GDP growth rates have declined steadily since the 1970s. And growth has tended to favour less developed countries like China and India, with simpler economies. World GDP has indeed continued to grow (at a less rapid pace) since 1973. But population has also grown. Even as the net energy return from oil has declined, rising population has kept GDP rising.

I still get the impression that you don't understand the role that energy plays as the key enabling resource for economic activity. Are you familiar with the laws of thermodynamics and how they effect complex self organising systems?

kbd512 · 2021-11-10 20:17:10

Louis,

The more you argue over the inarguable, the less credible your argument becomes. The figures Calliban linked to have been provided by The World Bank. They keep track of this sort of information because it affects the prices they set for loans.

From the article Calliban linked to:

GDP per capita growth (annual %) in World was reported at --4.582 % in 2020, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. World - GDP per capita growth (annual %) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on November of 2021.
Annual percentage growth rate of GDP per capita based on constant local currency. Aggregates are based on constant 2010 U.S. dollars. GDP per capita is gross domestic product divided by midyear population. GDP at purchaser's prices is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated without making deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets or for depletion and degradation of natural resources.

I don't have to so much as download the The World Bank's data and graph it in Excel, because the online software provided by "Trading Economics" graphs it for you. Use the trend line feature. Whether you look at the last 10Y / 20Y / 50Y / Max (all data recorded since 1968), the trend line is downwards. Growth has been declining since 1970, longer than I've been alive, and will continue to trend into negative territory. After 2040, if the present trend over the past 50 years continues, there will be negative growth.

Per-capita GDP is a real measure of economy and energy.

Total global energy usage has been rising along that same graphed time period, yet somehow per-capita GDP is trending down.

Q: How is that possible?

A: As energy became more expensive and less plentiful, real productivity declines.

100% of all solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries are made with fossil fuels.

If electrifying cars and home heating was actually cheaper, then why would we need government subsidies and mandates to force them into existence?

The combustion engine wasn't mandated into existence by governments?

Government did not mandate that horses be banned for sale, or that horse riders subsidize combustion engine users.

If this new technology works so well, then why is any of that necessary?

This is a question you have never answered, because it runs directly counter to your claims about energy becoming cheaper with the introduction of what you call "green energy". It's a direct repudiation of your claims.

If "green energy" truly is getting cheaper by the day, then GDP can't continue to drop as we acquire more of it.

There's only one explanation that's correct, and it's the simple fact that energy (all forms of it), are getting more difficult and therefore expensive to acquire and use, and it has been for the past 50 years.

Calliban · 2021-11-11 05:36:32

Kbd512, exactly so. Unfortunately, awareness of this problem in official circles appears to be entirely absent. Our leadership tend to view the economy as a financial system, which can be stimulated entirely through monetary means. This has fostered the illusion that the economy can in some way be decoupled from real physical inputs. For some reason, the reality of what the economy is, an assemblage of human beings making and exchanging physical goods and services, using energy to alter matter, has gotten lost in the overall financial interpretation of the system. So elites everywhere appear to have been blindsided by the deteriorating energy dynamic of the economy. So far as there is any understanding of energy resource problems, it appears to be limited to the environmental consequence of CO2 emissions. Focusing on this narrow aspect of the overall problem, risks misallocation of resources to inappropriate solutions, battery electric vehicles being but one example.

What is needed first of all, is recognition of the problem. The problem that we face is not running out of any single commodity, but a pincer movement created by falling net energy return from energy sources and rising energy costs of other resources, as resources deplete and resource base becomes dominated by lower grade resources. An understanding of the economy as a thermodynamic system is needed. This is the subject of the emerging discipline of Surplus Energy Economics. Following a better understanding of this problem, the world and individual nations, need to develop energy depletion protocols. These protocols will be mitigation strategies for falling FF EROI. They will be cognisant of the need to limit CO2 emissions, but this requirement must be part of a balanced strategy for minimising impact of human quality of life today and in the future.

The solutions adopted will vary dependent upon local circumstances. What is appropriate for the UK, may not be appropriate for the US, with its entirely different climate, population density and resource sets. But we would expect to see some general directions of travel.

Generally, we need to reduce the oil intensity of transportation, but this shouldn't be done in ways that burden society with other unsustainable resource costs. Reducing private vehicle usage of gasoline, whilst leaving the entire freight transportation system dependant on the same volumes of diesel, does not help our situation very much, because it places additional economic pressures on oil producers, who will continue to produce gasoline for which there will be no market, but remain essential suppliers as diesel for freight transportation. So oil intensity reduction must be systematic across all, consuming sectors. Essentially, we need to raise the sustainable price of oil, so that producers and refiners can stay in business.

It is sensible to establish fuel efficiency standards for vehicles and let engineers decide how best to meet those standards, rather than doing mentally retarded things like banning IC engines. It is sensible to make best use of rail infrastructure, by locating industry and consumers around rail freight hubs and building new ones if necessary. This is already done quite effectively in the US; not nearly so well in the UK. It is definitely sensible to develop modular high-EROI electricity systems, based on nuclear energy, that can be mass produced to produce cheap electricity. This would go a long way in mitigating rising energy costs for both industrial producers and consumers. Electricity can also be used to produce synthetic fuels through biomass and fossil fuel upgrading. This is a technically easier option than converting our entire transportation system to BEVs, and it stretches the benefits of liquid fuels. To do this for example, we could use nuclear electricity to produce hydrogen that would be used to crack Canadian tar sands and woody biomass. Nuclear heat could be used to reduce viscosity of heavy oils and directly thermally decompose biomass as part of the whole process. This uses artificial energy to leverage the energy available in the fossil fuel and provide liquid fuels that are compatible with existing infrastructure. Improving fuel economy helps keep the whole process affordable, whilst holding down CO2 emmissions.

In the aviation sector, we should focus on options that improve fuel economy and fuel flexibility. Reducing dead weight and improving lift-drag ratio should be key design considerations in the future. Can airframes be optimised further to improve these characteristics and can carbon fibre composites be used to reduce weight? Is there value in sending things like baggage on a different aircraft and optimising the passenger plane fuselage for passengers? Can we run turbofan engines on LPG or gasoline? Both have a higher mass energy density than kerosene and using these fuels could improve payload fraction for flights and reduce energy consumption per seat kilometre. Do turboprop aircraft allow a better optimisation between speed and fuel economy for some applications? Can we use innovative means of reducing compressor energy losses and improving compression ratio of engines? For example, liquid air energy storage has been discussed. Small amounts of liquid air would reduce the required compression power of turbofan engines, by substituting intake air and providing a lot of inter-stage cooling.

Can global shipping rely upon chipped biomass or heavier oils for fuel? Chipped woody biomass can go through gasification on-board to produce fuel gas that is burned in gas turbines. Biomass used in this way is cheap, but does introduce volume and handling problems. Can we use heavy oils, like Canadian tars in engines without cracking? Diesel engine exhaust heat could be used to preheat fuel tanks, reducing the viscosity of oil. We could incorporate liquid air energy storage on ships in clever ways. By using liquefied air, we eliminate the energy needed to compress air, which would greatly reduce fuel consumption in engines. At the same time, we suck heat out of exhaust gases to evaporate the air at the engine intake. By cooling exhaust gases to -70°C, CO2 will liquefy at a pressure of 5.1bar. It can then be drained as a liquid into the deep ocean. This improves fuel economy and sequesters CO2 at the same time.

All things to think about. Generally, our leadership need to wake up to the real problem and start using engineers to develop practical solutions, rather than pursuing idealistic fantasies, based on Green emotional prejudices. The problems that we face need a lot of balanced thinking. Our leadership just don't have the technical expertise to do the job at present. Here is a good example of how batshit crazy the present political elites are:

https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/bidens … o-bankrupt

This daft woman probably wouldn't be alive without fossil fuel powered agriculture. What we actually need, is for oil production to be lower but not zero and more profitable thanks to downstream efficiency improvements. Maybe something like this:

1) Passenger transport: A combination of hybrid vehicles, vehicle weight and drag production, vehicle size reduction, reduce fuel consumption per kilometre by 30%. Freight transport: greater use of rail and weight reduction in freight vehicles, hydraulic-braking recovery & launch assist, etc, reduces fuel consumption by a similar proportion.

2) Better provision of public transport, reduces passenger automobile miles travelled by 10%. Overall, transportation fuel consumption reduced by one third.

3) Reduced demand per mile for oil products allows higher fuel prices to be sustained without inducing recession. This allows biomass upgrading (using nuclear derived hydrogen and nuclear heat) to produce synthetic fuels which substitute one third of remaining fuel consumption.

4) Compressed natural gas and LPG could be used to fuel some vehicles reducing oil demand further. Railway electrification can reduce oil demand in freight transport.

5) Overall, oil demand is reduced to about 40% of its present value and the remaining oil is affordable at much higher prices, allowing low EROI oil reserves to be stretched for a century or more.

6) With nuclear power providing electricity for baseload and some winter heating needs and oil demand reduced by 60%, greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by about 80% compared to present. Ocean mineralisation can increase natural CO2 sequestration to balance remaining emissions.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-11-11 09:04:48)

louis · 2021-11-11 18:15:39

Yes, it's talking about wireless charging of phones. I don't accept that's particularly relevant here.

A car's a big object and you have to keep within probably 15% of the width of the lane either side (or 30% if you are up against one side of the lane). As long as the induction ring is occupying the central 40% of the lane, I don't think losses would be that great. Even if you had a loss of 20% of the energy (not saying that will be the case) I am sure that energy will be saved in terms of lower battery weight in vehicles, less energy consumption per mile of travel, lower tyre wear and less need for construction of charging stations etc. What exactly do you mean by " very precisely".

I hate to blow my own trumpet but in view of your ad hominem attack I have to.

Over the years people on here have told me the price of green energy would not fall dramatically and that the EDL challenge for Mars could not be overcome by retro-rocket firing and heat shielding (the latter claim used to be a big thing on here). I argued against both and I was right. I've said we don't need artifical G to get people to Mars...Musk agrees with me. From an early stage I backed Space X against NASA, having correctly analysed NASA's inability to put together a coherent Mars project. People now realise NASA is a joke in terms of human planetary exploration. I've consistently said that there will be no nuclear power solution for a 2020s Mars Mission and so far it looks like I am right and the nukies are wrong.

I think I have a good understanding of the technical challenge of creating an EV infrastructure on Earth. I think people will come to see that electric roads, using induction charging, solve so many issues that they will eventually be adopted everywhere.

Calliban wrote:

louis wrote:
Now you're just joking! There will be no need for any of that. You simply have induction charging of your battery as you head allong the motorway! No need even to stop in at a service station for refuelling. If you want to go from London to Aberdeen without charging you can.
Louis, did you read the paper that SpaceNut linked? It was all about charging by radio frequency coupling. Efficiency drops off rapidly as distance between the transmitter and receiver increases. Both are discs. That means you will need to follow a line running down the centre of the road very precisely, otherwise you get massive losses. And a moving vehicle would suffer eddy current losses as the transmitter induces current in the chassis. It is one thing having an RF power transfer device embedded in a parking space which you can line up with. Quite another having a continuous line of them running down a road for hundreds of miles, each with their own cable connection. I don't think you remotely understand the burden that grid powered cars would present to the grid. At peak traffic, the power requirements would be greater than the entire existing baseload power generation. Other times, it would be near zero. So we would need to build dedicated dispatchable power generation equivalent to the entire existing US generating capacity, just to meet the peak demands of these electric roads. And we would need to embed radio transmitters along thousands of miles of roads.
You really don't seem to know enough about these technologies to discuss them in an intelligent way. And you appear to suffer terribly from confirmation bias.

SpaceNut · 2021-11-11 18:22:12

Rf drops with distance squared fact so size does not matter as the greater the distance the higher the power will be required to compensate for the under charging that distance will cause.

The retro rocket plume from running the engines come at a loss of payload to orbit.. The exhaust pushes the friction causing atoms away from the ship....

Panels and systems are not cheaper as manufacturing is playing games with the size, materials and shapes of them to get energy to rise...

louis · 2021-11-11 18:43:08

Yes but if you have a large object (a car) travelling 15% either way from a central line over a line of induction coils at a distance of about 40 cms (my guess) what's the problem?

SpaceNut wrote:

Rf drops with distance squared fact so size does not matter as the greater the distance the higher the power will be required to compensate for the under charging that distance will cause.
The retro rocket plume from running the engines come at a loss of payload to orbit.. The exhaust pushes the friction causing atoms away from the ship....
Panels and systems are not cheaper as manufacturing is playing games with the size, materials and shapes of them to get energy to rise...

SpaceNut · 2021-11-11 19:01:36

You do realize that your electric stove has inductive heating elements for the pan to set on.

or
ge-jxds42001-solid-surface-element-7-inch-genuine-oem.jpg

usually under a foot in size

this is a 15 kw version of the range element
HTB1Huq1whSYBuNjSspjq6x73VXaq.jpg_50x50.jpg

The trouble is the average vehicle is about 6 ft wide x 16 ft long ad at 60 mph you are traveling 88 ft in a second.

A 15 kw coil is going to be quite large and so are the loses in the coil.

SpaceNut · 2021-11-11 19:30:18

Electric vehicles cost less to fill up than their combustion engine counterparts, according to an analysis from IHS Markit, Atlas Public Policy and the Wall Street Journal.

Article talks about yearly savings when using home and on the road charging..for people who drive at least 200 miles per week.

that is not going to work for those that drive lots more...

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