Danish Green Energy Solution

louis · 2021-04-23 15:02:10

Looks like Denmark is thinking big.

They plan to develop a $34 billion green energy island to further develop their wind energy sector. It seems the island will be used for electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen and also ammonia fuels.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment … rgy-island

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GC3VcB0gLY

Ultimately they think they could power 12 million homes - so far more than Denmark's population, and part of a strategy to export green energy to its neighbours.

Denmark is very lucky in its wind energy resources, so this would not be a solution for every country but it is an interesting development.

tahanson43206 · 2023-10-27 08:31:39

This topic created by Louis has been sitting unanswered .... I was looking for a topic suitable for an update on propane artificially created from used cooking oil and other recycled hydrocarbons. This post is not about Denmark, so it doesn't fit the title, but quite possibly the Danes in our audience would be interested in this report.

https://propane.com/newsroom/press-rele … 9ZG1ysmAAQ

Connecticut Welcomes First Gallons of Clean Renewable Propane
Sep 15, 2023
The Pride Travel Center is the first entity in Connecticut to offer renewable propane autogas, providing environmental and fiscal benefits to the state.
HARTFORD, CT (September 15, 2023) – The Pride Travel Center received an ultra-low emissions upgrade today thanks to the delivery of the first gallons of low-carbon renewable propane in Connecticut. The travel center, which is known for being the first in the United States to house multiple alternative energy options, received the gallons during a ribbon-cutting ceremony hosted by Capitol Clean Cities of Connecticut, Hocon Gas, Ray Energy, the Propane Education & Research Council, and the Propane Gas Association of New England.
“Renewable liquid fuels will be an important factor in reducing transportation sector emissions in the next 30 years,” said Craig Peters, Capitol Clean Cities of Connecticut. “I am grateful for all the progress the state of Connecticut has made to offer this option to residents, and I look forward to continuing our advancements with renewable propane.”
Vehicle fleets around the nation have been significantly lowering their emissions by running on conventional propane autogas for decades. Now, renewable propane is growing in popularity as an even more sustainable and carbon neutral energy source. Propane autogas vehicles operating with renewable propane have a lower lifetime carbon footprint than electric vehicles charged using the electric grid in Connecticut. Plus, they’re able to provide these low-emissions benefits at a fraction of the cost of electric vehicles.
Renewable propane has no fossil fuel origin and is methane free. It’s created from a variety of renewable feedstocks, including camelina plant oil, vegetable oil, animal fats, used cooking oil, soybean oil, and animal tallow. New research also shows it can be made by breaking down plastics, such as polyethylene and polypropylene, and by converting captured carbon dioxide into renewable propane.
With new innovations, it can even be used alone or in innovative blends with other renewable or low-carbon energy sources—including conventional propane—to further reduce carbon emissions. At the point of combustion, renewable propane’s carbon intensity is four times lower than conventional propane and five times lower than diesel.
“The Pride Travel Center understands that the future of transportation is clean, and renewable propane is one of the solutions on the wide path to zero that we’ll need to take to one day achieve zero emissions,” said Steve Whaley, director of autogas business development with the Propane Education & Research Council. “This is a monumental step forward to provide Connecticut with cleaner air, to provide the state’s fleets with an affordable energy option, and to provide energy security to the region.”
During the ceremony, David Gable, president of Hocon Gas was awarded with the Green Transportation Champion Award from Capitol Clean Cities of Connecticut. Gable was instrumental in securing renewable propane in Connecticut among a host of other propane projects for the state.
“It’s hard to measure the positive change Dave has made for the people of Connecticut,” said Peters. “Through his work with Hocon Gas in securing clean propane programs across the state, he has implemented significant and lasting sustainability initiatives that are bringing cleaner air to communities across Connecticut.”
For more information on renewable propane in Connecticut, visit ct-ccc.org.
About Capitol Clean Cities of Connecticut: Capitol Clean Cities of Connecticut is a coalition of stakeholders that has been designated by the U.S. Department of Energy since June 1999 to carry out the mission, vision, and goals of the program. Capitol Clean Cities of Connecticut supports programs and projects that decrease our dependency on imported oil and reduce air pollution. We work with stakeholders in the public and private sectors to deploy alternative and renewable fuels, idle-reduction measures, fuel economy improvements, and transportation technologies. Learn more at ct-ccc.org.
About PERC: The Propane Education & Research Council is a nonprofit that provides leading propane safety and training programs and invests in research and development of new propane-powered technologies. PERC is operated and funded by the propane industry. For more information, visit Propane.com.

(th)

Calliban · 2023-10-27 14:35:22

The exerpt doesn't give any details as to how the the process works. But they mention converting CO2 into propane, suggests that this is probably an example of hydrogen reduction and cracking.

Calliban · 2023-11-20 16:02:58

Vinyl acetate is produced by the reaction of acetic acid with ethylene and oxygen over a palladium catalyst.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_acetate

PVA is an adhesive used for bonding wood, paper and cardboard. It's strength is 20-30MPa. This is only half the strength of epoxy based adhesives. However, it is far easier to synthesise than epoxy based glues, which are typical double ring carbon compounds. Ethylene and acetic acid can both be synthesised from hydrogen and carbon dioxide in 1 or 2 reaction steps. So PVA requires only three reaction steps for syntyesis from CO2 and water. Lignin fibres in wood have a tensile strength of 40MPa. Laminates produced using wood fibres and epoxy would only be marginally stronger than wood-PVA composites.

As wind turbines grow larger, blades must be constructed of progressively stronger materials, especially close to the hub. But these blades are not recyclable. The materials used to make them, carbon fibre and epoxy glues, cannot be produced without petroleum. And these blades are landfill waste after a decade of operation. Servicing large turbines becomes progressively more difficult as hub heights grow higher and components grow larger. This calls into question the real versus theoretical economics of increasing the scale of wind machines.

One way of improving the sustainability of wind power is to make wind machines out of sustainable materials like wood, stone, brick, fabric and steel. Wood laminate blades could not be as long as carbon fibre blades unless rotation rates are reduced. However, the most significant limitation on the use of wood for blades in traditional windmills was the maximum length of trees from which sails could be made. The use of laminates eliminates this limitation.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019 … ble-again/

Stone and brick towers became common features of latter windmill construction in Britain, Holland and elsewhere. Stone tower windmills were still being constructed in Holland up until the early years of the 20th century. Many of these machines remain in active use today. The use of low embodied energy ceramic materials, does limit the achievable hub height. But they are non-oxidising, resistant to weathering and able to form compressive tower structures that survive for centuries. In direct mechanical power use situations, towers are also able to house mechanical equipment and form the structures of workshops. This provides an interesting counterpoint to the large steel turbines that now dominate the use of wind power to generate electricity. Whereas larger machines are able to tap higher speed winds above Earth surface, gusts introduce cyclic bending forces and vibration that limits tower life to twenty years. The stone towers of traditional windmills were shorter but had no obvious limitation on life expectancy. Whilst building stone towers would be capital intensive, the energy return on investment could potentially be greater, but would be acrued over a longer operational life.

The shorter hub heights of stone tower mills eliminates the need for carbon fibre blades and allows the use PVA wood laminates. The wood based materials needed to produce these blades do not need to be manufactured, they can be grown. Hemp fibres have demonstrated tensile strength ranging from 100 - 700MPa, depending on fibre thickness.
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/amse/2013/325085/

When accounting for the fact that these fibres have one third of the density of the glass fibre, the higher end of specific strength is comparable to glass fibre. The difference is that a hemp PVA composite blade can be remade from materials that grow nearby. The old blade can either be sawn into chunks and burned for fuel at the end of its life, or cut into planks and used in place of wood in any number of uses. This would be impossible for a glass or carbon fibre composite, which would destroy the saw blade.

The use of wind machines to produce electricity has become popular and has been pushed by the green lobby under the pretense of fighting climate change. However, it is far from clear that this is the optimum use for an intermittent, dispersed and dillute resource like the wind. The production and transmission of electricity from distributed sources like wind turbines is a very resource intensive way of generating electric power. But electric power is far from being the only potential use of wind energy. Mechanical power can be used at source for cutting, milling, pumping and machine work. Decentralised factories couod make use of direct mechanical power in this way. Mechanical power can be transmitted without electricity, using wire-rope, hydraulics, pneumatics and rotating shafts. These methods may not be suitable for long distance power transmission, but they do allow power from dispersed wind machines to be combined to meet large industrial loads. Hydraulics and pnuematics also allow the same sort of flexibility in factory layouts that electricity allows. But these energy transmission systems do not require rare metals like copper, cobalt or neodynium. Almost all components can be steel, with some flexible polymers for connecting pressurised mains to individual machines.

The use of compressed air allows other opportunities to be exploited. Compressed air can be used as mechanical energy source for any number of distributed tools, including hand tools. It can also be piped over long distances, delivering power to towns and cities. More importantly, it can be stored in pressure vessels, underground caverns or undersea concrete containers. This provides flexibility in use of the energy. Air is often a relatively inefficient way of transmitting power. Energy is lost as heat during the compression process. More energy is lost during expansion, unless expansion is truly isothermal. We can deal with this in two ways. The first is to store the heat released in compression and add it to the gas during expansion. The problem with this is that compression and expansion may not happen in the same place. A second approach is to use the heat generated by compression for another purpose and use the cold generated by expansion. Combined approaches are also possible, in which warm water is used to preheat expanding air, with the resulting expelled air being cold enough for refrigeration.

Last edited by Calliban (2023-11-20 17:39:48)

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#1 2021-04-23 15:02:10

Danish Green Energy Solution

#2 2023-10-27 08:31:39

Re: Danish Green Energy Solution

#3 2023-10-27 14:35:22

Re: Danish Green Energy Solution

#4 2023-11-20 16:02:58

Re: Danish Green Energy Solution

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