counterpoint to the 'Sky is Falling' hot air

NUKE ROCKY44 · Senior Member

counterpoint to the 'Sky is Falling' hot air

GoogleNaut · Guru

Alcohol from grains is a particularly inefficient way of creating motor fuels, followed by utilizing oil seed crops for creating biodiesel. The use of surplus crops for these purposes can be good, but we can't just replace our domestic petroleum consumption with them. We don't have enough cropland to do it, and besides, what are we going to eat?

Much better would be to create a synthetic fuel plant that is designed from the get go to use just about any form of carbon in the front end: wood waste, plastics, tires, corn cobs, etc. I had an idea for a plant that would use liquid oxygen to do a high temperature combustion of input materials to a mixture of mostly carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and water vapor. The front end would look pretty much like a conventional fossile fueled plant. The gasses from the first stage would go to a cooling, scrubbing facility to remove fly ash, toxic gasses (chlorine compunds, dioxin, etc.) and condense water vapor. The cleaned and cooled stack gasses will then go to a conditioning stage where some of carbon dioxide is removed by condensation, diverted to a seperate reduction step, and then reacted with carbon at high temperature and pressure to form carbon monoxide. This hot carbon monoxide is then reintroduced into the primary gas stream--whereapon hydrogen is now added to the gas mix and then sent to a Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis stage.

By carefully controlling the initial conditions of temperature and pressure, ratio of hydrogen to carbon monoxide, and the composition of the catalysts in the catalyst bed you can get FT synthesis to produce almost any manner of hydrocarbon you want: light oil fractions like diesel or jet fuel; heavy oil fractions like lubricants and greases; waxes can be made; and of course methyl and ethyl alcohols can also be made by FT synthesis.

A lot (50% or so) of the primary heat energy to run the plant could be derived from the combustion front end, while a nuclear plant can provide additional power and process heat. The nuke plant can provide the energy to electrolyze water to provide hydrogen--used in the synthesis part of the plant and oxygen--used in the combustion front end. The nuke plant will also provide power to run the necessary cryogenic liquification part of the plant to store enough hydrogen and oxygen for a process run...

Using a combustion front end will give the plant flexability to process nearly anything containing carbon--so just about any kind of agricultural waste will work.

-- Edited by GoogleNaut at 16:39, 2008-07-11

-- Edited by GoogleNaut at 16:40, 2008-07-11

John · Senior Member

I think that processing coal into liquid fuels would be the most economical. I understand that the South Africans have this process. We have a lot of coal. Oil Shale is probably next. The corn thing was really the agrobusiness lobby getting its payoff!

NUKE ROCKY44 · Senior Member

About FT synthesis, in Canada there is a big issue with it for example: Syncrude, Suncor; in States, AMSoil, Marriott etc.

"Numerous US companies have also taken advantage of coal-based synfuel tax credits established in the 1970s, however many of the products qualifying for the subsidy (for example slurries or briquettes) are not true synthetic fuels since they are not the portable, convenient, end-user liquids that the credit was established for.[neutrality disputed]

The coal industry currently uses the credit to increase profits on coal-burning powerplants by introducing a "pre-treatment" process that satisfies the technical requirements, then burns the result the same as it would burn coal. Sometimes the amount gained in the tax credit is a major factor in the economic operation of the plant. The synfuel tax credit has been used primarily in this manner since the cheap gas prices of the 1980's killed any major efforts to create a transportation fuel with the credit, and its continuation is seen as a major "pork project" win for coal industry lobbyists, to the tune of $9 billion per annum. [neutrality disputed]

The total production of such synfuels in the US was an estimated 73 million tons in 2002."

In Canada the criticism usually involves the typical issues of cost over runs and pollution (mainstream media).

There is the proposal by Alberta to install nukes, the deal with the issue of 'aid processing' of synfuel and residential/industrial electrical power generation offset.

To me it seems it's mainly an issue of nuke, oil, coal, altenergy industries protecting business turf and not enough cooperation with energy plans plus you have pressure from the politics of high transportation fuels energy cost to public and added demand from emerging economies for bulk transportation fuels.

The government's answer and the politicos in N.America seems to be confused on one hand they want to be seen as finding a clean profitable solution, drill your way to energy self-sufficiency on the other they insist they need to penalize the energy sector by carbon taxing everyone.

ANy comments?? smile

GoogleNaut · Guru

I agree, Bruce, that there are competing interests in the various industries--however, when you get right down to it: personally, I would rather pay US or Canadian citizens' wages, and have that money stay here in North America where we can all benefit more from it, than to have that money 'lost' by sending it overseas to pay for 'unfriendly' regimes...

It's more than economics for me--its personal, I suppose.

I've looked at the some of the synthetic fuel processes--they are pretty complicated, although the basic chemistry is pretty straight forward. Fact of the matter is: we simply cannot produce enough agriculturally produced fuel to replace our petroleum consumption here in the United States. I certainly applaud Brazil in their almost totally successful efforts to be energy independent with sugar cane based ethanol fuel production, but we don't have enough arrible land, enough water resources to supply all of our fuel needs and still eat...it has more to do with a different mix of climates and geographic distribution of population.

To completely displace the 22.5 million barrel per day of US petroleum consumption (of which transportation uses almost 65% of this) will require nearly a billion tons per year of carbon in the form of coal, which is only slightly more than current domestic production of coal anyways. In an effort to go 'carbon neutral' (no net Green House gas emissions) and completely displace this 1 billion ton per year of carbon with carbon derived completely from agricultural resources, would require the harvesting of about 9 billion tons per year of 'wet cellulose.' This 'wet cellulose' could be wood waste; wood grown for the purpose; corn cobs and stalks; wheat chaff; even possibly animal waste; and animal byproducts. I once played with the idea of creating a whole new agricultural sector: growing dense forests of western hemlock, or poplar or some other fast growing wood species; and processing the wood into synthetic fuels.

If we go to an agricultural based carbon cycle--while this will reduce or eliminate our carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles--will require remaking the entire agricultural industry to support motor vehicles. It could be done, but when combined with the costs associated with a fully synthetic fuel industry and an expanded role nuclear industry, this begins to seem like diminishing returns. So once again, I come back to the notion of expanding two of those sectors: nuclear energy with a massive expansion of our electrical distribution grid, and then updating, enhancing, and fully electrifying our nation's rail lines. By doing this, we can shift some of our transportation needs back to rail, and look at local production of liquid hydrogen for truck transportation.

My guess is there is no single answer out there; but a whole spectrum of solutions that will tend to fit some solutions in certain locations better than others...so it seems obvious to me that we must invest in ALL of these technologies.

-- Edited by GoogleNaut at 16:54, 2008-07-13

-- Edited by GoogleNaut at 16:55, 2008-07-13

John · Senior Member

First it seem that in Canada if I'm understanding it right the these credits are poorly structured and the energy companies have found a neat way to make a quick profit while avoiding the real goal of producing fuel. This could be fixed with a change in the reward system.

One thing to consider is that we don't need a total replacement for oil anytime soon but rather a useful supplement. That's one reason why I think coal liquification makes sense at the moment. If we just used the amount of coal that we export currently that would be enough to provide some relief. In addition if we started building nuclear plants rather than coal-burning plants we could gradually provide more coal to the liquid fuel cycle. We will move to more efficient vehicles at these prices and some type of hydrid. (On hybrids I favor basically an electric car with a gasoline driven generator to recharge the batteries on longer trips. Also, at home you could recharge of by plugging in to the grid.) I wouldn't discount exploring for more oil off shore, etc. either.

I don't think that CO2 is a near term problem like Al Gore and Dr. Hansen do! I think that we will run out of fosil fuels before it really causes any major climate effects. I also think that we need to focus on next generation nuclear development, i.e. breeders and fusion. (Note that even a fusion reactor that uses more energy than it produces can be one hell of a breeder!)

-- Edited by John at 19:26, 2008-07-13

GoogleNaut · Guru

John,

I think your view is right on. A gradual shift is not only desireable but necessary--since we can't 'instantly' bring a total replacement online that quickly. So a phased transition from fossil to synthetics to clean renewables makes good sense.

As far as global warming is concerned: I am an admitted 'wobbler.' I've seen some of the data--and I know enough about the mathematics of statistics to not be too naive about data analysis: the numbers can be made to 'lie' and tell a story that may be different from what is actually going on. The warming trend we see has been going on for twelve thousand years--and yes, the data seems to suggest that the 'trend' has steepened a little in the last three hundred years. The temporal correlation with the rise of the industrial revolution is tough to dismiss. However, what I have a hard time with is that there is a general 'concensus' that scientists have the ability to calculate the human contribution to global warming to a fraction of a degree, when the error bars on the actual data are wider than that prediction: i.e., there is enough slop in the data to make almost any sort of prediction, and still, technically be 'right.' And that kind of science is wrong.

I believe that humans are contributing to global warming, but to what degree, I don't know. And I am a bit skeptical of their emphatic statements predicting with seeming certainty what those contributions are. However, I am not a fool to think there is none--but even the Sun's natural output fluctuates over time, some time scales are much longer than others, and we've only been studying the sun with the 'eye' of scientific analysis for three centuries--who knows what the sun's output is going to be in 500 years: probably pretty close to what it is now, within a percent or two, but a percent or two can make a whopping big difference!

I feel that we can hedge our bets, though, and shift away from fossil fuels: it's good for us economically, politically, socially, and possibly environmentally as well. I just don't like the idea of being too dependent on our energy from regimes that are not necessarily very friendly with us...

A steady progress, phased approach makes good, sound sense. We should think of this as a war--some politicians already are thinking like this--and put substantial resources into solving our problems. Who knows, maybe by doing so we won't have to fight a real war later on!

Ty Moore

-- Edited by GoogleNaut at 21:54, 2008-07-13

NUKE ROCKY44 · Senior Member

So we agree the ideal goal of nations like ours is to approach energy self-sufficiency first.

I think Brazil 'Alcool' is heavily subsidized by gov't.

I like this:

"One thing to consider is that we don't need a total replacement for oil anytime soon but rather a useful supplement. That's one reason why I think coal liquification makes sense at the moment. If we just used the amount of coal that we export currently that would be enough to provide some relief. In addition if we started building nuclear plants rather than coal-burning plants we could gradually provide more coal to the liquid fuel cycle."

and I like this:

"A steady progress, phased approach makes good, sound sense. We should think of this as a war--some politicians already are thinking like this--and put substantial resources into solving our problems. Who knows, maybe by doing so we won't have to fight a real war later on!"

But how can we avoid the old axiom?

"We privatize the profits and nationalize the losses..."

Personally I can't help feeling dupped by gov't and industry trying to gouge citizens every time they become mobile or ship product.

GoogleNaut · Guru

True, Bruce. But what choice do we have? Rationally, we are talking about our nations' survival, and not just ours (Canada and USA) but Europe and the rest of the world too. It's not far fetched to say that eventually the demand for oil will push us to the brink of war: a little competition is healthy, too much competition could lead to conflict.

So subsidize it. Tax it. Do whatever you want with it--but get it done!

As one of the first steps, I'd really like to see the Canadians use a nuclear plant to provide process heat for the hot water washing of the Athabasca oils sands in Alberta--this will free up their natural gas consumption, reduce emissions of CO2; and eventually reduce the costs and improve production. 1.7 trillion bbl equivalent is a huge reserve--and I'd rather pay US cash to the neighbors 'up North!'