Top Hat Dome on Seafloor, Relief Well 1 Ahead of Schedule

The second, smaller containment dome, "Top Hat" is on the seafloor, being prepared for placement over the gushing wellhead.

The "top hat," a 5-foot-tall, 4-foot-diameter structure, weighs less than 2 tons. The structure was deployed by the drill ship Enterprise.
BP built the smaller dome after a much larger, four-story containment vessel designed to cap the larger of two leaks in the well developed glitches Saturday. Ice-like hydrate crystals formed when gas combined with water and blocked the top of the dome, making it buoyant.

The new device would keep most of the water out at the beginning of the capping process and would allow engineers to pump in methanol to keep the hydrates from forming, said Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production. Methanol is a simple alcohol that can be used as an antifreeze. _CNN

Meanwhile, BP engineers retrieved the "brain" of the failed blowout preventer (BOP) and performed "brain surgery" to allow them to get an accurate read on the pressure at the well head. Next, they hope to perform the "top kill" or "junk shot" operation -- shoving rubber junk and matting through the BOP in an attempt to clog it, and stop the oil flow. They would then top the plug off with cement.

“We retrieved what is called the yellow pod, this is the sort of brain on the BOP, and brought it to the surface,” Suttles said...“We are currently working to re-wire that brain. We’re going to redeploy back on the BOP and we hope that will allow us to read pressures inside of it.”

...the supermajor is still canvassing other, alternative options. One of these may well be attempting a "junk shot" through Macondo's BOP stack. Taylor said that BP is pressing ahead with junk shot plans.

"We are still deciding on the right combination of materials," he said, adding: "We are getting lower pressure readings which has encouraged us to move forward with this 'top kill' option."

A junk shot involves injecting ground-up material, such as rubber, into the bottom of the BOP in an attempt to clog it. The material would travel upwards into the BOP, blocking it. Kill fluid and cement would then be injected into the well...

...Suttles said that BP has already manufactured the equipment it would need to inject cement and fluid into the well and it is being shipped to the location.

It is understood that BP has two cement skids already on Helix’s Q4000 semi-submersible platform, which is already on site to try to place a containment dome over the oil leak.

...A third option may be to shear the lower marine riser package and stab a new BOP on top of the existing one.

“That also is a very, very complicated task and also brings risks with it,” Suttles said. _Upstream

BP CEO was interviewed by Greta van Susteren last night:

Hayward: So we are now moving to deploy over the next 72 hours, a smaller containment device, a so-called top hat, which is described like that because it looks like a top hat, put in the water, on the end of a piece of drill pipe to fit over the leak. We'll be doing that over the next 72 hours.

In parallel there are a series of other operations being planned on the blow-out preventer, most importantly the so-called top kill or junk shot whereby we would pump into the blowout preventer material to clog it up and stop the flow...The issue is the quantity of gas and seawater in the large dome. That is a difficult combination. So, by moving to a smaller dome we'll have less seawater and, hopefully, a better chance of minimizing the hydrate formation and being able to get in sort of system to work.

...So Plan C is the so-called junk shot, top kill, where we connect two flexible hoses to the top of the blowout preventer and pump material to block up the blowout preventer.

Plan D is to remove what is called the riser with which is sitting above the blowout preventer and put in place another blowout preventer. There's a Plan E and a Plan F. So we are working through a whole series of options that are being developed and engineered in parallel and deploying them in time sequence. _FN

Meanwhile, the first relief well is proceeding ahead of schedule:

... the Transocean semi-submersible drilling rig Development Driller III is drilling ahead on the first of two relief wells planned for Macondo.

BP confirmed the well had reached 9000 feet on Saturday - its target depth is about 18,000 feet - adding the drilling was ahead of schedule. It did not provide an update on drilling depth.

Spokesman Mark Salt said that the Development Driller II is now on its way to Mississippi Canyon Block 252, and should arrive on location by the middle of the week.

Should the rig arrive on Wednesday, it is possible the second relief well could spud as soon as the weekend. _Upstream

BP had conservatively estimated that it would require 3 months to drill the relief wells, but if they are lucky they may cut that time in half.

Up until now, surface relief efforts -- booms, controlled burns, dispersants, etc. -- have been effective in keeping the bulk of the heaviest slick centered around the drill site. Peripheral drifts of slick have been significantly thinned to between a light slick and a thin sheen.

More coverage of oil spill from USA Today, NOLA, and Miami Herald

Cross posted to Al Fin

Another Approach to Fuels from Levulinic Acid

In an earlier post, we looked at the University of Wisconsin project to create drop-in replacement fuels from levulinic acid derived from cellulosic biomass. This post looks at a different approach to levulinic acid based fuels.

GCCAn international team of Shell Oil researchers are developing a process to create biofuels from levulinic acid which could be blended with diesel or gasoline -- depending upon the designed configuration of the fuel.

Researchers at Shell have developed what they are calling a new generation of biofuels based on the hydrogenation of γ-valerolactone (GVL)—an intermediate produced from biomass-derived carbohydrates—to valeric acid and its subsequent esterification. GVL is produced by the hydrogenation of levulinic acid derived by the simple acid hydrolysis of lignocellulosic feedstock.

Depending on the reactants used in the esterification, the resulting valerates, which have good fuel properties, may be blended with gasoline or diesel. A paper on the work by Jean-Paul Lange and his co-workers at Shell in Amsterdam (Netherlands), Cheshire (UK), and Hamburg (Germany) was published online 5 May in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition. _GCC

Notice the difference between the Shell approach, and the University of Wisconsin approach pictured below:

Notice that the UW approach produces diesel and gasoline drop-in substitutes, whereas the Shell approach produces a biofuel ester for purposes of blending with diesel or gasoline. Naturally, some of the Shell biofuel projects will attempt to keep biofuels subservient to Shell's main product -- petrofuels.

Shell's process appears to be simpler than UW's. If it proves to be more economical, Shell's levulinic acid fuels may hit markets more quickly. It is important to provide a means to quickly reduce dependency upon fossil fuels, for economic and geo-political purposes. In the longer term, approaches to completely substitute biofuels for petrofuels will be more useful.

Gene-Engineering the Best of all Possible Algae

BiodieselMag
Iowa State University scientists are hard at work engineering the best genetic strain of algae for the production of biofuels.

“It’s a great time to be a scientist,” says Eve Wurtele, professor of genetics, development and cell biology at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. “We are able to gather massive amounts of data very quickly,” she says. “My job in this project is to analyze the data that is gathered here at Iowa State and at other laboratories using computational analysis and bioinformatics. We can know every experiment computationally, and similarly, the variables involved.”

The project to which Wurtele refers is an ISU effort underway investigating the process of genetically stacking traits in algae for biofuels production. With a $4.37 million grant from the U.S. DOE, ISU genetics professor and project lead Martin Spalding intends to develop a micro-algal platform allowing algae to be treated as a crop. The best analogy to this is stacking traits in corn. “Farmers could plant simple unmanipulated lines of corn that have high yield,” Spalding says, “but you wouldn’t get the drought tolerance you want. You could plant drought-tolerant corn, but you wouldn’t get standability. But by genetically manipulating corn, you get all the traits you need.”

...A primary interest is how photosynthetic cells monitor their carbon status and regulate the genes involved in carbon assimilation in response to carbon availability. This is an example of metabolic regulation of gene expression, where products of metabolism act as signals in the regulation of gene expression. “We can perform very rapid, deep sequencing of the genes that are used to make proteins,” Spalding says. “And we can compare the results with other experiments. There are a lot of experiments that track the expression of genes.”

In Chlamydomonas, ISU is dissecting both the signal transduction pathway for adaptation to changes in CO2 and the microalgal “carbon concentrating mechanism” using insertional mutagenesis to generate tagged mutants subsequently relied upon to clone the key genes in the pathway. Identification of a key gene in the Chlamydomonas signal transduction pathway, cia5, has provided the opportunity to identify genes/proteins that interact with it using both suppressor analysis and the yeast two-hybrid system.

Of course, what Spalding and his team hope to accomplish is to increase the amount of lipid produced and the rate at which the algae produces it. When researchers dye the cells they can see “tiny droplets of oil.” It is here that a stain accumulates and causes a light scanner to “fluoresce” as it passes through the cells. “So we can pick out the cells with high fluorescents,” Spalding says. “It would be impossible to deal with any other way.”

This process of selection and isolation is the backbone of genetic engineering. The proverbial “needle in the haystack” are those genes that are involved in the biosynthesis of lipids. So, the relentless search for those candidates present in the biosynthetic pathway that could lead to faster growth and increased fat production precedes the work involved with isolating mutants and modifying the genes. “Screening technology has opened up a whole world,” Spalding says. “[Screening] a hundred million cells takes a couple of hours.”

...Ultimately, researchers believe the three-year study will produce many desirable traits in Chlamydomonas alga. “Our project will probably lead to increased production of basically vegetable oil that can be converted to biodiesel,” Spalding says. “Using the same process we are using to increase that oil production, we also could divert the production into hydrocarbons, which are closer to petroleum.” The end result could have several benefits. “It will mean we will have a more sustainable source [of energy] than we have now—more sustainable and more flexible,” he says.
_Biodiesel

These are the foundational studies which should prepare the way for business startups, pilot plants, and finally commercial-scale algal fuel plants.

Humans have very good experience with the microbial production of food, pharmaceuticals, and some chemicals, cosmetics, and food supplements. But those are generally a higher value product than fuels typically have been. Scaling up microbial production for cheap fuels will demonstrate a mastery of the microbial world that has been lacking up until now.

Shale Gas Revolution Changes World Energy Balance

...the petro-states will lose lots of the muscle they now have in world affairs, as customers over time cut them loose and turn to cheap fuel produced closer to home.

The shale boom also is likely to upend the economics of renewable energy. It may be a lot harder to persuade people to adopt green power that needs heavy subsidies when there's a cheap, plentiful fuel out there that's a lot cleaner than coal, even if gas isn't as politically popular as wind or solar. _WSJ

WSJ
Russia is not the only energy dictatorship that is concerned about losing global clout as a result of the discovery of giant new unconventional gas deposits around the world. Corrupt energy dictators from Venezuela to Iran to Saudi Arabia to Bolivia are growing frantic at the thought that some of their biggest customers may soon start producing their own energy -- from unconventional gas.

Over the past decade, new techniques have been developed that drastically cut the price tag of production. The Haynesville shale, which extends from Texas into Louisiana, is seeing costs as low as $3 per million British thermal units, down from $5 or more in the Barnett shale in the 1990s. And more cost-cutting developments are likely on the way as major oil companies get into the game. If they need to do shale for $2, I am willing to bet they can, in the next five years.

... One of the biggest effects of the shale boom will be to give Western and Chinese consumers fuel supplies close to home—thus scuttling a potential natural-gas cartel. Remember: Prior to the discovery of shale gas, huge declines were expected in domestic production in U.S., Canada and the North Sea. That meant an increasing reliance on foreign supplies—at a time when natural gas was becoming more important as a source of energy.

Even more troubling, most of those gas supplies were located in unstable regions. Two countries in particular had a stranglehold over supply: Russia and Iran. Before the shale discoveries, these nations were expected to account for more than half the world's known gas resources.

Russia made no secret about its desire to leverage its position and create a cartel of gas producers—a kind of latter-day OPEC. That seemed to set the stage for a repeat of the oil issues that have worried the world over the past 40 years.

...In the U.S., the impact of shale gas and deep-water drilling is already apparent. Import terminals for LNG sit virtually empty, and the prospects that the U.S. will become even more dependent on foreign imports are receding. Also, soaring shale-gas production in the U.S. has meant that cargoes of LNG from Qatar and elsewhere are going to European buyers, easing their dependence on Russia. So, Russia has had to accept far lower prices from formerly captive customers, slashing prices to Ukraine by 30%, for instance.

But the political fallout from shale gas will do a lot more than stifle natural-gas cartels. It will throw world politics for a loop—putting some longtime troublemakers in their place and possibly bringing some rivals into the Western fold.

...Shale-gas resources are believed to extend into countries such as Poland, Romania, Sweden, Austria, Germany—and Ukraine. Once European shale gas comes, the Kremlin will be hard-pressed to use its energy exports as a political lever.

I would also argue that greater shale-gas production in Europe will make it harder for Iran to profit from exporting natural gas. Iran is currently hampered by Western sanctions against investment in its energy sector, so by the time it can get its natural gas ready for export, the marketing window to Europe will likely be closed by the availability of inexpensive shale gas.

...In the end, what's important to understand is that shale gas may be the key to solving some of our most pressing short-term crises, a way to bridge the gap to a more-secure energy and economic future. _WSJ

More energy news: Despite Gulf oil spill, continued drilling is necessary
Opportunists flock to profit from oil spill tragedy
And just wait until the lawyers show up in force!

Cross-posted to Al Fin

Smaller Modular Nuclear Reactors in IEEE Spectrum

The May issue of IEEE Spectrum looks at the move toward the factory manufacture of small, modular nuclear power plants. Noting that these smaller nukes are already under construction in Russia and China, the author looks at some of the various types of small nukes that are being proposed for a near future of safer and more abundant nuclear energy.

Small modular reactors, or SMRs, of 70 to 210 megawatts are under construction in China and Russia, and a mix of start-ups and established nuclear technology firms, such as Westinghouse Electric Co., General Atomics, and the Babcock & Wilcox Co., are shopping similarly modest designs in the United States.

This strategy overturns the drive toward economies of scale that has pushed nuclear designers toward ever-larger reactors since the industry’s inception. Now the designers may instead rely on the ”economies of multiples” that accrue to the mass production of everything from cars to iPhones.

”We want to manufacture in a plant with supply-chain management. This enables you to drive down cost and control the schedule,” says John Parmentola, senior vice president for energy and electromagnetic systems at General Atomics. That means building modules, including reactors, that are small enough to be shipped on a truck or railcar and designed so that they can be snapped together on-site. ”It’s almost Lego-style assembly,” says Kadak.

These innovators hope to avoid the sprawling construction sites required to build today’s gigawatt-plus reactors, which are prone to quality problems and delays. For example, in 2005 France’s Areva boasted that its flagship 1.65-gigawatt pressurized water reactor, the EPR, would be completed by 2009. Now the company is admitting that faulty materials and planning snafus have set the completion target back to 2012 and raised the project’s estimated cost by 66 percent, to a budget of 5.3 billion ($7.2 billion).

Proponents of SMRs admit that their installation costs may turn out to be as much as or even more than that of today’s behemoths, but they argue that the lower risk involved should make SMRs the better deal anyway. Christofer Mowry, CEO of Babcock & Wilcox’s Modular Nuclear Energy subsidiary, leads the development of a 125-MW SMR called mPower that he estimates will cost about $600 million in parts and labor. That’s comparable to Areva’s Olkiluoto plant on a per-megawatt basis, but because mPower could be built in bite-size chunks with a relatively modest overhead investment, using the same reliable light-water reactor technology, it’s much more likely to work and to start working on schedule. That means the cost of financing and insuring the project should be much lower. ”You could have 10 to 20 percent cheaper electricity,” says Mowry. _IEEESpectrum_via_NPT

In other nuclear news, Kirk Sorensen has recently taken a job with Teledyne Brown Engineering, where he anticipates being involved in the working out of some of the technologies for liquid fluoride thorium reactors.

Japan Fires Up Monju Fast Breeder Reactor

Japan uses nuclear power to supply roughly 33% of its electricity. But as popular concerns over steady supplies of fossil fuels grow, many nations are planning to generate ever larger portions of their electrical power from nuclear plants. A breeder reactor "breeds" new fissile material as it operates, leading to a more sustainable nuclear fuel cycle over time -- provided the proper re-processing is available.

The Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture-based Monju Nuclear Power Plant contains Japan's only prototype fast breeder reactor. This is a special type of reactor that is capable of producing more fissile material than it consumes. In a nutshell, once some material is placed inside, and the machine is turned on, no additional amounts of the stuff need ever be used. The technology holds great promise and was heavily researched several decades ago, but only a handful of FBR remain to this day, of which Japan's is one of the most advanced, ScienceNow reports.

...Between the 1970’s and 1990’s, many countries, including France, Russia, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, attempted to construct such reactors. The prospect of a facility producing more plutonium than it consumes attracted many politicians and scientists, as FBR could potentially be used as supply points for nuclear fuel, to be employed in other fields of research. However, all nations, except for Japan, abandoned the technology mostly due to technical problems, costs, and concerns about safeguarding plutonium, which is used in nuclear weapons. _Softpedia

The fast-breeder reactor was declared reactivated by Monju's director general, Kazuo Mukai, after one of its control rods, which had been inserted to prevent an atomic reaction, was lifted.
It uses plutonium fuel instead of conventional uranium and produces radioactive substances that can be reused as fuel.
It is expected to reach operational levels by Saturday, and then to reach full output by the spring of 2013.
Only Russia and India, alongside Japan, operate fast-breeder reactors, although China says it wishes to start doing so soon. _BBC

H/T NextBigFuture

Technology Works to Solve Problems With Big Wind Power

Physorg
Big wind power is currently a tremendous waste of money, land, and material & human resources. But is it possible for technology to create enough solutions to make big wind power truly competitive with coal, gas, and nuclear? Of course. Given enough time (decades) and research, wind power can eventually be groomed to fit particular niche applications. Eventually, big wind may not be the fool's errand that it is now.

The bladeless wind turbine is completely enclosed in a relatively small compact unit. Instead of using wind-powered blades to rotate a shaft and generator, the Tesla-inspired design consists of an array of closely spaced, parallel, thin metal disks separated by spacers. When air flows in the spaces between the disks, the spacers are arranged in such a way as to provide inward momentum to the air, causing the disks to move. The disks are connected to a shaft by spokes, so that the rotating disks cause the shaft to rotate as well. As explained in the patent held by Howard Fuller, the turbine design “provides maximum efficiency in converting wind energy to mechanical power.”

“The turbine of the present invention has the advantage that it is efficient over a wider range of fluid flow rates, as compared with turbines of the prior art, due to the airfoil-shaped spacers,” the patent explains. “This feature makes the present turbine especially useful for generating power from wind, which is inherently random and variable.”

What this efficiency translates to, according to a recent article at EcoGeek, are final costs of about $1.50/watt rated output, which is roughly 2/3 the cost of comparable bladed units. Further, “total operating costs over the lifetime of the unit” are estimated at about $0.12/kWh, which is comparable to current retail electrical rates. The number of disks determines the amount of power that can be produced, and a unit the size of the one pictured should be capable of generating 10kW of power, according to the company.

One major advantage of not having blades is reduced maintenance costs. For instance, the turbines can be mounted on towers or poles, while generator equipment can be located at the tower base, eliminating the need for climbing the tower for routine maintenance. Also, the turbines only need to be mounted high enough to clear nearby obstacles to wind flow. Since there are no external blades that require ground clearance, the tower can likely be shorter than those used for turbines with blades.

Further, the screen-enclosed turbine prevents injuries to birds and bats, avoids the visual pollution of spinning blades, and proper construction can make the turbine nearly transparent to radar microwave emissions, such as those from nearby defense facilities. Due to its reduced maintenance costs and limited infrastructure requirements, the turbine could even be located on urban rooftops.

Besides wind, the turbine’s design also makes it adaptable for geothermal applications, in which a heated fluid is used to drive the turbine. Since the turbine works even with relatively cool fluid, the invention could be particularly useful for situations where the geothermal source does not provide enough heat to produce the “superheated” steam needed to drive a conventional steam engine. _Physorg

We will watch the progress of such new and radical designs for tapping wind energy -- to see where they go.

The Growing Hunger for Carbon Dioxide

Algenol
Human industry is building up a mighty hunger for CO2, the villainous greenhouse gas. It is becoming a problem to get enough of the stuff. In the graphic above, you can see the plans that Algenol is making -- to situate its algal farms next to Valero oil refineries, so as to siphon off the CO2 byproduct of the refinery to feed its algae. Other companies making similar plans include Ceres, and Joule.

The latest CO2 hungry process being discussed is the German project to use wind-generated electricity to produce methanol. Such a process would not be particularly efficient overall, but it would use up a lot of CO2 -- and Europeans are desperate to find a way to make their huge wind energy investments viable.

Carbon dioxide is at historically low levels in Earth's atmosphere -- if one understands the concept of "history" at all. Most of the plant and animal families that populate the planet evolved under conditions of higher CO2 levels -- sometimes massively higher levels. Life on land and in the sea thrives on high levels of CO2, and quickly converts the gas into protoplasm, cellulose, and calcium carbonate.

Faux environmentalist claims that CO2 is bringing a bio-holocaust to land and sea have no scientific basis -- aside from contrived theoretical models and a bit of statistical malpractise. Part of the problem in public perception is the muddled confusing of CO2 with genuine pollutants -- such as those produced by Chinese industries.

What we actually have, is a shortage of CO2. Trees and sea creatures would agree that the current levels of atmospheric CO2 are sub-optimal. Certainly human industrialists in many growing fields seeking to bypass fossil fuels feedstocks, would like access to cheap and abundant supplies of pure CO2.

Origin Oil Brings Light to the Darkness for More Algae

GCC
Origin Oil's new "multi-layer" light focusing bioreactors allow for much more algal growth per acre of land (or sea). The light focusing lenses and prisms can even select the perfect wavelengths of light most preferred by algae for optimal growth rates.

The MultiReactor takes advantage of the fact that much more sun falls on the ground than vegetation can normally absorb. Its proposed solution is to capture the sunlight in a stack of growth layers. The new design uses an array of lenses to direct solar radiation from the top through a system of algae channels. Algae culture is pumped continuously to the top of the array and then trickles down through the layers, ensuring equal exposure. Tapping units at the end of the stack capture valuable gases.

The growth units are oriented east-west to capture the sun’s rays throughout the day. Adjustments are made for seasonal changes in the sun’s angle of incidence. The resulting system may be 10 to 20 times more efficient than single-layer systems, according to the company.

Algae prefer certain wavelengths, typically in the red and blue frequencies. This new design allows for filters and prisms to assure that only the wavelengths beneficial to algae get through, potentially diverting the rest for optional storage and night-time lighting.

Reducing the footprint required for algae growth enables co-location with industrial sources of CO2 and nutrient-rich wastewater, OriginOil says. These synergies make algae production more viable, and enable a distributed energy network. _GCC

Origin has 9 patent applications in the works -- including the one for the above invention -- and appears serious about succeeding in this challenging new eneterprise.

The need for energy -- including liquid fuels -- is driving an increasing amount of investment and creative energy. If not for the dark fog of statist strangulation falling over economies, the future would look much brighter.

New Fuels, Energy, Materials from Waste, Biomass

NYT
Slovakian company Carbon Green announced a new economically viable plan to use pyrolysis to "recycle" used tires.

Cornell University is planning a new waste-to-energy plant which will utilise pyrolysis, anaerobic digestion, combustion, and fermentation.

New York company Clenergen announced a partnership with Honeywell which will use pyrolysis to produce a bio-heating oil from rapid growing biomass -- including bamboo.

Rentech's biomass gasification to jet fuel approach was tested in flight by a US commercial airliner.

A brief look at a variety of waste - to - energy approaches.

Biomass to Diesel and Dimethylhydrotetrafuran

GCC
University of Wisconsin at Madison researchers have enlarged on earlier work where they produced gasoline from gamma valerolactone -- a biomass derived substance. They have now demonstrated the ability to make longer chain alkanes for diesel

In February, Dr. James Dumesic and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison published a paper in the journal Science describing a process to convert aqueous solutions of GVL, an intermediate produced from biomass-derived carbohydrates, to liquid alkenes suitable for transportation by using an integrated catalytic system that does not require an external source of hydrogen or precious metal catalysts.

In a new paper, published in the RSC journal Green Chemistry, Dumesic and colleagues focused on the production of alkenes in the range of C18–C27 from the oligomerization of C9 alkenes produced from biomass-derived GVL.

...The basic approach described by Dumesic and his colleagues is to hydrogenate levulinic acid—a product of biomass hydrolysis—to GVL (which is also used as a substitute for blending of ethanol in gasoline). The GVL is upgraded to C9 alkenes, which they then oligomerize over an acid catalyst to produce longer chain alkenes that, after hydrogenation, can be used as drop-in fuels. _GCC

This process is notable for not requiring an external source of hydrogen, and not needing platinum or other expensive catalysts.

Meanwhile at the University of Pennsylvania, a research team has devised a means of converting biomass and biomass derived sugars into dimethylhydrotetrafuran (DMTHF).

A team at the University of Pennsylvania has developed a one-step process for converting hexose from a wide range of biomass-derived carbohydrates, cellulose and even raw lignocellulose (e.g., corn stover) into 2,5-dimethyltetrahydrofuran (DMTHF) in good yields and under mild conditions in water. A paper on the work by Weiran Yang and Ayusman Sen was published online 30 April in the journal ChemSusChem.

...A one-step process generally requires less energy than processes that involve multiple steps, and the use of water as reaction medium is attractive, the authors note. In addition, a variety of feedstocks, including raw lignocellulosic biomass such as corn stover, can be directly used without any chemical pretreatment. _GCC

DMTHF is superior in some ways to DMF -- dimethylfuran -- which is itself significantly superior to ethanol. In other words, if DMTHF can be made from biomass efficiently, it stands to displace other less efficient biofuels such as ethanol.

Here's the Rest of the Story

PDF_dtic.mil_PDF
Brian Wang pulls together some loose ends regarding the UCR creation of spin - polarised positronium, in the quest to create a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC). Apparently, the US military wants to use this path to create a gamma ray laser!

Plan of work.

The first annihilation laser will be made in the following steps:
1.Attain Bose-Einstein condensed (BEC) positronium.
2. Make a source capable of delivering 10^12 slow positron per second on a 1 mm target.
3.Develop a multiple trap for storing and releasing 10^13 positrons.
4. Observe stimulated annihilation.
5. Make 1J annihilation gamma ray laser pulses. [this one joule laser has to be scaled up about one million times to enable the nuclear fusion system described above]

A three year project to get through step 1 would proceed via the following tasks.
A. Year 1: Make a system for producing brightness enhanced 10 ns pulses of 10^7 5 keV positrons in a 10 micrometer diameter spot.
B. Year 1: Develop a method for making cavity structures in porous silica for containing BEC positronium.
C. Year 2: Make a BEC positronium target chamber with 4K cooling and optical access.
D. Year 3: Develop a laser system for detecting the BEC state via the disappearance of Doppler broadening.
E. Year 3: Characterize the positronium BEC by measuring the condensate fraction as a function of time, temperature and density.

Advantages of the proposed Gamma Ray Laser approach.

The advantages of photons with energies of several hundred keV, loosely termed “gamma-rays”, over optical energy photons for inflicting damage on a distant target or for igniting fusion reactions are:
* Gamma rays penetrate a target to a thickness of roughly 10 g/cm2 and so impart up to two orders of magnitude greater impulse for a given energy compared to visible or infrared photons, thus leading to the fissure of large objects.
* Gamma rays are not significantly deflected by the atmosphere or its fluctuations, although absorption by the air limits the range at sea level to approximately 100 m if no means if employed for making a transparent gamma-ray channel through the atmosphere.
* The small size of the gamma-ray laser would be advantageous for steering and portability.
* A small annihilation gamma-ray laser would be fuelled by stored antimatter (positrons), which would leave no trace of radioactivity, although a GJ device might need to be based on energy derived from fusion. _BrianWang

More on the military's program PDF

Power Point pdf from UCR researchers

Once you learn to play with these forms of matter at will, you are on the way to a lot of different destinations. Choosing the right destinations at that point will require a bit of wisdom.

"Power Hungry" by Robert Bryce

Robert Bryce is a writer who has published several books on energy. His latest, Power Hungry, is a thorough rejection of wind power and a promotion of nuclear power.

So you want to build a wind farm? OK, Mr. Bryce says, to start you'll need 45 times the land mass of a nuclear power station to produce a comparable amount of power; and because you are in the middle of nowhere you'll also need hundreds of miles of high-voltage lines to get the energy to your customers. This "energy sprawl" of giant turbines and pylons will require far greater amounts of concrete and steel than conventional power plants—figure on anywhere from 870 to 956 cubic feet of concrete per megawatt of electricity and 460 tons of steel (32 times more concrete and 139 times as much steel as a gas-fired plant).

Once you've carpeted your tract of wilderness with turbines and gotten over any guilt you might feel about the thousands of birds you're about to kill, prepare to be underwhelmed and underpowered. Look at Texas, Mr. Bryce says: It ranks sixth in the world in total wind-power production capacity, and it has been hailed as a model for renewable energy and green jobs by Republicans and Democrats alike. And yet, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which runs the state's electricity grid, just "8.7 percent of the installed wind capability can be counted on as dependable capacity during the peak demand period." The wind may blow in Texas, but, sadly, it doesn't blow much when it is most needed—in summer. The net result is that just 1% of the state's reliable energy needs comes from wind.

If using a huge amount of real estate to generate a tiny amount of energy from an intermittent energy source sounds deranged, consider, too, that we haven't yet found the holy grail for storing wind-generated energy. Wind is either an instant energy snack or a famine. It must be used when it's there or immediately replaced when it isn't.

But if you are managing an energy grid, you have to meet constant demand or face blackouts, which means that you will have to have conventional power plants to back up the wind farms. As Jing Yang reported in The Wall Street Journal last year, this strategy is precisely the one that China is pursuing, adding in one province alone the coal-fired equivalent of Hungary. These plants, Mr. Bryce notes, are designed to run continuously and will in all likelihood "be run continuously in order to assure that the regional power grid doesn't go dark." The irony of wind power is that it "doesn't displace power plants, it only adds to them."

It is not for nothing, then, that the scientist and ur-environmentalist James Lovelock (the author of the Gaia theory of holistic planet-nurturing) now thinks that wind power and renewable energy are "rotten ideas." What is arguably worse are rotten ideas that no one is allowed to criticize: Last year, Britain's minister for climate change, Ed Miliband, declared that the British government had to make opposition to wind power "socially unacceptable." _WSJ

PowerHungry
Here is an excerpt from a recent post in Robert Bryce's blog:

The wind energy lobbyists love to claim that installing new wind turbines is the cheapest form of new electricity generation capacity. In fact, I heard that very claim while at a party here in Austin a few weeks ago. But as usual, there’s the hype and there’s the reality.

Today, the International Energy Agency, in cooperation with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency, released a study called “Projected Costs of Generating Electricity.” The results are yet another refutation that wind is the least-costly source of new generation. Using what it calls the “levelized costs of electricity,” a metric that includes key factors like the discount rate, construction costs, load factors, fuel prices, and carbon costs, the study found that nuclear power is the least-expensive option for new generation in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific when the discount rate is 5%. Meanwhile, wind energy was often the most expensive option regardless of location and whether the discount rate was 5% or 10%. _Bryce

PowerHungry
Anyone who bothers to check the underlying data and reality understands that big wind energy is the worst possible investment -- if not for ruinously huge government subsidies. Obama, Brown, and the other usual suspects love wind energy. Why not? None of them understand the technology or economics of energy, so why not promote the most idiotic approach to large-scale energy in existence? At least they are being consistent.

Toward a Bose-Einstein Condensate -- Spin Polarised Positronium

According to Mills and Cassidy, the new research could lead also to the production of fusion power, which is power generated by nuclear fusion reactions. _Nanowerk

Researchers at the Univesity of California, Riverside, have isolated a collection of pure spin polarised positronium for the first time.  Their study appears this week in Physical Review Letters.

Spin is a fundamental and intrinsic property of an electron, and refers to the electron's angular momentum. Spin polarized atoms are atoms that are all in the same spin state. A collection of spin polarized positronium atoms is needed to make a special form of matter, called the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). The BEC, predicted in 1924 and created in 1995, allows scientists to study atoms in a unique manner.

..."We achieved our result by increasing the density of the positronium atoms in our lab experiment," said David Cassidy, the lead author of the research paper and an assistant researcher working in the laboratory of Allen Mills, a professor of physics. "At such a high density, positronium atoms get annihilated simply by interacting with each other. But it turns out that not all the positronium atoms get annihilated under these conditions."
Cassidy explained that positronium atoms come in two types – say, an up type and a down type. The positronium atoms are only annihilated when an up type meets a down type. Two atoms of the same type do not affect each other.

"So if you have 50 percent ups and 50 percent downs and you squeeze them all together they will totally annihilate and turn into gamma rays," he said. "But if you have, for example, about 66 percent ups and 33 percent downs, then only half of the ups will be destroyed. You will get a load of gamma rays – but in the end you will be left with only one type of atom – in this case, up atoms.

"This is an important development for making the BEC," Cassidy said, "because you have effectively purified your sample of positronium. And you need a pure collection of spin aligned atoms to make the BEC."

When atoms are in the BEC state, they are essentially stopped (or they move extremely slowly), facilitating their study. Non-BEC atoms on the other hand whiz around at very high speeds, making them harder to study.

"There are fundamental processes that can be looked at in new ways when you have matter in the BEC state," Mills said. "Having Bose-condensed atoms makes it easier to probe the way they interact under certain conditions. Moreover, to have motionless positronium atoms is an important aspect for making something called a gamma ray laser, which could have military and numerous scientific applications."

According to Mills and Cassidy, the new research could lead also to the production of fusion power, which is power generated by nuclear fusion reactions. _Nanowerk

Positronium (Wikipedia)

Bose-Einstein Condensate Theory of Deuteron Fusion in Metal (PDF)

The Deuteron explained

Theory of Bose-Einstein Condensate Fusion a May 2009 slideshow by YE Kim

Brian Wang reported this story on April 30

Natural Oil Seeps Spill More Oil Than Oil Wells

The Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound released 10.8 million gallons of oil -- or almost 250,000 barrels of oil. But natural oil seeps off California release up to 80 times that amount. And natural seeps in the Gulf of Mexico release twice the amount as the Exxon Valdez every year.

The Transocean oil spill may eventually match that of the Exxon Valdez -- if it continues leaking at the current rate for the next month or two or more. Politicians and environmentalists are already declaring states of emergency, but better technology may yet break up the oil spill and allow natural forces to dissipate it.

Curious claims are being made from various sources regarding the origin of the oil platform fire, explosion, and sinking. But even if the oil platform was deliberately destroyed, as some are claiming, the well itself should have had some type of inbuilt mechanism -- a blowout preventer -- to stop oil flow in case of a catastrophic disruption in continuity of the piping. [Update 1 May 2010: Apparently the blowout preventer at the site failed to operate. At this time no one knows why the blowout preventer failed. Certain automatic safety switches that were not included in the operation may have been able to trigger the blowout preventer.]

Other offshore wells incorporate such safety features, which would likely have stopped the oil spill very early in its course.

So the problem is not offshore drilling so much as it is making sure the best technology is utilised when drilling offshore. And, yes, try to maintain a sense of perspective.

This Denver Post article presents a bit of background

ImgSource
Only a small fraction of all petroleum spilled into marine waters comes from oil drilling activity.

Above material taken from Al Fin

Optimistic Timelines for Algal Fuels

EmergingMarkets
Scientists at the University of Michigan are producing bio-oil from microalgae in just minutes -- using heat and pressure.

“We make an algae soup,” Savage said. “We heat it to about 300 degrees and keep the water at high enough pressure to keep it liquid as opposed to steam. We cook it for 30 minutes to an hour and we get a crude bio-oil.”

Using high temperatures and pressure lets the algae react with water and break down, releasing the native oil. Proteins and carbohydrates within the algae also decompose, increasing the fuel yield.

“We’re trying to do what nature does when it creates oil, but we don’t want to wait millions of years,” Savage said. “The hard part is taking the tar that comes out of the pressure cooker and turning it into something you could put in your car, changing the properties so it can flow more easily, and doing it in a way that’s affordable.”

With that in mind, Savage and his colleagues are looking at using catalysts to increase the energy density of the algal fuel. They also hope to reduce its viscosity and cut its sulfur and nitrogen content. _Wired

More here. The U. Mich. method involves a pyrolytic conversion of algal biomass to biocrude. Other approaches to algal fuels attempt to coax the microalgae into excreting large quantities of bio-oil continuously -- without having to kill or destroy the algae in the process of making biodiesel. Still other approaches aim to gasify algal biomass to syngas, then proceed to make synfuels from the syngas using catalytic syntheses such as Fischer Tropsch.

EmergingMarkets
According to optimistic forecasts at Emerging Markets Algae 2020 PDF, biofuels producers will be producing up to 6 billion gallons per year of algal biofuels by the year 2025.

Japan is looking at converting rice paddies into algal biofuel and aquaculture ponds.

Origin Oil is developing a process to convert wastewater into jet fuel, using algae

As rapidly as algae is capable of growing with a bit of sunlight and CO2, if scientists can tweak the organisms so as to maximise oil production, the algal and microbial fuels industry could go from promise to powerhouse in just a few years. Say, 10 years to significant impact on energy markets, 20 years to providing roughly 30% of liquid fuels.

3 Microbial Fuels Projects -- Out of Hundreds

Geobacter:

The Geobacter bacterium could be the biofuel-generating machine of the future, producing energy-rich butanol costing as little as $2 per gallon.

A project seeking to accomplish this, headed by Derek Lovley and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, received $1 million in funding today from the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). It was not even the largest grant, with 37 projects receiving $106 million to further their research in this second round of funding.

The Geobacter project is part of a new wave of biofuel generation experiments that feed electricity into tiny critters and generate valuable "electrofuels" as a product. _NYT

E. Coli:

The E. coli bacteria that can sicken bad-meat burger eaters may someday help power their cars through the next fast-food drive-through.

The U.S. Department of Energy yesterday put $6 million toward a potential biofuels game-changer that will play out in a research project led by a Hub bioengineering start-up.

“This is our biggest grant to date,” said Jason Kelly, founder of Ginkgo BioWorks. “It’s a great opportunity for us. It’s going to help us expand, and it’s part of our strategy of moving into alternative energy.”

After celebrating near their South Boston offices last night, the MIT-born outfit will now dig in and refine the process of a common bacterium converting carbon dioxide and water into isooctane, a key ingredient in gasoline. _BostonHerald

Helioculture:

Joule claims its process could produce up to 15,000 gallons of diesel and 25,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year at full-scale production.

The technology involves microorganisms growing on solar platforms that resemble green solar panels. The organisms take sunlight and carbon dioxide in the air – photosynthesizing in the same way as any green vegetation – and then secretes biofuels.

The process – called Helioculture – produces renewable diesel fuels in a single-step, continuous process the company says could help cut the use of petroleum-based fuels.

Bill Sims, president and CEO of Joule, said the technology was “commercial-ready”, adding that it could have a rapid scale-up allowing full production to start in 2012. _BrightEnergy

Clearly some microbial fuels projects are further along than others. The potential fuels will range from gasoline to diesel to jet fuel to butanol to cellulosic ethanol to methane or propane.

No one expects large scale sommercialisation of microbial fuels before 2015. 2020 should see microbial fuels (including algal fuels) beginning to have a distinct impact on fuel supplies and prices worldwide. By 2030, microbial fuels and other biofuels should supply close to 30% of liquid fuels globally.

Microbial products will also increasingly substitute for petroleum in the synthesis of plastics and high value chemicals.

Hyperion Power Generation Modular Nuke News

Image from NewEnergyandFuel
Hyperion Power Generation was featured in the pages of Inc. recently (h/t Brian Wang), with something of an update on its small nuclear reactor progress. The article follows Hyperion's John Deal to the UK, where Hyperion plans to set up its first modular reactor factory. Deal is on a sales tour of the UK.

Deal gives a quick sketch of how his nuclear plant works: A room-size reactor is buried underground, where the uranium fuel heats up metal, which in turn heats up water sent to a conventional electricity-generating steam turbine above-ground. "The specifics are boring," says Deal. "I'll send you a white paper with all this technical junk in it." This will be Deal's excuse for follow-up contact.

"The top question you'll get from your customers," he continues, "will be about safety and security." And that just happens to be Hyperion's strong point. He goes on to describe how the more conventionally designed mini nuke offerings from other competitors resemble "big teakettles," in which boiling water around the nuclear core provides cooling and heat transfer, with a "real potential for failure." (No turbine water runs through Hyperion's metal-filled reactor.) No nuclear power vendor wants to explicitly invoke the specter of a nuclear catastrophe, but Deal has doubtless said enough to help Barnes recall the sorts of radioactive steam plumes associated with the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents -- accidents that haunt the industry. "Our reactor is more like a battery," Deal says. Bad guys can't get at the sealed core, he says, and even if they could, they wouldn't be able to do anything with the molten, non-weapons-grade mess. "We're not quite as efficient as the others," he admits. "But who cares? We're about safety and security, and we make our price point."

...The reactor is sealed at the factory and shipped to the customer's site for burying. It runs for seven to 10 years, without requiring refueling or tampering with. Other reactors need human intervention, and that's where accidents tend to occur, Deal observes. After the Hyperion unit is spent, customers can swap in a new reactor "cartridge," simply leave it buried, or let Hyperion dig it up and take it away for recycling.

"There's plenty of heat available," Deal tells Barnes. "That's free energy, and Mace could use it to set up a water- or sewage-treatment business." Another profit-line suggestion, though it's an unlikely one -- most power plants give off heat, and the obvious opportunity is to provide warmth to buildings, not to clean water and sewage. As it turns out, though, water is one of Deal's obsessions. He sees nuclear power as a means to an end: to address the lack of clean water that leaves huge swaths of the planet mired in sickness, poverty, and even warfare. It's an obsession that drove him in 2002 to start a wind-power company in New Mexico. But unreliable winds, regulatory hassles, and objections from many locals to rows of hilltop wind turbines left Deal discouraged and the company in limbo.

That's when he ran into Otis ("Pete") Peterson, a scientist at the U.S. government's Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico who had a design for a tiny nuclear plant (and who is now the company's chief technical officer). Deal wasn't a fan of nuclear power, but he wondered if a small-scale generator could be the key not only to green energy but also to clean water. Such a device, after all, could be easily shipped to and set up alongside any small town or village, where it could sit safely underground, cheaply turning out electricity for homes, factories, and irrigation -- along with water-cleaning heat.

..."We have great connections with the U.S. military, and they're not bound by regulatory agencies," he says. "We have political connections who see us as having a chance to be the ones who lead a U.S. nuclear renaissance. We're overcommitted on orders. We keep hearing, 'When will you be able to ship us one?' And we hear it in a lot of different accents. And we're not worried about the approval process. The reception from the agencies has been great, and we expect the process to take less than two and a half years. This thing was designed to be approved. We've got $200 million of U.S. National Lab research behind us. _INC.com

Brian Wang also looks at research to develop advanced UO2 - BeO beryllium alloy fuel for nuclear reactors. It is claimed that the superior heat conduction properties of the beryllium oxide skeleton will allow the fuel to be burned longer and deeper -- resulting in more economical power production overall.

Trillions of Barrels of Oil Equivalent Strain to Break Free

Source
For decades, the oil shales of Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah have wanted to break free of the rocks, to provide the US with abundant -- trillions of barrels -- oil equivalent. But the kerogens of oil shale are tightly bound to the rock, and have not been easily or economically extractable until recently. General Synfuels International claims to have developed a clean, economical process for exploiting these trillions of barrels of oil-equivalent. But will Obama - Pelosi let them develop the fuels, even if they can?

General Synfuels International (GSI), a subsidiary of Earth Search Sciences, Inc., has formed the $10-million “Patriot’s Oil Shale Technology Fund L.P.”, to complete funding of the Phase 1 construction of a full-scale prototype oil shale plant under construction in Rock Springs, Wyoming.

The goal of this research and development type partnership is to prove the GSI Omnishale superheated air (SHA) in situ technology can recover large amounts of oil and gas products from American oil shale and oil sands in an inexpensive, economically viable and environmentally acceptable manner.

...In 2009, GSI secured an exploration agreement for lands in Wyoming and rights to a separate oil shale resource opportunity in Colorado. _GCC

For ideological reasons, the current Obama - Pelosi US government is dedicated to energy starvation -- the preventing of all large scale viable energy production in the US. But the US public is growing angry over the many suicidal policies of the O-P reich -- which are not consistent with many of the pre-election promises and public assurances of O-P.

If the US can find its way to energy abundance -- in spite of its horrifically ideologically inept government -- many of the underpinnings of the nanny state will collapse in the ensuing waves of economic prosperity.

GCCGenetic engineering has always held the keys to a robust bioenergy response to possible fuel shortages. One of the companies best personifying the "can do" approach to advanced biofuels, is Chromatin, Inc. Chromatin specialises in the production of artificial "mini-chromosomes", or gene stacks, that are designed to be inserted into a plant's genetic apparatus, to harness the plant's natural dynamics for the purposes of making a higher yield of fuels. Chromatin aims to use this technology with sorghum -- a hardy plant capable of producing grain, sugar, or biomass.

...sorghum holds additional advantages as a preferred biomass source for sustainable bioenergy production the company points out:

It is capable of growing across a wide geographic area within the US, offering a broad opportunity as a multi-regional, locally-available dedicated energy crop;


Sorghum thrives on marginal lands, is water and nutrient efficient and provides a low overall environmental footprint; and


Sorghum does not directly compete as a domestic food resource.


Sorghum is ideally suited as the energy crop for the future. Sorghum is adapted to 80% of the world's agricultural land, is very drought tolerant, is extremely efficient on less than optimum soils, and has a very favorable carbon footprint compared to other major grain crops. By joining forces with Chromatin, we will speed the development and distribution of advanced sorghum bioenergy feedstocks worldwide, while continuing to support our existing customers. This is truly a step forward for sorghum.

—Larry McDowell, SPI’s President, and Chromatin's Director of Seed Operations

Chromatin will be further building and commercializing its sorghum product portfolio over the near term. Using a phased approach as a platform for improving sorghum over time, the company will use technologies such as compositional screening and analysis, marker assisted breeding and gene stacking to deploy proprietary feedstocks near term and ultimately to optimize sorghum for specific bioprocessors’ needs. _GCC

Other researchers will turn their genetic expertise to transforming sugar cane, tobacco, maize, and other plants to produce higher yields of fuels. Yet other researchers are hard at work producing high yield algae, cyanobacteria, and other microbes for biofuels, chemicals, and plastics. Even more researchers will turn to the transformation of bioenergy crops and microbes for arid and saltwater environments.

Watson and Crick started an avalanche of human ingenuity, back in the early 1950s. That is as it should be.

In fact, most of humanity's resources should be devoted toward promoting greater human ingenuity in solving problems -- rather than in promoting government graft and neo-fascist corporatist greed, as we see in Obama - Pelosi and other modern national governments far too often.