Carnival of Nuclear Energy #38 @ Canada Nuclear Issues

Brian Wang points to another issue of the fabulous carnival of the nukes, the latest edition (#38) being hosted by Canada Nuclear Issues blog. Here are some excerpts:

Dan Yurman’s article this week is “Talking about a Sputnik Moment is a Mistake.” Dan refers to president Obama’s call, in his most recent State of the Union speech, for massive funding for research into, among other things, “clean energy technology.” By invoking Sputnik, the first man-made satellite which was launched by the USSR and not the USA, the president intended to spur Americans to new breakthroughs that would make the US once again a world leader in the field. Dan thinks the analogy is off-base. The original Sputnik shocked America into focused and well-funded action, which put Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969.
Contrast that with today: what response was the invocation of Sputnik intended to produce? Nobody really knows. Meanwhile, China is forging ahead with aggressive development of a Generation IV molten salt reactor fueled with liquid thorium. Such development is stalled in the US (along with the renaissance in large water-cooled power reactors; more below).
Charles Barton, in “Why the Chinese Commitment to the LFTR Matters,” picks up on that theme (LFTR stands for liquid fluoride thorium reactor). He believes the LFTR is superior to conventional uranium fueled water-cooled reactors. Thorium is abundant and cheap, and the LFTR has the potential to greatly improve both economics and safety. China’s interest in it is telling: that country’s economy is exploding, as is its need for huge amounts of concentrated energy. It is critical for that energy to remain cheap.
Brian Wang offers three posts for this carnival. Two, “Kazatomprom will boost uranium production to 19600 tons in 2011 and Areva delays Namibian mine Trekkopje” and “Kazakhstan doubles 2008 uranium production and Namibia Uranium expansion in progress,” deal with uranium production. Anybody who doubts a global nuclear renaissance is taking place should read these posts. Kazakhstan recently overtook Canada as the largest uranium producing country, and Namibia’s output has more than doubled since 2003.
The nuclear renaissance is hugely feared by the competition. This is why opponents of nuclear power are so quick to point to any lulls in the renaissance as proof that it’s not happening at all. Is that accurate? Gail Marcus, in “The Nuclear Lull: What Does it Mean?,” critically examines that claim. Gail formerly held a senior position at the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency, and knows what she’s talking about. As you’ll see, the current lull only looks like a lull if you believe that some of the much-publicized plans for nuclear construction were ever firm in the first place. Not all were.
_NuclearBlogCarnival#38

In addition, at Al Fin blog we learn more about why nuclear power may be the best form of energy for the coming ice age

The UK has learned a lesson about its wind power folly from recent extreme cold weather, and is looking into increasing its nuclear power fraction

More on the regulatory and financial uncertainty which is slowing the US nuclear renaissance to a crawl

It is the avowed purpose of the lefty-Luddite dieoff.orgy movement to choke off all reliable energy supplies to western nations -- particularly the US. This designed energy starvation leads inevitably to worsening economic conditions, a rise in unemployment, popular unrest, and political instability. As all of that is happening in the world's most advanced nations and its only superpower, the situation in the rest of world grows even direr. Only through an honest and unblinking look at who is causing the problem, can problem solvers see a clean way through to a more abundant future.

Update: Holtec International has announced a new design for an "Inherently Safe Modular Underground Reactor" rated at 140 MWe.  More info at World Nuclear News, at Pennenergy, and at NextBigFuture.

Is nuclear power a better fit for South Africa's needs than wind and solar? Yes, but. South Africa is a nation in transition. Thanks to South Africa's corrupt government, most of the transition is in a downward direction. Can South Africa field the necessary team of competent engineers, technologists, electrical workers, security force, nuclear specialists, and all the rest of the competent people needed to safely operate a nuclear power infrastructure? Remember that the average IQ of South Africa is only 72 IQ points, according to the best available studies. The normal curve around such a mean -- assuming a SD of 15 points -- means that the critical IQ level of 115 points needed for advanced technical competence, sits 3 full SDs above the mean!

Nuclear energy is fairly safe, but only if the skilled manpower is available. Otherwise, downward-trending societies such as South Africa might be forced to learn how to "fail gracefully."

More on Dense Plasma Focus Fusion

FocusFusionSociety
Brian Wang provides some updated information on the incremental progress being made by the Lawrenceville Plasma Physics group working on dense plasma focus fusion.

The experimental gear is being upgraded and "ruggedized" in order to handle the higher voltage and current to be used as the experiments progress toward the ultimate goals of achieving fusion with a proton-Boron fuel.

One of the changes is the provision of larger tungsten rod "spark plugs." In this case, clearly size does matter.

Here is more from a recent LPP paper to be published in the Journal of Fusion Energy:

The DPF is a compact and simple device first developed in the 1960s by N. V. Filippov in the USSR and by J. W. Mather in the USA and has been studied by dozens of groups over the last 45 years, resulting a large and rich literature. It consists of two concentric cylindrical electrodes enclosed in a vacuum chamber. The chamber is evacuated to low pressure and then backfilled to several torr with the fuel gas. A pulse of electricity with a rise time of 0.2-10 s from a capacitor bank is discharged across the electrodes during operation. [4] In operation, the capacitors discharge in a several-microsecond pulse, the gas is ionized and a current sheath, consisting of pinched current filaments, forms and runs down the electrodes. When the sheath reaches the end of the inner electrode (the anode), the filaments pinch together forming dense, magnetically confined, hot spots or plasmoids.[5-6] The plasmoids emit X-rays with energy from several keV to over 100 keV.

...These plasmoids emit intense beams of accelerated ions and electrons[16-19]. Fusion neutrons are emitted from the device in large quantities (up to 10^13 ) per shot._LPP PDF

The video above is a quick 1 minute introduction to LPP's dense plasma fusion approach, with a dynamic 3D schematic of the apparatus in action.

LPP's chief Eric Lerner put together a "webinar" in autumn 2010 to explain the focus fusion approach. Follow the YouTube links to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th installments of the webinar.

Focus Fusion Society
Lawrenceville Plasma Physics
Switches and Sparkplugs

More on small scale fusion approaches from M. Simon

A Spanish Solution: Renewable Diesel from Waste

A team at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (Spain) has designed a new simple, energy-efficient process (that also does not require any organic solvents) for the production of renewable diesel from biomass waste. A paper on their work is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition. _GCC

The name of the game in biofuels is efficiency and affordability of both feedstock and every step in the pre-processing, refining, and synthesis processes -- plus efficient distribution. Given the upward creep of liquid fuel prices caused by emerging demand, speculation, and cartel shenannigans, it is crucial that renewable alternative liquid fuels be made affordable. To that end, teams of researchers and technologists are working on the problem around the world.

A number of routes have been and are being developed for the conversion of biomass into renewable fuels, including (but not limited to):

• Gasification of biomass followed by Fischer-Tropsch synthesis;
• Fast pyrolysis and upgrading of bio-oil;
• Hydrolysis of biomass followed by the fermentation of the sugars by genetically modified microorganisms to hydrocarbons;
• Dehydration of hydrolyzed sugars to 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) or into furfural (FUR) when starting from hexoses or pentoses, respectively, followed by aqueous phase processing;
• Production of γ-valerolactone from biomass-derived carbohydrates via levulinic acid, followed by decarboxylation to produce butene and CO2, the former then being oligomerized to octenes and hexadecenes in a second step.

This list of processes to produce second-generation biofuels can be further expanded, but the extent to which one of these technologies will play an active role in the future biofuel industry will depend on economics, energy efficiency, and environmental issues. Surplus energy consumption and process limitations can be detected in most of the processes proposed to date. For example, the excessive cleavage of carbon–carbon bonds and subsequent reformation leads to energy losses. Extractions of products with organic solvents are energy and cost-intensive steps that change, to the worse, the overall energy balance of the process. Organic solvents as reaction medium should be avoided, as they enlarge process volumes with a negative impact on process economics and environment. A crucial point for the optimization of the overall process economics is the perfect overlap of the boiling point range of the product mixture, with diesel range C9 to C24 hydrocarbons.

Here is the Spanish solution devised by U. Politecnica de Valencia researchers:

The first step is the conversion of biomass into furfural—an established industrial process. In an adaptation of another current process, furfural can be converted with high selectivity into 2-methyl-furfural (2MF), a ring consisting of four carbon atoms and one oxygen atom, with a side chain consisting of a methyl group (-CH3).

Three molecules of 2MF are linked together. This requires water and an acid catalyst. This reaction causes one third of the rings to open and each to link to two other rings (hydroxy alkylation/alkylation). The aqueous phase, which also contains the catalyst, separates from the organic phase, which contains the intermediate product, on its own. It can easily be removed and the catalyst recycled. In a second reaction, the two other rings must also be opened and their oxygen atoms removed. This reaction uses a special platinum-containing catalyst (hydrodeoxygenation).

In the end we obtain 87% of the diesel fraction in the form of branched hydrocarbon chains with nine to 16 carbon atoms. This is the best yield reported in the literature thus far for biodiesel synthesis.
—Avelino Corma

The process is very stable at lab levels (more than 140h). Gas-phase and lower molecular weight byproducts can be used to produce heat. The resulting renewable hydrocarbon liquids are of excellent quality (cetane number 71, pour point -90 °C) and can be mixed directly with conventional diesel fuels.

_GCC

A good use for used motor oil

Another wastewater to diesel conversion using algae

Questions about the validity and reliability of the recent Rand report on algal fuels for the US military are beginning to crop up. More on that later.

Big Wind Energy Just For Dummies and Crooks?

US President Obama and former Vice President Al Gore are both enthusiastic about the potential of big wind energy farms. But more informed, intelligent, and honest energy analysts and observers are not so sanguine.

In order to assure a constant availability of electricity, a grid needs to be protected against the sudden loss of any power plant. This can occur, for a wind farm, if the wind speed increases beyond acceptable limits. The sudden loss of wind power must be accommodated by the rest of the power plants connected to the grid. They must be available with a spinning reserve to provide this backup power when needed. Of course, this is true for the loss of any type of power plant. But a wind increase may occur suddenly over a large area and shut off all the wind power connected to the grid.

Hydro electric plants and natural gas plants can respond fairly quickly to the sudden loss of another power plant, but as more wind farms are added to the grid, the problem of grid stability gets more severe. Grid stability, therefore, limits the amount of wind energy that can be accommodated by the grid (to roughly 15 percent). _FittingWindOntotheGrid

Most grid managers would prefer not to have any wind power on the grid, since dealing with even a small amount of wind power is like dodging bullets for electrical grid personnel.

A typical wind farm would generate electricity about 30 percent of the time, and not necessarily at times when electricity is needed. There is a very big difference between intermittent sources of electricity, such as wind farms, and baseload sources, such as nuclear power. The argument that nuclear power also has down times is true, but these refueling and maintenance outages are largely planned during times of low electricity demand (during spring and fall). _Economics of Wind Power

Most of the time either there is no wind, too little wind to use, or too much wind to safely run the turbine. During the UK's recent spell of super-cold arctic weather, its wind generators provided power less than 5% of the time. Imagine if the UK were even more dependent on wind power than at present. Imagine that to be the case, without nuclear energy from France available as backup, during an extended cold spell of years, decades, or longer.

The capacity factor of the 104 nuclear reactors operating in the United States is 90 percent. In other words, nuclear facilities crank out electricity around the clock, 365 days of the year, at pretty near their total capacity. Compare that to the results of a study from a group of wind power advocates at the University of Delaware that modeled data from off shore meteorological stations from Maine to the Florida Keys. Their results show that a large offshore turbine array would attain a 90 percent capacity factor only 2.2 days a year. Their numbers show that 20,000 five megawatt turbines would be needed to equal the full generating capacity of those 104 reactors. Even 1,200 turbines would not supply electricity as dependably as a new reactor like the one proposed at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland. _BaltimoreChronicle

It sounds as if an advanced nation that allowed itself to become dependent on wind power for its electricity, would experience the same sort of quality of electrical service provision as a typical third world country.

Here are some "levelized cost comparisons" for building various types of power generation plants

If you haven't read John Droz presentation on wind energy, you need to do so ASAP

Ted Rockwell's Energy Facts PDF is also a must-read (PDF)

David Mackay's "Without Hot Air" is another useful quantitative comparison of energy sources

Whimsical Claims from BARD, an Algal Fuels Company

GreenTechMedia
BARD's claims are too whimsical to put in a headline or title. But in an atmosphere of mainstream doubt regarding the short to intermediate-term viability of algal fuels, these claims are too cute to ignore. Keep in mind these claims are for yields, not for profitability:

: "Biofuel Advance Research and Development, LLC. (BARD) has entered into an agreement with The Green Institute Inc. to construct and operate a commercial scale algae system pilot facility located in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The planned facility will produce algae biomass to be used to produce biodiesel, and other commercial products. The pilot facility is estimated to produce 20,000,000 gallons of algae oil / biodiesel per acre per annum [emphasis added]. Initially, the pilot facility will produce 43,070 gallons of algae oil / biodiesel per annum using 6 modules of photo-bioreactors covering 84 square feet." _Greentechmedia

Got that? The claim is for roughly 43,000 gallons of oil in 84 square feet over one year. Since there are roughly 43,000 square feet in an acre, they claim that they would have produced over 20,000,000 gallons of oil per year had they expanded their lab facility to 1 acre size.

Here is what an algae guru from NASA and other algae experts say about the claims:

According to John Benemann [an algae expert], with 'normal' systems we can expect at the very most 5,000 gal/acre/yr from open ponds. This either means that BARD is doing something very revolutionary or they are not telling us that their yield of 9+ million gal/acre will take them 1,886 years to produce! We have a real problem with light unless of course we use artificial light and then we have an energy problem or a photonic materials cost problem... These guys may have discovered a miracle organism, but I suspect they are selling snake oil rather than making algae oil.

...According to Bob Walsh, the CEO of Aurora Biofuels: "While it is hard to comment on another company's technology when you are not under the hood, I can say we believe the absolute theoretical maximum is 10,000 gal/acre/year. The white paper GreenFuel Technologies: A Case Study for Industrial Photosynthetic Energy Capture by Dr. Krassen Dimitrov, PhD, March 2007 goes through the calculations.

"We also believe engineering systems [photo bioreactors and their ilk] will not deliver huge increases in productivity. Engineering has to drive out the typical costs of algae production but cannot double production. Our most recent scientific progress, which decreased photo inhibition increased our capability from the 2,000 gal/acre/year level to consistently producing above 4,000 gal/acre/year. Our scientific team believes 6,000 gal/acre/year is an achievable target." _GTM

Clearly BARD is doing a great deal of extrapolation, and is likely supplementing its module's sunlight with artificial light, in addition to feeding its algae some very expensive algal food. Yield is irrelevant if the process is not economically viable.

But there are ways to fudge the yield. Imagine a tall rotating cylindrical building, with a 120 ft radius and a height of 4,000 feet. The algae are grown on panels (or bags, etc) on the cylinder's outer surface. Given an oil yield of 5,000 gal / acre / year on the cylinder's surface -- but with the building's footprint occupying roughly 1 acre of land -- an algal facility could theoretically produce about 20,000,000 gallons of oil per "acre" per year, using only sunlight for photons.

Perhaps this is what BARD has in mind? They will have to find a cheap way of rotating the building to provide uniform sunlight for all the pannels. Of course their are other ways of sharing the sunlight -- rotate only the outer surface, or slide the panels around in any number of elaborate patterns . . . Or if BARD locates the building on a hill surrounded with mirrors that bathed the panels with sunlight, they might get away with a smaller building. You can probably think of a novel approach yourself if you give it some thought. But keep it between yourself and your investors, for now.

It all depends upon what BARD's investors or government sponsors are willing to go for. The numbers provided are certainly impressive -- large enough to throw your blog host into a whimsical mood at the very least. So whimsical that I hesitate to pour that scotch and water, savouring the natural whimsy instead.

Nuclear Power in the Age of Idiocracy

The Generation IV project has selected six nuclear energy systems for further development involving a variety of reactor, energy conversion and fuel cycle technologies.

The six research areas are:
A gas-cooled fast reactor featuring a fast neutron spectrum, helium-cooled reactor and closed fuel cycle.

A very high-temperature reactor that is helium-cooled.

A super critical water-cooled reactor that is a high-temperature, high-pressure water-cooled reactor that operates above the thermodynamic critical point of water.

A sodium-cooled fast reactor that features a fast-spectrum, sodium-cooled reactor and closed fuel cycle.

A lead-fuelled fast reactor that includes a closed fuel cycle.

And a molten salt reactor that produces fission power in circulating molten salt.


According to the world nuclear association, most of the six systems employ a closed fuel cycle to maximise the resource base and minimise high-level wastes to be sent to a repository. Only one is cooled by light water.

Two of the remaining reactors are helium-cooled and the others have lead-bismuth, sodium or fluoride salt coolant, making it possible to operate at low pressure, with a safety advantage.

The sizes range from 150- 1500MW output with the lead-cooled one available as a 50-150MW electrical so-called "battery" with a long-core life (15-20 years without refuelling). _The Australian

Image SourceThe good news is that several countries seem to be moving ahead to develop advanced nuclear reactors of a safer, more efficient, more reliable design. China, India, France, Japan, and Russia are working actively on new generation designs. Several US companies are also working on new designs -- but without any realistic expectation that their reactors will be put to use in their home country.

The best nuclear bet for the US and other apparently energy-averse western countries, seems to be the small modular nuclear reactor (SMR).

Most of the nuclear plants now working and being constructed overseas are big, capable of producing from 700 megawatts to 1700MW. Finland has several plants already and is expanding its complex at Olkiluoto from two to three plants.

But much of the research and development attention is also being focused on small-scale units that the industry hopes will be cheaper to build and more flexible to operate, drastically changing the economics of the industry.

According to former Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation chairman Ziggy Switkowski, there has been a big escalation of interest in small reactors of about 100MW capacity for application in remote areas and small towns. He says small reactors are expected on the market within five years.

These reactors will be the size of two shipping containers and can be built underground. They will be gas-cooled, so they will not require large amounts of water and they can be expanded.

A range of small land-based demonstration nuclear reactors will soon be trialled in the US.

French group DCNS, which has been a supplier of nuclear submarines to the French Navy, this week unveiled a small offshore nuclear plant called Flexblue.

Flexblue is a cylindrical unit 100m long and 12 to 15m in diameter, which houses a small nuclear power reactor as well as steam generators, turbines and a generator to produce from 50MW to 250MW of electricity.

The vision is for the reactors to be installed on the seabed under 60m to 100m of water, several kilometres from a centre of demand such as a city, industrial base or remote community, served via underwater cables.

The nuclear industry is hopeful that small nuclear plants could be the game-changer that will give nuclear a niche in a rapidly evolving electricity market being transformed to accommodate much greater use of renewable technologies such as wind and solar. _TheAustralian

But the Idiocracy presents a number of dangers to the use of advanced nuclear fission as a bridge to the future's energy technologies, such as fusion.

The Idiocracy comes into the picture in at least two ways -- in advanced industrial nations, advance vanguards of the Idiocracy enmeshed within the faux environmental movement and lefty-Luddite politica groups, work actively to shut down existing plants and prevent new nuclear plants from being constructed. In the third world, the Idiocracy is simply the established order, including a lack of qualified (and qualifiable) persons to run a technology as sophisticated as nuclear power.

A large number of nuclear power employment opportunities are expected to open up over the next decade. There are insufficient training institutions in the civilian infrastructure to supply these workers, although military schools such as the US Navy's Nuclear Power School should be helpful in supplying retired and separated military engineers and technicians.

Oxford Economics, an energy consulting firm, estimated the impact on employment from the construction of 50 new conventional light-water reactors by 2030, along with 20 advanced high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, 12 fast-spectrum reactors and three used-fuel recycling facilities. The company estimates this would create 75,000 manufacturing jobs, 100,000 construction jobs, and 100,000 indirect jobs.

... Under one scenario for high growth, domestic SMR manufacturing and construction would add 255,000 jobs annually to the U.S. economy. _BCE

Advanced western countries can provide these skilled workers if they get serious about both the technology and the training. Otherwise, the road toward an abundant energy future will be rocky.
As for the Idiocracy -- the third world and the "third worldisation" of the rest of the world -- a low IQ population is not suited to nuclear power. The potential for damaging accidents is too great when the people running the nuclear facility are not up to standards. Best for the third world to stick to biofuels and other simple, low-risk fuels. Even oil & gas pipeline infrastructure and basic electrical grid infrastructure are too much for many third world populations to manage safely and reliably without outside assistance. What a nightmare nuclear power would be in such environments.

When looking at the human future, it is clear that there will be several futures, corresponding to the ultimate potentials of different human populations. The violence and unrest across Northern Africa, the Middle East, Subsaharan Africa, Central Asia, and parts of South and Central America bear sad witness to the tendency of low IQ human populations to regress to low standards of behaviour, without oversight.

There is a wide range of energy technologies which are being developed. It is best to fit the energy technology to the abilities of the underlying society, to avoid too many serious mishaps.

Those who consider the Deepwater Horizon spill or the Three Mile Island breech serious mishaps, have clearly led very sheltered lives.

H/T Energy Tribune

Converting Abundant Glycerol Waste into Useful Chemicals & Fuel

Source
A research student at U. Alabama Huntsville, is developing the capacity of cell bacterium Clostridium Pasteurianum to convert waste glycerol from biodiesel manaufacture into valuable fuels and chemicals.

A strain of bacteria found in soil is being studied for its ability to convert waste from a promising alternative fuel into several useful materials, including another alternative fuel.

A graduate student at The University of Alabama in Huntsville is developing biological tools to make products from crude glycerol -- a waste material from the production of biodiesel. The research is being funded by the National Science Foundation.

... About 100,000 gallons of glycerol is produced with every million gallons of biodiesel manufactured from animal fats or vegetable oils. (In 2009 more than 500 million gallons of biodiesel were produced in the U.S. while more than 2.75 billion gallons were produced in Europe.)

...The bacteria uses glycerol as a carbohydrate source. From that they produce three alcohol byproducts -- butanol, propanediol and ethanol -- plus acetic acid and butyric acid. Butanol is a particularly interesting byproduct.

"Butanol is a big alcohol molecule, twice as big as ethanol," Venkataramanan said. "You can use it as an industrial solvent and it can be used in cars, replacing gasoline with no modifications. It doesn't have some of the problems you have with ethanol, such as rapid evaporation. And ethanol is a two-carbon molecule, but butanol is a four-carbon molecule so its energy value is much higher. In fact, there are plans to use it for jet fuel.

...In their present form, the bacteria convert about 30 to 35 percent of their gylcerol meals into butanol and another 25 to 30 percent into a chemical used to make plastics. Venkataramanan is looking at different strategies to improve that yield. He is also studying the bacteria's genes to see if a more productive strain can be bioengineered. _Newswise_via_BiofuelsDigest

Similar approaches to microbial chemical synthesis are utilised at massive scale in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. It is more difficult to produce fuels economically, given the much lower prices for fuels by weight or volume, compared to prices for pharmaceuticals, chemicals, foods, etc.

In Europe, planners are anticipating much higher utilisations of biofuels and sustainable fuels over the next 30 years. After taking a foolish and ruinous detour into wind and solar investments, some of the more intelligent energy analysts and planners of Europe are beginning to sober up and comprehend the gravity of their situation. Others -- particularly lefty-Luddites -- will never learn.

North American Unconventional Hydrocarbons Coming on Strong

Growth in Unconventional Hydrocarbons
North America contains a huge portion of global hydrocarbons, when unconventionals are taken into account. As the price of oil creeps ever higher over time, engineers and technologists are developing cleaner and more economical ways to utilise unconventional hydrocarbons.

Heavy Oils via Ivanhoe Energy
Canada's economic growth is being driven largely by oil sands. As the importance of this resource is slowly sinking into the thick skulls of Canadian politicians, various Canadian governments are beginning to take a more realistic view of oil sands production.

Both Canada and the US possess huge coal resources. Many different approaches are being considered, in order to use the resource more cleanly and economically, including coal-to-liquids technologies and in situ gasification technologies.

Image from Earth; an introduction to physical geology, 6th Edition, Tarbuck & Lutgens Prentice-Hall, 1999.

North America's huge oil shale resource will also be exploited eventually, along with oil shales the world over. The global oil shale market is projected to approach US$ 12 billion by 2015.

Gas-to-liquids is another unconventional liquid fuel likely to be scaled up in areas with rich conventional and unconventional gas resources -- such as North America.

OPEC nations control a huge volume of both conventional and unconventional hydrocarbons around the world. But as non-OPEC nations discover how to utilise their unconventional hydrocarbons more efficiently and cleanly, the power of OPEC and the Asian oil dictatorships to hold the world hostage to energy shortages, will diminish.

Carnival of Nuclear Energy #37 plus Other Nuke News

The 37th Carnival of Nuclear Energy can be found at Idaho Samizdat (via NextBigFuture). Excerpt:

ANS Nuclear Cafe

Ulrich Decher, Ph.D., examines the premise that 'wind-generated electricity is free' by analyzing the costs associated with installing, maintaining and operating wind turbines and turbine farms.

Since wind turbines must be paired with other generators of equivalent power to compensate for wind variations and for electricity grid stability, he also looks at economic and other factors associated with combining wind generation with natural gas, oil and hydropower.

Dr. Decher concludes that there is no economic justification for building windmills except when low-cost alternatives are not available -- and that there is no free lunch.

CoolHandNuke

Sakatchewan wants small modular nuclear reactors. The sparsely populated province thinks node balancing its far flung grid would work

Brad Wall, the entrepreneurial provincial premier of Saskatchewan, knows that mining 20% of the world’s uranium supply won’t fuel the region’s economy forever. For years Wall has wanted to move up the value chain.

A few years ago he floated the idea of getting Canada into the uranium enrichment business. Now Wall, and his energy minister Bill Boyd, want to develop a plan to deploy small modular reactors (SMRs), e.g., with less than 300 MW, across the wide open spaces of Saskatchewan.

Atomic Insights

Forty-year-old nuclear plants with paid off mortgages can operate so cheaply that they could sell their output using an "all you can eat" pricing model similar to the ones used by cable television or internet service providers.

Those plants have achieved the condition that Lewis L. Strauss described 56 years ago when he waxed poetic about a world with electricity that was too cheap to meter (measure).

Unfortunately, mature nuclear plants have competitors that will do everything they can to push that low cost, clean, reliable power off of the grid.

Nuclear Green

A panel of of United Kingdom House of Commons Members recommends energy rationing in a report written by the late English Green David Fleming and his associate Shaun Chamerlin.

But the report, which argues that nuclear power does not offer a solution to British energy woes, depends of an earlier Fleming anti-nuclear Pamphlet which was harshly criticized in 400 comments on the Oil Drum.

_Much more at IS

Chile's new freedom-oriented government is very interested in nuclear energy, but Chile has its share of lefty-Luddites

Iowa officials are looking at small modular reactors as safe, reliable providers of clean, vital power

Steven Chu on video expressing his admiration for small nuclear fission reactors, despite the NRC under Obama stonewalling new reactor designs

Is "Peak Oil" Slipping Backwards to the Year 2060 and Beyond?

3 Feb 2011 Note: Jeremy Bowden is the author of the piece quoted below. He specialises in energy issues, among other topics.

“The estimates for how much oil there is in the world continue to increase,” according to William M Colton, Exxon Mobil’s vice president for corporate strategic planning. “There’s enough oil to supply the world’s needs as far as anyone can see.” Just as prices rose sharply and peak oil concerns re-emerged, huge deep water oil fields were found off the coasts of Brazil and Africa. Higher prices also stimulated “unconventional” oil production from massive Canadian oil sands projects, which now provide North America with more oil than Saudi Arabia. In 2009, the United States increased domestic oil production for the first time in decades. The longer “life horizon” and drop in natural gas prices make it a particularly attractive choice to power producers now, given its relatively low carbon emissions and flexibility as a generating fuel. _Source

Image Source
Much of the fashionable panic surrounding "peak oil DOOM!" is reminiscent of the catastrophic circus that surrounded Y2K. While it is true that the Y2K problem required the attention and effort of thousands of professionals to solve, the same thing is obviously true for ongoing energy supplies in the face of rising global populations and expectations. Maintaining reliable energy supplies is an ongoing problem which is solvable as appropriate effort is applied.

...at least one positive development has resulted from the sharp rise in oil prices of recent years. The influx of capital to oil companies from high prices, combined with expectations that prices are unlikely to fall very far, has boosted investment in oil exploration and production, especially in what the industry terms “frontier” areas – namely enhanced oil recovery (more oil from existing fields), the deep (or ultra-deep) water and the Arctic. Massive new reserves have been identified, proven up, and brought to production – whilst reserves previously considered impossible to reach are now no more than a horizontal drilling or steam injection technique away. All this should help ensure supply can meet global demand for far longer than was expected just a few years ago – pushing back the oft-cited “peak oil” date by decades.

...most of this newly-discovered potential avoids the above-ground risks and cartel policies that constrain oil production in most of the world’s largest proven deposits – the bulk of which lie in Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), or are controlled by national oil companies in central Asia and Russia. It is the technical expertise and project management skills of the most dynamic multinational and independent oil companies that hold the key to these new hard-to-get-at reserves, rather than the whims of Arab dictators or the level of OPEC budget deficits. A similar, but even more dramatic change has taken place with gas, where new techniques mean huge “tight” gas deposits present in many rocks are now recoverable. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently estimated that natural gas reserves could last twice as long as previously expected – up to 250 years.

...Some experts claim enhanced oil recovery (EOR) could potentially double the amount of oil that can be extracted globally. Most fields only recover just over a half of the original oil in place and sometimes less than a third. With modern techniques field development should be able to extract a far higher proportion of the oil, while more and more oil can be made recoverable from existing wells.

The three main types of EOR are gas injection, steam (both cyclic stimulation and flooding), and chemical injection. They have been around for a long time, but are increasingly viable economically and nimble technologically....Natural gas injection is also an improving technique used to maintain reservoir pressures, especially where it is difficult to bring the gas to market, and where gas is produced alongside oil. Other gases, such as nitrogen and carbon dioxide, can also be used.

...The newest of the major EOR techniques involves inoculating reservoirs with microbes that will make the oil flow more freely. Such developing techniques may create a new jump in recoverable reserve estimates for many fields in the near future. Above all, EOR extends the life of oil fields – many North Sea fields were expected to have run dry by now, but continue to produce often in the hands of specialist oil producers that focus on enhanced recovery.

...Faced with falling reserves and barred from acquiring fresh production in areas such as the Middle East, international oil majors began to search for new large deposits in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico in the 1990s – on the back of a proven drilling record in shallower Gulf areas, and in the North Sea. Exploration and drilling below 10,000ft of water and through miles of hard rock, thick salt and tightly-packed sands required the development of supercomputers and three-dimensional imaging techniques as well as equipment that could withstand the heat and pressures common at such depths, not to mention submarine robots to make repairs.

That technology is now available to drill in other areas such as the Arctic and elsewhere...Similar advances in technology have opened up huge unconventional oil shale resources in Canada. This is moving to the US, where the Bakken shale field is now the country’s fastest-growing major oil field. Production has reached about 350,000bpd, from 100,000bpd a decade ago. In a recent report, consultancy firm PFC Energy projected production would climb to 450,000bpd by 2013. _Industrial Fuels and Power

Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil forecasts that by 2030, gas will surpass coal as an energy source.

Many analysts are expecting a lot of new oil supplies from multiple locations around the globe.

Clever technologists are finding ways to make every barrel of oil go that much further. This is true in many ways, not just in terms of improved efficiency at the consumer level.

The concept of "peak oil" is heavily dependent upon unknown factors which could change at any time. Only a fool would maintain a posture of predictive certainty in that atmosphere of uncertainy and rapid change.

The Nuclear Energy Debate at TED and Elsewhere

A TED Talks debate between the grand old man of true environmentalism -- Stewart Brand -- and a young but ditzy-green Stanford professor -- Mark Jacobson. An interesting look at how a TED audience reacts to the basic ideas in the debate. Make up your own mind.

A comparison of two countries who took different paths toward the goal of cleaner energy. Remember: When you come to the fork in the road, take it.

Anyone who has read Ted Rockwell's PDF on nuclear energy, John Droz' Wind Energy Facts, and Without Hot Air by David MacKay, is ready to make the decision between the "feel-good" trendy renewables -- wind and solar -- and the no-nonsense, thousands of years sustainable at full capacity -- nuclear energy.

In my experience, Mark Jacobson -- although a professor at a prestigious US west-coast university and a prolific publisher of papers -- is not a trustworthy source on this topic. Time will reveal his hidden motives -- which may be nothing more than naive wishful thinking -- just as time will reveal the IPCC for its hidden motives of obfuscation.

Cross-posted at Al Fin

Terrabon Announces 70 gal / ton bio-gasoline from Waste

Through an advanced bio-refining technology, MixAlco® converts materials such as municipal solid waste (MSW), sewage sludge, forest product residues such as wood chips, wood molasses and other wood waste, and non-edible energy crops such as sweet sorghum into a wide array of chemicals and secondary alcohols that can be further refined through separate, well-established processes to produce renewable gasoline, jet fuel or diesel. The gasoline produced through the MixAlco® technology is not ethanol. In fact, it has a higher energy value than ethanol and can be blended directly with gasoline produced from hydrocarbons. _Terrabon

TerrabonHouston based Terrabon creates advanced gasoline-like biofuel from mixed waste biomass, including sewage and solid waste. The company utilises a non-sterile anaerobic digestion for this versatile feedstock mix.

Terrabon’s MixAlco process is described by Luce as a linkage of biological fermentation and chemical processes. It begins by treating the feedstock with lime to enhance its digestibility, and then fermenting the biomass using a mixed-culture of microorganisms to produce a mixture of carboxylic acids. Calcium carbonate is added to the fermentation to neutralize the acids to form corresponding carboxylate salts, which are then dewatered, concentrated, dried and thermally converted to ketones. The ketones are then hydrogenated to alcohols that can be refined into renewable gasoline, diesel or jet fuel blendstocks.

“When we have those ketones, we use parts of the zeolite and hydrogenation catalysts,” Luce said. “Once we get through the organic acids, we actually create a whole series of secondary alcohols and then we use the same zeolite catalyst structure. The research with CRI that we’ve done is making sure the catalyst structure is set up in a way to optimize through the mix of ketones that we create.”

Terrabon’s cellulosic gasoline product, according to Luce, is a viable drop-in renewable gasoline blendstock that looks similar to cracked gasoline that comes off the fluid catalytic cracking conversion process, a pathway commonly used by today’s petroleum refiners.

“It ends up being a subcomponent of RBOB, which then ethanol can be put on top of to fulfill the RFS2 mandate,” Luce said. “What we’re hoping is that as we begin scaling it up that we can take on the next generation of catalysts to actually make it into a finished product, blend it with ethanol and make E85 straight to the retail station. But, that’s probably version three or four in our vision of what we’re trying to do. First, we want to show we can economically make a drop-in biofuel and use existing infrastructure and satisfy some of this RFS2 mandate.”

Terrabon’s work isn’t satisfied at stopping at this milestone. The company is in the process of engineering scale-up strategies in hopes of bringing its first commercial production plant online. “We’re looking at two regions of the country—one in Texas and another in the Pacific Northwest—to figure out where the best economic position is to put our first commercial facility,” Luce said, adding that the company is targeting an annual production output ranging between 5 MMgy and 25 MMgy. “We’re hoping if we stay on track with what we’re trying to do, then by the end of this year we’ll be breaking ground on either of those two sites for our first commercial facility.” _CheckBiotech

Houston—Terrabon, Inc., announced today that it has been successful in the production of an economical cellulosic gasoline fuel blend stock by leveraging CRI/Criterion’s renewable fuel catalyst technologies.

The use of catalysts are necessary to efficiently convert inedible feedstocks like garbage, sorghum, corn stover or woodchips into renewable cellulosic gasoline, diesel and jet fuel using Terrabon’s patented acid fermentation technology, MixAlco®.

These catalysts have enabled Terrabon to capture yield improvements from the MixAlco® acid fermentation process at its Bryan, Texas demonstration plant, known as Energy Independence I.

In fact, Terrabon actually exceeded the target yield threshold of 70 gallons of green gasoline per dry ton of garbage that it received from the cafeteria dumpsters and paper shredders at Texas A&M University.

Normally, this garbage would have been shipped to a landfill for disposal. _BiofuelsJournal

Seaweed is being viewed more widely as a valuable feedstock for biofuels production. Seaweed has many advantages over terrestrial biofuels crops -- including prolific growth rates, low lignin levels, and the ability to grow in salty and brackish water over most of the Earth's survace -- land and sea.

Japan is pushing ahead with 100% biomass-fired power plants. Torrefied biomass can be crushed and fired like coal. Gasification plants are preferable due the minimal waste resulting. Torrefied biomass -- either woody or grass -- can also be co-fired with coal with modifications to combustors. Biomass can also be co-fired with natural gas via gasification or pyrolysis -- using specially designed mixing chambers or nozzles and combustors.

Vinod Khosla on Affordable Biomass, Feedstocks, More

For the regressives who project fixed land use and biomass production capacity based on yesterday’s technology, un-optimized yields and practices, I just beg to differ. Many people simply refuse to accept that the future can be different from the past and yet extrapolating an unsustainable present is a bankrupt strategy by which to reach a sustainable future. Much research remains to be done but the potential clearly exists for significant jumps in our biomass capacity. With proof of this biomass as a source of liquid fuel, this research will accelerate. _GTM

Greentech Media continues its Khosla series with a look at biofuels feedstocks and how they compare:

There is a surprising amount of forest waste available; a good example would be hardwood waste, which can reach up to 30 percent or more of the harvest: southeast timber has roughly 18 to 22 percent waste by mass, whereas the Northeast and Alaska have as much as 30 percent. Ultimately, scaling fuels will depend upon exploiting these near-term available non-food feedstocks. In the mid-term (5 to 10 years) winter cover crops (where appropriate) and energy crops planted in crop rotations or on marginal land (over one billion acres of marginal land worldwide has been put out of production due to degradation)[1].

The appropriate perennial, polyculture biomass production approaches, (which can restore degraded lands) will come into play in addition to continued wood, agricultural waste and bagasse use. Long term (10 to 15 years), dramatically improved energy crops, new cropping practices and new chemical fertilizer reduction strategies (such as polycultures) could yield well over a billion tons of biomass in the United States alone, if not substantially more, without significant land impact.

...Use of bark, waste and mixed feedstocks will lower costs and be a significant competitive advantage for any process. Accepting mixed feedstocks will be a major advantage for any conversion process. Such technologies, in my estimation, should yield more than 2000 gallons of fuel per acre (ethanol equivalent) in the long term (versus 400 to 500 gallons per acre today with corn ethanol) to provide material biomass fuels scalability without significant land use impact.

At a high level, at 2000 gallons per acre, to reach 36 billion gallons, we need 18 million acres of land (which need not be farmland), compared to 309 million acres of cropland currently in production (of 406 million acres of total cropland). If one displaces corn ethanol and recovers that land, the numbers for land usage could be substantially lower to meet our 36 billion gallon goal (though corn does co-produce animal feed). In the last 10 years alone, more than 30 million acres went out of production due to degradation, crop yield improvements and conservation.[2] The issue is further complicated by the recovery of land that takes place (covered in more detail in my previous papers) as diets shift from red meat (beef) to white meats (chicken), which take less than 5% of the land beef requires for corn cultivation for animal feed. _Greentechmedia

Khosla then moves from biomass feedstocks to oils:

, technologies that focus on specialty oils like jatropha, rape seed (used extensively in Europe for biodiesel), palm oil and the similar are less attractive because their gallon per acre yields are far lower (40 to 50 gallons per acre for jatropha, up to 600 gallons per acre with palm oil), and we don’t expect these oil yields to increase substantially over the next decade. Not only that, jatropha in particular is toxic to animals. Additionally, used restaurant grease, oil from old tires and animal waste, are largely irrelevant as feedstocks at the global scale, though they can be used to produce cost effective fuels where available. As a result, we are not considering them here in detail because in my view, they are not likely to achieve relevant scale, regardless of profitability. _GTM

Khosla similarly discards algal feedstocks as being too expensive for near term utilisation. He feels that 2,000 gallons per acre yield will be the minimum which can possibly impact global fuel needs. As a result, Khosla feels that both maize and sugar cane ethanol will be superceded by more prolific biomass crops.

...A few years ago, I forecast that as processes mature, one ton of cellulosic biomass will yield 110 gallons of ethanol equivalent, approaching our target of 2000 gallons of ethanol equivalent per acre as yields approach 18 to 20 dry tons per acre. If Kior, for example, is able to reach 2 barrels per ton of production (equivalent to 140 gallon ethanol equivalent per ton) in the next five years, then it will only take 14 tons per acre to reach this 2000 gallon per acre goal; such adjustments to estimates will continue to happen. If these process improvements prove out, we will need smaller yield improvements than I forecast only a few years ago. Encouragingly, Ceres and Mendel, two energy crop companies, forecast biomass crop yields at roughly 15 to 20 tons per acre, depending upon the region, rain and soil.

Again, for comparison, though corn is currently one of the most efficiently grown agricultural products in the world, it only produces 400 to 500 gallons of ethanol from an acre of corn (though animal feed byproducts do increase the effective yield equivalent per acre), with an additional ~300 gallons of ethanol equivalent cellulosic biofuel theoretically possible from the stover. Corn requires prime crop land, which stokes “food versus fuel” politics (perception is important), requires fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides,...

...The beauty of cellulosic processes is the flexibility of biomass feedstock, which allows the use of short and long rotations (up to 10 year rotations), agroforestry (interplanted rows of trees and row crops), and polycultures. Technologies that can use mixed feedstocks will have much lower long-term costs and less price volatility. By using feedstock flexible technologies we have an opportunity to increase biodiversity and symbiotic production of nutrients, which improves soil quality and yields, while not adversely affecting fuel output. Technologies like enzymatic hydrolysis, besides higher early costs, will likely be more feedstock specific and feel less likely to succeed in my opinion.

One option I have previously proposed is the usage of a 10 year x 10 year energy and row crop rotation. As row crops are grown in the usual corn/soy rotation, lands lose topsoil and get degraded, need increased fertilizer and water inputs and decline in biodiversity. By growing no-till, deep rooted perennial energy crops (like miscanthus or switchgrass - see below) for ten years following a ten year row crop (i.e. - corn/soy) cycle, the carbon content of the soil and its biodiversity can be improved and the needs for inputs like fertilizer decreased. _GTM

Biomass crops can even be engineered specifically to add value to the topsoil over time.

Perennial polycultures, drought and salt tolerant plants (a huge upside for humanity), long term crop rotations, winter cover crops and innovative low input (water and fertilizer) techniques are very powerful tools in improving agronomy, environmental impact, yields and biodiversity while potentially recovering even non-arable land. Meanwhile, some companies are aiming at dramatically reducing fertilizer and pesticide demand, by developing creative new approaches and technologies. These techniques will shape the ultimate level of impact. In many scenarios, a little imagination, a lot of research and a continued focus on biofuels could actually increase available land by creating incentives to recover degraded lands.

...At least half a dozen technologies will be competitive with oil, with some more profitable than others. The critical point is that for the next 10 years at least, there will be an unbounded demand for biofuels, the quantities required by the current mandates both in the US and in many other countries will be an achievable stretch with all the technological innovation. US and worldwide demand of oil will be such that biofuels will not compete with each other, they all compete far more with oil. Each technology is suited to particular local conditions, and with the expected demand, there is lots of room for all these and even more technologies. Within a decade after beginning to scale (2012?), advanced biofuels will become material in the oil supply equation, and will be a significant market force within twenty years. I firmly believe that in 30 years, the price of oil will be more dependent on the marginal cost of land than anything to do with exploration, drilling, OPEC, or Middle East instability.

To those who accuse me of believing because I’ve invested in these technologies; I continue to invest because I continue to believe. _GTM

In an attempt to prove Khosla wrong in his negative attitude toward algal fuels, Origin Oil is cooperating with an Australian company to prove its extraction technology.

SG Biofuels is attempting to prove its approach to fuels from the oilseed tree jatropha -- in tropical Brazil.

Most analysts predict liquid fuels to continue to rule over the highway for at least 20 more years.

Biofuels will be competing not only with conventional crude oil, but with unconventionals such as Canada's new in situ oil sands technologies, GTL, CTL, and in situ coal gasification to liquid fuels.

As long as oil prices stay above $70 a barrel, investment into advanced biofuels, unconventionals, and other alternative liquid fuels will continue.

Bio-DiMethylEther from Black Liquor in Sweden: More On the Way

The European Union has approved the SEK 500 million (€55 million, $75 million) R&D grant awarded by the Swedish Energy Agency towards the industrial scale demonstration biofuels plant based on Chemrec’s gasification technology at the Domsjö Fabriker biorefinery in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden. The plant will produce the renewable and environmentally compatible biofuels biomethanol or bioDME using forest harvest residues as energy feedstock.

...Chemrec AB and our partner the Domsjö Fabriker biorefinery were awarded the R&D support in September 2009 by the Swedish Energy Agency. The plant will be based on the Chemrec black liquor gasification technology combined with advanced technology for fuels production. The project investment cost is estimated at approximately SEK 3 billion for a production capacity of 140 000 ton biomethanol or 100 000 ton bioDME per year in a dual product plant. _Chemrec_via_BiofuelsDigest

Chemrec Domsjo Biorefinery
Sweden possesses vast forests which are harvested for timber, specialty cellulose, and paper/pulp. A by-product of the paper/pulp industry is black liquor, which can be converted to useful biofuels via gasification.

Biofuels produced using our gasification technology reduce carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 95% compared to gasoline or diesel and replace imported fossil fuels with renewable fuels. The global potential of the technology is equivalent to replacement of approximately 30 million tons of diesel oil. The Domsjö plant will have the capacity equivalent to the fuel demand of over 2000 heavy trucks. _Chemrec Press Release

The bio-DME and bio-methanol produced by these plants will replace significant amounts of diesel fuel, and other petroleum products. But the process is but a niche application -- an add-on to a pre-existing industry which is itself an add-on (or offshoot) to the lumber industry.

That is one way in which market capitalism works -- by locating waste products of pre-existing enterprises which can be converted to valuable feedstocks and end-products.

Nuclear News Bits

Brian Wang reports on new nuclear developments from India, Mongolia, Belarus, Canada, Japan, and Australia

Rod Adams at Atomic Insights discovers that some nuclear power is indeed "too cheap to meter."

A new nuclear blog, Nuclear Britain, is on the web

Turkey is working with Russia and Japan in its move to construct nuclear power plants

Cold fusion may find new life in India -- Upcoming International Conference

If you haven't read Ted Rockwell's PDF Nuclear Energy Facts Report yet, you need to do so at your earliest convenience. Ted's Learning About Energy website is where updated versions of the report will appear when available.

With new, smart, clean, nuclear reactors, using re-cycled fuels, the energy to power advanced human societies many thousands of years is in our grasp. Long before that time is up, clean fusion and other advanced forms of energy will be perfected and ready for use.

The future is currently stymied by greens, energy starvationists, and carbon hysterics -- all yearning for the great human dieoff.orgy and a 90% or more reduction of the human population. Unfortunately, once the left-Luddite instigated human dieoff begins, it becomes a wildfire that cannot be controlled. The Earth and its ecosystems and biodiversity are likely to be left far more vulnerable by left-Luddite interference than at present.

The recent direction of advanced societies has been toward bioremediation and greater biodiversity and preservation of habitat. That trend will only accelerate as humans achieve cleaner and more sustainable energy sources such as advanced nuclear power.

Underground Coal Gasification Moving Ahead in Alaska

Underground coal gasification (UCG) is the in-situ gasification of coal in the seam. It is achieved by injecting oxidants, gasifying the coal and bringing the product gas to surface through boreholes drilled from the surface. The gas is used for power generation, industrial heating or as chemical feedstock.UCG Engineering Ltd has recently undertaken reviews of the technilogy and provided designs of underground configurations for demnonstration and commercial applications. _UCG EngineeringLTD

Queensland-based LINC Energy has won new exploration licenses for development of underground coal gasification in Alaska.

January 27, 2011

Linc Energy is one step closer to becoming a significant part of the USA domestic energy market after winning further underground coal gasification (UCG) exploration licences in Alaska.

The Queensland-based company announced today it has been successful in its tender to the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority for the grant of 181,414 acres of UCG licences.

The decision follows more than six months work in UCG geological assessment and competitive tender submissions from a unit spanning the Linc Energy Australian and United States offices.

Linc CEO Peter Bond says the outcome greatly advances the company’s strategic goal to bring commercial UCG development to Alaska.

“We have known for a long time that Alaska, the Cook Inlet Basin in particular, holds significant coal deposits,” Bond says.

“Importantly, the decision confirms that we were successful in obtaining 100 percent of the exploration areas we applied for in the competitive tender process,” he says. _qbr.com

Another likely site for commercial development of underground coal gasification (besides China) is Canada.

...Mr. Fallows says the only rational response for the U.S. is to use China as “a huge laboratory for deploying technology.” He cites the potentially game-changing technology known as underground coal gasification as an example of what a Sino-American technology partnership could achieve.

With this technology, jets of pure oxygen would be blasted, deep underground, into seams of coal. Under intense pressure, a controlled burn would take place. The heat would boil the saline water that occurs naturally far below groundwater. The resulting steam would set off the chemical reactions that turn coal into gas – which would be used (such as “natural” gas) to fuel “coal-fired power plants.” Yet no coal would ever be “mined.” The residual char and ash would remain put, along with the sulphur and nitrogen associated with dirty coal. Above ground, the C02 would be separated from the synthetic gas and recycled for use in the enhanced recovery of crude oil.

This is all marvellous science, but Mr. Fallows errs in thinking that China offers the only laboratory, or the best laboratory, to test it. The technology he describes in futuristic terms is already well advanced in the Swan Hills Synfuels development in Alberta – the largest coal gasification project in North America and the deepest underground coal-to-gas operation in the world. Beginning in 2015, Swan Hills will deliver synthetic gas from 1,400 metres underground – and, quite possibly, lead the entire world in clean coal technology. _GlobeandMail

Alaska, China, Alberta, and likely Australia. Four locations where underground coal seam gasification is likely to be developed, perfected, and commercially developed.

By eliminating the need for mining, UCG offers some benefits to the environment over traditional coal mining and coal gasification methods. Immediate benefits include the elimination of solid waste discharge and reduction in sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx). In traditional coal mining, large quantities of coal ash, oxides, waste rock and radioactive waste are common discharges. In the case of UCG, this waste is either avoided or contained underground. Due to the absence of coal mining, Appalachian mountaintops are not stripped bare and remain largely preserved, hence there is no need for tailing and ash dams. For comparison, the ash content of UCG syngas is estimated to be approximately 10 mg/m³ compared to smoke from burning where ash content may be up to 70 mg/m³. _Sourcewatch

More information:
UCG Association
UCG Engineering LTD

Do Fungal Fuels Foretell Endophytic Future?

Sandia National Lab researchers are zeroing in on production of fuels by endophytic fungi. According to Sandia scientists, the fungi in their lab can break down cellulose directly, and turn it into hydrocarbons.

The fungi grow on cellulose and digest it, forming fuel-type hydrocarbons as a by-product of their metabolic processes. Through genetic manipulation, the Sandia team hopes first to identify these pathways, and then to improve the yield and tailor the molecular structure of the hydrocarbons it produces.

Sandia’s bioscience team is using genetic sequencing to catalog the pathways and other molecular biology techniques to understand how changes in feedstock determine the type and amount of hydrocarbons the fungi make, with a long-term goal of engineering greater quantities of the desirable fuel species.


Meanwhile, Craig Taatjes and John Dec, both engine combustion researchers at Sandia, are experimenting with the main compounds produced by the fungi and are giving feedback to their bioresearch counterparts on the compounds’ ignition chemistry and engine performance. The ideal outcome, Dec said, is to “dial in” the right feedstocks combined with the right set of genes to produce the preferred blend of compounds to go into an engine.

The first step has been to learn what kinds of compounds the fungus makes naturally on its own. “We just don’t know much about some of the compounds, so we need to do research on their ignition chemistry and how they behave in an engine,” Taatjes said. The team, he says, is working with Professor William H. Green at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop an ignition chemistry model that can predict the performance of the classes of compounds made by the fungus.

Hadi and his colleagues are contributing to building up the understanding of the distribution of molecules produced by the various fungi, at which point they can genetically tailor them to produce more of the optimal compounds to suit the needs of engine combustion. _GCC

The scientists and engineers are still working with very small quantities of product, and it will take some time before they will know if the project can be scaled to commercial levels.

Nevertheless, as a research project to expand the boundaries of basic science knowledge of what engineered endophytic fungi can achieve, the approach has potential to seed further projects and perhaps successful industrial ventures.

Endophytes can be injected directly into crops which themselves have been engineered to accept them and provide maximum surface area and biomass for conversion to hydrocarbon -- or any other high value chemical or substance the endophyte's enzymes can produce.

As plants are engineered to grow on marginal soils and to provide higher levels of more convertible biomass, they will provide yet one more piece of the larger interlocking puzzle. For microbial fuels it will take about ten years to proof of feasibility and proof of scalability. Ten more years to scale large enough to capture roughly 10% of the liquid fuels markets -- to microbial fuels alone (not counting alcohols).

Torrefaction Plant for Salt Lake City? Comments on Khosla

Torrefaction is the controlled "roasting" of biomass to remove moisture, increase the energy density, and to induce superior burning, transport, and long-term storage properties. Radian Bioenergy is based in Salt Lake City, and has engineered a torrefaction system which it believes will work -- at least for woody feedstock.

Salt Lake City-based Radian BioEnergy has completed preliminary engineering on a commercial-scale proprietary torrefaction system, which can convert wood and other biomass feedstocks into biochar or “green coal.”

“It’s a top-fed system where the wood enters the top and warm inert flue gases are used to do the torrefaction,” said Radian BioEnergy CEO Ben Phillips.

The technology leverages Radian’s existing biomass gasification reactor configuration. “It basically readies us to be able to supply this type and scale of torrefaction system to perspective commercial buyers.” Phillips said the company would either license the technology to potential buyers or sign a contract to sell the equipment and then have it manufactured.

“The development of our torrefaction technology will further enhance our product offerings in the biomass energy sector, enabling us to supply major equipment or turn‐key solutions to customers seeking a solution for biomass upgrading,” Phillips said.

The Radian torrefaction system will produce approximately 200 tons per day of biochar, ranging in energy content from 9,000 to 11,000 Btu per pound depending on operating conditions and product yield goals. The biochar burns similar to coal so that it can be integrated into coal‐fired power plants. Phillips said the initial design was based on wood, and additional biomass types will be evaluated in the future. _CheckBiotech

As torrefaction technologies become more efficient, portable, and closer-to-the-source of feedstock, the ability to make economic use of more forestry waste, agricultural waste, and other cellulosic feedstock will grow.

The primary problem with biomass energy schemes is the low energy density of the biomass. As better means of densifying biomass are created and made inexpensive enough to bring to the local site of biomass production, the costs of biomass energy will drop.

Vinod Khosla's table of biofuels technologies (via Greentechmedia) is an extremely useful shorthand reference to the expected timescales to production and viability of production for a wide array of approaches to biofuels. In general, Al Fin energy analysts, engineers, and technologists are in agreement with Khosla's basic thoughts.

One particular area of disagreement involves the gasification of biomass and F-T catalytic synthesis of fuels and chemicals. Khosla asserts that such an approach will probably not work economically. But with the arrival of technologies such as the Velocys microchannel F-T reactors, plus the improvement of on-site densification of biomass and scalable plasma gasifiers, it is possible that we will see small to medium scale gasification plus F-T fuels within 5 years -- according to Al Fin analysts.

Extreme Crude: Oil's Impossible Places

Brazil's quest for extreme oil may cost as much as US$ 1 trillion. That is a lot of money to invest in a such a risky proposition -- to retrieve oil that is miles deep underwater. But oil prospectors and producers around the world are on the prowl for extreme crude -- found in places that previous generations would not have dreamed of going.

The hunt for extreme oil proceeds apace in the ultradeep waters off the coasts of Ghana and Nigeria, in the sulfur-laden depths of the Black Sea, under the polar ice caps, and in the gummy tar sands of Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin and Canada’s McMurray Formation (see the related DISCOVER story, "The End of Easy Oil"). The Gulf debacle has shaken national governments, but it has hardly deterred them. Mexico is taking advantage of the fallout from the disaster next door—and the suspension of cross-border prospecting—to buy time for its national oil company, Pemex, which plans to beef up its own deepwater capabilities. A month after Deepwater Horizon exploded, the Australian government reaffirmed its commitment to ocean drilling, putting 31 offshore blocks up for bidding, 17 of them in deep waters. While pundits and regulators issue encomiums to safety, the most noticeable shifts in the “post BP” oil industry are a fat discount on rental rates for offshore platforms no longer needed in the Gulf and the exodus of idled rigs heading to other waters.

...What keeps Petrobras going is the size of the prize. Just the proven reserves in three different Brazilian pre-salt exploration areas total 10 billion to 16 billion barrels, the largest oil discovery in the Western Hemisphere in three decades. And that may be only the beginning. After drilling 13 more test wells, the experts now reckon that the pre-salt reserves sprawl over an oblong slab of more than 57,000 square miles of ocean—Brazilians call it “the blue beefsteak.” And the petroleum there is not the heavy, low-grade stuff that Brazil currently fetches from existing offshore wells, but light, sweet crude, the prize of hydrocarbons, preferred for jet fuel. _Discover

The microbes which created the oil in the Gulf of Mexico were fed ages ago by the land effluent of the Mississippi River basin Not so long ago -- in geologic terms -- Africa and South America were at hailing distance from one another. With a broad continental shelf between them, and with the Amazon feeding from the west and the Congo and other rivers feeding from the east, photosynthetic and other microbes between the continents fed very well indeed.

Those vast fields are relatively recent in origin, as the Earth thinks of time. It will take some good detective work to track down older, more ancient shelfs and feedwaters. But that is what the spirit of extreme crude is all about. That and going ever deeper, and after ever-tougher game.

Geophysicists have known for decades that plenty of oil and gas is hidden away below the oceans, but they were unable to see it clearly with traditional seismic techniques. Because salt is much less dense than rock, the sound waves surveyors use to scour the depths race through it at nearly three miles per second, twice as fast as it traverses the surrounding rock and sand. When sound waves pass from compact rock in the seabed to the pliant salt below, they kick into overdrive, scattering and distorting the seismic waves. The result is a blurry image that geophysicists compare to a snowy television picture, making it almost impossible to define the true size and position of the salt cap.

To sharpen the picture, Petrobras upgraded its toolbox with 3-D imaging. Traditionally, geophysicists take readings by sending sound waves straight down and straight back, creating two-dimensional pictures of slices of the earth that can be “read” like individual pages. But since salt can blur any given seismic image, exploration crews fired their seismic probe from various angles and then put all the images together to produce a three-dimensional view of the salt block. The technology helped them zero in on an intriguing section of seafloor in the little-known Santos Basin, off the coast of southern Brazil. To confirm the findings, Petrobras’s computer engineers have spent years developing software to correct for distortions—both sound wave reflections and seismic noise—that salt introduces in the readings. After multiple 3-D probes, they had a sense that something big was buried under the salt.

BP pioneered the exploration of oil and gas sealed beneath salt domes under the Gulf of Mexico, and potential pre-salt oil reserves of untold dimensions are currently being mapped along the west coast of Africa in the waters of Gabon, Angola, and Ghana. That area is a geologic mirror image of South America’s eastern flank, the two continents having separated when the supercontinent of Gondwana broke apart some 160 million years ago.

But Brazil may be sitting on the largest pre-salt resources of all, meaning that Tupi may represent both the pinnacle and the end point of this type of exploration. Finding and retrieving all this oil (and the associated natural gas) weighs heavily on the balance sheet. The first pre-salt test well took 14 months and cost $240 million, although more recent Petrobras pre-salt offshore wells have cost about $66 million each. Just operating a rig to drill in the pre-salt can cost up to $1 million a day. Industry insiders estimate that retrieval costs for Brazil’s proven pre-salt reserves could run as high as $1 trillion. _Discover

As geologists get better at finding oil and gas that require newer horizontal drilling approaches, engineers will develop yet newer approaches to finding and producing from even tougher deposits. It is a progression that is demanded by modern day economic and political factors which dominate the price of oil -- rather than by any meaningful or impending shortage of liquid fuels.