Another Way Make Clean Use of the Abundant Coal Resource

The US has roughly 1 trillion barrels of oil equivalent in coal resources,or more. It has twice that amount in kerogen resources, but we are looking at coal specifically. The challenge has been to find ways to burn this massive coal resource cleanly, so as to provide abundant and inexpensive electrical power and heat to what should have been a healthy economy -- if not for a government policy of planned energy starvation.

Georgia Tech. researchers have devised self-cleaning anodes for a solid oxide fuel cell, which may provide yet another clean way of making use of the massive global coal resource.

Conventional coal-fired electric generating facilities capture just a third of the energy available in the fuel they burn. Fuel cells can convert significantly more of the energy, approximately 50 percent. If gas turbines and fuel cells could be combined into hybrid systems, researchers believe they could capture as much as 80 percent of the energy, reducing the amount of coal needed to produce a given amount of energy, potentially cutting carbon emissions.

...But that would only be possible if the fuel cells could run for long periods of time on coal gas, which now deactivates the anodes after as little as 30 minutes of operation.

The carbon removal system developed by the Georgia Tech-led team uses a vapor deposition process to apply barium oxide nanoparticles to the nickel-YSZ electrode. The particles, which range in size from 10 to 100 nanometers, form "islands" on the nickel that do not block the flow of electrons across the electrode surface.

When water vapor introduced into the coal gas stream contacts the barium oxide, it is adsorbed and dissociates into protons and hydroxide (OH) ions. The hydroxide ions move to the nickel surface, where they combine with the carbon atoms being deposited there, forming the intermediate COH. The COH then dissociates into carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which are oxidized to power the fuel cell, ultimately producing carbon dioxide and water. About half of the carbon dioxide is then recirculated back to gasify the coal to coal gas to continue the process.

"We can continuously operate the fuel cell without the problem of carbon deposition," said Liu, who is also co-director of Georgia Tech's Center for Innovative Fuel Cell and Battery Technologies.

The researchers also evaluated the use of propane to power solid oxide fuel cells using the new anode system. Because oxidation of the hydrogen in the propane produces water, no additional water vapor had to be added, and the system operated successfully for a period of time similar to the coal gas system.

Solid oxide fuel cells operate most efficiently at temperatures above 850 degrees Celsius, and much less carbon is deposited at higher temperatures. However, those operating temperatures require fabrication from special materials that are expensive – and prevent solid oxide fuel cells from being cost-effective for many applications.

Reducing the operating temperatures is a research goal, because dropping temperatures to 700 or 750 degrees Celsius would allow the use of much less expensive components for interconnects and other important components. However, until development of the self-cleaning process, reducing the operating temperature meant worsening the coking problem.

"Reducing the operating temperature significantly by eliminating the problem of carbon deposition could make these solid oxide fuel cells economically competitive," Liu said.

Fuel cells powered by coal gas still produce carbon dioxide, but in a much purer form than the stack gases leaving traditional coal-fired power plants. That would make capturing the carbon dioxide for sequestration less expensive by eliminating large-scale separation and purification steps, Liu noted.

The researchers have so far tested their process for a hundred hours, and saw no evidence of carbon build-up. _PO

The problem with making the removal of CO2 a priority, is that it destroys whatever profitability exists within the coal energy sector. But destroying coal energy production has always been one of President Obama's long-term goals, as he confessed to supporters in San Francisco before being elected in 2008. When so much of the government of the world's only superpower is dedicated to the destruction of reliable forms of energy such as coal, nuclear, oil sands, unconventional gas, offshore oil, etc etc, it becomes difficult for industry and commerce to survive. Since the prosperity and power of the world's only superpower is based upon its industrial and commercial might, it appears that the Obama administration is committing democide and a grand scale, via its broad policies of energy starvation.

Fortunately for this government, the lickspittle media -- including comic lickspittles such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert -- are firmly on board the bandwagon of destruction and decline. It is up to more productive groups and persons to find within themselves the fortitude to outlast their dysfunctional overseers in government.

Images transplanted from an earlier posting at AFE 

North American Shale Oil Bonanza Attracts GTL Technologies

...a major exploration and production company is seriously considering the possibility of incorporating microchannel FT reactors into a planned 5,000 -15,000 barrel per day (bpd) GTL facility onshore in North America designed to convert shale gas into finished synthetic fuels...The shortlisted technologies will be subjected to further evaluation as part of a major high-budget engineering study that will last for several months. The results of the study will be used to select the project’s technology providers. _Engineer

Oxford Catalyst's microchannel F-T technology for converting gas-to-liquids (GTL) is one of the frontrunners to be intensively studied for shale gas to liquids operations onshore in North America.

The technology is already being adopted for offshore applications in Brazil.

PDF presentation on Velocys / Oxford Catalyst's microchannel F-T technology

Microchannel FT reactors developed by Velocys and using a new highly active FT catalysts developed by Oxford Catalysts exhibit conversion efficiencies in the range of 70% per pass, according to Jeff McDaniel, Oxford Catalysts director of commercialisation.

“The high efficiency and modular nature of our microchannel FT reactors makes them particularly useful for this type of application because capacity can be easily increased by simply ’numbering up’ or linking together additional FT reactor modules,” said McDaniel. _Engineer

Can US Energy Giant TVA Save US Nuclear Power from its NRC?

Giant US energy provider TVA has signed a letter of intent for the construction of 6 125 MW small modular reactors (SMRs) from Babcock and Wilcox, a solid company with a long record of building small reliable reactors for the US military.

TVA is also looking at reviving a half-built reactor located in Alabama, in an effort to jump-start the process of building new nuclear reactors which has been stymied by the obstructionist US bureaucracy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Because the plant already has a precious construction license, albeit from 1974, and because of the authority’s independent status, it faces far fewer obstacles than most other reactor builders.

The T.V.A. does not answer to state regulators. It has no shareholders to worry. As a federally chartered corporation established in 1933 as part of the New Deal, it is overseen by nine directors who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Today it supplies electricity across parts of seven states, serving roughly nine million people.

It also enjoys financial advantages that most public utilities lack, borrowing money at rates similar to those paid by the United States Treasury, which is critical for building hugely expensive reactors.

That makes it one of the very few American builders that could pull off a nuclear power comeback in this climate. With the exception of Watts Bar 1, another T.V.A. plant that was mothballed for a time but was finished in 1996, no new reactor construction has been started since the early 1990s. _NYT

Meanwhile in Russia, 8 massive new floating nuclear reactors are being readied for service in the Arctic -- to assist in development of massive hydrocarbon resources there. Russia's economy is dependent on its energy exports, and Russia is not reluctant to utilise its nuclear technology to benefit its economy -- unlike the government bureaucrats in the US [TVA excepted _ed.].

While Russia's vast energy resources are keeping the nation's economy afloat -- barely -- corruption in high places of Russian government place ever greater demands on Russia's rusting energy industry.

Perhaps Russia should also look into selling nuclear power to lefty-Luddite dieoff.orgy governments in western Europe, such as Germany. Several nations in Europe appear determined to commit energy suicide by rejecting nuclear and embracing unreliable and exorbitantly expensive wind and solar. Russia is in an excellent position to take advantage of that irrational streak in modern European governments.

Big Oil and Big Chemistry See Salvation in Bio-Feedstocks

The Earth is floating in hydrocarbons, yet the easy oil is in the hands of dictators, kleptocrats, and corrupt national oil companies. Oil is not only used for fuels, it is also used for feedstock in the chemicals, fabrics, plastics, and lubricants industries. When big international oil companies and big international chemical companies are being held hostage by corrupt tin-pot national oil companies, what do they do? They look for alternative sources and feedstocks. The most promising alternative feedstocks come from biology -- biomass and bio-oils from micro- and macro-organisms.

Many new companies and industries are sprouting up to exploit the potentially huge and profitable economic opportunities. Hundreds of $billions are at stake in chemicals, and $trillions are at stake in the fuels trade. But these fledgling biomass, biofuels, and bio-chemicals companies need financial backing, and much of their backing is coming from big oil and big chemicals.

Advancing next-generation biofuels technology from proof-of-concept to commercial reality will require major investment, a need that is being filled in part by oil giants and other industrial players. At the same time, these corporate powerhouses are staking their claims in this emerging area knowing that dwindling fossil fuel reserves will limit their existing businesses, according to Burrill & Company's annual report on the biotech industry.

"Big Oil is to biofuels companies what Big Pharma has been to biotech drugmakers," says G. Steven Burrill, CEO of the San Francisco-based merchant banking firm Burrill & Company. "It's a symbiotic relationship. Biofuels developers need Big Oil's deep pockets, global presence, and engineering expertise. At the same time, Big Oil needs a strategy beyond fossil fuels if they are to have long-term financial health."

...It's not just large oil companies, such as Royal Dutch Shell, Total, and BP that are making strategic investments in emerging biorenewables. Large chemical concerns such as DuPont and Dow Chemical are also positioning themselves to become major players in the field.

"Because of the cost and complexity of scaling biofuels to a point where they could compete with conventional fossil fuels, the early opportunities for these biofuel companies will be in the area of high-value specialty chemicals," Mr. Burrill says.

Renewable chemicals represent an enormous opportunity to companies that are challenged by the scale and cost of fuel production. Although most companies say their chemicals can compete with petrochemical-based molecules when oil is selling for $60 to $80 a barrel, with the exception of ethanol and handful of other alternatives, few renewables have reached commercial scale. As these companies ramp up operations, they are turning to renewable chemicals as a substitute for petroleum-derived chemicals for use in plastics, fibers, cosmetics, and as bulk and specialty chemicals.

These findings are contained within Biotech 2011-Life Sciences: Looking Back to See Ahead, Burrill & Company's 25th annual report on the biotech industry. The book is now available in print and electronic format at www.burrillandco.com/resources.html. _Marketwire

A good example of a savvy biotech company jumping into these waters is Amyris, in the East SF Bay area. Amyris has developed farnesene from biomass and called it Biofene. The company plans to market the chemical to the global surfactants business, to generate cash flow to finance a frantic program of ongoing research into further bio-chemicals and bio-fuels from biomass production.

Gevo is another busy startup hoping to prosper in both the bio-fuels and bio-chemicals areas. Gevo has developed a proprietary yeast for fermenting corn sugars into butanol -- instead of ethanol. Butanol is a much higher value fuel than ethanol, and a precursor to high value chemicals. Gevo is retrofitting ethanol plants in Minnesota and South Dakota for production of bio-butanol.

One problem for these high tech startups is the emergence of abundant, cheap natural gas from unconventional sources. As Shell's Qatar GTL plant proves, natural gas can be an excellent feedstock for production of liquid fuels and chemicals if the price of feedstock is low enough.

And yet, Earth is a biological planet. Biomass of one type or another grows prolifically over the greater portion of both land and seas. Hydrocarbons are not as readily available at all locations as biomass could be. As new methods of fermentation, gasification, pyrolysis, torrefaction, etc. are developed for processing all forms of biomass, expect the smart money to discover the versatility of biology and biological products.

Genomatica Ferments bio-Butanediol at Demonstration Scale

1,4-Butanediol is used industrially as a solvent and in the manufacture of some types of plastics, elastic fibers and polyurethanes. In organic chemistry, 1,4-butanediol is used for the synthesis of γ-butyrolactone (GBL). In the presence of phosphoric acid and high temperature, it dehydrates to the important solvent tetrahydrofuran.[8] At about 200 °C in the presence of soluble ruthenium catalysts, the diol undergoes dehydrogenation to form butyrolactone.[9]

World production of 1,4-butanediol is about one million metric tons per year and market price is about 2,000 USD (1,600 EUR) per ton (2005). Almost half of it is dehydrated to tetrahydrofuran to make fibers such as Spandex.[10] The largest producer is BASF.[11] _Wikipedia

Genomatica Research Goals, Publications
Using engineered micro-organisms, San Diego based Genomatica has achieved demonstration scale fermentation of over $2 billion a year chemical butanediol (BDO) from sugars. Commercial production of bio-BDO is planned for 2012, with rapid scale-up to industrial "world-scale" production by 2014. (h/t GCC)

Source
Current feedstocks for the genomatica platform consist of refined sugars. As depicted above, the company plans to utilise cellulosic sugars from biomass as the cheaper feedstocks become available. Eventual use of syngas from bio-waste as a fermentation feedstock is planned.

As the table above illustrates, BDO is just the first product ($2 billion global production) planned for the Genomatica line. As more biotech companies move into "green chemicals" production using alternative feedstocks to petroleum, the established order in big chemicals is likely to shift considerably.

Expect to see such transformations occurring in the chemical industry before they occur in the fuels industry, due to the higher value per ton of targeted chemicals. Later, many of the same companies who perfect their processes and business models with high value chemicals, will move into much higher volume synthetic fuels production.

1st Sales from Shell's Gas to Liquids + 2 Approaches to Coals to Liquids

Unconventional hydrocarbon resources represent a huge resource as alternatives to liquid petroleum fuels. Liquids from coal and liquids from gas are potentially competitive at today's petroleum prices -- with proper development and scaling of industrial processes.

Big News from Shell's Pearl GTL Plant in Qatar:
Shell sells first gasoil from Pearl Gas-to-Liquids plant

The $19 billion Pearl gas-to-liquids plant, built in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, will reach full capacity by the middle of 2012, when it is expected to convert 1.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day into kerosene, gasoil, base oils, paraffin and naphtha, Shell said today in a statement.

Pearl would generate about $6 billion a year in profit for Shell assuming oil at $70 a barrel, Andrew Brown, the company’s executive vice president for the country, said last year. Pearl and a Qatari gas liquefaction plant that started earlier this year may account for 10 percent of the company’s output when both are fully operational.

...Gas-to-liquids plants such as Pearl produce fuels that would normally be made in an oil refinery and hence benefit when natural gas is cheaper than crude. Oil is close to four times more expensive than gas on an energy equivalent basis and was a record five times more expensive in April, based on New York futures prices.

Pearl will have the capacity to produce 140,000 barrels a day of liquid fuels normally produced in a refinery ... as well as 120,000 barrels a day of condensate and liquid petroleum gas, byproducts of natural-gas production._BW

A plasma gasification CTL plant for Morristown, Tennessee, is planning the beginning of operations by November 2012. The plant will utilise plasmas at 30,000 degrees F to create a clean syngas from coal, for catalytic diesel synthesis.

An alternative CTL approach planned for China involves the production of ethanol from coal. Chinese developers intend to sell this ethanol both within China and on the international ethanol market. They may even sell their coal ethanol to Russia and label it as vodka? ;-)

Al Fin energy analysts prefer the coal to diesel approach, given the much higher value of diesel compared to ethanol. In addition, any catalytic synthesis plant capable of producing diesel from syngas, could be modified to produce other high value chemicals, plastics, lubricants, etc.

Similarly, GTL plants using catalytic synthesis can be modified to produce a wide array of hydrocarbon based chemicals, materials, fuels, and lubricants.

Carnival of Nuclear Energy #56 Hosted at NEI Nuclear Notes

The 56th edition of the Carnival of Nuclear Energy is being hosted at NEI Nuclear Notes. (h/t Brian Wang) Here are some excerpts:

To start, Rod Adams at Atomic Insights has a piece describing what’s happening between the NRC, the AP1000 and Friends of the Earth. According to Rod, the NRC appears to be wavering in its commitment to its own established process because some believe that receiving 14,000 emails on the AP1000 design certification indicates a high level of general public opposition. Rod notes that the emails are mainly from a single group, the FOE, who have professionally opposed nuclear energy for 40 years. The group claims credit for orchestrating nearly every one of those emails as part of a campaign against nuclear energy in general, not against the AP1000 in particular. The FOE sources who have identified the cited "technical issues" have questionable professional backgrounds, long histories of antinuclear activity, and little credibility.
Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat discusses the NRC Inspector General’s report on the NRC Chairman’s use of budget guidance on the review of the Yucca Mountain license. According to media summaries of the leaked IG’s review in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, the Chairman issued controversial budget guidance to his staff to stop the work and brushed off complaints from other commissioners about it.
Rick Maltese at Deregulate the Atom pointed out that the NRC should not get all the credit for nuclear energy's decades of safety.

The Institute for Nuclear Power Operations in the US and the World Association of Nuclear Operators deserve a lot of the credit for improvements in safety and other design improvements. They are the Nuclear Industry’s self regulating bodies. And most of the accomplishments were made within the 10 or so years after the Three Mile Island accident. I point this out to set the record straight about who and how the excellent record of safety that has come about in the nuclear industry is not at all understood.

Alan Rominger and Steve Skutnik at Neutron Economy have two posts to mention. Alan explains the connection between the recent idea for "charter cities" where small modular reactors located at the bottom of the ocean can provide sustainable, independent power for such efforts. And Steve explains why he ultimately went from being a physicist to a nuclear engineer. Steve encourages other nuclear professionals and advocates to tell their stories of how they came to be involved in nuclear energy as well (I’m reminded of this example).
Charles Barton at Nuclear Green asks: Why Is Renewable Energy So Expensive, While Molten Salt Reactors will be So Cheap? He finds that an examination of input materials for wind generation systems and solar PV generation is greater than the input materials for an Advanced High Temperature Reactor. The study he cites reveals that the AHTR, a near relative of the Molten Salt Reactor, has big advantages by the little amount of resources needed. MSRs can potentially offer the same material input advantages over renewables, and thus may generate electricity at very competitive costs.
Brian Wang at Next Big Future reports that Lawrenceville Plasma Physics’s (LPP) research team has sorted out several issues on their dense plasma focus fusion project which should enable them to substantially increase power.
_NEI Nuclear Notes

Despite the Obama administration's overarching policy of energy starvation and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's blatant obstructionism, small modular reactors are being developed rapidly -- the B&W reactor being a prime example.

The concept behind mPower, and small modular reactors designed by B&W competitors, is to let electric utilities add nuclear generation in small blocks. While most reactors on the market today generate more than 1,000 megawatts of power, an mPower module would provide 125 megawatts. A utility could order just enough modules to meet its needs, Halfinger said.

“There are places in the world where they need 1,000 megawatts, (but) one size does not fit all,” he said. “A lot of places need 200 megawatts.”

The nuclear industry has been abuzz about small modular reactors. Westinghouse, NuScale Power and Holtec International also are working on modular designs.

Cross-posted from Al Fin

Complementary Uses for Waste Heat and Cryogenic Storage

Leeds Engineering
The scheme pictured above is from the University of Leeds Engineering. The process involves using low cost off-peak power to cool air to liquid cryogen. During peak load hours, the cryogen is combined with waste industrial heat to generate peak load power in a turbine.

Oregon State Engineering
The above schema comes from Oregon State University Engineering, depicting a process for turning waste heat into mechanical power for cooling. Heat-to-cooling efficiencies of up to 80% are claimed. The OSU process combines micro-channel heat exchange with an organic rankine cycle turbine to drive the refrigerant compressor. If used to generate electric power from waste heat, efficiencies of only 15% to 20% are claimed.

Leeds Engineering
The schema above is from the University of Leeds Engineering. It depicts a combined use of waste heat from power production for either cooling -- using absorption refrigeration -- or for assisting in the generation of electric power using cryogenic storage.

It is easy to see how the OSU micro-channel / organic rankine cycle process might be used in such a trigeneration scheme, substituting for the absorption cooling in the scheme above.

The purpose of combining different processes together -- as in either CHP or IGCC etc -- is to achieve higher efficiencies and more economical production.

While the above waste heat retrieval processes are more efficient than thermoelectric conversion, they are less suited for mobile uses due to their greater complexity. But for use on industrial and utility scales, such processes are likely to prove as useful for integration into total power schemes as the emerging flow cell batteries.

An advantage of the cryogenic storage approach is that whenever a relative excess of electricity persists over an extended time, the cryogen can be separated into liquid N2 and liquid O2 and sold for a profit.

New Subcritical Thorium Reactor Revolution

GWPF
Somewhere in Cheshire an energy revolution is brewing. Modern nuclear researchers are developing new approaches to safe subcritical reactors, using fertile thorium as fuel. The new reactor designs will be incredibly safe, proliferation resistant, and will produce only miniscule and easily stored amounts of long-lived nuclear waste.

Imagine a safe, clean nuclear reactor that used a fuel that was hugely abundant, produced only minute quantities of radioactive waste and was almost impossible to adapt to make weapons. It sounds too good to be true, but this isn’t science fiction. This is what lies in store if we harness the power of a silvery metal found in river sands, soil and granite rock the world over: thorium.

One ton of thorium can produce as much energy as 200 tons of uranium, or 3.5 million tons of coal, and the thorium deposits that have already been identified would meet the entire world’s energy needs for at least 10,000 years. Unlike uranium, it’s easy and cheap to refine, and it’s far less toxic. Happily, it produces energy without producing any carbon dioxide: so an economy that ran on thorium power would have virtually no carbon footprint.

Better still, a thorium reactor would be incapable of having a meltdown, and would generate only 0.6 per cent of the radioactive waste of a conventional nuclear plant. It could even be adapted to ‘burn’ existing, stockpiled uranium waste in its core, thus enormously reducing its radioactive half-life and toxicity.

...The good news is that, thanks to funding from the Research Councils UK Basic Technology Programme, we’ve taken the first, critical step to making this dream a reality – constructing an incredibly hi-tech, cutting-edge machine with a surprisingly ordinary name: Emma.

Daresbury, the science park where Emma lives in a big, bare building with solid concrete walls more than two feet thick, isn’t especially scenic – it’s overlooked by a power station and stands on the boggy Cheshire flatland between Runcorn and Warrington, at the head of the Mersey estuary.


...Emma is a particle accelerator, the first of an entirely new type. Since the first such machines were built nearly 80 years ago, accelerators – devices that propel beams of electrons, protons or other particles to high speeds – have played a vital role in experimental physics, opening up fresh insights into the origins of the universe and the nature of matter. But most are big and expensive. The best known and biggest of all is the Large Hadron Collider operated by CERN in Switzerland, an underground ring 17 miles in circumference, which cost billions to construct.

Emma is different. She is the world’s first ‘non- scaling, fixed-field, alternating-gradient’ (NS-FFAG) accelerator. In layman’s terms, says Bliss, this means she is a ‘pocket-sized’ machine, the prototype of a new generation that will be significantly smaller and cheaper than its predecessors.

And this is Emma’s special significance. Making particle accelerators affordable means they could be built and used in practical, everyday settings – such as thorium power stations. The key to thorium energy is likely to be the further development of ‘pocket-sized’ machines – precisely the kind of accelerator that looks and behaves like Emma.

... Thorium atoms only start to undergo fissile nuclear reactions and thus to release their energy when they’re bombarded with neutrons, and these would have to be supplied by an external source – ultimately, an accelerator.

‘This means the margin of safety is far greater than with a conventional plant,’ says Cywinski. ‘If the accelerator fails, all that will happen is that the reaction will subside. To stop the reactor, all you would have to do is switch off the accelerator.’
And if hit by an earthquake, he adds, even one as powerful as the one that wrecked Fukushima, a thorium plant would be ‘intrinsically safer’.

‘There’d be some residual radioactivity heating the core, but sustained nuclear fission would simply stop. Everything would cool much faster. You’d be left not with potential catastrophe, but just a heap of molten metal and metal oxides.’

This type of plant – dubbed the Energy Amplifier by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Carlo Rubbia in 1993, when he patented the basic design – wouldn’t be simple. Because neutrons carry no electrical charge, the magnets in a particle accelerator have no effect on them.

Hence, the way to generate the neutrons necessary to trigger nuclear reactions in thorium would be to build a ‘spallation source’ in the middle of the reactor core. This is a substance – molten lead, for example – which produces neutrons when you fire a beam of protons at it. That beam, in turn, would come from a particle accelerator.

...Last year, ThorEA published a report, Towards An Alternative Nuclear Future, which concluded it should be possible to build the first 600MW power plant fuelled by thorium with three attached ‘pocket-sized’ NS-FFAG accelerators within 15 years, at a cost of about £2 billion – making it highly competitive in relation to fossil-fuel or conventional nuclear alternatives. _GWPF_from_MailOnline

Using "pocket-sized" accelerators to generate spallation neutrons to breed fissile U233 from fertile Th232 might allow for highly scalable and versatile reactor designs, which would certainly be safer than any nuclear reactors currently generating power. And nuclear is by far the safest form of power generation currently in existence.

Below, you can see researcher Rachael Buckley standing inside the EMMA device.

Thorium itself is plentiful, and will be quite cheap once the infrastructure is developed. The cost for subcritical reactor designs depends mainly on the cost of the accelerators and reactor vessels, and containment. The fuel itself is a negligible expense. And by reducing the quantity of waste to be stored and lowering the proliferation potential of the reactor dramatically, those costs would also plummet.

This technology will also be useful in the perpetual fight against cancer.

‘I’m optimistic we can build a machine that overcomes the technical challenges and would be applicable for cancer therapy straight away,’ he says. ‘I think Pamela can be built for an overall cost of £10-15 million, and would take about five years. And that would be a crucial stepping stone towards a thorium power station. It wouldn’t be cheap. But it would be highly competitive.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2001548/Electron-Model-Many-Applications-Technology-save-world.html#ixzz1P4ubEPYz

It will take time to put the pieces together, but the writing is on the wall, if modern humans will only take the time to read it and take action.

MIT Study: Climate Policy Must Destroy the World to Save It

GCC
According to an MIT study, the conversion of coal to liquid fuels via gasification and Fischer Tropsch, has great potential for clean and economical replacement of petroleum fuels, as the price of oil edges higher. Unless, that is, a global climate policy is in place -- which will force additional costs to the technology so as to make it uneconomical.

Coal-to-liquid technology has been in existence since the 1920s and was used extensively in Germany in 1944, producing around 90 percent of the national fuel needs at that time. Since then, the technology has been largely abandoned for the relatively cheaper crude oil of the Middle East. A notable exception is South Africa, where CTL conversion still provides about 30 percent of national transportation fuel.

But will there be a resurgence of CTL technology? To determine the role that CTL conversion would play in the future global fuel mix, researchers examined several crucial factors affecting CTL prospects. Different scenarios were modeled, varying the stringency of future carbon policies, the availability of biofuels and the ability to trade carbon allowances on an international market. Researchers also examined whether CTL-conversion plants would use carbon capture and storage technology, which would lower greenhouse gas emissions but create an added cost.

The study found that, without climate policy, CTL might become economical as early as 2015 in coal-abundant countries like the United States and China. In other regions, CTL could become economical by 2020 or 2025. Carbon capture and storage technologies would not be used, as they would raise costs. In this scenario, CTL has the potential to account for about a third of the global liquid-fuel supply by 2050.

However, the viability of CTL would be highly limited in regions that adopt climate policies, especially if low-carbon biofuels are available. Under scenarios that include stringent future climate policies, the high costs associated with a large carbon footprint would diminish CTL prospects, even with carbon capture and storage technologies. CTL conversion may only be viable in countries with less stringent climate policies or where low-carbon fuel alternatives are not available. _MIT_via_GCC

MIT study PDF 512 KB

In other words, costs for energy are likely to be driven far higher with top-down carbon penalties than with more market-oriented energy policies. Given the rather shaky nature of global economic regimes, the pursuit of expensive carbon penalties is apt to depress global trade and western economies beyond the current troubles.

Climate change science has been forced to backpedal on a number of over-wrought alarmist claims recently, and has had its nose rubbed in some rather unsavoury insider activity as a result of the public release of a number of emails between some rather unscrupulous climate scientists (ClimateGate).

It would be a shame to discover that world economies had been subjected to ruinously expensive carbon policies which were based on nothing more than sham science. And yet, such may well be the case.

More: A single but dramatic example of the destructive impact of Obama's EPA climate regulations on US energy supply These governmental and inter-governmental bureaucrats of the faux environmentalist persuasion do not care how many lives or enterprises they destroy. Still, you cannot claim that Obama did not give fair warning of what he planned to do. The promise of energy starvation is one that he aims to keep, and damn the costs.

Bringing Fischer Tropsch into the 21st Century

The Fischer–Tropsch process involves a series of chemical reactions that lead to a variety of hydrocarbons. Useful reactions give alkanes:

(2n+1) H2 + n CO → CnH(2n+2) + n H2O

where 'n' is a positive integer. The formation of methane (n = 1) is generally unwanted. Most of the alkanes produced tend to be straight-chain alkanes, although some branched alkanes are also formed. In addition to alkane formation, competing reactions result in the formation of alkenes, as well as alcohols and other oxygenated hydrocarbons. Usually, only relatively small quantities of these non-alkane products are formed, although catalysts favoring some of these products have been developed. _Wikipedia

hte AG Heidelberg is collaborating with BP to improve efficiency and yields for Fischer Tropsch (F-T) catalysts and processes. F-T catalytic synthesis takes syngas from several different sources and converts it to synthetic fuels, lubricants, and other valuable chemicals. The process was invented in Germany in the 1920s and has been tweaked and modified ever since in attempts to improve throughput and quality of product, as well as the economic bottom line.

As demand for hydrocarbons grows due to rising global populations and the industrialisation of emerging nations, more interest is being shown in F-T and similar catalytic synthesis approaches to making hydrocarbons. The higher the price of petroleum, the greater the interest in F-T will grow.

The BP Conversion Technology Centre is continuing to work with hte in the field of Fischer-Tropsch catalysis and process. The Fischer-Tropsch process is used to convert syngas into synthetic fuels and lubricants, and due to the global resources situation is currently gaining importance. Syngas itself can be formed from gaseous or solid carbon sources such as natural gas, coal or biomass.

hte has provided in-house developed testing capacities as well as an experienced project team. Over the period of the collaboration, hte’s technology platform has been continuously refined and advanced for the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis reaction allowing BP to perform a large number of rapid and precise data measurements in support of catalyst and process scale-up. Used systematically this data rapidly generates information on reaction kinetics, the fundamentals of start-up and activation and the impact of key process parameters. This builds confidence in BP’s implementation of their FT technology across a variety of potential applications and feedstocks.

...BP and hte are now set to extend their successful cooperation in the field of Fischer-Tropsch for another year. Dirk Demuth, CEO at hte, is encouraged by this successful cooperation, commenting:

"We are delighted to continue working as a reliable partner to BP. From a strategic perspective, performing catalyst quality control and process optimisation for our customers is becoming increasingly important to us. hte will continue to add value to the BP Fischer-Tropsch project through its high-profile scientific team and its leading technology platform "

_hte AG Heidelberg

h/t GreenCarCongress

The BP / hte collaboration is one of many projects into synthetic fuels being spurred by current high oil prices and geopolitical instability -- particularly in oil dictatorships.

Fischer Tropsch Archives -- a large collection of documents dealing with F-T and related processes

World Oil Reserves Continue to Rise Year on Year

In the absence of replenishment by successful exploration or reserves growth, so-called 'reserves replacement', proved reserves would tend to decline over time as production depleted the existing reserve base. However, the tendency has been for proved reserves at the aggregate level to increase over time as reported discoveries, extensions and improved recovery have exceeded production.

Global oil reserves rose by 6.6 billion bbls to 1,383 billion bbls in 2010. That represents an increase of 25% over the 2000 figure of 1,105 billion bbls, despite an estimated cumulative production of 318 billion bbls during the intervening ten years. Thus global reserves additions amounted to around 596 billion bbls between 2000 and 2010. _BP Statistical Review of World Energy

As oil prices continue to trend higher, more resources will be devoted to exploration, discovery, and production of new reserves. In addition, more work will continue to be put toward substitution of alternative synthetic liquid fuels in place of conventional petro-fuels.

Something that peak oil doomers need to ask themselves: "If oil production hasn't crashed under the Obama energy starvation regime, under the lax maintenance and production regimes of Russian, Venezuelan, and Iranian national oil companies, and under the general incompetence and corruption of state oil companies around the world -- what will it take to crash global oil production far enough to bring about the collapse?"

The world is floating in hydrocarbons of all kinds. The only shortages in the human world are the shortages of human ingenuity and human will.

Downloads for the BP Statistical Review 2011

More: The critical need to give up on lefty-Luddite energy starvation

Carbon Sciences Claims Better Catalysts for GTL

1. The conventional steam reforming using steam:
CH4 + H2O ↔ CO + 3 H2 (∆H = 206 kJ/mol) …………..( 1.1)
2. Carbon dioxide reforming of methane:
CH4 + CO2 ↔ 2 CO + 2 H2 (∆H = 247 kJ/mol) ……… (1.2)
3. Partial oxidation using oxygen:
CH4 + O2 ↔ CO + 2 H2 (∆H = - 38 kJ/mol) ………….. (1.3)
(Source)

GCCThe race is on to find economical uses for the rich bonanzas of methane being unleashed globally by North American practises of horizontal drilling and various types of fracturing tight shale gas formations. Both gas-to-liquids (GTL) and LNG are being proposed and developed to extend the economic reach of methane deposits -- many of which may be stranded far from lucrative markets.

Carbon Sciences Inc. has developed a catalyst which it claims will make the process of dry (CO2 reforming, #2 above) reforming of methane to syngas more profitable. From high quality syngas, any number of high value chemicals or liquid fuels can be produced.

The UOS catalyst technology, developed over the past decade by Dr. Hui Wang, professor of Chemical Engineering, has demonstrated high performance and reliability. The UOS catalyst achieved 92% conversion into essentially 1:1 H2/CO syngas with no detectable sintering, no significant carbon deposition, and thus no catalyst deactivation. Dr. Wang’s research team has successfully tested the catalyst for 2,000 hours of continuous operation in a bench top reactor.


The catalyst has also undergone 600 hours of commercial testing without regeneration. The company claims that its second-generation catalyst has achieved performance levels close to its theoretical limits.


After achieving very positive commercial test results for our catalyst, we are moving ahead aggressively to accelerate the production of larger quantities of the catalyst, as well as completing the technical and economic analyses in preparation for discussions with strategic partners. Working with the GTL experts at our engineering firm, Emerging Fuels Technology, we also plan to demonstrate an end-to-end process that will produce samples of diesel fuel that can be used by existing diesel vehicles.


—Byron Elton, Carbon Sciences’ CEO
Broadly, the methane dry reforming reaction is:

CO2 + CH4 → 2CO + 2H2

...Carbon Sciences’ claims that using its catalyst can achieve a 20% to 30% capital cost advantage over the alternatives because dry reforming is a simpler process, does not require an oxygen plant, uses small amounts of steam and has high conversion efficiency. Additionally, the feedstock cost of dry reforming syngas may be lowered by as much as 25% because CO2 is a zero cost feedstock (and often negative value) that occurs naturally in methane gas fields.
... _GCC

In situations where plentiful CO2 is freely available, the dry reforming method may well offer several advantages, and Carbon Sciences Inc.'s new catalyst may find itself a very lucrative niche in the brave new world of synthetic liquid hydrocarbons and high value chemicals.

But in the long run, better catalysts will lead to GTL processes which will bypass the energy-intensive gasification stage. It is commonly known that micro-organisms break down hydrocarbons in the environment to methane. Other micro-organisms have enzymes which perform reverse, synthesis reactions to create medium and longer chain hydrocarbons. It is these lower temperature synthesis reactions which will win out in the end, probably using robust biomimetic inorganic nano-catalysis. While humans will eventually move away from hydrocarbon fuels, they will likely be using hydrocarbon based chemicals and plastics for many centuries to come.

Risk in Perspective: Who Is Afraid of Nuclear Power

Dan Yurman has published an excellent review of the German government's decision to close down all of its nuclear power plants by the year 2022. The decision's costs to German society and the German people will be incalculable, and once again call to our attention the fact that ordinary humans have no valid perspective on risk.

The chart below comes from an an article out of the Journal of Physicians and Surgeons, in PDF format. Risks from a wide range of events and phenomena are ranked according to days of lost life expectancy. The risks at top are measured in thousands of days in lost expectancy. As you drop down through the chart, lesser risks are measured in days of lost life expectancy. As you can see, risks from nuclear power occupy the very lowest position -- a small fraction of a single day of lost life expectancy on average -- if calculated by government sources.

Journal of Physicians and Surgeons (US) PDF
And yet, Germany's government and much of the entire nation of Germany has panicked itself into a dangerous and expensive restricting of its own future energy resources. Sometimes government can undo damage that government has done previously -- at least in part. Future German governments will curse what Merkel's government has done, but they will deal with it -- and almost certainly return to nuclear power out of necessity.

But they will be forced to buy massive amounts of power from neighboring countries at much higher rates than would have been necessary if they had preserved their nuclear power resources. And when Germany does choose to go nuclear again, it will have to buy reactors and fuels from other countries -- countries which instead of panicking, chose to develop safer, cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable nuclear reactors.

ZeaChem and Procter & Gamble's Green Chemistry Venture

Cellulosic ethanol producer ZeaChem utilises both biomass gasification and microbial fermentation to produce biofuels from cellulose. But the small startup is joining with commercial giant Procter & Gamble to use ZeaChem's biorefinery platform for producing larger and more sophisticated high value chemicals from cellulose:

In Colorado, ZeaChem announced a binding multi-year joint development agreement with Procter & Gamble. The agreement will accelerate development of ZeaChem’s product platform beyond C2 through the commercialization of “drop-in” bio-based chemicals and other products.

The two companies will utilize ZeaChem’s existing infrastructure at its lab in Menlo Park, Calif., pilot facility at Hazen Research in Golden, Colo., and demonstration-scale biorefinery in Boardman, Ore. Together, P&G and ZeaChem will research, develop and demonstrate, scale-up, and commercialize this new product platform.

...ZeaChem’s technology is a parallel hybrid system of fermentation and gasification. This hybrid process achieves 40% higher yield than other cellulosic processes. Theoretical maximum for biochemical and thermochemical players is approximately 100 gallons/BDT compared to ZeaChem’s theoretical maximum of 165 gallons/BDT. At 85% efficiency, actual yield for biochemical and thermochemical only processes will be around 90 gallons/BDT compared to 135 gallon/BDT for ZeaChem’s technology. This significant yield advantage translates into economic saving and environmental benefits. _BiofuelsDigest

Higher yield biorefinery processes will certainly push up the timetable for viable biofuels. In the case of ZeaChem, both gasification and microbial fermentation will be advanced. Other companies will emphasise gasification plus F-T or similar catalytic synthesis -- OR -- will take the microbial path from beginning to end, cellulose to fuels or chemicals.

It is possible that other approaches besides thermochemical, catalytic synthesis, or microbial metabolism, will prove even more viable in the long run. According to Al Fin energy analysts, the year 2020 is the target date for competitively priced drop-in renewable substitutes for petrofuels and chemicals, using microbes (including algae) as primary producers and biomass as the primary feedstock. For competitively priced dropin fuels and chemicals using thermochemical approaches primarily, the year 2015 is the target date.

In the long run, microbes and nano-tech synthesis will sweep every other approach to chemicals and fuels off the stage due to economic and overall energy efficiencies.

Malthusianist Doomerism Haunts Environmental Left

From Paul Erlich's warnings of a population bomb to The Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth," contemporary ecological politics have consistently embraced [leftist] green Malthusianism despite the fact that the Malthusian premise has persistently failed for the better part of three centuries. Indeed, the [capitalist agri-tech] revolution was exponentially increasing agricultural yields at the very moment that Erlich was predicting mass starvation and the serial predictions of peak oil and various others resource collapses that have followed have continue to fail. _Breakthrough.org

One good recent example of frustrated Malthusianism is natural gas supply. Peak oil doomers declared an impending "peak natural gas" throughout the first decade of the 2000s. Even now, in the face of a shale gas bonanza sprouting up over the last few years, the doomers are frantic to justify their Malthusian true faith -- resorting to false claims of rampant water pollution from fracking fluids etc.

Within a year, U.S. recoverable shale gas reserves alone rose from 340 trillion cubic feet to 823 tcf, the Energy Department estimates. That’s 36 years’ worth, based on what the USA currently consumes from all gas sources, or the equivalent of 74 years’ of current annual US oil production. The reserves span the continent, from Barnett shale in Texas to Marcellus shale in Eastern and Mid-Atlantic states – to large deposits in western Canada, Colorado, North Dakota, Montana and other states (and around the world).

Instead of importing gas, the United States could become an exporter. The gas can move seamlessly into existing pipeline systems, to fuel homes, factories and electrical generators, serve as a petrochemical feedstock, and replace oil in many applications. States, private citizens and the federal government could reap billions in lease bonuses, rents, royalties and taxes. Millions of high-paying jobs could be “created or saved.” Plentiful gas can also provide essential backup power for wind turbines.

...Environmentalists voiced alarm. HBO aired “Gasland,” a slick propaganda film about alleged impacts of fracking on groundwater. Its claims have been roundly debunked (for instance, methane igniting at a water faucet came from a gas deposit encountered by the homeowner’s water well – not from a fracking operation). A politically motivated Oscar was predicted, but didn’t happen.

The Environmental Protection Agency revealed a multiple personality disorder. Its Drinking Water Protection Division director told Congress there is not a single documented instance of polluted groundwater due to fracking. (Studies by Colorado and Texas regulators drew the same conclusion.)

EPA’s Texas office nevertheless insisted that Range Resources was “endangering” a public aquifer and ordered the company to stop drilling immediately and provide clean water to area homes. EPA officials then failed to show up at the hearing or submit a single page of testimony, to support their claims.

Meanwhile, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced plans to conduct a “life-cycle” or “cradle-to-grave” study of hydraulic fracturing drilling and gas production techniques, to assess possible impacts on groundwater and other ecological values. Depending on whether the study is scientific or politicized, it could lead to national, state-by-state or even city-by-city drilling delays, bans – or booms. _MasterResource_via_OilPrice

While scientists argue whether water wells located within a mile of shale gas wellheads contain higher levels than normal of dissolved methane, there has been no evidence of water contamination or public health hazard from fracking fluids. Given the incredible financial wealth potential of shale gas deposits, it makes far more sense to let individual states regulate shale gas fracking. This is particularly true when the US government is controlled by an administration packing an "energy starvation agenda."

Malthusian lefty-Luddite Greens litter the landscape of European capitals, and under Obama have become a national hazard in the US as well. Their extreme alarmist rhetoric and anti-commerce stance threatens economies across the western world.

Human technology and ingenuity have repeatedly confounded Malthusian predictions yet green ideology continues to cast a suspect eye towards the very technologies that have allowed us to avoid resource and ecological catastrophes. But such solutions will require environmentalists to abandon the "small is beautiful" ethic that has also characterized environmental thought since the 1960's. We, the most secure, affluent, and thoroughly modern human beings to have ever lived upon the planet, must abandon both the dark, zero-sum Malthusian visions and the idealized and nostalgic fantasies for a simpler, more bucolic past in which humans lived in harmony with Nature. _Breakthrough.org

Cross-posted to Al Fin

More on the safety of shale gas fracking:

Study upon study has concluded that hydraulic fracturing doesn’t pose a risk to drinking water. In fact, the last comprehensive study on the issue was conducted by the federal government in 2004, in which EPA found no substantiated cases nationwide of fracturing fluid contaminating groundwater. That evidence stands today.

Anti-gas activists haven’t let a dearth of evidence silence their claims though. A very telling example is a bizarre report just released by Duke University that set off a media frenzy by attempting to draw spurious conclusions based on the presence of methane in drinking water wells and the proximity of those wells to shale gas drilling sites.

The headlines, however, failed to mention that the report itself admits “the study found no evidence of contamination from hydraulic fracturing fluids or saline produced waters.”

Researchers also failed to collect baseline data on the quantity of methane that existed in the wells before drilling began. This is critical, as methane occurs naturally in water in the region where the study was conducted. In fact, the gas presence is a key tool in finding gas resources. Without this baseline information, it’s impossible to understand the significance of this correlation.

The larger problem stems from the way portentous headlines distract from the real issue. Additives injected deep underground in a well-constructed shale well don’t affect the quality of our water in the same way chemicals contained in a well constructed jet engine don’t affect the health of passengers in the plane. The key is ensuring proper well design and proper wastewater treatment/disposal.

Thankfully, state regulators have been working harmoniously with industry representatives to achieve that goal. Unfortunately, this kind of effective collaboration just doesn’t make for good doomsday headlines. _EnergyTribune

And that is what Malthusian lefty-Luddite dieoff.orgy Greens hate about safe and abundant energy: There is nothing to be alarmed about. Doomers have made the apocalypse into a religion and an addiction. Visit any peak oil forum or carbon hysteria website, if you feel the need for a quick mainlined dose of doom.

Of course, if you are more about solutions and means for creating a better life, you may want to work within a fact-supported reality.

More: Pennsylvania's shale oil and gas helping to prevent a double dip recession in the Quaker State

Still More:  Everything you've heard from the mainstream media about fossil fuels is wrong  

Europe Turns Away from Nuclear, Asia Embraces It

Germany has panicked and is running away from nuclear power like a frightened child.

Switzerland appears to be joining Germany in its flight from the future.

Europe's reflexive reaction stands in stark contrast to Asian countries' embrace of nuclear power. By the time Europe emerges from its green narcotic trance, it will be desperate to buy Asian-made nuclear reactors and Asian-produced nuclear fuels at any price it can scratch out.

Idaho Samizdat hosts the 54th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Excerpt:

ANS Nuclear Cafe

• Fitting wind into the grid

Dr. Ulrich Decher analyzes wind, solar, and hydro in the Pacific Northwest and California and asks: What is the “good thing” of having so much wind on the Bonneville Power Administration grid? What will be the outcome of California's renewable energy portfolio goal given the intermittency of wind power?

More on Asian nuclear renaissance:

•China’s nuclear build programme is huge – has the potential to shape world nuclear industry for many decades

•Russia internal build of VVER designs will build credibility for export market

•India’s potential buy of imported LWR designs may change the competitive picture, if EPR, ESBWR, or ABWR (or all of these) get orders

•As new nuclear countries make selections, the aggregate world league table will be important

– countries will look for proven designs with real experience and low costs
– will seek a range of support from vendors (government vendors have edge)

Kee also noted that South Korea, China and India were all planning to sell reactors on the global market. Asian reactors cost less than European or American reactors with the Korean APR-1400 costing only 40% of the cost of the French EPR. _NBF

The Anglospheric nations now have a choice of whether to panic like Europe, or to pursue safer, cheaper, more scalable nuclear reactors which are less prone to risk from proliferation, nuclear wastes, or terror attack.

Synthetic Fuels from CO by Tweaking Molybdenum Nitrogenase

Nitrogenase enzymes allow living organisms to convert atmospheric N2 to organic nitrogen, for growth, development, and metabolism. But Utah State University researchers have discovered that by tweaking molybdenum nitrogenease -- substituting an alanine or glycine in place of the normal valine in a particular position -- the resulting enzyme can do a lot more than convert N2.

...when the nitrogenase MoFe protein α-70Val residue is substituted by alanine or glycine, the resulting variant proteins will catalyze the reduction and coupling of CO to form methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6), ethylene (C2H4), propene (C3H6), and propane (C3H8).

The rates and ratios of hydrocarbon production from CO can be adjusted by changing the flux of electrons through nitrogenase, by substitution of other amino acids located near FeMo-cofactor, or by changing the partial pressure of CO. Increasing the partial pressure of CO shifted the product ratio in favor of the longer chain alkanes and alkenes. _Journal of Biological Chemistry _ via _USU PDF

It is unlikely that the yields are particularly high at this point -- and organic enzymes may well prove too delicate for high volume industrial synthesis of fuels from syngas-derived CO. In that case, biomimetic nano-catalysts are likely to be crafted which can take over for the nitrogenase enzyme.

More from USU:

While studying bacterial enzymes, known as nitrogenases, used in nitrogen reduction, Utah State University biochemists Zhi-Yong Yang and Lance Seefeldt, along with colleague Dennis Dean of Virginia Tech, discovered a molybdenum nitrogenase capable of converting carbon monoxide into usable hydrocarbons. The reaction is similar, they say, to FT synthesis.

“This is pretty profound,” says Seefeldt, professor in USU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “Understanding this process paves the way for developing better ways of converting carbon monoxide, a toxic waste product of combustion, into transportation fuel and precursors for plastics — without the time and energy required for conventional extraction of fossil fuels.”

The scientists’ findings appear in the article “Molybdenum Nitrogenase Catalyzes the Reduction and Coupling of CO to Form Hydrocarbons,” in the June 3, 2011 issue (and May 27 online issue) of Journal of Biological Chemistry. The paper was selected as “Paper of the Week” by the journal’s editorial board, an honor bestowed on the top one percent of more than 6,600 manuscripts reviewed annually by the publication’s editors. In the “Paper of the Week” feature, Yang, a doctoral candidate mentored by Seefeldt, is highlighted as an up-and-coming researcher. _USU

Of course if the researchers focused on creating better nitrogenases for converting atmospheric N2 to organic nitrogen, the revolutionary impact on human society would be just as great as discovering a breakthrough in synthetic fuels production.

It is likely that both breakthroughs will be made in time, built upon the crucial work being done at USU and other labs around the world. If so, better nitrogenases will contribute to abundant food AND abundant fuel.

H/T GreenCarCongress

Comparing Different Methods for Electrical Energy Storage

Images via ESA (ht NBF)
The Electricity Storage Association provides a useful comparison for different methods for electrical energy storage (via Brian Wang). One significant omission from the list is "Cryonic Energy Storage," which may prove to be the best of the current crop of contenders for now, until "flow batteries" are perfected.

Large -scale stationary applications of electric energy storage can be divided in three major functional categories:

Power Quality. Stored energy, in these applications, is only applied for seconds or less, as needed, to assure continuity of quality power.

Bridging Power. Stored energy, in these applications, is used for seconds to minutes to assure continuity of service when switching from one source of energy generation to another.

Energy Management. Storage media, in these applications, is used to decouple the timing of generation and consumption of electric energy. A typical application is load leveling, which involves the charging of storage when energy cost is low and utilization as needed. This would also enable consumers to be grid-independent for many hours.

Although some storage technologies can function in all application ranges, most options would not be economical to be applied in all three functional categories.

... _ESA

More graphic comparisons from ESA below:

Read the entire ESA comparison sheet for more information.

Cryonic energy storage has far more potential than compressed air storage, given the phase change energies involved.

Among electric battery storage methods, flow cell batteries are most scalable and versatile in application. Newer approaches to flow cells using more viscous electrolyte media should allow the technology to be used in vehicular power storage applications.

Do We Really Want to Consume All of These Geo-Hydrocarbons?

The doomsayers of the 1970s thought we would have run out of oil by now because they compared knowledge about the state of supply then with rates of consumption then, and concluded that those available supplies would soon be exhausted. But we have consumed 40 more years’ worth of oil since then and yet find ourselves with more reserves than we believed we had in 1970.

That is possible because the supply of oil isn’t only what is in the earth’s crust. Supply is also determined by the application of human intelligence to the problem of finding the oil we need. Today’s extra reserves are not due chiefly to discoveries of new deposits, but from wringing more supply from already known reserves through enhanced recovery techniques.

...We are nowhere near to running out of natural resources. Human creativity and financial resources together will ensure a continued supply of all the resources we need. The exact form those resources will take cannot be known today, however. It relies on future innovations, which are, by their nature, unpredictable because they will be the fruit of our imagination and curiosity. That is why the human mind is the greatest natural resource of all. _FP

IEA 2008 Taken from CSIRO 2011 (PDF)
It is only a matter of time before fuels produced from agricultural, forestry, municipal waste, marine biomass, and microbial production become cost competitive with geo-hydrocarbons. Since such renewable fuels can be produced virtually anywhere on the inhabited parts of the planet, once the infrastructure is in place to produce economically competitive renewable liquid fuels, the need for geo-hydrocarbons is likely to shrink steadily, for all parts of the world except for those regions capable of very cheap production of geo-hydrocarbons.

From Data in Rogner 1997 (PDF) via GWPFLikewise, for electricity production, the development of advanced fission reactors which are safer, cleaner, cheaper, more scalable in production, less prone to proliferation and storage hazards, and capable of burning fuel much more thoroughly -- these newer reactors will make the use of coal, gas, and oil for power production virtually obsolete except for areas rich in geo-hydrocarbons which are unable to afford or operate nuclear reactors. If scalable fusion and LENR reactors become workable, the obsolescence of hydrocarbons for production of heat and power should be that much more complete.

The quantities of geo-hydrocarbon pictured in the graphs above are almost certainly gross underestimates -- and it is likely that to some extent "wet gas" is produced on a quasi-renewable basis deep in the crust or in the upper mantle of the planet. Some of that gas may even migrate to upper levels to become economically recoverable. And some of those "renewable" short-chain geo-hycrocarbons may be converted by bacteria into a crude oil, deep in the crust. If so, estimates of Earth's geo-hydrocarbon complement are hugely underestimated by virtually every published source.

CSIRO_2011 (PDF)
We can find clean and affordable ways to use most of these geo-hydrocarbons, certainly. But the plain truth is that we should not have to. We are developing enough alternatives so that we will not require these resources, most of which should remain in place for the time should humans ever go back to a more primitive, more Luddist age.

Substituting renewable synthetic liquid fuels for conventional transportation fuels, and nuclear powered electricity and heat for power from coal and gas, will allow for a relatively smooth transition from geo-hydrocarbons to fuels and energy that will take us at least to the next millenium.

And if we ever do need the geo-hydrocarbons? There will be more in place then, than there were 200 years ago.

Fueling Aviation with Biomass and Other Renewable Feedstocks

More: A 100 page PDF roadmap to aviation biofuels from CSIRO for Australia & New Zealand

A new report from Sustainable Aviation Fuels Northwest touts the ability of the US Northwest region to supply significant quantities of feedstock for sustainable aviation fuels -- via multiple methods of synthesis. PDF Executive Summary of Report

Noting that no single feedstock or technology pathway is likely to provide sustainable aviation fuel at the scale or speed needed to achieve industry goals, the report focuses on a portfolio of options, including different conversion technologies and sources of potentially sustainable biomass, including oilseeds, forest residues, solid waste, and algae.

...SAFN focused on two primary conversion technologies for use with the four feedstocks:

Hydroprocessing. Established hydroprocessing technologies to produce aviation fuels from natural oils. ASTM approval for an aviation fuel using up to a 50% biofuel blend is anticipated later this year. This provides a near-term opportunity to create Northwest supply chains for sustainable aviation fuels utilizing oils from oilseed crops such as camelina, as well as algae and biomass.

Lignocellulosic biomass processing. Emerging technologies that use heat, chemicals and microorganisms to process woody biomass and cellulose into fuels and chemicals. This opens the way to using forest and agricultural residue streams, as well as significant portions of municipal and industrial solid waste. One technology has received ASTM approval and others are in cue. A report chapter provides an overview of emerging technologies and ways to site demonstration facilities in the Northwest.

_GCC

Full SAFN PDF report download 3.7 MB

While the above report focuses on the US Pacific Northwest, in reality other parts of the world are even more prolific producers of biomass, algae, oilseeds, or solid wastes. The tropics are a particularly promising area for feedstock production given the year-round growing climate and abundant sunlight.

As biomass to fuels technology improves and becomes more economical, expect to see and increasing number of wealthy temperate zone nations investing in bioplantations in the tropical zone. As for the politically correct connotations of "neocolonialism" which may accompany such investment in more primitive and impoverished third world nations -- it is best to get away from such blockheaded and reactionary obstacles to clear thinking.

Biofuels feedstock production may be the best fit for a sustainable and appropriate industry that the tropical third world has ever known.

Intelligent Design for Rational Nuclear Evolution

Charles S. Holden founder of Thorenco LLC working with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory physicists has proposed a small transportable 50-megawatt-thermal Thorium converter reactor for multiple uses: producing electricity (15 megawatts), burning up high-level actinides from spent fuel, and producing low-cost, high-temperature steam (or process industrial heat). This high-temperature steam can be used for extraction of oil from tar sands, or desalinating, purifying, and cracking water. The reactor’s fuel matrix can be “tuned” to provide the right output for each particular work process.

Designed by specialists, the reactor core is a squat cylinder, about 140 centimeters in diameter and 50 centimeters tall. Its size makes it portable, so that it can be brought to remote locations to work site and supply heat and electricity there without dependence on long-distance transmission lines. Its small size also allows it to be factory-built and transported to its destination, “plugged in” in a deep underground containment structure, and put to work quickly. The core can be shipped back to the factory when the fuel needs to be changed. _Thorenco

The modern world is in desperate need of a compact, scalable, portable source of reliable power. Several startups and established companies are designing small modular reactors to meet that need, but in nuclear and industrial design there is always room for improvement. The new Thorenco LLC 50 MW thermal thorium reactor answers most of the concerns which critics of nuclear power have expressed:

• Neutrons convert Fertile Thorium-232 to
fissile Uranium-233
• No Plutonium Produced
• No melt downs
• No fuel rods
• No cooling ponds
• No 10,000+ year spent fuel storage _Thorenco Presentation PDFvia NBF

More from NextBigFuture:

•10 years at 40 megawatts
•141 Kg. U-233 “burned” during decade
•More than 100 Kg. of fissile produced
•1600 kilograms of U-233 fissile load
•9000 kilograms of Th-232 fertile load
•23 Grams U-232 produced in fuel over the decade of operations
•Hexagonal Prism 160 Cm. Width and Height
•Fuel Volume 2330 Liters
•Fuel 11.65 Metric Tonnes; 1-2 Metric Tonnes Fissile in Fuel
•Coolant 93,200 Liters; 450 Tonnes
•Reflector Volume 1420 Liters 16.65 Metric Tonnes

Thorenco’s ceramic fuel is dispersed in an inert metal matrix covered by Holden’s Patent Cooperation Treaty application. This solid state metal alloy is composed of four materials. The thorium and uranium fuel particles are embedded in the alloy, which both slows and moderates the fissioning process. There are moderating materials dispersed in the alloy along with the actinide particles. Using the metallic alloys as moderators (instead of the water used in other Thorium reactor designs) allows Thorenco’s reactor to operate in a more energetic neutron spectrum so that its core can have a long life.

The self-regulating reactor is expected to operate for 10 years without needing refueling. _NBF

Not only does the small thorium reactor avoid the production of plutonium, it burns nuclear waste from conventional nuclear reactors -- without producing 10,000 years of radioactive waste products. Besides greater safety in terms of proliferation and waste products -- and in making productive use of nuclear waste from mainstream reactors -- these small modular thorium reactors can be installed in remote locations for dedicated use in mining and industrial CHP applications.

Economically, modular reactors allow much greater versatility for both utility planners and for off-grid applications. Rather than being forced to connect to the grid -- or to overdesign a grid to match large reactor outputs -- economic entities can fit the power source to the actual need.

Energy from Heat: A Variety of Options

Nuclear energy from the heat of fission: Carnival of Nuclear Energy #53 Cool Hand Nuke...Check out the latest carnival of nuclear blog news and views.

New developments in nanoantennas to harvest solar infrared radiative heat...NewEnergyandFuel

Siemens combined cycle turbine technology achieves 60% efficiency...NextBigFuture Combining gas turbines with steam turbines allows the extraction of a larger amount of the heat energy potential contained in coal, gas, biomass . . . . and even nuclear fuels in advanced high temperature gas-cooled reactor designs.

If you add thermal electric technology to combined cycle technology -- to harvest as much waste heat as possible -- you could increase overall efficiency of energy from heat.

Most contemporary energy and power comes from the use of heat energy -- either energy of combustion or energy from nuclear fission. This will be the case for many decades more -- even with the growth of fuel cells, photovoltaics, and other alternative methods of power generation. Advanced biofuels and enhanced geothermal power will continue to utilise heat power and heat engines.

As technology improves, it is crucial for society to make the best use of any energy assets which may be available, rather than to follow the Obama energy starvation approach. Energy is the life's blood of advanced societies. Any persons or groups that are dedicated to the strangulation of energy sources, are enemies of the people who are part of those societies. This is true whether the society derives most of its power from heat, or whether it uses power from matter - antimatter reactors.