Biofuels Prospects--Extremely Good

Biofuels do not need to drive up the price of food or cropland. In fact, bio-ethanol can be made from just about any organic material--including municipal waste.

A biofuel startup in Illinois can make ethanol from just about anything organic for less than $1 per gallon, and it wouldn't interfere with food supplies, company officials said....Coskata, which is backed by General Motors and other investors, uses bacteria to convert almost any organic material, from corn husks (but not the corn itself) to municipal trash, into ethanol.

"It's not five years away, it's not 10 years away. It's affordable, and it's now," said Wes Bolsen, the company's vice president of business development.

The discovery underscores the rapid innovation under way in the race to make cellulosic ethanol cheaply. With the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requiring an almost five-fold increase in ethanol production to 36 billion gallons annually by 2022, scientists are working quickly to reach that breakthrough.___Wired

Cellulosic ethanol can produce 5-10 units of energy for every unit consumed. It is an economical approach to biofuels. And even though ethanol is not as energy-dense as gasoline, there are ways to compensate for that deficit:

Ethanol turbocharging—Ethanol has less energy density than gasoline, lowering vehicle miles-per-gallon. However, MIT researchers are studying small turbocharged engines that run on gasoline but have a separate fuel injection system for ethanol. This approach can boost engine efficiency and enable fuel savings of up to 20–30%.____Source

Another approach to biofuels is algal biodiesel. Algae can grow on wastewater effluent. It also thrives on agricultural runoff.

Imagine if you could scoop algae out of your fish tank and put it in your gas tank. It’s not quite that easy, but it is possible to extract usable fuel from algae. Sommerfeld and Hu are working on a way to produce algae-based biodiesel for cars and trucks.

Biodiesel is a cleaner alternative to regular diesel fuel. Diesel is produced from nonrenewable petroleum. Biodiesel comes from renewable sources such as vegetable oils or animal fats. Biodiesel also burns cleaner than diesel, and it is biodegradable. Pure biodiesel can only be used in modified engines, but a diesel-biodiesel mixture can be used in existing diesel engines.

Scientists around the world are working to produce alternative fuels from a wide variety of plant materials. Ethanol derived from corn is already widely used. Unlike corn, however, algae aren’t food crops. And algae doesn’t have to be grown on arable soil—soil that could be used for growing food.____Physorg

China's ongoing energy crisis is forcing it to look into alternatives to coal. Given China's indifference to environmental quality, we can expect environmental devastation to follow wherever China's biofuel investments go:

Sinopec, China's top oil company, reportedly will cooperate with an Indonesian enterprise to set up biofuel plants and to grow energy crops in Indonesia, with a major investment of US$5 billion. Indonesia's national news agency Antara reported about the project, which would become Sinopec's second large overseas biofuel investment.

The plants and plantations are set to be located in Indonesia's Papua and East Kalimantan regions, and will be used for extracting biodiesel from crude palm oil and jatropha curcas oil.....In January 2007, another oil major, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Indonesian government under which it intends to invest $5.5 billion in the development of the biofuel sector in Indonesia, announcing the establishment of 3 biodiesel processing plants in Kalimantan (earlier post).

Besides Sinopec and CNOOC, several other Chinese state-owned and private enterprises have announced large biofuels investments in, amongst other countries, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mozambique and Congo. Most of these investments have gone unnoticed because China is quite discreet about them.____Source

Given China's emphasis on profits above all else, we can expect to see the decline of the environment in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and various African countries--wherever China invests.

Peak Oil: Meet the Raytheon Oil Shale Microwave

US defense contractor and electronics company Raytheon has developed oil extraction technology that may send "Peak Oil" packing, for a decade or two. At least, giant oil and gas developer Schlumberger thinks so:

Much as a microwave oven heats food, Raytheon Co.‘s (NYSE:RTN) technology relies on microwaves to generate underground heat and melt a waxy substance in the shale called kerogen so it can be converted into oil...Carbon dioxide heated and pressurized into a liquid form is then used to extract the oil from the rock and carry it to a well.

Raytheon and oil companies began exploring ways to extract oil from shale decades ago, but many efforts were shelved in the 1980s as oil prices and supplies stabilized. Some projects _ including Raytheon‘s _ were revived in recent years because of spiking prices, technological improvements and hopes of decreasing U.S. dependency on foreign oil....Most of the attention is focused on oil shale reserves scattered across U.S. federal lands in Colorado, Utah and southwest Wyoming _ an area estimated to contain up to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil trapped in shale, or three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia.

Oilweek

This technology can also be used for extracting oil from tar sands in Canada, and for extracting heavy oils.

The RF/CF combination is more economical and environmentally responsible than older oil shale extraction techniques as it uses less power, does not severely disrupt the landscape or leave behind residue that can enter groundwater supplies....For tar sands and heavy oil, the Raytheon process could yield 10 to 15 barrels of oil equivalent per barrel consumed, due to the lower heating temperatures required. When applied in tar sands, the combined RF/CF technology performs a mild upgrading in-situ, yielding an attractive light sweet crude oil. The process is “tunable”, facilitating production of various product slates.

The use of RF technology in shale processing would enable the fuel to be extracted from the earth in only one to two months. In-ground heating methods that do not employ radio waves, by contrast, require three to four years to replicate the natural conversion process.

Green Car Congress

While efforts to produce sustainable biofuels are gearing up, the ability to economically and cleanly produce petroleum from regional deposits (oil shales and tar sands) should make the necessary transition to renewable energy easier.

Peak oil doom is looking more and more like an adolescent fantasy.

Algal Biodiesel and Other Sustainables

Era I: During periods of intense global warming--90 million and 150 million years ago--large quantities of algae were produced. As the planet went through geologic transformation, the large algae deposits were buried under massively heavy layers of rock, and transformed by time, heat, and pressure into petroleum.

Era II: During the 21st century CE, blessed by mild temperatures and relative wealth, humans learn to grow algae themselves. Humans then convert the algae to oil, using fairly simple chemical techniques.

...PetroSun BioFuels Refining has entered into a joint venture to construct and operate a biodiesel refinery near Coolidge, Arizona. The feedstock for the refinery will be algal oil produced by PetroSun BioFuels at company owned and operated algae farms to be located in Arizona....The refinery will have an annual production capacity of thirty million gallons and will produce 100% renewable biodiesel. PetroSun BioFuels will process the residual algae biomass into ethanol....Petrosun claims that Independent studies have demonstrated that algae is capable of producing in excess of 30 times more oil per acre than corn and soybean crops.

The biorefinery and algae farm complex will generate all of its own electrical and heat requirements, utilize non-potable or saltwater, consume no fossil fuels and will be carbon neutral. The joint venture anticipates that all permits will be approved and construction on the biorefinery should commence during the third quarter of 2008.

Source

Since producing algal biodiesel is more efficient than maize (corn) biodiesel, it is anticipated that industrial production of biodiesel will shift away from food crops such as maize. Algae can be grown on sewer plant effluent, which does not deplete crops or cropland. Consequently, and with good conscience, industry is preparing for larger scale use of biodiesel.

Safeway announced today that it has converted its entire California and U.S. truck fleet to cleaner-burning biodiesel fuel.

The biodiesel initiative makes Safeway one of the first major retailers in the United States to convert its entire fleet of more than 1,000 trucks to cleaner-burning biodiesel fuel. The decision by Safeway will help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 75 million pounds annually, the equivalent of taking nearly 7,500 passenger vehicles off the road each year.

Source

As humans learn to do in a short time what took nature hundreds of millions of years, the problem of sustainable energy will be solved. Although near-term "Peak Oil" appears to be a fantasy, basic prudence suggests that a renewable energy approach is preferable to one that depends upon non-replenishable stocks.

Algae is capable of producing both biodiesel and bio-butanol or ethanol--making its cultivation and use more economical still. As better forms of oil producing and microbe-resistant algae are created, algae will become a year-round all-purpose energy crop that does not raise the cost of food or cropland.

Other ways of producing oil besides biodiesel, include pyrolytic conversion of garbage and organic waste, synthetic biology micro-organsims made to convert plant waste to hydrocarbons, methane to hydrocarbon chemistries, coal to liquid HC, etc.

Approaches to sustainable energy other than liquid biofuels which are very promising, include concentrated full-spectrum photovoltaics, and geothermal.

The organic Rankine cycle-based power system is an advanced binary cycle system that is driven by a simple evaporation process and is entirely enclosed, which means it produces no emissions. The only byproduct is electricity, and the system’s “fuel” -- geothermal hot water -- is a renewable resource.

PureCycle geothermal systems have been in operation since 2006 at Chena Hot Springs Resort in Alaska, as a U.S. Department of Energy Geothermal Technologies demonstration project. It is the first geothermal project in Alaska and the lowest temperature geothermal resource (165° F) ever used for commercial power generation.The PureCycle system makes it possible to tap into a significant new domestic renewable energy resource because it operates at previously unusable low temperatures -- from 165 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

Source


Image credit to Energy Blog and Biodiesel America

The End of Landfills? Waste Pyrolysis to Energy

This is an exciting technology--one of many "waste to energy" technologies that are treating garbage as valuable feedstocks for the production of energy and other valuable products.

Anyone who remembers the great landfill avalanche of 2505 from the movie Idiocracy, will instantly understand the unlikelihood of such a huge landfill ever existing--at least in North America or the rest of the developed world. Garbage will be considered too valuable to just let it sit around and take up space.

More on OTEC and Energy Island

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is at the center of the Energy Island concept. OTEC was invented by Frenchman Georges Claude in the 1920s. The idea is simple: use the approximately 20 degrees C difference in temperature between the deep ocean and tropical surface ocean to drive a heat engine. Besides producing megawatts of electric power, the byproducts of the process include clean freshwater for drinking and growing crops, and plenty of air conditioning.

There are two basic versions of the technology. The first operates in a "closed cycle", using warm surface water to heat ammonia, which boils at a low temperature. This expands into vapour, driving a turbine that produces electricity. Cold water from the depths is used to cool the ammonia, returning it to its liquid state so the process can start again.

The "open cycle" version offers the added benefit of producing drinking water as a by-product.

Warm seawater is introduced into a vacuum chamber, in which it will boil more easily, leaving behind salt and generating steam to turn a turbine. Once it has left the turbine, the steam enters a condensing chamber cooled by water from the depths, in which large quantities of desalinated water are produced - 1.2 million litres for every megawatt of energy.

A 250MW plant (a sixth of the capacity of the new coal-fired power station that has just won planning permission in Kent) could produce 300 million litres of drinking water a day, enough to fill a supertanker. Using electrolysis, it would also be possible to produce hydrogen fuel.

Telegraph
The map below displays the ocean area where the temperature difference between surface waters and the deep ocean is great enough to allow large scale economical OTEC . By placing a site close to an arid coastline, an OTEC energy island could make a huge difference in quality of life--by providing reliable electric power, plentiful fresh water for drinking and crop irrigation, and chiller-based air conditioning.
Energy island based seasteads could also provide a nucleus for burgeoning aquaculture--based upon the nutrient-rich deep ocean water routinely pumped into the OTEC generator.

Projects for Harvesting the Energy and Other Riches of the Ocean

Energy Islands are floating modular renewable energy platforms that incorporate photovoltaics, solar thermal towers, wave energy, ocean current energy turbines, wind turbines, and OTEC (ocean thermal energy conversion). Designed by architect Alex Michaelis, the concept is aimed at capturing a share of Richard Branson's Virgin Earth Prize.

Each island would be built on a floating platform and at its centre would be a plant that converts heat from the tropical sea into electricity and drinking water. Below deck would be marine turbines to harness energy from underwater currents and around the edge floating devices to provide wave power.

Vegetable farms and homes for workers will complete the colony and the power will be piped back to be used on the nearest populated land mass.

Michaelis, who is working together with his father Dominic, an engineer, estimates that each island complex could produce 250MW.

NextEnergy

Combining enough Energy Island modules to form the outside of a protected lagoon, you would be on your way to renewable power, agriculture, and aquaculture for your floating city.
Aquarius is the sea-colony concept from Marshall Savage, writer of The Millenial Project. Self-sufficient Aquarius floating cities would be the first step to colonising the galaxy. The lessons learned from building sustainable and profitable colony-cities-on-the-ocean could be transferred to floating cities in outer space.

A different group has coalesced around the concept of "Seasteads". For the seastead movement, building a sustainable floating city is an end in itself.

In the past, pioneers and malcontents would head to the frontiers, of which few now exist. The oceans, which make up 71% of the earth's surface, have always been a place for those seeking new ways of life. They are the last great unclaimed region. Ships are not well suited for permanent living, but by creating new land on the oceans we can achieve both freedom and a reasonable degree of comfort.

Freedom of movement and self-sufficiency are both intimately connected with political freedom. Fixed locations such as seamounts, islands, and atolls are much more vulnerable to the whims of nearby governments [minerva link], but a mobile seastead can always move if the political climate becomes unsuitable. While a seastead is likely to import many goods, being able to supply its own basic necessities will also add greatly to its independence. This approach to nation founding reduces - but does not eliminate - the difficulty in finding sovereignty, by operating in international waters...If the seastead is parked in area that does not get regular rain storms an alternative method of fresh water replenishment is needed. Either sea water distillation or reverse osmosis will work. Both forms of sea water reclamation require pretty hefty amounts of power. Distillation can be done with solar evaporation trays and condensers; whereas reverse osmosis runs off of electricity....

Seastead Book
Seascape One, pictured above, is a combination tourist destination and high-end condominiums designed to float around the Mediterranean Sea. It incorporates multiple renewable energy features, including wind and solar power. The tall white structure projecting above the living section is a solid sail, for clean (but slow) propulsion. Lessons learned from operating such a design should be applicable to a more rough weather seastead.
Paolo Soleri designed floating arcologies which could also be classified as "seasteads." The "Nexus" floating city project is more than a little based on a Soleri design.

This is a floating city designed to accommodate 100,000 persons. 7 kilometers long and 4 kilometers wide with the capacity to be mobile, grow its own food, produce its own electricity and, owing to it existing beyond the 12 mile governmental jurisdiction boundaries, create its own government, income system and tax base. In essence, this mobile city becomes its own independent country....The city utilizes several different types of electrical power generation. Five Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion units are positioned at strategic zones of the city to supply electricity. Banks of freestanding windmills and photovoltaic solar cells produce additional electricity. The "head" of the floating city is a small mountain range with a specially designed frontal structure that cuts Tsunami tidal waves into smaller, manageable waves with little destructive effect. It is a tidal wave barrier that requires the city to head into the on-coming wave.

Nexus

The video above is a graphic portrayal of some of the aspects of the "Energy Island" concept--the UK project that wants a piece of the Virgin Prize.

A safe, self-sufficient living structure in mid-ocean for thousands of residents would require considerable care in design and testing--long before it was ever built or floated. The ocean is a dangerous environment under the best of conditions. Any floating structure destined to remain in mid-ocean would eventually see the ocean in all of its moods. Hurricanes, deadly squalls, typhoons, giant rogue waves, perfect storms, etc. The seastead would have to be built to survive anything it could not avoid.

From Alfin2100

JTEC: Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Conversion

This heat engine, based on the "Ericsson cycle", has been discussed on multiple websites yesterday and today, including Brian Wang's.

It is based on the "Ericsson Cycle", and incorporates aspects of heat engines and fuel cells. It has no moving parts, it does not burn fuels or depend on chemical reactions (other than simple oxidation and reduction of H2 gas), and it is not at all obvious to me how it can be made to work efficiently. Anyway, here is the company's spiel:

The JTEC is an all solid-state engine that operates on the Ericsson cycle. Equivalent to Carnot, the Ericsson cycle offers the maximum theoretical efficiency available from an engine operating between two temperatures. The JTEC system utilizes the electro-chemical potential of hydrogen pressure applied across a proton conductive membrane (PCM). The membrane and a pair of electrodes form a Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA) similar to those used in fuel cells. On the high-pressure side of the MEA, hydrogen gas is oxidized resulting in the creation of protons and electrons. The pressure differential forces protons through the membrane causing the electrodes to conduct electrons through an external load. On the low-pressure side, the protons are reduced with the electrons to reform hydrogen gas. This process can also operate in reverse. If current is passed through the MEA a low-pressure gas can be "pumped" to a higher pressure.

The JTEC uses two membrane electrode assembly (MEA) stacks. One stack is coupled to a high temperature heat source and the other to a low temperature heat sink. Hydrogen circulates within the engine between the two MEA stacks via a counter flow regenerative heat exchanger. The engine does not require oxygen or a continuous fuel supply, only heat. Like a gas turbine engine, the low temperature MEA stack is the compressor stage and the high temperature MEA is the power stage. The MEA stacks will be designed for sufficient heat transfer with the heat source and sink to allow near constant temperature expansion and compression processes. This feature coupled with the use of a regenerative counter flow heat exchanger will allow the engine to approximate the Ericsson cycle.

Source

You can find an animation of the device in action at the link above. It is a bit of a puzzler for me at this point.

Lonnie Johnson, the inventor, was formerly an engineer at NASA's JPL, before he made millions from inventing a glorified water gun. Some of his other inventions are quite intriguing, so check out his websites.

To be honest, I am more excited about the nano-antenna and the nano-spray silicon particle PV windows, than I am about the JTEC. But if the inventor gets a working prototype with better than 1 or 2 % efficiencies, I may start to perk up.

Heat conversion is one of the best ways to utilise solar energy, and it is the only way to utilise geothermal energy. Solar and geothermal are the two most abundant sources of energy on this planet, so we had best learn to use them every way we can.

Forget Peak Oil: The Problem is Peak Manpower

The most serious shortage facing the developed world is the shortage of skilled and talented workforce participants.

While Zay looks for executives and top-level managers, the entire energy industry – from welders, tank builders, and roughnecks to petroleum engineers, nuclear engineers, and technicians – is strapped for talent. And the problems are likely to get substantially worse before they get better. Nor is the labor shortage limited to the U.S. and the hydrocarbon sector. Rather, it is worldwide, and being felt in industries ranging from coal mining to nuclear power. The reasons for the labor crunch are many: an aging workforce, lagging student interest in engineering, a lack of interest in blue-collar jobs like welding, and perhaps most important, the strong commodity prices that have led to a boom in energy projects of all types.

...The dearth of skilled workers can be seen by looking at the Gulf Coast. “There is a shortage of several thousand skilled laborers for the offshore industry,” says Bill French, a three-decade veteran of the oil industry and an executive search director for the recruiting firm World Wide Worker. French says that the entire coast is feeling the pinch. All of the offshore industries need welders, not just those who cater to the energy sector. “Welders are making twice as much as they were five years ago,” says French. “It’s like a merry go-round, with workers going across the street for 50 more cents [an hour]…everybody needs welders.”

Michael Harter, chairman of the Tulsa Welding School, the nation’s largest, says demand for his students has never been greater. “I have three to ten job opportunities for every student that leaves us,” he said. Demand is so great that Harter has nearly doubled the size of his classes. Five years ago, the school, which begins a new class every three weeks, would have 60 students. Now, those classes may have 100. And Harter doesn’t see demand slowing down any time soon. “There are so many welders who are already between 55 and 65 and who are retiring. They are retiring as fast or faster than new welders are coming into the job pool.”

The situations for blue-collar workers is matched by that for white-collar professionals. For instance, engineers are in short supply in the North Sea, where Robert Rapier works for one of the supermajors. Rapier, who writes the R-Squared Energy Blog and requested anonymity for his company, says the demand for engineers is “insatiable,” and that he has “posted jobs that literally go unfilled. Supply and demand is out of balance, so the supply side – the manpower – can command high premiums. We have started recruiting a lot in Iran and India.”

Source

Skilled manpower shortages are indeed worldwide, from Hong Kong, to India, to Canada, to large sections of the US.

We already have an active bidding war for top talent in the energy sector. This competition for skilled workers will grow more heated, as experienced workers leave the workforce through retirement.

Pluggable Hybrids: The Need for More Electric Power Plants: Stop the Denial

Electric vehicles are a great idea for shifting much of the energy burden of transportation from oil to electricity. But we need to make sure we can make enough electricity to re-charge the large fleet of EV's that are required to make a difference.

Based on the default assumptions on the spreadsheet - 15 million electric vehicle commuters, a 40 mile commute, and 4.0 miles per kilowatt-hour - it would take 150 gigawatt-hours of electricity to charge into such a fleet of battery-powered cars when they are plugged in every night.

Given these are off-peak hours, and given a 10 hour average recharge cycle, the electric power grid would have to deliver 15 gigawatts of additional power all night in order to recharge this quantity of cars. Input your own assumptions!

In California, for example, where during peak demand the power grid can deliver over 50 gigawatts, this is probably barely feasible. But where will the additional electricity come from? Even assuming massive grid-scale storage capacity, you only get about 1.5 gigawatt-hours per day from a one square mile solar thermal plant - you would need to build 100 of these. A nuclear power station can easily output 1.0 gigawatts, and since they run continuously, that would add 24 gigawatt-hours per day - you would need to build about six of them. But what if decentralized sources of electricity were used to power electric cars?

Ecoworld

Ecoworld has been kind enough to provide two online interactive spreadsheets to allow any reader to experiment with the numbers:

Gigawatts per E-Commuters

Photovoltaics per Electric Car

Ecoworld promotes the "series hybrid" which uses a small clean diesel engine running at constant rpm to an electric generator, which charges the batteries that power the electric motor drive.

Diesel can become a renewable fuel within the foreseeable future. So until safe, clean nuclear energy capacity is built to support an EV transportation infrastructure, we are going to have to make do with hybrids.

100 Billion Barrels of Offshore Brazilian Oil?

A series of new oil discoveries off the Brazilian coast promise to catapult Brazil into one of the major world oil powers.

"Through crude measuring it appears that Sugar Loaf's area is about five times larger than that of Tupi," Gattass said, citing former Petrobras geologists and studies of Tupi and Sugar Loaf. "We expect the first announcements of a find over the next two months and test results between four and seven months."

... there are other similar geological formations in the Santos Basin area. The ultimate potential of the area is unknown, but potentially gigantic: a multiple of the figures being mentioned today....the potential for deep oil in offshore Brazil is but one example of the as-yet unexplored potential of other territories, such as ANWR, federal lands in the American West, and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, where oil development is officially banned.

Source

The longer the price of oil remains in the over $70 a barrel range, the incentives for exploration of new fields, better production from existing fields, and more efficient refining of lower quality (cheaper) oil will all combine to extend oil supplies beyond the numbers commonly predicted.

Peak Oil: Meet the TAO of Oil by Leonardo Maugeri

Only around 2,000 new field wildcats (wells made for exploring the presence of hydrocarbons in the subsoil) have been drilled in the entire Persian Gulf region since the inception of its oil activity, as against more than 1 million in the United States. TAO

Leonardo Maugeri's 2006 book, "The Age of Oil (TAO)," is an indispensable look at the past, present, and future of the role of petroleum. Written in two parts, TAO first looks at the human history of oil along with current events of oil. The second and final section of TAO looks at the question of whether the world is at or near "peak oil."

In April 1977, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) delivered a highly influential report stating that the growth of world oil demand would soon outpace production because of constraints on OPEC potential and the impending peak of Soviet Production. By the 1980s, the report argued, oil would be scarce and very expensive....

Maugeri points to three categories of reserves used when referring to future oil reserves.

• Proven Reserves---defined as the amount of oil and gas in place in known reservoirs that can be estimated with "reasonable certainty" to be commercially recoverable under current economic conditions....profitable recovery of at least 90 percent.
• Probable Reserves---the probability of profitable recovery falls to 50 percent
• Possible Reserves---profitable probability of recovery no less than 10 percent.

Maugeri points out that:

During the last 25 years more than 70% of exploration has taken place in the United States and Canada, mature areas that probably hold only 3% of the world's reserves of crude. The Middle East, on the other hand, has been the scene of only 3% of global exploration, even though it harbors 70% of the earth's reserves. In the Persian Gulf, holding 65% of the region's reserves, fewer than 100 exploration wells were drilled between 1995 and 2004. During the same period, 15,700 such wells were drilled in the U.S. Forbes

Future advances in the technologies of production, and refinement--as well as improved efficiencies of utilisation--have the potential to move reserves from the "possible" and "probable" categories up to the "proven reserves" classification. Future advances in discovery technology have the potential to expand all reserves significantly.

A recent declaration by the International Energy Agency that world petroleum production had peaked in 2006--had passed "peak oil"--was based on an analysis of world petroleum production, without considering either world petroleum reserves or seriously considering the many reasons why world petroleum production might peak from time to time without signaling any type of "peak oil." (Like the IPCC, the part of the IEA that produces reports touching on politics, eg "peak oil," may well have been infiltrated by bureaucrats and contributors with a fixed agenda.)

Maugeri concludes his book with a look at "resource nationalism," the gloomy reality that most of the world's known conventional petroleum resources exist in territories controlled by dictators and autocrats--Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya, etc. For this reason, oil prices are likely to remain quite high--unless market forces arising from new discoveries and production outside the autocratic zone force the dictators of oil to compete once again.

Remember, nationalised resources do not tend to attract the latest technology in discovery, production, and refinement. That means that a lot of resources remain in the ground.

Despite its long history as an oil producing region, the Persian Gulf is still relatively virgin in terms of exploration. Only around 2,000 new field wildcas (wells made for exploring the presence of hydrocarbons in the subsoil) have been drilled in the entire Persian Gulf region since the inception of its oil activity, as against more than 1 million in the United States. p. 221 TAO

More from Maugeri at National Geographic, Forbes, and Foreign Affairs.

Uranium from Seawater--Peak Uranium Most Unlikely for next 5,000 Years!

Brian Wang posted a promising look at the prospects of mining uranium oxide from seawater. How much uranium is in seawater compared to expected uranium reserves on land?

It is estimated that there is 4.7 million tonnes of uranium ore reserves (economically mineable) known to exist, while 35 million tonnes are classed as mineral resources (reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction).[32] An additional 4.6 billion tonnes of uranium are estimated to be in sea water (Japanese scientists in the 1980s proved that extraction of uranium from sea water using ion exchangers was feasible).[33][34]

Wikipedia

Brian estimates that the value of uranium in seawater at today's prices may approach US $720 trillion!

Uranium oxide would be retrieved from seawater with irradiated polymer (eg polyethylene) woven into netting, and moored in seawater for app. 60 days to absorb uranium. The netting would be retrieved, the uranium would be removed from the netting, the netting replaced in the sea, with the polymer absorbent re-used multiple times similar to fish nets.

Methods for improved harvesting of uranium from seawater suggested by Brian:

1. Functionalize an algae bloom to concentrate Uranium
See the work of Matt Francis at Berkeley for functionalizing virus shells and microbes for anti-cancer or for solar power. Many others are trying to engineer microbes using synthetic biology.

The goal would be to increase the concentration of Uranium from 3 parts per billion to 300 parts per million. The higher concentration allows regular methods of Uranium mining to take over. It is an increase of 100,000 times....

2. Nanomembrane Filtering
Nanomembrane filtering is starting to be used for desalinization of water at 100,000 gallons per day using a 6 inch diameter membrane.
If one could filter 1 billion gallons per day then there would be $1.92 million/day worth of Uranium. (3 mg per ton of water. 1 billion gallons is 4 million tons. 12,000 kg of Uranium in 1 billion gallons) Ten thousand of the 6 inch diameter nanomembrane enabled filtration pipes would be needed.

Advanced Nanotechnology

Here is an abstract from one of the most active Japanese research groups:

The total amount of uranium dissolved in seawater at a uniform concentration of 3 mg U/m3 in the world's oceans is 4.5 billion tons. An adsorption method using polymeric adsorbents capable of specifically recovering uranium from seawater is reported to be economically feasible. A uranium-specific nonwoven fabric was used as the adsorbent packed in an adsorption cage 16 m2 in cross-sectional area and 16 cm in height. We submerged three adsorption cages in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 20 m at 7 km offshore of Japan. The three adsorption cages consisted of stacks of 52 000 sheets of the uranium-specific non-woven fabric with a total mass of 350 kg. The total amount of uranium recovered by the nonwoven fabric was >1 kg in terms of yellow cake during a total submersion time of 240 days in the ocean.

Source

More here.


Seawater contains many thousands of years worth of uranium at current usage. No one actually believes that human civilisation will still be based upon nuclear fission and fossil fuels one thousand years from now. Fossil fuels will still be around then, but will be considered too dirty, expensive, and valuable to burn for fuel. Nuclear fission will still be around if needed--certainly there is plenty of uranium and thorium--and may be used in particular applications where the fuel available makes clean fission more practical.

Most tech forecasters expect nuclear fusion to be widely available for large scale power generation within the next one thousand years--if not the next one hundred years. We will not need but a fraction of the available uranium and thorium over the long run.

Of course, that prediction is based upon the continuation of western civilisation--or perhaps other successor civilisations just as friendly to scientific/technological research and personal/economic freedoms currently guaranteed by the west. A surrender to reactionary religious fanatics or ideologues (luddites) would introduce a significant element of pessimism into the forecast.

Recent pessimistic "peak oil" pronouncements have been taken far too seriously by the many uninformed persons who attempt to follow trends. A recent declaration that peak oil occurred in 2006, was particularly ludicrous--since it was based upon selective production figures without taking into account reserves or various factors that could influence their production data. Too much peak oil "research"--like much of climate change research--is infested by ideologues who assume the result and carefully craft data to fit that result.

The important thing is to understand that it is resource prices--and how society reacts to price changes--that matter in the long run. It is natural for modern societies to begin to move from more expensive (particularly if dirtier like fossil fuels) to more economical and sustainable technologies. That is basic economics and will occur over time regardless of any "Kyoto" or other treaties or regulatory schemes.

For those of us interested in the next level, the singularity, or just a very promising future, it is always important to watch important trends, while always looking a little farther ahead.
Previously published at Al Fin.

Saving Billions of Dollars by Using Waste Heat

Thermoelectric generating devices are currently only about 8% efficient. But even at those low efficiencies, they might be able to save billions of dollars worth of fossil fuel a year in the US.

Tritt said more than 60 percent of the energy that goes into an automotive combustion cycle is lost, primarily to waste heat through the exhaust or radiator system.

“Even at the current efficiencies of thermoelectric devices, 7 to 8 percent, more than 1.5 billion gallons of diesel could be saved each year in the U.S. if thermoelectric generators were used on the exhaust of heavy trucks. That translates into billions of dollars saved,” Tritt said.

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Waste heat is a huge potential resource, ripe for the plucking. Using either heat engines or thermoelectric devices--specially customised for the purpose--many billions of dollars in energy costs could easily be saved. We should also expect that the best uses for waste heat have yet to be discovered.

Naked Glacier Dwellers Going Tragically Extinct Due to Global Warming

A tribe of naked glacier dwellers was recently discovered in the middle of a mass trans-glacial migration, by wildlife photographers high in a remote portion of the Swiss Alps. Approximately six hundred naked people belong to the ice-dwelling tribe, which apparently speaks only body language for communication.

Highly trained anthropologists from Greenpeace were rushed to the scene in an attempt to discover the tribe's history and customs, before the glaciers vanish and the tribe goes extinct. The Greenpeace scientists quickly shed their own clothes, in a desperate attempt to establish communication, as the clock ticks down on global warming. At last radio transmission, all attempts at establishing body language communication were unsuccessful, perhaps because the proximity to the glacier induced uncontrollable shivering and shrinkage of certain body tissues of the researchers. The message conveyed to the tribe by the shivering shrinkage apparently repulsed all members of the tribe, who turned their backs on the scientists significantly.

Al Gore, James Hansen, Bono, Laurie David, and Leonardo di Caprio announced a joint filmmaking expedition to explore and preserve this courageous tribe in a fight for its very existence. "For at least three long ice ages and inter-glacials this care-free tribe led an idyllic existence among the clouds," said Gore.

All of us can only echo Mr. Gore's sentiments, and wish the very best for the naked glacier dwellers in the sky. We will never forget.

Volvo Pluggable Hybrid Concept Car--All Electric All the Time--No Transmission, No Driveshaft

Before you get too excited, you should know that this car will not see production before 2015 at the soonest. The four independent electric motors are built into the wheels, and the only power connection to the wheels is a power cable from the battery. The 1.6 liter flex-fuel engine is only there to keep the batteries charged.

When fully charged the Volvo ReCharge Concept can be driven approximately 62 miles on battery power alone before the car's four-cylinder 1.6 Flexifuel engine1 is needed to power the car and recharge the battery. The concept car also retains the Volvo C30's lively and sporty drive thanks to an acceleration figure of 0-62mph in 9 seconds and a top speed of 100mph.

"This is a groundbreaking innovation for sustainable transportation. This plug-in hybrid car, when used as intended, should have about 66 percent lower emissions of carbon dioxide compared with the best hybrid cars available on the market today. Emissions may be even lower if most of the electricity comes from CO2-friendly sources such as biogas, hydropower and nuclear power. A person driving less than 60 miles per day will rarely need to visit a filling station.

...During a journey the combustion engine starts up automatically when 70 percent of the battery power has been used up. However, the driver also has the option of controlling the four-cylinder Flexifuel engine manually via a button in the control panel. This allows the driver to start the engine earlier in order to maximise battery charge, for instance when out on a motorway in order to save battery capacity for driving through the next town.

* The battery pack integrated into the boot uses lithium-polymer battery technology. The batteries are intended to have a useful life beyond that of the car itself.
* Four electric motors, one at each wheel, provide independent traction power.
* Four-cylinder 1.6-litre Flexifuel engine drives an advanced generator that efficiently powers the wheel motors when the battery is depleted.

...The central electrical components in the Volvo ReCharge Concept – the generator for the APU and the wheel motors – were developed together with British electromagnetic specialists PML Flightlink.

With an individual electric motor at each wheel, weight distribution as well as mechanical efficiency and traction are maximised and the friction in mechanical gears is eliminated. Since the car does not have the transmission found in ordinary cars, there is no need for a gear lever.

...The energy that is generated during braking is transmitted to the battery pack. When the system is ultimately developed, traditional wheel brakes will be completely replaced by electrical brakes with minimal energy wasted through friction. To ensure reliable operation of the drivetrain and braking system, driver inputs are fed into a quadruple-redundant electronic control system.

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Hat tip Gizmag

Peak Oil: You Don't Know Jack!

"Jack" is a recently discovered undersea oil field in the Gulf of Mexico that may exceed 15 billion barrels of oil. Given that water covers 2/3 of Earth's surface, it is not unlikely that more oil reserves exist underwater than under dry land.

The mother lode of oil in the deepwater Gulf is so significant that Tahiti and other successful fields in this region are expected to soon produce enough crude to reverse the long-standing decline in US oil production of about 10 percent per year.

Even better, a recent discovery by Chevron has signaled that soon there may be vastly more oil gushing out of the ultradeep seabeds — more than even the optimists were predicting four years ago. In 2004, the company penetrated a 60 million-year-old geological stratum known as the "lower tertiary trend" containing a monster oil patch that holds between 3 billion and 15 billion barrels of crude. Dubbed Jack, the field lies beneath waters nearly twice as deep as those covering Tahiti, and many in the industry dismissed the discovery as too remote to exploit. But last September, Chevron used the Cajun Express to probe the Jack field, proving that petroleum could flow from the lower tertiary at hearty commercial rates — fast enough to bring billions of dollars of crude to market.

...Technological breakthroughs have, decade after decade, revived the perpetually doomed oil industry. "Predicting peak oil," Siegele tells me as we tour the drilling floor of the Cajun Express, "is almost like predicting peak technology" — an exercise, in other words, that to him seems inherently small-minded. Even absurd.

SourceBesides the "Jack" oilfield and other yet to be discovered Gulf fields, there are also many Arctic and Antarctic oil fields currently unexplored. And then, there is all of that oil shale and oil sands that Canada, the US, and other large countries are sitting on.
And don't get me started on all the coal reserves and uranium/thorium reserves spread out across the globe. And please--never! and I mean never!! get me started on all the resources in the solar system, should humans ever grow out of their prolonged, restless, and generally incompetent adolescence.

Peak Oil doesn't know Jack. Peak Oil will soon meet Jack and a lot of other energy resources that will be developed, sooner or later.

Peak Oil: Meet Microbial Petroleum Producers

Creating micro-organisms that can synthesise renewable hydrocarbons for fuels and feedstocks, is one aim of synthetic biology.

The process is the same as making cellulosic ethanol insofar as cellulosic feedstocks are converted into fermentable sugars, and those sugars are placed in a fermentation vat. The difference comes in the microbes doing the fermenting. With ethanol, it's generally some form of yeast. The researchers at LS9 have engineered their own microbes, lifting genes from other microbes and recombining them into an organism that does just what they want. In this way they can precisely tweak the characteristics of the resulting fuel.

Yeast fermentation produces ethanol, which mixes with water and subsequently has to be extracted via distillation. LS9's microbes produce -- via fatty acid metabolism, in a process I won't claim to understand -- hydrocarbons (the building blocks of petroleum). These hydrocarbons are immiscible, i.e., they don't mix with water. Instead, they float to the top of the vat, where they can essentially be skimmed off. That allows LS9 to skip the distillation process, which saves a whole boatload of energy. (That's where most of the claimed 65% energy savings comes from.)

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David Berry, one of the brains behind LS9, has won the Young Innovator of the Year award from MIT's Tech Review.

Berry's goal was nothing less than "to develop a novel and far-reaching solution to the energy problem." In col­laboration with genomics researcher George Church of Harvard Medi­cal School and plant biologist Chris Somerville of Stanford University, Berry and his Flagship colleagues set out to do something that had never been attempted commercially: using the tools of synthetic biology to make microörganisms that produce something like petroleum. Berry assumed responsibility for proving that the infant company, dubbed LS9, could produce a biofuel that was renewable, better than corn-derived ethanol, and cost-­competitive with ­fossil-based fuels.

I understand that Chris Somerville -- a leading figure in the plant biology field -- is also at work on plants that are genetically engineered to produce biodegradable plastics. Now if they could just integrate that idea with these petroleum-producing microbes, we'd really have something to celebrate.

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If synthetic biologists can create microbes that efficiently create "petroleum" in an industrial environment--out of renewable materials and skipping any energy-wasting distillation process--the economics of the future of energy might change a bit.

Oil Seeds: Jatropha

Jatropha is disease resistant, and grows on marginal soil. Cultivation of jatropha for biodiesel may have less impact on food costs than other oil seeds.

Almost overnight, the unloved Jatropha curcushas become an agricultural and economic celebrity, with the discovery that it may be the ideal biofuel crop, an alternative to fossil fuels for a world dangerously dependent on oil supplies and deeply alarmed by the effects of global warming.

The hardy jatropha, resilient to pests and resistant to drought, produces seeds with up to 40 per cent oil content. When the seeds are crushed, the resulting jatropha oil can be burnt in a standard diesel car, while the residue can also be processed into biomass to power electricity plants.

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There is a substantial need for a renewable liquid fuel substitute for petro-diesel and gasoline. Using food oils for biodiesel would cause the cost of some foods to rise--much as the price of maize has risen due to corn ethanol for fuel.

Jatropha seems as good a crop for oil seed/biodiesel as any, for now. Eventually, genetic modification of plants may produce a much better oil seed crop.

Peak Oil: Meet Oil Seeds

Oil seeds are a renewable source of oils for industrial use, for chemical feedstocks, and for petroleum replacement in transportation fuels.

... an even greater potential for oilseed crops, according to John Dyer—who works at the agency's Southern Regional Research Center (SRRC) in New Orleans, La.—resides in their capacity to pump out unusual fatty acids that have valuable chemical, industrial and nutritional properties. Fish-oil-type fatty acids derived from plants, for instance, could benefit the heart, brain and eyes.

Dyer, a chemist, and Jay Shockey, a plant geneticist who also works at the SRRC, are getting inspiration from tung trees for how plants could be coaxed into churning out such impressive oils.

Tung trees, which used to be cultivated in great plantations along the U.S. Gulf Coast, produce eleostearic acid, an unusual fatty acid with applications ranging from furniture finish to computer chip production. The trees' major shortcomings? They're slow to grow and vulnerable to hurricanes.

Similar limitations apply to other currently grown oilseed crops. With traditional breeding alone, it's almost impossible to raise crops that will manufacture abundant amounts of unusual fatty acids.

That's why Dyer and Shockey are looking to engineer plants that will practically gush forth unique fatty acids, such as eleostearic acid. They recently discovered that a gene involved in the production of the important enzyme DGAT2—short for diacylglycerol acyltransferase type-2—may well be the "magic bullet" for boosting plants' oil-oozing abilities.

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Genetic engineering research has focused mainly on medical applications. But modifying the genetic makeup of plants to create inexpensive substitutes for petroleum, and to create novel and unique products for human use, is inevitable.

The research described in the above article is rather tame and mundane, compared to what is possible for engineered plant life. But it's a start.

Nanotechnology and Power Engineering

Nanotechnology is poised to strongly influence virtually every area of technology and engineering. Electric power engineering is no exception.

discoveries in nanotechnology have led to what many consider the next generation of solar technology: ultra-thin amorphous silicon, organic and inorganic solar cells derived from nanocrystals that convert sunlight into electricity at a fraction of the cost of silicon-based solar cells. They are also more flexible, less brittle and can even be painted onto structures, allowing more possibilities for building integrated architectural design. Greater research investment in these technologies is yielding continually higher sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiencies, bringing them closer to full-scale commercialization.

Fuel cells also benefit from nanotechnology. While the ability to store adequate quantities of hydrogen molecules has remained a serious dilemma in developing the technology for large-scale use, nanotechnology has the potential to put hydrogen storage in the fuel cell directly using nanostructures of carbon, zeolites or stacked clays. Nanoengineered electrodes in the form of cathodes and anodes are currently being manufactured and incorporated in solid oxide and polymer electrode-based fuel cells that provide higher efficiency and performance. Nanotechnology applied to fuel cells enables more efficient and reduced use of precious metals - such as using platinum nanoparticles for high surface area and low volume - along with improved membrane function and durability.

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Also see this article, that discusses the exciting quantum level effect called multiple exciton generation (MET), which is being studied in silicon nanocrystals/quantum dots. These crystals can be capable of generating more than one electron per absorbed photon.

Improved storage batteries and supercapacitors will also come from the application of nanotechnology research to electric power.