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Sounds like a great set of talks and presentations....thanks for the update.
You know, it's kind of funny that when folks like myself (and others, the recent BenjaminCole issue comes to mind) speak of such things as waste recapture, recycling, methane recapture, etc. here on TOD, we are immediately descended upon by the doom wolves, and ripped to shreds, but when it comes from presentations and speeches, which often seem to vindicate what we were trying to say, then of course it's a viable option. It makes me think of the great joke in the old "Frazier" TV show, in which Niles was recounting something a psychologist had recently said to him:
"Well, of course, dad always said that too, but then, he had no credentials."
:-)
(brief aside: same is true with the advances in solar PV and concentrating solar, and batteries. Folks around here seem now to be making the greatest possible effort to refuse, right into the tide of facts, the absolutely revolutionary things that are happening in those industries, so great is the....what would you call it, need(?) for catastrophe and collapse)
When many of these "we're out in xxxx years" scenarios are given for various materials, the possibility of recycling and waste recapture are dismissed in most of the calculations. But of course it can be done in many industries and in energy on a back scale. The lack of methane recapture worldwide for just one example, will someday in a time of even greater shortage be viewed not as just careless but an outright crime by this generation, given that we know how to do it, we just refuse to.
Thanks for all time and attention.
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Å lot of "technical" fixes are not very appealing, notably all sorts of biofuels. However, I have heard of these waste recycling systems before, and the solar guys say that there are big advances coming for solar. If you can increase solar efficiency by 2x (12% to 25%) and reduce cost/square foot by 75% -- both entirely possible in my mind and I'm told this is coming soon -- then you end up with 8x more cost-efficient solar power. At that point, you would just cover roofs everywhere with solar panels. Batteries are really the weak link in solar systems, but a mass grid-tie system could help eliminate that problem. That, combined with a 50% reduction in electricty use (not very difficult), and our so-called problems would be largely solved.
The main problem is that gasoline and electricity are still too cheap.
I can't quite see how tying into a grid would do much for storage unless you mean some sort of centralized storage that would not be economical on an individual producer scale. Having a whole pile of houses tied together in the middle of the night won't help much.
Storage seems like a bigger problem, er 'issue', than generation at the moment. Less glamorous in some ways but just as necessary. In Spain they were pumping water back uphill which had the added benefit of not extracting the irrigation water for electricity generation. There was a big installation going in near Almeria circa 1992. Wonder how it worked out. Almeria has almost constant sunshine, well in the daytime anyway.
What would be wrong with a giant lead acid setup which at least utilized the hydrogen gassing off to regenerate some of the thermal losses? I know, who'd want to work there in a plant full of sulphuric acid, hydrogen, pure O2 and lead? But then compared to a cracker at a refinery or a nuke plant...
Storage of solar energy isn't an issue until over 20% of our electricity is solar. Up from none today. Solar is a peaker meaning it produces the most power on those hot summer day in which the air conditioning loads are the highest. I have no clue what to do then. Maybe I'll be dead. Produce 80% of our electricity some other way? Come up with efficient storage?
The round trip efficiency of electricity to hydrogen to electricity is 7%. You'll ruin your expensive batteries to produce cheap hydrogen.
True only because we do heating by, surprise, burning oil or gas, and in about the least efficient way possible. Basically, we make heat at about 2,000+ degrees within a furnace, and then dilute it down to 72F in a house, wasting the vast majority of the useful work that the fuel can accomplish. Heat pumps are better, but then there we are. Peak heating is in the dead of night, in winter, exactly when there isn't much solar.
Of course, something like this waste conversion could help immensely with that problem. By turning waste streams into fuel that can be stored until needed, the difficulties are dramatically reduced, just use solar when the sun shines, burn your fuel when it doesn't.
Even then, it'll work, but I"m not sure it's that ideal. Fuel shortages would be a chronic problem, as we'd probably want to use at least 30% of our energy when the sun isn't shining. Given that around 10% of the planet currently lives comfortably, and we will either run low on fuel, or be unable to use it due to GW, we will either need to be making less than (say...) 10% of our energy from carbon based sources, or convince 90% of the planet that they should stay poor, I vote for the former.
If only we had something that could generate baseline power continuously, all the time, and use it for something like 40-50% of our energy needs. Something like, say, nuclear?
Certainly solar would be helpful, but doesn't it seem strange that we're spending immense sums of money, and betting the farm on new technologies that should come out of the lab "in a few years" just so that by 2030 we can be where France was in 1985 using (at the time) 30 year old technology.
slaphappy - "If only we had something that could generate baseline power continuously, all the time, and use it for something like 40-50% of our energy needs. Something like, say, nuclear?"
Even better if we had a proven method of storing the spent nuclear fuel or even a method to stop people from turning the nuclear fuel cycle into weapons.
Round trip cycle efficiency (real world) for Bath County Pumped Storage is 81% (up from 80% after improvements).
Best Hopes,
Alan
The round trip efficiency of electricity to hydrogen to electricity is 7%.
Where on earth do you get this number.? Using currently available commercial technology it is easily 30%, and best available technology is >50%.
http://www.siei.org/efficiency.html
This is where the 7% number came from. I'm not surprised the best available commercial technology can do better but it was the only number I knew.
70% is a more reasonable efficiency for an electrolyzer. Vehicular use requires considerable energy for compression; I recall a figure around 20% for this, so the total production efficiency of compressed hydrogen is (.7/1.2)=58%. A 40%-efficient PEM FC yields throughput of about 23%. Power conditioning will cut the yield from the AC line further.
Li-ion batteries are about 90% efficient, so they can yield about 4 times as much useful work per unit of input as a hydrogen system; on top of that, we already have all the infrastructure we'll need for years. Hydrogen is a boondoggle.
We just need the litium...