DrumBeat: July 19, 2006
Posted by threadbot on July 19, 2006 - 11:26am
Topic: Miscellaneous
"Energy Security Will Be one of the Main Challenges of Foreign Policy"
In a SPIEGEL interview, United States oil expert Daniel Yergin discusses fears of a global energy crisis, the growing confidence of oil-rich nations and changes in world politics caused by rising energy prices.
Europe's suppliers could decide to just save their energy
WHAT if they leave the oil and gas in the ground? That unwelcome prospect emerged as the world’s leaders tiptoed round President Putin last weekend, like postmen negotiating their way past an irritable alsatian.
“Prudence and friendly dialogue” to face energy crisis
Chile must insist in a friendly dialogue with Argentina while it strives to achieve energy autonomy because the “real truth is that Argentina is running out of natural gas”, warned Chile’s former Economy and Energy minister Jorge Rodriguez Grossi.
Niger: Protests Against Soaring Cost of Living
Hundreds of people turned out on the streets of Niamey on Tuesday to protest against high costs for fuel and other essential commodities.Demonstrators, organised by Nigerien civil society groups, called on the government of President Mamadou Tandja to reduce the price of fuel by 50 percent through slashing customs duties and taxes.
Southern Africa: Region in Search of Energy Self-Sustenance
UN backs Nigerian delta activists on oil wealth
ABUJA (Reuters) - A United Nations report on Nigeria's oil producing Niger Delta has backed a call by local activists for the region to receive a greater share of its vast oil wealth.
Deep water windfarm ‘key to EU energy plans’
U.K.: Heatwave trebles electricity prices
German June Producer Prices Increase on Oil, Raw Material Costs
(Bloomberg) -- Producer price inflation in Germany, Europe's largest economy, held close to a 24-year high last month, led by higher energy and raw material costs.Goods from plastics to newsprint were 6.1 percent more expensive in June than a year earlier, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said in a statement today.
In California, energy shortages are becoming a political issue.
Road to recovery sinking into Gulf. The highway to Port Fourchon is going under.
U.S. Cities in Harm’s Way: SustainLane ranks the risk. (You might want to think twice about buying that condo in Miami.)
Peak oil preview: North Korea & Cuba
IEA Will Use Oil Reserves in Event of Supply Problems
Uranium’s Outlook Is So Bright, It Glows in the Dark
Under the "really???" column:
Oil price spike "very uncomfortable": OPEC.
Its really amazing how well Southwest hedged their fuel. It should be no suprise to hear that they are actually improving.
They recently were the first customers for a retrofit kit from GE for their older engines. This kit takes elements from the newer engines and retrofits the older engines. 1.6% better fuel economy and lower combustion temperatures (longer time between maintenance & less pollution).
In another forum, I am on record predicting that Southwest will launch the 737 replacement (~25% more fuel efficient) with an order for about 400 a/c with entry into service of 2012.
Unless Boeing starts now with their so far not flown plastic fuselage technology of the 787 it will be a while.
There is one little diesel twin I like, and I love the ethanol planes in Brazil, which have been around for forty years and are now becoming more numerous and larger.
As one might expect, ethanol is an excellent aviation fuel, and it decreases maintenance expense considerably because it burns so clean and cool.
Brazil is a large country with a lot of smart people in it. Maybe we could learn some things from them.
Kerosene: 45.9 MJ/kg
Ethanol: 29.7 MJ/kg
So there's basically a 50% higher weight penalty carrying ethanol for fuel.
I was actually more hopeful until I had those numbers driven home for me:
http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/2005/06/post-oil-airliners.html
Or do you prefer to go on with meaningless handwaving, snide remarks and armchair theorizing?
In other words, do you want to genuinely learn something of value?
If you have better data, ideally with a URL to provide easy access to all of us, that would be great.
Indeed, my opinion is that excess posting of links tends to make people stupid.
I am extremely selective in what I choose to study. Most of my secondary research is done in libraries and with the aid of reference librarians. That is why I have so much accurate information and so little garbage in my memory.
By the way, I have been home brewing ethanol from the age of fourteen and have been doing small-scale replications of some of the key research papers for decades.
Expertly written and edited books and peer-reviewed reputable scientific publications is the way to get an increaingly accurate and complete world view, in my opinion.
I rarely post links, for the reasons indicated above. I presume you pay taxes: Some of this goes for libraries. Why not use them. Librarians are some of my favorite people; they know where the good stuff is and are delighted to help you find it. And who knows, you might meet somebody interesting and intelligent in a library--happens to me more than once a month.
BTW, I keep in touch with chemists who have advanced degrees and who keep up in their fields. How many chemists do you know well enough to call by their first names?
Chemical engineers rather than chemists have much of the knowledge needed to analyze the EROEI of ethanol. RR is one (graduate level research in ethanol at the second best ChemE department in Texas). (I was in the best ChemE Department in Texas and transfered to BioMedE, then my tenured professor & I resigned to chase a dream; a liquid membrane blood oxygenator using liquid perfluorocarbons).
I am really loathe to get into a credentials battle, in an obvious logical fallacy (an appeal to authority) but since everyone else is doing it ;-), I'll mention that I have a chem degree myself.
Ultimately the value of the web is created and reinforced when we can point, and link with URLs, to things we find which are true. That builds value (and google rank) for those that come after us. It is a community process.
http://www.plos.org/
Scientists themselves coverse with URLs.
Unfortunately, this seems to be an unavoidable barrier and ethanol will have to be economically viable at a discount of 30% of gasoline. I do think that ethanol from sugar cane can meet this criteria, once sugar markets adjust. Right now, growing ethanol use, combined with other factors, has driven sugar prices up.
My calculations have a breakeven point below 70% of current gas prices, although at this level it remains more profitable to produce sugar. A price of 80-85% is required to be better than sugar. It is almost always more profitable to produce ethanol than molasses, which is about 30% of a sugar refineries output.
The additional weight/volume issue is not a death blow for cars, but may well be for airplanes. I would guess it will always, make sense to use petroleum-based fuel and increase ethanol in vehicles.
Sure, that would do it. My assumption is that a turbine has relatively equal efficiency ...
For what it's worth a raft of papers on ethanol in aviation are here:
http://www.baylor.edu/bias/index.php?id=5302
In a fast pass it looks like ethanol is used in piston craft and biodiesel has been tested in turbines? Anyone feel free to investigate and correct me. A chem degree is not required ;-)
http://www.baylor.edu/bias/publications/avgasethanolETBE.pdf
It gives similar MJ/kg numbers to the ones I gave above:
avgas - 44.2 MJ/kg
ethanol - 27.2 MJ/kg
Interestingly, flight tests show a smaller penalty:
So there, I think that shows how you do it. It confirms both that my earlier number was correct, shares my "expectations of 23% and 62% more consumption based on the heating value ratio" ... and finally shows that it is possible to add to our knowledge with a URL. ;-)
When you're right, you're right.
And that is usually the case.
What bothers me is that people sometimes think that just because I disagree with maybe 2% of a person's posts that I do not like or respect them.
Anybody who agrees with me always should be committed to a locked ward of a state hospital.
I change my mind whenever I get new evidence that suggests my previous view was incomplete or incorrect.
http://www.trbav030.org/pdf2006/265_Dagget.pdf
I'm not sure if it was clear to the reader above, but I'm more optimistic about piston aircraft running ethanol. This paper addresses large commerical passenger aircraft, and from page 8 says such an ethanol aircraft requires:
Energy demands:
Imagine my astonishment when the folks who are normally preaching to me that it will be impossible to save autos are on here designing post peak airplanes! :-)
Be the oddity of that as it may, it gave me pause to remember one of the single great "beautiful items" ever designed by human folk, inspired by the last time we were at peak, or at least were sure we were...
http://www.rps3.com/images/Pages/Starship/Starship%20page/star1385%2012x9%20lg.jpg
http://www.rps3.com/Pages/Starship%20Resources.htm
http://www.starshipdiaries.com/Images/16.jpg
What we found out then is that efficiencies can be improved by staggering degrees with aerodynamic and structural development.
The price of fuel crashed in the early 1980's against everyone's bet and sadly, the plane failed terribly as a commercial venture. But a few are still around, and the models and photos, to prove it can be done. Due to it's efficiency, it of course would change all calculations of needed fuel and needed power to weight ratio.
Whether something he actually said or not, in the movie "Tucker", the car designer Preston Tucker is attributed the words, on finding out that his venture is not going to make it, and the handful he has built is all there will ever be.....
"Son, you don't understand, it's not how many you built, even if it's just ONE, It's the IDEA that matters, just so that get's built...."
With the Beechcraft Starship, it did.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
That is:
- the agreement on lower MJ/kg
- the cited 15% reduction in range
I think it's pretty clear, based on the MJ/kg data, and reinforced by Boeing's numbers, that the range reduction is not a flat percentage, but based on distance of travel. The further the (loaded) distance, the greater the penalty.So ethanol looks good for shorter flights in piston or jet aircraft, but a flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo may be problematic.
I am staying out of the range/power debate till I see specific results of real world tests. With aircraft, any reduction in maximum power output significantly changes performance and safety in a variety of situations.
Then there is the weight factor. the "skin patch" or "skin patches" on the plane adds to more weight too. Sheet metal is heavy, even the paint adds to the weight.
A composite fuselage is completely different, for one thing, it's far more lighter than metal and more durable. the weight difference alone will help save on fuel costs. Composites will need to be repaired too, especially if there a puncture, which induces moisture, which is not good. Composite repairs take time, they cannot be "hurried" up. If a composite repair requires a 4 hour "cook" time, before the repair is paintable, then you must wait 4 hours. Cut and dry.
I've only read one time about the order of airplanes, and have never seen it since, would LUV to get a copy of the article that i read it from.
It will be the 787 team told to "once more, but smaller" for the 737 replacement. At the current airshow, Boeing has already said that the 737 replacement will have a composite fuselage.
Tidbits keep leaking out. PW said that it was told to have next generation small commercial engine ready for EIS 2012 as one example.
At the airliens request, they are making the areas with greatest risk of "ramp rash" thicker. Supposedly, sledge hammers bounce off those areas.
They also use a composite with mixed hard & soft spots, so cracks will not propagate.
This has been a decades long effort. B-2 was first all composite a/c (a "flying wing").
USA anyway got the worlds most powerfull military and why build more B2:s when you won the cold war?
I guess the reason I dont hear about any B3 project is the F-22 and JSF going over budget, the development of unmanned aeroplanes and you dont have to build the replacement yet if todays force of B52:s, B1:s and B2:s is enough.
Btw, the FB-22 idea looked reasonable.
What looks stupid from afar is that you did not change to modern engines on the B-52:s manny years ago, it could almost have paid for itself when oil were cheap and would have given much larger range and less service work although you would have had to buy parts and not draw on old almost unlimited stockpiles of engines.
Longer range, lower maintenance costs, shorter takeoffs*, better mission availability. Just give Boeing most (not all) of the fuel savings. Win-Win (big win for Boeing as future results have shown).
*B-52s take the longest runways of anything flying (the Space Shuttle just drops, not flies), the world is littered with 10,000 to 14,000 foot runways just for B-52s.
Usually I am close to you in your thinking, but no B-2 has ever crashed and it flies incredible miles from Missouri to deliver payloads over Afghanistan. Are you speaking of the B-1 that has had some issues?
Now there was a brilliant concept.
I say, convert its six prop engines and jets to ethanol (or maybe "bio-kerosene" for the jets), then put in sleeping berths and use it for long-range passenger travel at roughly 250-300 knots.
If some routes demand extra speed, then use the jets to go up above 400 knots (but not much more).
Land for fuel every now and then. Honolulu is in a good place, and so is Iceland--two of my favorite places to stop while changing planes or refuelling.
The first I can remember is the Variviggen which was followed by the VariEze. Both were homebuilt (experimental aircraft plans built) and both were designed by Burt Rutan. The same Burt Rutan that heads the company that designed and built Spaceship One and the round the world non-stop unrefueled aircraft a few years ago.
He and his company, Scaled Composites, were the first to delve into composite construction techniques. A lot of private citizens all over the world built those planes to plans and instructions suppled by Mr Rutans company. Go to any homebuilt flyin and you will see lots of them.
And the flying wing concept goes back to Northrup in the 50's and also a company in Germany (Horten) in the early 40's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_VariViggen
http://www.mojaveairandspace.com/products/rutan_longEZ_voyager_variviggen_solitaire_poster.html
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/research/bombers/b3-66.htm
http://aerostories.free.fr/constructeurs/horten/page2.html
Not too much new in the world these days is there.