The Oil Drum

There were a couple of small Australian solar power projects that I left out of my look at solar thermal power a little while ago, as I thought they were worthy of separate consideration.

The first of these is being put together by a South Australian company called Wizard Power, which is trying to commercialise research from the Australian National University (ANU) - a solar concentrator dish and a closed loop thermochemical energy storage system using ammonia.

The following is a guest post by Dave Bradley (TOD User: nb41), who has some very good technical essays on wind power (as well as his contact info) here. Dave introduced himself to me via e-mail several months ago, and after exchanging a few e-mails in which we covered many technical issues, it became clear that we share a number of very similar interests. One of Dave's essays that caught my attention involved the very interesting idea of using excess wind power to make methanol, ethanol, or even ammonium nitrate fertilizer. But Dave doesn't just throw an idea out there; he gets into the important technical details. I first mentioned Dave's paper in my essay on Compressed Air Energy Storage.

Dave explains in the following essay how we could use renewable energy to make nitrogen fertilizer, thus taking some of the fossil fuel inputs out of biofuels production. By doing so, the energy return would be substantially improved, which is one thing that must happen before biofuels can be truly sustainable. So, it is my pleasure to present Dave Bradley's ideas for helping to mitigate our energy problems.