The Ergosphere
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
 

Steven Den Beste misses the mark on thorium

Over on Hot Air, Steven Den Beste claims that thorium reactors are a huge proliferation risk.

Unfortunately, he

  1. oversimplifies and gets it wrong, and
  2. is going to be taken as gospel by lots of people anyway

Here's the real dope, in a nutshell:

That's why nobody's ever tried to base a weapons program on thorium; if it was so easy, Kim Il Sung, A.Q. Khan and Saddam Hussein would have gone that way.  Even the USA realized that neither a weapons program nor a plutonium economy could come from thorium reactors (which we now know is a good thing).  Nobody did because they know more about nuclear technology than Steven Den Beste.

For more information, start with this lecture by Dr. David LeBlanc and the supporting materials.

 
Monday, August 02, 2010
 

Peak coal, 2011?

Using a multi-cyclic Hubbard analysis, researcher Tad Patzek has concluded that the world will experience "peak coal" as soon as next year (h/t GCC).

Several things are obvious:

  1. This is going to be one heck of a shock to the system.
  2. Efficiency will become much more important.
  3. Alternative means of exploiting coal which is otherwise not recoverable, such as underground coal gasification (UCG), will become much more attractive—and perhaps shortcomings such as groundwater contamination will be overlooked.

The study does contain a caveat:  "new cycles could occur if a technological breakthrough allowed mining of coal from very thin seams or at much greater depths, or if non-producing coal districts become important producers."

I believe UCG is one of the wildcards.  Massive deposits of deep, thin or undersea coal are not recoverable by conventional mining, but these could potentially be pyrolized in place and extracted as gas.  With an estimated 3000 billion tons of coal off Norway and strong interest in Britain, coal could return as supplies of Russian natural gas taper off.

This does make it doubtful that carbon emissions would fall very far before rebounding.  Nuclear is looking better and better every day.

Labels: , , , , ,

 
Sunday, August 01, 2010
 

Analysis from posts

GCC has a post on biomass-to-naptha schemes, upgrading pyrolysis oil to hydrocarbons.  The projected cost is $2.11-$3.09 per gallon.  My analysis follows.

2000 dry tons/day = 730,000 tons/year.  The yield is 48 gallons/ton for the hydrogen production scenario and 79 gallons/ton for the merchant hydrogen scenario.  (I calculate the carbon fraction captured in the product to be about 26% and 47%, respectively.  This is not a very efficient scheme.)

If we take the figure of the 446 million dry tons of crop residues as a given, the potential output from this process is 21 billion gallons/year in the hydrogen-production scenario and 35 billion gallons/year in the purchased hydrogen scenario.  (The question of the provenance of purchased hydrogen is significant.)

Even if the biomass supply can be doubled (or tripled), this scheme still falls short of providing BAU supplies of motor fuel.  It can supply the liquid fuel needs of the PHEV component of an electrified fleet.

Labels: , , ,

 
Talk largely about energy and work, but also politics and other random thoughts


Mail Engineer-Poet

(If you're mailing a question, is it already in the FAQ?)

Important links

The FAQ
Glossary
The Reference Library

Blogchild of

Armed and Dangerous

Blogparent of

R-Squared




The best prospect for our energy future:
Flibe Energy

ARCHIVES
January 1990 / February 2004 / March 2004 / June 2004 / July 2004 / August 2004 / September 2004 / October 2004 / November 2004 / December 2004 / January 2005 / February 2005 / March 2005 / April 2005 / May 2005 / June 2005 / July 2005 / August 2005 / September 2005 / October 2005 / November 2005 / December 2005 / January 2006 / February 2006 / March 2006 / April 2006 / May 2006 / June 2006 / July 2006 / August 2006 / September 2006 / October 2006 / November 2006 / December 2006 / January 2007 / February 2007 / March 2007 / April 2007 / December 2007 / January 2008 / May 2008 / June 2008 / August 2008 / October 2008 / November 2008 / December 2008 / February 2009 / March 2009 / April 2009 / May 2009 / June 2009 / July 2009 / August 2009 / September 2009 / October 2009 / November 2009 / December 2009 / January 2010 / April 2010 / May 2010 / June 2010 / July 2010 / August 2010 / September 2010 / October 2010 / November 2010 / December 2010 / January 2011 / February 2011 / March 2011 / April 2011 / May 2011 / July 2011 / August 2011 / September 2011 / October 2011 / April 2013 / November 2013 / December 2013 / January 2014 / February 2014 / March 2014 / April 2014 / July 2014 / August 2014 / September 2014 / October 2014 / November 2014 / February 2015 / April 2015 / October 2015 / March 2016 / April 2016 / May 2016 / June 2016 / July 2016 / November 2016 / December 2016 / February 2017 / May 2017 / June 2017 / September 2017 / October 2017 / November 2017 / March 2018 / May 2018 / June 2018 / October 2018 / December 2018 / January 2019 / March 2019 / June 2019 / October 2019 / November 2019 / March 2020 / June 2020 / December 2020 / March 2021 / April 2021 / May 2021 / July 2021 / January 2022 / February 2022 /


Powered by Blogger

RSS feed

Visits since 2006/05/11: