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blowfish posted:* Hydrolysing water/Synthetic fuels The environmentalists probably aren't happy about this one, but this technology is interesting in that it can leverage existing infrastructure for the storage and transport of liquid fuel, and that the electro-chemically synthesized fuel can also be used for heating, trains, ships, planes, trucks, and cars. When you talk about the efficiencies, what kinds of efficiencies do people achieve? And when you say that it's not quite there yet for large scale applications, what do you mean? The Nazis during WWII used electro-chemically synthesized fuel (probably at great cost--they had to do it since they had no access to oilfields), so it actually has been done at large scale before, I thought. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Nov 17, 2015 |
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Nov 17, 2015 15:08
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silence_kit posted:The environmentalists probably aren't happy about this one, but this technology is interesting in that it can leverage existing infrastructure for the storage and transport of liquid fuel, and that the electro-chemically synthesized fuel can also be used for heating, trains, ships, planes, trucks, and cars. I was wondering about efficiency as well. Synthetic fuels seem to me the "natural" way to store energy in this way. It'd be nice if you didn't have to combust it to retrieve the energy- I assume that is where most of the loss comes from.
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Nov 17, 2015 16:00
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Anosmoman posted:Rare earths refer to 17 elements and there's plenty of battery chemistries that don't involve any of them such as zinc-air or lead-acid. What he means - I'm guessing - is that batteries with a reasonable energy density require expensive and rare elements such as the lithium batteries in Teslas powerwall. Personally I find it odd to pay a premium for energy density on the utility scale so I don't think lithium will really be used there - it'll probably be flow batteries and other chemistries to optimize for cost rather than size. But you do need energy density. Space around suitable points of the infrastructure for energy storage isn't exactly infinite. When we're building battery banks that can hold a sizable percentage of a continent's energy needs, we can't just accept the "make it huge" tradeoff. Count Roland posted:I was wondering about efficiency as well. Synthetic fuels seem to me the "natural" way to store energy in this way. It'd be nice if you didn't have to combust it to retrieve the energy- I assume that is where most of the loss comes from. No, most of the loss comes from the fact that you're using a whole bunch of energy to store a fraction of itself in newly constituted chemical bonds. Cracking water to make hydrogen fuel is about the least loss synthetic fuel solution, but handling hydrogen as a fuel source is super tricky and dangerous to compensate. Of course, with enough power coming in, the loss of power in production concerns are less relevant. Effectively, making synthetic fuel is a terrible way to store power to be released back on the grid, but a great way to divert excess grid power to something that can be used by things off the grid: cars, lawn mowers, ships, maybe even planes.
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Nov 17, 2015 16:05
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What are the primary synthetic combustible fuels under consideration? Or are you talking about hydrogen for use in fuel cells for electricity generation?
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Nov 17, 2015 16:09
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Saint Fu posted:What are the primary synthetic combustible fuels under consideration? Or are you talking about hydrogen for use in fuel cells for electricity generation? I don't know what the state-of-the-art achievements are, but it'd be nice if they could synthesize the precursors to kerosene, jet fuel, diesel, and so on, because the most attractive thing about the technology is that fuel is great at things that electricity isn't, like for powering ships and airplanes and for heating.
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Nov 17, 2015 16:34
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Saint Fu posted:What are the primary synthetic combustible fuels under consideration? Or are you talking about hydrogen for use in fuel cells for electricity generation? We've been able to synthesize a gasoline suitable for use in standard vehicles from coal products since the 1930s, you simply need to have a lot of power available to do the process. As it happens this was a major thing the Nazis relied on for fuel in World War II, besides captured oil fields and oil fields in allies. There are several different processes to do this, and most of them also produce useful amounts of oil suitable for lubrication purposes during the process. Fuel for diesel engines can also be synthesized with related processes, as well as making both gasoline and diesel out of biomass or natural gas.
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Nov 17, 2015 16:44
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Agreed, coal gassification to CO followed by the Fischer Tropsch to CH2 is what the Nazi's and apartheid-era SA used. I'm more curious about the CO2->CO end of the equation. Since we were talking about useful ways to use intermittent excess electricty, I was wondering if there was a way to push the CO2 + H2 <-> CO + H2O reaction to the right using electricity.
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Nov 17, 2015 16:55
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fishmech posted:But you do need energy density. Space around suitable points of the infrastructure for energy storage isn't exactly infinite. When we're building battery banks that can hold a sizable percentage of a continent's energy needs, we can't just accept the "make it huge" tradeoff. Even if there was infinite space, there are not infinite materials. We might run out of lead trying to build a national-scale lead-acid battery backup.
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Nov 17, 2015 17:04
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Even if there was infinite space, there are not infinite materials. We might run out of lead trying to build a national-scale lead-acid battery backup. That blog post makes two common errors. First, just decides that we'd need a battery big enough to store all the electricity the US needs for a week. Studies by research groups like NREL show that number is vastly lower, even in some crazy 90% renewables scenario. Second, it makes a mistake about the definition of resource. The term, when used by USGS and others, specifically refers to amount of something economically viable at this price. In some insane world where we build a giant lead acid battery of doom, we wouldn't run out of lead the global "lead resources" would increase as the price increases and things that used to be not economical to get lead out of would become economical. Same thing with rare earths. There used to only be a few mines in the world that could economically mine lithium and those mines can't supply world demand! So we've just opened 3+ new mines in North America alone, because the price rose to make those new mines viable. (We're on the other side of the resource boom/bust curve on oil too....fracing opened up too much new supply and along with reduced demand, crashed the price) Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Nov 17, 2015 |
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Nov 17, 2015 17:53
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Trabisnikof posted:That blog post makes two common errors. Yeah, I treat all material scarcity claims with a grain of salt because of stuff like this. Even scientific researchers get this stuff wrong. There were solar cell researchers who were trying to make crappy solar cells with paper and rocks (mostly as an excuse to study the opto-electrical properties of materials not traditionally used for those purposes) who cite stuff about the scarcity of solar cell materials as a way to technologically justify their research. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Nov 17, 2015 |
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Nov 17, 2015 18:03
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Trabisnikof posted:That blog post makes two common errors. How much storage would be required, then?
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Nov 17, 2015 19:10
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:How much storage would be required, then? Depends on what % renewables you're envisioning, if we invest in the grid, etc etc. The RE: Futures scenario calls for 100-150 GW of storage response by 2050 which gets ball-parked at 100-300GWh of installed storage capacity depending on what storage you use, what other response options you have (demand response, biogas, etc). RE:futures model batteries of capable of 8hrs of charge and CAES as 12hrs for context. The blog post was calling for 336,000 GWh of storage for comparison. To be fair, it was envisioning a world where all energy is electric, powered by wind or sun, no demand response and an impossible meteorological event and this battery-to-end-all-batteries would handle it all. So it'd be a pretty baller battery.
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Nov 17, 2015 20:14
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Trabisnikof posted:Depends on what % renewables you're envisioning, if we invest in the grid, etc etc. To be fair, if we want to be CO2 neutral, we have to electrify transport in some way. Either by putting batteries in cars and boats or by running them on H2/synthetic fuel (taking into account electrolysis inefficiency and heat loss in combustion engines or fuel cells you may well be losing 1/3 to 2/3 of energy by producing and then burning synthetic fuel compared to just running an electric motor off the mains in that case).
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Nov 18, 2015 12:41
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Solar panels wear out eventually, right? What's the process for recycling them?
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Nov 18, 2015 17:53
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Solar panels wear out eventually, right? What's the process for recycling them?  Probably ship them all to china and forget about it, like we do with all our electronics. But right now there just isn't a big enough market for the infrastructure of dedicated solar panel recycling so they just go into the garbage system mostly. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/11/141111-solar-panel-manufacturing-sustainability-ranking/ And of course in the world of recycling people only do it if it's profitable, or are forced to do it. Even if recycling the panels is technically possible, it may require strict regulations forcing people to do so, and if the process is expensive that needs to be taken into account when judging the costs of solar. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Nov 18, 2015 |
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Nov 18, 2015 18:48
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Solar panels wear out eventually, right? What's the process for recycling them? Here's a cool paper on one way to recycle PV https://www.bnl.gov/pv/files/prs_agenda/2_krueger_ieee-presentation-final.pdf
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Nov 18, 2015 18:52
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Trabisnikof posted:Here's a cool paper on one way to recycle PV https://www.bnl.gov/pv/files/prs_agenda/2_krueger_ieee-presentation-final.pdf But good luck standing up groups to do that. We can recycle Nuclear Waste as well, and 95% of nuclear fuel is still useable when declared waste, but its really rare because GE and others fought it. computer parts posted:Also mining is a pretty major (in terms of volume anyway; it's actually pretty stupid) argument against fission so I don't see why it wouldn't apply here. Mining for rare earth elements and fission are two different footprints. Fissionable materials mines are much smaller and generally underground, and rare earth element mines tend to be open pit mining.
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Nov 18, 2015 20:20
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Solar panels wear out eventually, right? Most are rated for a 25 year lifetime. I can't think of any energy generation technology which is as low maintenance as flat-plate photovoltaic solar cells. Solar cells are solid-state devices, just like transistors, which are famous for being extremely reliable. A big reason why they are so reliable is that they have no moving parts and no plumbing. This is maybe one of the biggest reasons why solar energy is so attractive--it's like the opposite of nuclear energy, where the power plants are super complicated, you've got plumbing, machinery, high temperatures, radioactivity, and so on which needs constant maintenance. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Nov 18, 2015 |
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Nov 18, 2015 20:50
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CommieGIR posted:But good luck standing up groups to do that. We can recycle Nuclear Waste as well, and 95% of nuclear fuel is still useable when declared waste, but its really rare because GE and others fought it. I think the PV industry is all on board PV recycling, since it basically will be free to them (tax-writeoffs on any losses) and great PR near the end users.
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Nov 18, 2015 21:03
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silence_kit posted:Most are rated for a 25 year lifetime. I can't think of any energy generation technology which is as low maintenance as flat-plate photovoltaic solar cells. Solar cells are solid-state devices, just like transistors, which are famous for being extremely reliable. A big reason why they are so reliable is that they have no moving parts and no plumbing. There's just that whole, y'know, sun going down thing and power output per acre. Seriously, most on-demand generation plants, be nuclear, gas, coal, or hell even solar-thermal are incredibly complicated machines.
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Nov 18, 2015 21:07
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CommieGIR posted:But good luck standing up groups to do that. We can recycle Nuclear Waste as well, and 95% of nuclear fuel is still useable when declared waste, but its really rare because GE and others fought it. Huh? Nuclear fuel reprocessing was banned during the Carter administration by executive order because of proliferation fears. GE would have no reason to argue in favor of such an order.
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Nov 18, 2015 21:13
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Phanatic posted:Huh? That's kinda silly, especially if the reprocessing is handled by the US NRC.
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Nov 18, 2015 21:16
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CommieGIR posted:That's kinda silly, especially if the reprocessing is handled by the US NRC. Yeah I don't get it. Have a big government/military organization that's in charge of all spent fuel transport and reprocessing. Done. They come and collect the fuel and drop off fresh fuel. No waste or weapons concerns.
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Nov 18, 2015 21:20
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Baronjutter posted:Yeah I don't get it. Have a big government/military organization that's in charge of all spent fuel transport and reprocessing. Done. They come and collect the fuel and drop off fresh fuel. No waste or weapons concerns. "Hooray, free Tritium and Plutonium for the national stockpile!"
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Nov 18, 2015 21:23
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Baronjutter posted:Yeah I don't get it. Have a big government/military organization that's in charge of all spent fuel transport and reprocessing. Done. They come and collect the fuel and drop off fresh fuel. No waste or weapons concerns. That sounds like socialism to me.
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Nov 18, 2015 21:25
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CommieGIR posted:That's kinda silly, especially if the reprocessing is handled by the US NRC. It wasn't just the reprocessing. It was the transportation to the reprocessing facility that was the biggest political problem, and then the security requirements for storing the reprocessed fuel. Overall, he concluded that a once-through cycle was the cheapest and safest alternative. I don't know if it was right, but it wasn't decided rashly. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=7316
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Nov 18, 2015 21:33
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CommieGIR posted:There's just that whole, y'know, sun going down thing and power output per acre. I'm just bringing it up so that someone doesn't conflate solar cells with inexpensive consumer electronics, like BaronJutter, and think that they have to be replaced every year and therefore generate a ton of waste. Quite frankly, that's an ignorant opinion.
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Nov 18, 2015 21:34
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CommieGIR posted:That's kinda silly, What part of "Carter administration" are you not understanding? (NB: Well, actually, the whole deregulation of the airlines and trucking and legalizing homebrewing, that stuff was all pretty cool.)
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Nov 18, 2015 22:17
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Phanatic posted:What part of "Carter administration" are you not understanding? I'm not sure if I would call Carter under-informed or "silly" in his opinions of nuclear power.
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Nov 18, 2015 22:25
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Trabisnikof posted:I'm not sure if I would call Carter under-informed or "silly" in his opinions of nuclear power.
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Nov 18, 2015 22:31
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The UK's first engineered geothermal system is struggling for £12m of EU funding because the government refused to put in £37m. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/18/eden-project-in-bid-build-one-uks-first-geothermal-plants Renewable energy in the UK is going to get killed off before it even gets going
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Nov 18, 2015 22:51
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to be fair, the UK's been baffled by every new energy source since coal
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Nov 18, 2015 22:58
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You could run Cornwall like Iceland and everything 
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Nov 18, 2015 23:08
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Rent-A-Cop posted:It is possible to be an intelligent person with stupid opinions. I don't think Carter had stupid opinions about nuclear power. I'm pretty sure he was the president that knew more about the technology than any other.
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Nov 18, 2015 23:10
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Trabisnikof posted:I don't think Carter had stupid opinions about nuclear power. I'm pretty sure he was the president that knew more about the technology than any other. It's almost like Presidents occasionally make decisions for political reasons rather than technical realities.
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Nov 18, 2015 23:11
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Phanatic posted:It's almost like Presidents occasionally make decisions for political reasons rather than technical realities. Or maybe the proliferation risks were higher in the 70s?
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Nov 18, 2015 23:15
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Trabisnikof posted:Or maybe the proliferation risks were higher in the 70s? In what way has uranium enrichment changed? What about the incredibly precise technology required to create a plutonium bomb, not even considering the fact that the plutonium in the waste of a reactor being run normally isn't even useful for bombs?
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Nov 18, 2015 23:20
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Sinestro posted:In what way has uranium enrichment changed? What about the incredibly precise technology required to create a plutonium bomb, not even considering the fact that the plutonium in the waste of a reactor being run normally isn't even useful for bombs? The fundamental problem with reprocessing was transporting the waste. Period. Many states had banned the transport of nuclear waste across their lines. Greenpeace was forming human blockades stopping trains and trucks that carried it. This was the era of peak anti-nuclear hysteria. Carter could have utilized federal powers to stomp all over it and force the issue anyway, but ultimately decided it wasn't worth it. Once-through fuel cycles with the waste stored on-site has been the standard since.
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Nov 18, 2015 23:27
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Trabisnikof posted:I don't think Carter had stupid opinions about nuclear power. I'm pretty sure he was the president that knew more about the technology than any other. He was a sub officer on a diesel sub, but he wasn't a nuclear engineer - his dad died while Carter was taking the nuclear power courses, so he resigned his commission midway through them to run the family business.
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Nov 18, 2015 23:42
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silence_kit posted:It's not only the mining, but the "they have to be manufactured" argument I find hilarious. You can make a detailed argument about the cost of the manufacturing, but complaining that batteries don't grow on trees is pretty funny. It's actually a major issue even if your requirement could be satisfied by something as basic as a giant pile of tin cans. Atmospheric gases are free and turning them into an energy storage medium them doesn't damage much of anything. Water isn't as easily available but unless you live in a desert you'll be able to divert some into a reservoir and it will not damage anything except whatever was under the physical footprint of the reservoir. Having any sort of storage medium that requires inputs of resources that are not readily available means extracting loads of the relevant resource (duh) with additional environmental costs. If your storage medium ever wears out, this will keep going on forever and not just be a one-time investment. Therefore, hydro or synthetic fuel/H2 are the preferred option for any large scale storage that doesn't need to be portable, though the latter are obviously also serviceable for portable applications.
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Nov 18, 2015 23:54
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