My response. And it is a long one. With no apologies for length or content.
MechEng said:
As for coal plants I'm talking about carbon and sulfur recapturing. And making them "so called clean" even though they still really won't be clean.
Good. We're talking about the same thing.
For ethanol it will take about 5 years to get these plants up and running.
It may take 5 years to get A Plant up and running. You won't get "dozens" of plants up and running in 5 years. Just try organizing the fleets of cement trucks you will need.
And Cellulosic ethanol can use a variety of waste products in general not just biomass.
Biomass is any material which originated from a living organism. Essentially it is any carbonaceous material from any plant or animal. Cellulose is a carbonaceous material from a plant - any plant - all plants. All cellulose is by definition "biomass". There are other "biomass" sources - like living bugs or like dead fish, dead cows, dead people and excreta from all of the above - but none of them qualify as "cellulosic". It is possible to use them with other foods to grow plants containing cellulose but the carbon in the cellulose comes from carbon sources like molasses and sugar.
Cellulose is Biomass. Ethanol from Cellulose, cellulosic ethanol, is ethanol from biomass.
And the conversion process takes energy and the more you have to do, the more energy you have to put in, the less energy is available.
In fact there is currently more ethanol being produced than being consumed right now and many of the crop based ethanol producers are at risk of going under. Ethanol distribution has not kept up with ethanol production. And the price of things like corn are putting pressure on crop based ethanol producers.
Welcome to the world of economic subsidies and the law of unintended consequences. Refer to a chap name of Adam Smith with respect to being able to plan an economy.
As for Algae based biofuels there are other ways to extract the water from algae other than expending energy for evaporation. This is where many of the recent breakthrough's have been.
Perhaps you are thinking of filtering? The water won't free drain.
Ultra-filtration and reverse osmosis? First you have to chop things up really small then apply lots of pressure, lots of surface area and lots of time - and it still leaves you with water trapped in wet fibre and sugar trapped in water. The wet fiber will not burn and the sugar needs to be separated from the water before it can be burnt.
Pressing? Energy intensive and achieves the same results.
Centrifugation? Marginally less energy intensive than pressing but achieves similar results.
Usually these processes are utilized in combination with each other, along with heating to disrupt cell structure or to provide the growing conditions for digestion, and multi-effect evaporators and dryers to achieve economical outcomes. And the more the processes that are involved the more that has to be done, the more by-products produced that have to be sold or treated and the less product available for the primary stream.
Exotics like Supercritical Fluid Extraction or Molecular Distillation - don't get me started. Those are still evaporative processes but really expensive ones that still require chopping big bits into little bits befor they can be processed. More processing, more money, less product. I had one plant many years ago that was designed to take half of the entire supply of cowhides from the Alberta kill and convert it in a pharmaceutical. It required a massive building, three or four highly secretive and compartmentalized process rooms, one of which required my centrifuges (over 2 million just for the centrifuges) to produce a "product" measured in grams. Think of that: Millions in investmet supported by grams of product from hundreds of tonnes of raw materials - which happened to be a form of biomass - which were mainly turned into unusable wastes.
But the value of the product was the only way to support the extremely expensive process.
I had a couple of prospective projects where the investor was being asked to convert their dead fish or dead chickens (and money) into ethanol using bugs. The advantage was that much of the size reduction and cell denaturation had already been accomplished making meals and oils for feed. The problem was that the conversion process was a sideline for the bugs in question. They still had to eat. To make the process work the bugs had to be fed a steady diet of molasses or sugar.
I don't see why there would be a big push to keep coal power in Canada.
Because coal is the purest grade of carbon we have available on the planet.
Gasoline is Coal plus Hydrogen in the form of Benzene Rings
Sugars are Coal in the form of rings of 6 carbons, just like Benzene and Coal, with water stuck to it as Hydrogens and OHs.
Starch is Coal plus Water in the form of chains of the same sugars cellulose is made from but untwisted so that they become accessible for digestion
Cellulose is Coal plus Water in the form of chains of sugars strung together so that they are unavailable for animals to digest with the bugs and enzymes they have available to them. Cow hire out the task.
Ethanol is nothing more than finely divide Coal plus water. The 6 Carbon ring is busted into 3x 2 Carbon chunks and more water is added.
Methane/Natural Gas is just the most finely divide Coal available but with Hydrogen added.
So, to sum up, to achieve the energy available in coal from any other source one must first either remove Water or Hydrogen.
Bound Hydrogen has the advantage that it
at least Releases energy when removed from Carbon
thus helping and greatly improves your energy balance.
But it It also reduces the density of the fuel. A little density reduction to convert the solid coal to the liquid benzene is a good thing because you actually gain a little on bulk density and a lot on convenience. A large density reduction from solid to coal to a gas creates more problems as storage densities decrease and handling becomes more difficult. You don’t have to worry about coal leaking past gaskets.
Ethanol requires the removal of water to generate energy: CH3CH2OH or 2C+2H2+ H2O.
Breaking the two Carbons apart releases energy.
Busting off the Hydrogen releases more energy.
Removing the water REQUIRES energy.
(Of course this all assumes an Oxygen rich environment)
On balance the burning of Ethanol in an oxygen rich environment releases enough energy to get rid of its internal water and leaves a significant surplus.
But in order to get there you had to get rid of the water in the Glucose to make Ethanol.
Glucose equals C6H12O6 or 6C+0H2+ 6H2O versus 3x(2C+2H2+ H2O) or 6C+6H2+3H2O
Glucose has fewer energy rich Hydrogen bonds and more energy intensive OH bonds for an equivalent number of those high energy Carbon-Carbon bonds.
Starch and Cellulose contain still more water for each Carbon-Carbon bond and less Hydrogen.
Both of them are equally bio-available commercially be selecting the right bugs.
On the market starches and sugars are harder to come by than cellulose because plants create less and humans eat them. Most animals can fend for themselves with cellulose. Lions and tigers are another matter.
That makes cellulose the cheaper source of water-drenched carbon-bonds.
Cellulose and starch both bind water to those structural H and OH bonds. That makes the Carbon still more water-logged and unavailable. And the only way to remove that bound water is by heat. Mechanical means like pressing and centrifugation will not get the job done. Period.
That bound water then binds to more water and somewhere along the way the bonds become loose enough that some of the water becomes free draining ie when the force of gravity supplies enough energy to break those weak water to water bonds.
But sugar is very efficient at spreading itself around so as to associate itself with lots of water and dissolving while cellulose is very efficient at creating structures that wrap around water and trap it.
All of which makes those Carbon-Carbon bonds harder to reach.
And all of which begs the question of where the Carbon comes from in the first place ---- Lessee, at 150 ppm how much air do I have to pass over a field or through a greenhouse to capture a tonne of Carbon from the air and convert it into plants which I can chop up, mechanically extract water, digest the cellulose to dextrose, ferment the dextrose to ethanol, distil the ethanol to thermally extract water and generate enough ethanol to give me the same energy equivalency as digging up a tonne of Coal?
Coal is carbon. Wood is carbon. Corn is carbon. Sugarcane is carbon. Bark, hay and straw are carbon. Algae are carbon. Cellulose, starch and sugars are carbon. Gasoline, diesel, natural gas, shale oil and tar sands are carbon. Heck, even proteins are carbon. Bullsh*t is carbon.
Why is carbon such a valuable energy source? Because, if it is dry enough, it lights when you put a match to it. It can be stored for an eternity until you need it and then it is immediately available to provide instant heat.
The same cannot be said for nuclear power, hydro power, wind, tidal or solar power. Nor can it be said for energy stored in batteries or capacitors.
Coal stores for millennia and lights in seconds with no processing.
Coal represents a small percentage of the power produced in most parts of Canada.
Not true in Alberta or Saskatchewan and questionable in Manitoba and BC where despite their Hydro capabilities they buy energy from the Coal Fired plants of Alberta and Saskatchewan. (BC buys cheap “dirty” electricity from Alberta and then sells its “clean” hydro-electricity to California at a premium to help Governor Ahnuld meet his green commitments).
In Ontario Coal only represents about 15% of the power in the province.
And you are having trouble dealing with power surges resulting in more brown-outs and black-outs
And this could be easily be replaced with nuclear power which is just as economical if not more economical.
It couldn’t be easily replaced with nuclear power and it shouldn’t be “replaced” with nuclear. Nuclear plants should be built. But they should be built to meet the baseline power requirements. The 80% of the market demand that doesn’t change or is predictable. The coal fired generators should be retained for the same reason that more people are keeping gasoline generators at home: to meet the unexpected (and the uneconomical peaks).
Wind power is not as expensive as you think. On a small home scale it's about 11 cents/KWh on a large scale its about 7 cents/KWh. And these numbers have been falling fast and show no signs of stopping.
See previous comments about Adam Smith and unintended consequences of subsidization.
One reactor at Darlington produces 850 MW of steam 24/7 for 365 days a year. That is piped, along with the steam from the rest of the reactors to a group of turbines which also run 24/7. When a turbine needs to be serviced it is enclosed. It is at ground level. It is accessible.
A Wind Turbine is nominally about 2 MW these days. That means that you need 425 wind turbines to produce the power that one Darlington reactor does – if the wind is blowing. Most wind farms anticipate that the right winds will only blow around 25 to 30% of the time – with no known schedule for availability.
That means that you have to build 3 to 4 windfarms of 425 turbines and site them in different areas and hope that at least one of the farms will be in a local weather system that provides usable wind while the other farms are idle. That means anything from 1275 to 1700 turbines. Scattered across the countryside. Stuck on the top of 100 meter poles. Accessed by helicopters. With servicemen deployed by safety lines to elevated platforms then required to work in cramped quarters with the tools and parts that they bring with them.
Ever forgotten a tool or discovered that you needed an unanticipated part?
1700 turbines to service versus 1-3 turbines – and then there is life expectancy.
Solar 5 years ago was 30 cents/KWh. Today its 15 cents/KWh and also falling very fast. Canadian tire is now selling solar powered home generators.
Canadian Tire also sells Solar Showers for camping (a 5 Gallon plastic bag you hang in a tree). I don’t plan on using them at home either.
As for electric cars. The Chevy Volt is expected to have a range of over 1000km's on 40L of gasoline when using the engine to regenerate the battery and an electric only range of 62kms. I don't call that short range.
4 litres per 100 km is pretty good. I like hybrids.
62 km is impressive for a battery operated vehicle. But it still qualifies as an urban runaround.
ICE's have an efficiency of ~25%. Electric motors ~95+%.
Absolutely. Hybrids good.
Electric motors can go as high as 15000 RPM and have a virtually flat torque curve. And don't require a transmission (Which gives ~20% efficiency loss).
Absolutely again. Hybrids good. Fewer moving parts, less service and maintenance.
The only issue to date with electric motors is not size or power. But it is energy storage. The next generation of batteries will solve this problem. The Tesla Roadster electric car with rather primitive Li-Ion batteries has a range of 300kms. http://www.teslamotors.com/
And there you have it. And back to the advantages of Coal. Energy storage. Diesel is a really good compromise. Lots of carbon
and just enough lots of hydrogen
to make storing and transporting the coal Edit: and storing and transporting is easier in confined spaces. It doesn't have the shelf-life of coal but it is sufficiently long to make it a marketable commodity.
The Chevy Volt and GM's e-flex system will use a small advanced Li-Ion battery that the car can use to go 62kms on electric only range. And can be recharged by plugging into the wall at home. It also has a small gas engine. The gas engine does not power the wheels. It is only used to recharge the battery and this is a big advantage. ICE's are most efficient in a very narrow RPM range. With the engine only used to recharge the battery it can be optimized to run at only one RPM. It will be like getting highway mileage all the time except better.
Have I said I like Hybrids?
Trains made by GM already use the E-flex concept. Trains today use electric motors for their main source of propulsion and a diesel engine to recharge the battery.
Becoming monotonous. Hybrids.
City buses already use hybrid systems with a combination of electric motors and a diesel engine.
Agreed.
Sorry about the long blurb about electric motors but there is a lot of misconceptions about electric motors. I'm a mechanical engineer (hence my name) and my background is in the automotive industry.
I am a Food Scientist with a background in thermo-coagulation, fermentations, digestions, separations, evaporation and drying as well as designing, installing and commissioning plants in diverse locations where you have to carry your own fuel, generate your own energy, provide for your own service (unless volcanoes, tidal waves, snowstorms or the runway not washing out permit the service man to land) and, on occasion, make your own process water. You might consider me as a chemical engineer that happened to specialize in food - the world's most complex mix of chemicals.
I have had just about every “alternative” solution in the book thrown at me over the years. And none of them made economic sense…… And then there were Carbon Credits. :
Edited to tidy up some erroneous/confusing statements.
