Future Energy Sources....

[swansont]

If you look at history you will find that we did indeed handle hydrogen for many decades in the form of Town Gas or Coal Gas. Town Gas is a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide resulting from cracking coal and it was used for cooking, heating and lighting up until the early 1950's.

 

And what was the pressure, and mass flow rate of the hydrogen component, of this type of system? Local? Transcontinental?

 

For the last decade or so, all new gas pipelines have had to be hydrogen ready by federal law.

 

Cite?

[pioneer]

I like the idea of bacteria, which are being developed, that can convert biomass to hydrogen gas. If we can couple these with algae that can use the sun to make the appropriate biomass, then we have solar powered hydrogen production. What some scientists have found is low level electricity can increase the output of the hydrogen bacteria. We can get this adding some solar panels. What is interesting is the hydrogen producing bacteria will also produce CO2. The symbiosis involves the constant recycle of the same CO2, allowing closed containers. The gas separation and recycle may be the most complicated part so we can maintain maximum production. But we would get O2 and H2 streams for double money making.

[coreview2]

And what was the pressure, and mass flow rate of the hydrogen component, of this type of system? Local? Transcontinental?

 

The Town Gas system supplied almost all of the Northeast and much of the country for nearly 100 years. The history is pretty well recorded. Wiki has a good overview.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_gas

 

It ain't a clean process. In fact, most of the process itself and the energy spent is spent cleaning up the nasty stuff in the result of incomplete burning of coal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's an old link and long gone' date=' but as I'm was interested in hydrogen, it was info I remembered well enough. Of course, I'm talking about pipe-lines and not all gas pipes.

 

I like the idea of bacteria, which are being developed, that can convert biomass to hydrogen gas. If we can couple these with algae that can use the sun to make the appropriate biomass, then we have solar powered hydrogen production. What some scientists have found is low level electricity can increase the output of the hydrogen bacteria. We can get this adding some solar panels. What is interesting is the hydrogen producing bacteria will also produce CO2. The symbiosis involves the constant recycle of the same CO2, allowing closed containers. The gas separation and recycle may be the most complicated part so we can maintain maximum production. But we would get O2 and H2 streams for double money making.

 

I'm most happy to see bio-waste, fall leaves, land-fill and such used to make fuel, however, it will only be a niche in the overall picture of energy needs and we really need to get beyond the Fossil Fuel age and hydrocarbons as soon as practical.

 

Then too I'm more than a little concerned that some of those bacteria that are used to digest cellulose are E Coli (yes the very same that live in our gut and without which we cannot digest our food). One of the reasons E Coli is used in so much research on gene-splicing is that it was so well studied as a bacteria because it has a symbiotic relationship with our bodies. That's a short-cut that worries me.

[dichotomy]

Anyone have any other suggested new sources of energy that would qualify as both clean and baseline power (non-intermittent, reliable and sustainable too).

 

 

Solar Tower technology

http://www.enviromission.com.au/project/project.htm

 

Hot fractured rock

http://www.geodynamics.com.au/IRM/content/home.html

 

 

solar thermal electric power

the Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector

http://www.ausra.com/

 

Thorium Nuclear Power

http://www.thoriumpowerinc.com

[swansont]

The Town Gas system supplied almost all of the Northeast and much of the country for nearly 100 years. The history is pretty well recorded. Wiki has a good overview.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_gas

 

It ain't a clean process. In fact, most of the process itself and the energy spent is spent cleaning up the nasty stuff in the result of incomplete burning of coal.

 

This was distribution of locally-produced gas, so the relevance to pipelines transporting hydrogen from remote production facilities is limited.

[coreview2]

Solar Tower technology

http://www.enviromission.com.au/project/project.htm

 

Hot fractured rock

http://www.geodynamics.com.au/IRM/content/home.html

 

 

solar thermal electric power

the Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector

http://www.ausra.com/

 

Thorium Nuclear Power

http://www.thoriumpowerinc.com

 

 

I can see industrial grade solar working very well in Arizona and New Mexico or Australia, for example, where there is lots of sun and a lot of land isn't used to grow things. However, solar has a very big footprint and I'd rather see it in an adjunct role as the roofing material of choice for suburban and rural homes and facilities for less than arid places.

 

I've followed the Aussie geothermal plants for some years as well as the concept. However, the one in Switzerland recently caused a minor earthquake and one in Japan loses its water. Guess that's why pilot plants are built. Advances in drilling (laser drilling for one) and seismic imaging are great assets for this and ultimately for magma heat mining.

 

http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/ees/ees11/geophysics/other/hdr.shtml

 

For a bit of history, Fenton Hill from Los Alamos was the first HDR pilot built.

[SkepticLance]

I have just read an article by William Calvin (author of the book 'Global Fever - How to Treat Climate Change').

http://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2008/04/24/press_release_calvin_global_fe.html

He lists the various options for energy production without releasing carbon.

 

His top two are geothermal and nuclear. The geothermal option he favours (bias towards the USA) is what he calls Hot Rock Energy. This is not exactly energy from magma. It is to drill to about 7 kms deep in certain places, such as the US Rocky Mountains, to where hot, and dry granite is found. Temperatures about 200 C. You then pump water down and steam drives turbines. Obvious advantage compared to drilling for magma is that the hot rock is found at much lesser depths. Hence cheaper drilling.

 

The article I read is in Skeptic mag; Vol. 14, no. 1, 2008 page 38

 

I am not so keen on solar energy, myself. For one thing, it stops producing for 12 hours per day on average. Storing energy always wastes about 50% of the energy (plus or minus a factor). Thus, its efficiency as a supplier of energy at night is rather problematic.

[Rev Blair]

I see a much wider mix of energy in the future.

 

Bio-fuels, hydrogen, and electric for cars and small motors.

 

Electricity generated by wind, hydro, tidal, geothermal, nuclear etc...whatever works in a given area.

 

A lot of that will be pretty small-scale too, I think. Personal generation that feeds back into the grid at least part of the time.

 

The other thing we're likely to see is a reduction in use per capita. More efficient homes, appliances, transportation and so on.

[stingray78]

This is really new:Starpower energy. Check it out!!!!

It's incredible:

http://www.tubepolis.com/play.php?q=energy%20sources&title=Starpower%2B-%2Bthe%2Bfuture%2Benergy%2Bsource&id=hgbtVR2Qrco&img=http%253A%252F%252Fi.ytimg.com%252Fvi%252FhgbtVR2Qrco%252Fdefault.jpg

[insane_alien]

it is true that stars release a lot of energy when they explode. but even if the nearest star to us wen supernova by the time the gamma rays got to earth they would be so spread out that the energy density would be useless.

 

we get more energy from the sun than gamma ray bursts

[coreview2]

I have just read an article by William Calvin (author of the book 'Global Fever - How to Treat Climate Change').

http://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2008/04/24/press_release_calvin_global_fe.html

He lists the various options for energy production without releasing carbon.

 

His top two are geothermal and nuclear. The geothermal option he favours (bias towards the USA) is what he calls Hot Rock Energy. This is not exactly energy from magma. It is to drill to about 7 kms deep in certain places, such as the US Rocky Mountains, to where hot, and dry granite is found. Temperatures about 200 C. You then pump water down and steam drives turbines. Obvious advantage compared to drilling for magma is that the hot rock is found at much lesser depths. Hence cheaper drilling.

 

.

 

 

I used to be a big fan of dry rock geothermal and have followed it for years. I still think it is a great idea. It will certainly work in some areas, but as mentioned there are problems with the nature of the heat exchanger being shattered rocks. Perhaps when drilling is a lot cheaper thanks to the coming use of laser drill heads, it would be possible to construct a very deep closed loop rather than shattering the rocks and hoping that it didn't cause an earth quake (as happened to the Swiss pilot project recently) or as in the case of the Japanese project, a lot of the water simply leaked out somewhere. The concept does work, but it is not a 100% sure bet until the heat exchanger problems are solved (the sure bet part being very important to its investment climate). Also, note that dry rock heat resources become exhausted over a couple of decades or so as the rock cools and it is projected that it would take a few decades for them to re-heat.

 

Drilling directly into magma has some serious advantages. Once the the hole is drilled through to magma, the heat exchanger can be a pipe loop that is "merely" inserted (no more drilling at least). The quality of the energy there is about 1000C and would with be a permanent source given sound study, testing and planning. 1000C is ideal for massive hydrogen production via thermochemical process which is by far the most efficient. Heat to usable energy conversion is in the 60% range given electric co-gen along with hydrogen production (according to Argonne National Lab).

 

In the future magma heat mining would offer a very high grade energy source capable of producing vast quantities of hydrogen and electric power from facilities with a small environmental footprint, producing no emissions and with no waste to dispose of. It is the ultimate source of baseline power that does not require anything more than contemporary technology to develop.

 

The link I had breaking down very clearly the current range of thermochemical processes no longer works, but it is not hard to see the advantage of a 900C+ source of heat.

 

http://www.cmt.anl.gov/Science_and_Technology/Fuel_Cells/Nuclear_Hydrogen_Production.shtml

 

Obvious advantage compared to drilling for magma is that the hot rock is found at much lesser depths. Hence cheaper drilling.

 

Note the massive blue area on the US Geological Survey chart of crustal thickness. I also note that drilling for gas in Oklahoma sometimes results in striking molten material even where the average crust is 40KM thick and the drilling on 5 or 6KM (only

 

Of course, I'm not suggesting that location isn't important or that magma heat mining can solve all of our energy needs, just that it's potential dwarfs all others given the fact that 99% of our planet is molten and above 1000C.

 

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/structure/crust/crust.php

[SkepticLance]

My own number 1 preference is nuclear. A big reason for this is that nuclear is proven technology. We have 50 years of experience and know how to do it, and do it well. It also has an incredible safety record. Total deaths (including Chernobyl) of less than 5000. Hydro-electric has total deaths of more than 20,000 (mainly due to accidents with dams), while coal burning kills hundreds of thousands each year due to respiratory distress.

 

Disposal of nuclear waste is often held up as a major problem, and it is. However, it is a political problem - not a technical one. We know how to dispose of waste safely. It is just that hysterical opponents of nuclear power fight against the sensible disposal options.

 

Drilling deep, whether hot rock or magma, appears to be something with great potential, and that may be true. However, it is highly experimental. We still do not know how to do it properly, what the costs are and what the safety downside might be.

[Rev Blair]

Disposal of nuclear waste is often held up as a major problem, and it is. However, it is a political problem - not a technical one. We know how to dispose of waste safely. It is just that hysterical opponents of nuclear power fight against the sensible disposal options.

 

It is largely a political problem, but until the nuclear industry and pro-nuclear governments take some real steps to both address the concerns raised and explain how things work, it is not politically viable in a lot of areas.

 

Another problem with nuclear is the initial capital expense. It eats up money that could be spent on other technologies.

[coreview2]

Drilling deep, whether hot rock or magma, appears to be something with great potential, and that may be true. However, it is highly experimental. We still do not know how to do it properly, what the costs are and what the safety downside might be.

 

 

 

http://economy.okstate.edu/papers/economics%20of%20deep%20drilling.pdf

 

Here's a good link on the cost of deep drilling. The average cost of drilling 17,585 feet deep was $2.65 million from 1995 to 1999 (1,221 wells). Some of the wells have gone to 30,000 feet! The cost of drilling has actually gone down quite a lot due to improved technology and techniques and given the coming advent of laser drill heads there is great promise that the curve of improvement will make great strides.

 

The big cost will be off-shore drilling, but at least there would be no danger of a big oil spill and the 70,000 KM of tectonic rift has millions of vents where sea and air meets fresh magma all of the time.

 

Of course, a few pilot plants would be in order and I don't think that they should be done in subduction zones or near non-rift side faults. The pilot plants alone would provided a great deal of new scientific information about the 99% of our planet that is molten and above 1000C.

[alan2here]

I'm shocked that we can drill down and find lava yet there are so few power plants that use this. A tube made of a hard material from there to the surface would result in a continuous volcano and presumable vast amounts of power to be generated. Or the more conventional method of water down, steam up.