Killing Phantom Loads to Lower Electricity Usage
As you may remember from the post on our plans to reduce our electricity usage by 50%, one of our strategies was to eliminating phantom loads within our home.
First let me start by explaining what phantom loads are and how they have crept into our homes. A phantom load is the power that is […]
Sourse: Killing Phantom Loads to Lower Electricity Usage
Ethanol: The Gum That Sticks To The Bottom of A Good Man’s Loafer
As I drive past the gas station by my house I can’t help but notice their sign stating that they are proud to provide gasoline containing ethanol. As drive down a little farther I also notice the sign of the gas station in town stating proudly that their gas does not contain ethanol. I hear many people saying how wonderful ethanol is and how it’s helping to save the environment, but then I also know many who refuse to put the stuff into their tanks. This caused me to do a little research of my own. What I turned up was very enlightening, and somewhat alarming.
Sourse: Ethanol: The Gum That Sticks To The Bottom of A Good Man’s Loafer
Cleaner Coal Rises from China’s Central Committee
This weekend the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee swapped added some new faces to the 9-man Politburo that actually runs what is or will soon be the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases. Among the four new members is a chemical engineer named He Guoqiang. As the New York Times reported, Mr. He is tasked with running the party’s corruption-fighting Central Commission […]
Sourse: Cleaner Coal Rises from China’s Central Committee
AOL pulls plug on Netscape browser
… Dec. 28, 2007 at 5:56 PM U.S. stocks held back by housing concerns … Crude oil has first losing day in week … New U.S. home sales tumble 9 percent …
Sourse: AOL pulls plug on Netscape browser
Bob Lutz Video: Volt, the most fuel-efficient car in the world?
Filed under: EV/Plug-in, MPG, GM
In the video above, GM’s Bob Lutz says “we made a mistake” on hybrids because GM did not think it would be “important.” Well, not exactly a mistake the way Bob puts it because there were “legitimate reasons.” Bob says U.S. corporate structure with their “fiduciary duty” would mean going to the board to green light a “multi-hundred million dollar program that was going to lose money” and that would be difficult, of course. While at Toyota, where the “name is on the building,” the “quasi-owners” can say “I want to build a hybrid and I don’t care if it costs me a couple of hundred million dollars.”
Don’t worry about GM losing the mantle of “technology leader of the world” because of that “one” car from Toyota. Why? Bob says the Volt could be “perhaps the world’s most fuel efficient vehicle that has the highest range on batteries only.” Just the world Bob? Does anyone in the car industry under promise?
Review Panel Recommends No-Go on Further Funding for Sodium Borohydride for On-Board Vehicular Hydrogen Storage
An independent technical review panel convened at the behest of the Department of Energy to consider the technical status and progress of R&D on the hydrolysis of sodium borohydride (NaBH4) for on-board vehicular hydrogen storage has unanimously recommended a “no-go” to further funding.
Millenium Cell and others have been working on sodium borohydride-based systems for a range of applications, from portable devices to transportation. DaimlerChrysler used Millenium Cell technology it its Natrium fuel cell concept car, introduced in 2001. The Natrium (Latin for sodium, and the origin of the “Na” symbol for the element) was based on a Town and Country minivan, and used a Millenium Cell fuel processor with a Ballard fuel cell, Siemens motor and SAFT Li-ion battery pack. (Earlier post.)
When NaBH4 is suspended in an aqueous solution and then passed over a catalyst, the reaction produces hydrogen, along with a benign byproduct—sodium metaborate—that can be recycled back into sodium borohydride.
NaBH4 + 2H2O? 4H2 + NaBO2 + heat
| Selected DOE Hydrogen Storage Technical Targets | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Storage Parameter | Units | 2007 | 2010 |
| System gravimetric capacity | kWh/kg (kg H2/kg system) |
1.5 (0.045) |
2 (0.06) |
| Storage system cost (and H2 cost) |
$/kWh net ($/kg H2) $/gge at pump |
6 (200) – |
4 (133) 2-3 |
The panel, in its recommendation statement, said that the hydrogen storage technology considered for the hydrolysis of sodium borohydride has clearly not met all the 2007 targets. In addition, the panel saw no promising path forward for this technology to reach all the 2010 targets.
The panel reviewed materials from Argonne National Laboratory, Millenium Cell, NREL, Penn State University, Rohm and Haas, TIAX, MERIT (Material & Energy Research Institute Tokyo), the DOE Chemical Hydrogen Storage Center of Excellence, and others.
Some of the status reports provided to the panel indicated system numbers that in some cases met the 2007 targets. In particular, Millenium Cell reported on the hydrolysis of an aqueous 30% (this was not in use in the Natrium) solution of NaBH4, containing 3% sodium hydroxide (NaOH) as a stabilizer. The hydrolysis is promoted by a proprietary catalyst.
However, the panel found a number of points of concern over the practicality of the system including the unproven single-tank bladder system; the requirement for large amounts of water on board the vehicle; and issues dealing with the precipitation of the sodium borate (NaBO2) product.
Millennium Cell essentially concluded that the solution-based NaBH4 approach was not likely to achieve 2010 capacity targets. Millennium Cell also felt that the problem of accumulating a solid product was a significant engineering issue that had not been addressed adequately, and that no practical engineering solution has been proposed. Finally, Millennium Cell pointed out that the hydrogen cost remains above the target with this system.
The panel also found the high energy penalty and cost of regenerating sodium borate back to NaBH4 fuel to be of significant concern, again concluding that the 2010 hydrogen cost target did not appear within reach.
In its document, however, the review panel was careful to note that improvements in NaBH4 production have application to the cost-effective production of amine boranes, for the alternative borane-based on-board storage system, which is a major area of research under the DOE Chemical Hydrogen Storage Center of Excellence.
Therefore, the Panel is recommending that some continued research activities related to the cost-effective production of amine boranes may be appropriate. This does not contradict the Panel’s no-go recommendation for on-board sodium borohydride; the recommended future work relates to addressing the viability of chemical hydrogen storage approaches as an alternative to sodium borohydride.
Resources
- Go/No-Go Recommendation for Sodium Borohydride for On-Board Vehicular Hydrogen Storage (NREL/MP-150-42220)
Smeg introduces 50s-style flueless gas fire for the kitchen
Ideal if you’ve got that open plan living thing going on, the fire matches up with the rest of your appliances and with no chimney required, it can go pretty much anywhere. Flueless fires also convert 100% of gas to heat, which should help on the gas bill too.
They retail officially for £999, but we’ve seen them discounted down to £750.
Find out more at the Smeg website
Sourse: Smeg introduces 50s-style flueless gas fire for the kitchen
Scipio OKs test towers for wind power
The Scipio Town Board tonight adopted a local law that will allow “temporary placement of devices to conduct scientific monitoring of meteorological conditions.”
This will allow Shell WindEnergy Group, based in Houston, to erect two to four temporary towers to take wind measurements. The towers will be about 100 feet tall. Possible locations for the test […]
Sourse: Scipio OKs test towers for wind power
Passing the hat round for the Co-Op
Unfortunately in their search for the Holy Grail politicians have in turn adopted various environmentally produced energy technologies. The first to be adopted and then discarded were photovoltaic cells.
It is hard to explain photovoltaics in layman’s terms and can be quite hard to understand so if you don’t want to read the technical stuff, skip the next two paragraphs.
PV started with Becquerel in 1839 and then Willoughby Smith, Hertz, Max Planck and even Einstein found that light shining on a metal can create energy proportional to the frequency of the light. When the light strikes the metal, the energy from the photons is transferred to electrons in the metal. If that energy is greater than what is required to overcome the forces which keep the electron in the metal, the energy will be released. The result is that light with a high enough frequency can knock electrons out of a metal surface.
The displaced electrons are freed to move about, forming a “conduction band”, and a hole is left behind where the freed electrons used to be. They are “harnessed” by the use of semiconductors with different electrical characteristics so that an electric field is generated. This field causes positive and negative charges to move in opposite directions, thus creating electric current. I hope that I have explained this reasonably accurately and if I have not no doubt someone out there will let me know.
Anyway when you understand that you use light to generate electricity you will understand how attractive this must seem to politicians looking for the Holy Grail; they thought they had found it, with these photovoltaic cells, which have been confusing called solar panels but now are know as “PV”.
PV superficially sounds much more impressive than using light to generate heat (which is what real solar panels do), because electricity is often associated in people’s mind with energy and they tend to ignore heat. That is a shame because you can live without electricity – it will be hard but people have done it for tens of thousands of years, but people have lived with heat and in most places would die in winter without heat.
In Manchester, Europe’s largest vertical photovoltaic project was installed at the Co-operative Insurance Society Tower. This project was subsided by the state (that is you and me, folks) to the tune of just over £1 million, although what business the government has in subsiding a commercial organisation like the Co-op (turnover £9.4 billion) is entirely beyond me. Interestingly enough the amount given by the taxpayer to the Co-Op was virtually the maximum that is permitted to be given for a project of this nature under the European Community’s State Aid rules.
PV re-cladding was predicted to result in a rated power output of between 250 and 350 kWp and was expected to meet only 10% of the building electricity requirements by generating it is hoped 180MWh electricity per year. I have not been able to find out any data yet as to whether the project met its expectations.
Governments all over the world provided subsidies for PV because the environmental cost of electricity generated is very high, although if you look at the carbon cost in making the PV and spread that over the life time of the PV it is much more carbon productive than first thought. They hope to attract investment in building PV cell manufacturing plants to create jobs (although when they do they frequently have to subsidise the establishment of a factory).
Governments have listened to multi national companies that have invested in PV technology. Mr Blair took advice from Lord Browne who ran BP, one of the most carbon producing businesses on earth. BP invested in PV, and claimed a “green” sustainable image as a result. Mr Blair bought the sales pitch and set up a very generous PV grants system.
The Co-op was not the only company or person that was able to access these large grants. At one time PV attracted a grant of 50% of the cost, which meant that if you were building your own house, provided you could access the grant, and you wanted to have a PV roof, the taxpayer would pay half of the cost up to £15,000. This struck me as wrong; someone with the cash to build their own home should not get half a PV roof paid for by the state.
This has now been changed; the PV grants are still very generous compared with other technologies – around £2,500 – but the drop in grants has affected the PV market, causing it to decline. Of course the smaller businesses that sell and install PV are worse affected; somehow the multi-nationals will survive a down turn in a business that does not even represent 1% of their portfolio.
The problem with efficient photovoltaics is that they use broad spectrum light whereas they would operate more efficiently at only at specific narrow part of the light spectrum. Anything outside this narrow part of the spectrum cannot be converted to electricity. Also their efficiency drops as they become older, and in very hot weather. At freezing point silicon has a maximum theoretical efficiency of 24%; at room temperature this drops to 12%. The laws of physics mean that photovoltaic cells decrease in efficiency as the temperature of the cell increases.
The best and most efficient use of PV is when it eliminates the need for batteries in many calculators. Many places have now installed photovoltaic cells to operate parking meters and some street lighting, but this really makes no sense environmentally.
Photovoltaics really become effective in “off-grid” situations. In places where the cost of bringing power lines or building generating plants is expensive, the PV offers a good solution which is both environmentally friendly and cost effective. It makes no sense to me to install PV in Manchester at public expense. If the Co-op wants to make an environmental statement for reasons of good corporate governance then I applaud them, but let them do that with their own money.
In the real world £1 million would provide free solar water heating systems for three hundred poor people and that would save more energy and more carbon dioxide emissions and save the poor some money.
Sourse: Passing the hat round for the Co-Op
L.N. Mittal planning to set up refineries in Congo, Nigeria
Steel tycoon Lakshmi N Mittal plans to set up multi-billion dollar refineries in Congo and Nigeria and has approached state-run Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd for a partnership.
Mittal Investments Sarl, the holding company of Mittal family, which earlier this year picked up 49 per cent stake in HPCL’s 5-billion dollar Bhatinda refinery in Punjab and signed […]
Sourse: L.N. Mittal planning to set up refineries in Congo, Nigeria
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