Chemical Forums
Chemistry Forums for Students => Organic Chemistry Forum => Organic Chemistry Forum for Graduate Students and Professionals => Topic started by: Enthalpy on February 25, 2022, 07:25:56 AM
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Hello everybody!
Europe imports from Russia about 1/3 of the natural gas it consumes, and the present war of Russia against Ukraine may cut this supply. This mere hypothesis restrains extended diplomacy.
Other sources exist: Norway, Qatar, Algeria, the USA, Canada, Nigeria... To my understanding, they can't replace the Russian amount. The only answers I read in the Press were "We have stock for X months, then plans exist to decide who gets gas or not". I'm not satisfied.
So: what do you propose to replace the natural gas imported from Russia?
Don't feel limited in the nature of your answers, if they are manageable!
- Build bigger faster boats
- Build a new pipeline parallel to the Suez canal or from Eilat to the Mediterranean
- Produce methane from some biomass
- Transform propane, crude oil, coal to methane
- Replace natural gas (essentially methane) by a compatible gas or mixture
- Other ideas?
The amounts are big: 40% of Europe's consumption, or 400×109m3 in 2021, come from Russia. Or 2×1013mol/year = 2×109mol/h = 5×105mol/s = 104kg/s = 3×107kg/h = 3×1011kg/year.
The price shouldn't exceed much the present 100€/MWh = 30€/GJ = 25€/1000 mol = 1,5€/kg which is much more than coal, crude oil, crop, garden cuttings.
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Some amounts for comparison, to fuel your thoughts.
26*1010kg/year (gas from Russia) weigh as much as 5.5M barrel/day crude oil. Among OPEC members, only Saudi Arabia produces more
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC#Current_member_countries
150usd/barrel is as much as 1€/kg. Arabian light has more H/C hence can provide more methane, ethane, ethylene... than heavy crude from the Caspian, shale oil being the worst.
A huge coal mine produces 4*1010kg/year and there are more mines
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagebau_Garzweiler
at 0.06€/kg coal price, the conversion to gas seems easy. By accepting a higher extraction cost, less optimized machines can increase the output immediately.
The whole EU produces 7*1010kg/year maize, 13*1010kg/year wheat, 2*1010kg/year sugar from beet, 3*1010kg/year oleaginous plants
https://agridata.ec.europa.eu/extensions/DashboardCereals/CerealsProduction.html
https://www.agriculture-strategies.eu/en/2019/07/the-european-sugar-policy-a-policy-to-rebuild/
https://www.lafranceagricole.fr/actualites/cultures/colza-tournesol-soja-la-recolte-2022-doleagineux-en-europe-devrait-rebondir-de-10-5-1,0,456683265.html
production was bad last year. Consider 0.2 to 0.3€/kg maize, where only a fraction is oil.
The EU produces 2*1010kg/year firewood, knowingly very cheap
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/workingpapers/agri/s4-1-2_fr.htm#l4-22
we could clean the woods of the uncontrolled low vegetables and obtain far bigger amounts over a short time. After 1 to 2 years, bamboo can be harvested, maybe coppice suffices until then.
I didn't search the grass and wood output of gardens in Europe. Data welcome!
Presently the best candidates seem to be (1) coal, with gasification (2) coppice and undergrowth, fermented to methane (3) maybe gardens' waste. Fermentation units, maybe gasification plants, can be numerous to resist attacks and sabotage.
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Building big boats to transport more natural gas takes long. Accelerating existing boats takes less time.
For instance a Q-Max (266 000 m3 of LNG) has two 21.8MW piston engines fed with LNG. Replacing them by two 64MW Trent 60 gas turbines of 64MW each mutiplies the speed by 1.4, from 19 to 27 knots.
A few details must be checked, like cavitation at the propellers, fluttering, and so on.
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Some amounts for comparison, to fuel your thoughts.
The worldwide production of palm oil was 7×1010kg/year in 2019
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm%C3%B6l#Produktion_weltweit_und_Anbaugebiete
conversion to ethylene must be very efficient.
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Germany agrees today to reduce the access of Russian banks to Swift and to provide weapons to Ukraine
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-26/germany-upends-policy-to-hit-russia-on-swift-ship-ukraine-arms
https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Deutschland-fuer-gezielte-Einschraenkung-von-Swift-article23158259.html
https://www.courrierinternational.com/depeche/lallemagne-brise-un-tabou-en-livrant-des-armes-lukraine.afp.com.20220226.doc.323z7ed.xml
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Excellent, I dont think Putin calculated with that, this will be a economic nuclear bomb.
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Can firewood be an alternative to gas or uranium? I take the example of Finland, where forests make 78% of the land area.
The growth is 108×106m3/year there, and the drain 84×106m3/year, so additional 24×106m3/year could be used at constant amount. Taking the heating value as 6GJ/m3, the available heat is 4.6GW.
https://mmm.fi/en/forests/forestry/forest-resources
https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/fthr/biomass-energy-resources/reference-biomass/facts-figures/typical-calorific-values-of-fuels/
Finland reconsiders presently the purchase of a 1200MWe nuclear reactor to the Russian Rosatom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanhikivi_Nuclear_Power_Plant
40% efficient power plants can burn wood would to produce 1800MWe and replace this nuclear reactor. Looks cheap!
- Several smaller power plants let transport wood over shorter distances.
- Paper, construction wood and firewood use 69×106m3/year. Is some waste still available? Branches, bark...
- Power plants can burn wood that grows faster. Replace the cut trees with willow, bamboo, or something fit for the climate?
- Coppice and undergrowth must grow faster than timber. Adequate machines could harvest them more efficiently.
Can this example extend to other European countries?
- Finland is 78% forest and has 16 inhabitants/km2. Other countries have rather 30% forest, and 100-300 inhabitants/km2.
- This suffices to replace just one nuclear power plant.
- Replacing the Russian gas over decades would need forests about 50× more productive. Can other vegetables grow that fast?
- But as a transition, maybe. Fermentation of the existing undergrowth needs little investment and is compatible with natural gas. This can be done quickly.
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benzo(a)pyrene
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Can firewood be an alternative to gas or uranium? I take the example of Finland, where forests make 78% of the land area.
The growth is 108×106m3/year there, and the drain 84×106m3/year, so additional 24×106m3/year could be used at constant amount. Taking the heating value as 6GJ/m3, the available heat is 4.6GW.
https://mmm.fi/en/forests/forestry/forest-resources
https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/fthr/biomass-energy-resources/reference-biomass/facts-figures/typical-calorific-values-of-fuels/
Finland reconsiders presently the purchase of a 1200MWe nuclear reactor to the Russian Rosatom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanhikivi_Nuclear_Power_Plant
40% efficient power plants can burn wood would to produce 1800MWe and replace this nuclear reactor. Looks cheap!
- Several smaller power plants let transport wood over shorter distances.
- Paper, construction wood and firewood use 69×106m3/year. Is some waste still available? Branches, bark...
- Power plants can burn wood that grows faster. Replace the cut trees with willow, bamboo, or something fit for the climate?
- Coppice and undergrowth must grow faster than timber. Adequate machines could harvest them more efficiently.
Can this example extend to other European countries?
- Finland is 78% forest and has 16 inhabitants/km2. Other countries have rather 30% forest, and 100-300 inhabitants/km2.
- This suffices to replace just one nuclear power plant.
- Replacing the Russian gas over decades would need forests about 50× more productive. Can other vegetables grow that fast?
- But as a transition, maybe. Fermentation of the existing undergrowth needs little investment and is compatible with natural gas. This can be done quickly.
In sweden we are making bio-diesel from wood. We also heat our homes with wodd to some extent. So its a good idea!
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Details about the wood power plant I suggest to replace the nuclear power plant at Hanhikivi, Finland.
1200MWe is a peak power. The mean power is 3/4 of that, or 900MWe. So the spare forest growth can feed two 1200MWe equivalents.
Finland covers 338 455 km2 and the forest growth is 108×106m3/year, that's 319m3/km2/year. 23% of the growth is unused, so 50% of the growth around a power plant can serve to it, if it's located away from other big forest users.
1200MWe peak shall come from 20 plants of 60MWe peak each, or mean 45MWe, or mean 113MWth. At 6GJ/m3, a plant consumes 68m3/h = 1620m3/day = 810t/day = 592 000 m3/year. If an easily manoeuvred truck carries 25t wood, 33 deliveries a day suffice. No need for a railway. Best feed the trucks with processed turpentine or electricity.
3700km2 feed a plant, that's only 34km radius, so a truck can make one rotation in 2h, and at 8h/day, just 9 trucks suffice.
Are fewer bigger power plants even cheaper? Is 40% efficiency needed? For comparison: a 1600MWe EPR costs 12G€, a 1200MWe VVER maybe 4G€.
Filters to catch the fumes are standard at German coal-fired plants and would fit nicely here. The fumes and ashes are a fertilizer that can be brought to the forest by the same trucks or sold domestically and abroad if worth it.
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Hi Borek, Rolnor and the others, thanks for your interest!
benzo(a)pyrene
Among others, yes. But a power plant improves several aspects:
- The combustion is better controlled and complete. The flame will be hotter than 600°C thanks to air pre-heating.
- The exhaust is cold for efficiency. The toxic thing has bp=+495°C. Little will be left.
- The exhaust is filtered. The fumes and ashes can be calcined if needed.
In Sweden we are making bio-diesel from wood. We also heat our homes with wood to some extent. So it's a good idea!
I hope it can apply to Finland. Germany has 82 million inhabitants on roughly the same area, less easy. Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom are even more densely populated. But other solutions exist, like wind turbines.
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17% of our eletric power is from windturbines in Sweden. We have a lot of coast with good wind and will build much more in the near future. Then you need hydrogen-storage to get kompensation for weak/strong winds. We will build this too. No, many countries have much less forrest, its a problem. Also less good wind. In some cases nuclear energy and fossil fuels are hard to replace
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Wind varies, but the UE is bigger than a windless zone. From Scotland to Portugal to Romania over Scandinavia, the wind blows always somewhere. So a solution is to transport the electricity. It needs stronger lines than presently available, they cost, but not so much. Storage is a useful complement.
Hydrogen storage? If you mean the round trip from and to electricity, the conversions are only 50% and 70% efficient. But if producing hydrogen anyway, say for helicopters and aeroplanes, then the plant can operate when electricity is plentiful, which provides the equivalent function of storage
https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/75102-electric-helicopter/
https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/73798-quick-electric-machines/?do=findComment&comment=1070457
Efficient storage uses lithium batteries presently, from Tesla and more, at home size and at grid size. Affordable, reasonably compact, 10 years warranty. But if enough electric cars must be charged, just doing this when electricity is plentiful makes the equivalent of electricity storage at zero cost. I've also proposed cheap flywheels
https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/59338-flywheels-store-electricity-cheap-enough/
Pumping and turbining water to an altitude dam is done in Switzerland and Norway for neighbour countries. More work is ongoing with air in undersea bags, vacuum in undersea concrete bubbles, and more. I wish more people bring innovation in this area.
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The countries with most forest area in the EU:
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosques_de_la_península_ibérica (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosques_de_la_península_ibérica)
M ha
===============
75% 30 Sweden
57% 28 Spain
78% 23 Finland
17 France
11 Germany
11 Italy
9 Poland
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Wind varies, but the UE is bigger than a windless zone. From Scotland to Portugal to Romania over Scandinavia, the wind blows always somewhere. So a solution is to transport the electricity. It needs stronger lines than presently available, they cost, but not so much. Storage is a useful complement.
Hydrogen storage? If you mean the round trip from and to electricity, the conversions are only 50% and 70% efficient. But if producing hydrogen anyway, say for helicopters and aeroplanes, then the plant can operate when electricity is plentiful, which provides the equivalent function of storage
https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/75102-electric-helicopter/
https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/73798-quick-electric-machines/?do=findComment&comment=1070457
Efficient storage uses lithium batteries presently, from Tesla and more, at home size and at grid size. Affordable, reasonably compact, 10 years warranty. But if enough electric cars must be charged, just doing this when electricity is plentiful makes the equivalent of electricity storage at zero cost. I've also proposed cheap flywheels
https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/59338-flywheels-store-electricity-cheap-enough/
Pumping and turbining water to an altitude dam is done in Switzerland and Norway for neighbour countries. More work is ongoing with air in undersea bags, vacuum in undersea concrete bubbles, and more. I wish more people bring innovation in this area.
In Sweden we are going to produce steel from ore by hydrogen reduction instead of coal reduction so we will have a very large hydrogen storage because of this that will buffer the system with windpower. You only need to buffer a portion of the system so 70% loss is acceptable.
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Batteries are also interesting but they need to be enormous of course. In Sweden we also sell a very large number if electric cars now.
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Electricity storage lets run any power plant permanently at full capacity, even at night when consumption is low, and restore the excess energy during daytime peak demand.
I suggested it for Japan when electricity was scarce after the Fukushima disaster. I also evaluated that lithium batteries cost less than building excess production capability to satisfy the consumption peaks. In California, one electricity company even shut an existing gas power plant to replace it with a battery by Tesla.
Presently in Europe, storage would let the coal and nuke power plants produce at full capacity 24/7 to consume less gas and oil.
To be seen: how quickly the batteries can be delivered. They would have been useful before the present crisis, and will keep useful after.
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Batteries are also interesting but they need to be enormous of course. [...]
I put figures on that, and the size is reasonable. Night-to-day storage for a nuke power plant is roughly as big as the parking lot for the employees. My flywheels would be smaller, more efficient from night to day but less so over several days.
Cost: if you build 4 power plants to satisfy the daytime peak consumption, as a mean only 3 plants produce, 1 idles. Building 3 power plants plus a big battery costs far less.
We have enough lithium. Research is in progress about sodium batteries.
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A wood-fired power plant can distribute heat too.
Any heat-to-electricity conversion could, but with nuke power plants it's too dangerous.
Heat distribution favours power plants of limited size located near towns and cities.
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Yeah, we have lithium, but do we have enough cobalt? I dont have these numbers but batteries seem hard if you want to bufffer the power for a whole country. The battery for a electric car is around 10000-20000usd and they have limited life-span.
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So far we have no reliable battery technology for this scale of operation - from what I understand there is one pilot battery plant, and it went off due to overheating at least twice in the last five months.
https://interestingengineering.com/lithium-ion-battery-overheating
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I think this can be solved but it still seems hard with todays battery technology, its just so very large currents. I guess its impossible to make a battery with redox-technique that can be more size and weight efficient than lithium batteries because lithium is the smallest nucleus available?
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I think this can be solved but it still seems hard with todays battery technology, its just so very large currents. I guess its impossible to make a battery with redox-technique that can be more size and weight efficient than lithium batteries because lithium is the smallest nucleus available?
For storage sodium is potentially much better, as it is a lot cheaper and slightly lower energy density is not as important as in cars. Still, we don't have the technology ready yet.
Similarly there is a storage potential in flow batteries, but they haven't been scaled up yet.
So in general: yes, there are potential solutions, but there are no proven solutions as of now.
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I think sodium would be more flammable, more dangerous?
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I think sodium would be more flammable, more dangerous?
It is not much more difficult to deal with than lithium.
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Yes it is, have you compared reactivity with water?
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In both cases contact with water or air is out of the question and in both cases we talk about metal that is sealed off and its production and processing requires an inert atmosphere. From this point of view differences in their reactivities with water is not a serious problem - it doesn't make the fabrication process much different.
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So far we have no reliable battery technology for this scale of operation - from what I understand there is one pilot battery plant, and it went off due to overheating at least twice in the last five months.
https://interestingengineering.com/lithium-ion-battery-overheating
Thanks! I didn't know about these events.
The B-777 Dreamliner experienced fires due to battery overheating. This was "solved" by packing the batteries in fireproof containers, so the flames don't spread. Doing the same on the ground is no big story. Accept one battery to burn from time to time, continue operation. And: who bozo put water sparklers over lithium batteries? Firefighters - first responders - engineers know that electric circuits demand foam or powder.
If these fires result from poor cooling, the technical answers are easy and well known. No nice news for the production as it implies deep changes in the design, but no need for years long research neither.
Home batteries by Tesla don't ignite, do they? Hint to a better design, probably better cooled because thinner. If Tesla can produce them at the same €/kWh, the answer is to assemble more of them instead of the big units.
How does the storage plant in Australia perform? Somehow I have in mind that it's bigger than the one in California.
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Yeah, we have lithium, but do we have enough cobalt?
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2020/mcs2020-cobalt.pdf
4× more Co than Li mined presently, and 1/2 as much Co reserves as Li. I too had read allegations that Co is scarce, apparently it's b*t. In addition, some Li batteries use no Co.
The battery for a electric car is around 10000-20000usd and they have limited life-span.
Tesla give 10 years guarantee and estimate 20 years life. From my previous computations, just buy, operate, send back for recycling, and you save money.
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OK. I agree, recycle is key in the future for batteries, its should not be difficult. If you look att Tesla Powerwall these are 14kWh and 8000usd each. If you want to heat a Swedish house in the winter you need around 30kWh/day if you use a heat-pump. Offcourse price will be different if you make them for industrial use. I imagine you need at least 10-20 times this capacity/house if you want to buffer the system in a country. It sometimes is low wind speeds for 1-2 weeks.
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I believe storing electricity for 2 weeks is still too expensive, until someone has an idea. The Powerwall is meant for night-to-day storage.
But if electricity is transported across the EU, there is no calm period. The EU is just too big for that. If a calm is over Denmark, Sweden and even Scotland, then we have wind in Spain, Greece or Romania. The EU spans about the half-distance between two depressions. Overcapacity and limited storage then flatten out the remaining fluctuations.
Power lines work already between the countries and sufficed to supply whole Belgium when all nukes were halted for planned maintenance or unplanned worries. Stock exchanges for electricity operate already. But we need stronger lines to carry more power over longer distances with reasonable losses. Brazil did it for 13GW over 700km from Itaipú to São Paulo forty years ago. Canada did it for 16GW over 1000km from Bay James to Montreal and New England.
Imagine that we want to transport up to 50GW over 2000km in Europe. One (rather several) DC 1MV line carries then 50kA. Accepting 5% losses at full power means 0.5+0.5Ω. The aluminium conductors need 11+11dm2. 2000km weigh 1.2Mt and cost 3G€. Pylons cost as much in an optimized design, so the line costs only 6G€, half as much as a single 1.6GW EPR. Mean 3% losses at 30GW cost 0.4G€/year so the balance with the investment is meaningful. The price tag for electricity production is many times 100G€, for comparison.
Such lines must resist sabotage and to some extent war. The line from Itaipú failed after I met Brazilians in Munich, that's no reasonable risk. Burying the lines needs insulator, just 2m2 polypropylene cost already 8G€ and oil >4G€. High-pressure air in steel tubes is doubtful. Or overhead lines must take many paths so not all fail simultaneously.
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I think also this problems will be even more impartant for SaudiArabia and other dessert nations where you can generate enormous amounts of solar power, this need to be transported somehow if you want to export it. The powerwall was just an example of storage that allready exists and is closing in to what you need for a few days in a normal house.
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Here's a glimpse at present methods to harvest forests:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvester_(forestry) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvester_(forestry))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxDFdcGfEjE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxDFdcGfEjE)
productivity improved since the dwarves with an axe on the shoulder.
Chipping is done on branches, bark or complete trees:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAcG7Xeg3ug (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAcG7Xeg3ug)
Where possible, the best tree parts should become construction wood and the leftovers heating chips. A power plant can cleanly burn chips of lower quality, something a single house doesn't afford. Then the biomass is even cheaper.
Efficient harvesting, chipping, biomass for combined electricity and heat are already common practice, done at hotel or town size for being much cheaper than gas. I just claim that Finland and others have the spare forest production to do it at GW scale. Rosatom being now undesired and EDF's EPR extremely expensive, biomass is the clear alternative.
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I think also this problems will be even more impartant for SaudiArabia and other dessert nations where you can generate enormous amounts of solar power, this need to be transported somehow if you want to export it. The powerwall was just an example of storage that allready exists and is closing in to what you need for a few days in a normal house.
Companies and banks, many of them German, had a many-GW project to produce electricity from sunlight and wind in North Africa and transport most of it to Europe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec)
Cheap oil killed the initiative.
Presently, Namibia builds capacity to produce hydrogen from sunlight (and wind?) and export it. What I like less: the videos show solar cells feeding electrolysers, which is costly and inefficient. The proper way is the Zn-ZnO cycle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc–zinc_oxide_cycle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc%E2%80%93zinc_oxide_cycle)
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If 3,27% of the US was covered with solarpanels this could power the whole world. It depends on how much sunlight you have, its an ideal situation probably. With the ZnO-system less is needed I guess. It will be a revolution for the dessert nations, they have so much sun, to make hydrogen seems good. https://www.axionpower.com/knowledge/power-world-with-solar/
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As France's Macron got the EU presidency, just before the war in Ukraine, several EU politicians argued that Europe should build nuclear power plants again (... and use natural gas too). But figures tell that nuclear electricity is extremely expensive.
Two Japanese companies had bought US developers of nuclear power plants. Meanwhile, both companies have abandoned their projects in the UK. Rosatom is presently out of the run. This leaves essentially EDF with its infamous EPR, over 10 years belated, which costs whopping 12G€ per 1.6GW reactor even at the sixth unit.
The deal between EDF (Electricite de France) and the UK government guarantees 92.50 gbp/MWh for EPR's electricity for 35 years, rising with inflation while UK offshore wind farms get 57.50 gbp/MWh for 15 years.
https://www.ft.com/content/8307c266-066b-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5
In March 2022, that's 112€/MWh and 70€/MWh. The free market pays around 50€/MWh thanks to coal and dams, while oil and gas aren't interesting presently.
EDF claims production costs around 50€/MWh too, but only because its nuclear reactors are old and the company didn't save money to replace them. The French accounting office estimated at 100G€ or 62€/MWh the coming maintenance just to use the old reactors even longer, plus the dismantling costs
https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2016/02/10/centrales-nucleaires-des-couts-de-maintenance-estimes-a-100-milliards-d-euros_4862575_3234.html
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Finlands latest reactor has been called "the most expensive building ever" and was heavily delayed. Now Russia is attacking nuclear reactors in Ukraine at big risc and this shows the danger with nuclear energy. No radiation has been detected yet but this is dangerous. Wind or wood-power has non of these drawbacks.
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As France's Macron got the EU presidency, just before the war in Ukraine, several EU politicians argued that Europe should build nuclear power plants again (... and use natural gas too). But figures tell that nuclear electricity is extremely expensive.
Two Japanese companies had bought US developers of nuclear power plants. Meanwhile, both companies have abandoned their projects in the UK. Rosatom is presently out of the run. This leaves essentially EDF with its infamous EPR, over 10 years belated, which costs whopping 12G€ per 1.6GW reactor even at the sixth unit.
The deal between EDF (Electricite de France) and the UK government guarantees 92.50 gbp/MWh for EPR's electricity for 35 years, rising with inflation while UK offshore wind farms get 57.50 gbp/MWh for 15 years.
https://www.ft.com/content/8307c266-066b-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5
In March 2022, that's 112€/MWh and 70€/MWh. The free market pays around 50€/MWh thanks to coal and dams, while oil and gas aren't interesting presently.
EDF claims production costs around 50€/MWh too, but only because its nuclear reactors are old and the company didn't save money to replace them. The French accounting office estimated at 100G€ or 62€/MWh the coming maintenance just to use the old reactors even longer, plus the dismantling costs
https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2016/02/10/centrales-nucleaires-des-couts-de-maintenance-estimes-a-100-milliards-d-euros_4862575_3234.html
Yes, all experts agree, nuclear energy is expensive, its just a fact. The large steel producers here in Sweden want electricity from wind to make the new fossil-free steel. Its just good business.
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[...] The large steel producers here in Sweden want electricity from wind to make the new fossil-free steel. Its just good business. [...]
I suggested to first roast the iron ore Fe2O3 or Fe3O4 to FeO using concentrated sunheat, there
https://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=100275.msg351914#msg351914 (https://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=100275.msg351914#msg351914)
I believe sunlight is abundant at the Baltic side of Sweden, and room is available too. That would save hydrogen hence electricity and cost to produce Fe.
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Its very little sun here in wintertime, in the north the sun does not show att all during the darkest period. Maybe a dessert nation could pre-treat the ore for us with sun-heat?
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As the USA press to stop importing Russian oil but the EU doesn't clearly see how to live without, I should like to remind that the C3-C4 fraction is still available at gas and oil wells. It has always been torched at the wells for being too cheap to transport, but at present gas and oil prices and if refusing Russian supplies, we could make good uses of these fractions. Already suggested there
http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=79403.msg289485#msg289485 (http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=79403.msg289485#msg289485)
It can't replace natural gas in the networks, as the uses need at least some tuning. At most, mix a bit in the natural gas.
But power plants could be converted in months to burn C3-C4 instead of natural gas. Some boats can carry both. The fraction must be transported between the wells, the ports, the power plants. Trains?
Oil refineries can process the fraction easily into polypropylene or antiknocking gasoline additives. This takes little or no modification. At 100$/barrel it can even be profitable. Maybe they can produce gas-oil and kerosene ersatz from this fraction, less easy.
Needs more time and efforts: combine the fraction with coal or tar to synthesize liquid fuels somehow. Heating fuel is little demanding.
OPEC countries don't increase their output presently, but the USA (and Canada?) have this means to alleviate the lack of Russian oil.
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[...] Maybe a desert nation could pre-treat the ore for us with sun-heat?
It depends on where the ore comes from. Shipping it from Sweden to Spain and back looks too expensive. But Australian, Brazilian, Indian ore can be pre-treated before transport. It saves weight too.
Or in Sweden, pre-treat the ore in summer when daylight lasts long, and store for the winter? This needs a big storage area.
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The association for biogas wants subsidies to produce 35×109m3 gas in 2030
n-tv.de (https://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Gruenes-Biogas-koennte-russisches-ersetzen-article23179629.html)
Don't they read the Press? Business as usual is exactly what we don't need.
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Maybe the C3-C4 fraction can replace a higher proportion of natural gas in the network if supplemented with N2 or CO2 or both, so the burners adjusted for methane still provide a good proportion of oxygen.
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Known processes for coal gasification output a mixture very different from natural gas, unsuited for use in the general gas network. But I hope power plants can be adapted in few months to be fed by coal gasification. The answer would then be: increase at once the production of coal mines even if not extremely cheap, feed the power plants by coal gasification, inject the natural gas obtained from other countries in the general network, don't rely on Russian gas any more (... depending on what proportion the power plants consume).
At a gas turbine, the adaptation isn't trivial.
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Coal gasification, is that when you treat it with heat and watervapor? That gives the CO-containing gas then? C3-C4 seems very good, thats just "Gasol"
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Coal gasification, is that when you treat it with heat and waterv apor? That gives the CO-containing gas then?
CO isn't necessarily the last step. Operations can go on to H2 or to hydrocarbons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gasification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gasification)
When I checked the state of the art a few centuries ago, gas-fired power plants burned liquid natural gas in a gas turbine and used the exhaust to heat water send to a vapour turbine, so-called "combined cycle". H2 wouldn't fit easily there, CO less badly, cryogenic or liquid hydrocarbons would be nice.
C3-C4 seems very good, thats just "Gasol"
The C3-C4 fraction contains propane, propene, butane, isobutane, butene, isobutene and minor components. Plans to use it are regularly abandoned when oil is cheap, so it uses to be torched at the oil and gas wells, and refineries produce again ethylene and propylene by cracking heavy fractions. Propylene isn't any more a cheap by-product as polypropylene demand has grown. Refineries produce it on purpose and transform ethylene into propylene. So in the present context of prices and embargoes, catching and transporting this fraction from the wells would make sense. It wouldn't even emit more CO2.
This fraction is more easily liquefied than methane, it's easier to burn too: denser, lower autoignition. Adaptation from methane is essentially a burner with adapted mix ratio. While gas turbines are more demanding, I hope the adaptation can go in few months and be reversible.
Other uses too are reasonably easy, daily operations of a refinery. The alkylation unit can makes high-octane additives of it. Feeding Diesel and jets is less obvious: they need a low autoignition temperature, hence some straight tails in the molecule, while standard alkylation produces branched molecules. But refineries make long 1-alkenes from ethylene, that's nearer to a synthetic kerosene or gas-oil.
I suggested trialkylamines as a fuel, easy to produce, good liquid range, tailored combustion properties, there
https://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=56069.msg362592#msg362592 (https://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=56069.msg362592#msg362592)
https://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=103039.msg362089#msg362089 (https://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=103039.msg362089#msg362089)
that step would follow the 1-alkene synthesis. Or maybe the complete raw C3-C4 fraction can react with ammonia, to produce the trialkylamine fuel and leave alkanes useful elsewhere, with easy separation?
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OK, that figures, I thought of butane, propane. There is talk now that we can manage without russian gas for one year in Europe, how is this, do we have large stored amount of gas? Also US are going to ship gas to us, but thats smaller amounts?
For long time ago we used gasified carbon, "stadsgas" in swedish homes but stopped because of CO-danger, also we got electricity. It was a "popular" way of commiting suicide, putting you head into a owen and turn on the gas. As I understand, this is a good way to die, non-painfull? I think submarines carry a canister of compressed CO-gas that can be used for suicide if the boat sinks and can not be rescued.
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Today, the US have stopped all imports of gas and oil from Russia. The UK announced the end of Russian oil imports by the end of 2022. The EU announces a 2/3 reduction of Russian gas imports by the end of 2022.
bbc.com (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60666251) - bbc.com (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60664799)
Their mix of solutions resembles what I suggested in the discussion.
n-tv.de (https://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Leopoldina-Boykott-von-russischem-Gas-handhabbar-article23181361.html) - n-tv.de (https://www.n-tv.de/politik/EU-will-russische-Gas-Importe-schnell-reduzieren-article23181584.html)
Some claims are for 2030 or 2050, pretty much useless in the present crisis. Either the politicians asked the wrong persons, or it's a way to reassure the citizens that CO2 goals still matter, since the solutions for 2022 (coal!) will increase the emissions.
A part of the answers is to import gas from other countries. Nobody knows the situation in Autumn 2022, but the alternative suppliers have limitations.
- Qatar produces already at full capacity I believe. If its other customers must turn to Russia, no use.
- Algeria has decent relations with Russia.
- Egypt relies on Russia for food. Food is already scarce, and if we lack the Ukrainian production, the worldwide situation will be catastrophic. Even if no Arab spring removes the Egyptian gov, Egypt will want to please Russia.
- Azerbaijan exports through Georgia. During the last war, the Russian troops advanced in Georgia exactly to the pipeline, and then Nato went silent.
The new German terminals for Liquefied Natural Gas might prolong the use of fossil fuel, they say... unless said terminals can handle liquid hydrogen too, immediately or with limited modifications.
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[...] There is talk now that we can manage without Russian gas for one year in Europe, how is this, do we have large stored amount of gas? Also US are going to ship gas to us, but that's smaller amounts?
No significant amount of gas stored in the EU presently. The capacity would be around 2 months, and it's nearly empty, because deciders never-ever consider bad scenarios. The idea is to consume less in Summer but continue importing the 60% from the other suppliers, store the excess to fill the capacity before Winter.
For long time ago we used gasified carbon, "stadsgas" in Swedish homes but stopped because of CO-danger. [...]
I don't want to distribute any CO to the homes. At most within the power plants, over a few metres between the coal gasification and the burner or the next reactor.
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OK, thanx Enthalpy. My Uncle killed himself by CO-gas in a oven. Eletricity is very expensive here in Sweden now, it was around 150öre/kWh before the war now its 300öre/kWh. Its fluctuating a lot but seems to stabilize much higher and if all gas to Europe from Russia is cut it will probably be much higher. We dont use gas here but the electricity follows the gas price. I have bought a lot if wood so I save hundreds of dollars now each month by using my fireplace. The sunlight is getting stronger also so now in spring we need less energy to heat homes.
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The amounts are big: 40% of Europe's consumption, or 400×109m3 in 2021, come from Russia.
Which means: 155km3/year = 424hm3/day = 4910m3/s came from Russia in 2021.
That's (at 273K 101325Pa) 6.93Tmol/year = 19.0Gmol/day = 220kmol/s, or 115×109kg/year = 315×106kg/day = 3.64t/s,
or 6.25EJ/year = 17.1PJ/day = 198GW upper calorific value, may provide mean 80GW electricity.
diva-portal.org (https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1519203/FULLTEXT01.pdf) p15 - unitrove.com (https://www.unitrove.com/engineering/tools/gas/natural-gas-density)
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[...] Electricity is very expensive here in Sweden now[...]
Powerwall to buy at night price and consume during the day? Solar cells?
You certainly have LED lamps everywhere, tuned the idle modes of the Cpu and the graphics card, have curtains at the windows, and so on.
Produce the hot water from wood or sunlight, send the warm used water to a heat exchanger to pre-warm the cold water...
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26×1010kg/year (gas from Russia) weigh as much as 5.5M barrel/day crude oil. Among OPEC members, only Saudi Arabia produce more.
Corrected: 11.5×1010kg/year (gas from Russia) weigh as much as 2.4M barrel/day crude oil. Half a dozen OPEC members produce more
wikipedia (http://http://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC#Current_member_countries)
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Maybe the C3-C4 fraction can replace a higher proportion of natural gas in the network if supplemented with N2 or CO2 or both, so the burners adjusted for methane still provide a good proportion of oxygen.
Air can be added too, in proportion small enough to stay non-flammable. This can help to match both the mixture ratio and the calorific value of natural gas.
The same adjustments can help distribute ethylene, obtained from other sources like crude oil or palm oil.
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As all sorts of energy become scarce, Law could stop the mining of cryptocurrencies to save electricity.
I can imagine that the present scarcity of chips too results from mining, but I didn't check the figures.
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[...] Electricity is very expensive here in Sweden now[...]
Powerwall to buy at night price and consume during the day? Solar cells?
You certainly have LED lamps everywhere, tuned the idle modes of the Cpu and the graphics card, have curtains at the windows, and so on.
Produce the hot water from wood or sunlight, send the warm used water to a heat exchanger to pre-warm the cold water...
Absolutely, sometimes electricity is 30öre nighttime and 300öre daytime. I have thought about covering windows nighttime, this could save 20% of heatingcost I think. I am currently building a system where I store heat in a watertank at night and use this daytime, also connecting my fireplace to my centralheating with a heatexchanger. Its fun work and it can save a lot if money. We dont know how long this war and sanctions will last.
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The worldwide production of latex was 1.3×1010kg/year in 2020. Significantly less than the mass of natural gas Europe imports from Russia, and we still need rubber.
nasdaq.com (https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/world-natural-rubber-use-seen-rebounding-7-in-2021-2021-05-26) - statista.com (https://www.statista.com/statistics/275397/caoutchouc-production-in-leading-countries/)
Turpentine is much less: 0.025×1010kg/year.
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The foliage of deciduous trees makes an interesting mass. Figures for Germany:
nabu.de (https://www.nabu.de/natur-und-landschaft/waelder/lebensraum-wald/13284.html) - uni-hohenheim.de (https://440ejournals.uni-hohenheim.de/index.php/Grundlagen/article/view/339/287)
Deciduous trees make up 40% of Germany's 11Mha forests, and they drop 1.1kg/m2 foliage a year, of which 40% is dry mass. This sums to 20×109kg/year for Germany alone. The 7 biggest forest countries in the UE cumulate 12× the German forest area.
Foliage can convert to heat and electricity, supposedly to methane, maybe to fertilizer.
How to harvest this widespread foliage, at least in Autumn 2022, at affordable cost and without wreaking havoc to the biotope? Err, it's your turn to bring ideas.
Coppice makes intuitively more mass than the foliage and seems easier to harvest.
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[...] the C3-C4 fraction is still available at gas and oil wells [...]
Gas and oil wells seem to separate and sell the C2-C3-C4 components presently, so how much is available remains to see.
The variable proportion is like 15%wt of the methane at "wet gas" wells, wow.
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As all sorts of energy become scarce, Law could stop the mining of cryptocurrencies to save electricity.
I can imagine that the present scarcity of chips too results from mining, but I didn't check the figures.
The EU failed to restrict cryptocurrencies yesterday.
aljazeera (https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/3/14/crypto-eu-proposal-seen-as-de-facto-bitcoin-ban-fails-in-vote)
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Not easy to upphold that law, how do you know if somebody is mining?
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Cryptocurrencies work over the Internet, so Law enforcement agencies can know exactly who does what.
The law repelled yesterday would have banned the validity checks on cryptocurrencies to my understanding, which would prevent their use in the EU. Or rather, that law demanded to feed the computers with green electricity.
How many chips used for cryptocurrencies mining: the sales of nVidia vary strongly with the activity of miners
Financial Times (http://"https://www.ft.com/content/0417645c-456d-4ef6-90d9-f74f0ef1fcdf") - South China Morning Post (http://"https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3138349/nvidia-hedges-against-cryptocurrency-hangover-chips-just-miners")
and gamers can't buy the high-end video chips from nVidia, monopolized by the miners. nVidia is among the big chips sellers, and manufacture is by Tsmc, so mining can very well provoke a general shortage of chips.
The other factor is that Intel hasn't progressed for years, so Apple switched to ARM processors made by TSMC (and Samsung?), after AMD and nVidia sourced from TSMC too. Even Intel announced recently they would buy the hi-perf chips from TSMC. Two major manufacturers less in few years, leaving only TSMC and Samsung to produce all the fastest processors, that can't go smoothly.
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Is this true? Does the rig need to be online when mining?
Edit: I checked this, and yes, its done online.
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The production of palm oil leaves much biomass: 26×1010kg/year from 74Mt/year palm oil worldwide in 2019 and 22% oil contents. This exceeds the 11.5×1010kg/year natural gas sold by Russia to the EU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil
How much of this biomass serves already? A decade ago, papers urged not to waste it. Dead leaves, old trees increase the amount further.
Maybe the pressed mesocarps and the leaves can feed cattle to save corn, or the fields that grow it, for human consumption.
What doesn't feed cattle, notably the shells and the old trees, can be burnt in Europe for heat and electricity. Transformation into pellets is best done near the palm trees plantations.
Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy
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Most straw is presently dug in the fields where it decomposes and is a fertilizer for the next harvest. We could let straw produce biomethane and dig the residue instead.
I thought it was my bad idea, but it's the excellentissima idea by other people.
wiki.de (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroh) - wiki.fr (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw) - wiki.en (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paille)
Check especially "Biomethan" in the German article. Biomethane from straw could produce 2.5GW in Germany alone.
The amounts are good. 2.5*1010kg/year straw in France. Scaling according to the wheat production would give 10*1010kg/year straw in the EU. Only a fraction becomes gas, but biomethane can replace a useful part of the 11.5*1010kg/year natural gas we import from Russia. If you prefer, this biomethane can produce 30GW over the EU, wow.
We can build the digesters before this summer and the gas is directly usable. It emits no CO2 and avoids the possible methane emission by straw decomposing in the fields.
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But it does emitt CO2? If you could avoid breakdown biologicaly and just do nothing you would store CO2 instead if releasing it?
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In the present situation, my first goal is to replace Russian gas, and straw can contribute strongly. The EU grows as many kg straw as it used to import gas from Russia, and about 1/6 the straw mass can become methane, wow. To compare, Canada and the USA will export 100 000 barrel/day more, that makes 0.5×1010kg/year, or 0.3× what European straw would offer, or 0.05× the imports from Russia. Methane from European straw is worth 200G€/year, figure that!
Fantastic: tapping this resource is easy. The technology exists, the designs too, and methane is directly usable. We only need to build many methanizers before this summer's harvest. Ask Swedish or American engineers, not German ones, as the operation needs action right now, the big way.
Yes, straw could re-create the coal, oil and gas deposits that we have burnt, and absorb the CO2 we have emitted. But fields need that organic matter to grow new crop, and this has absolute priority. The fantastic news is that we can tap the methane from straw, bury the rest in the fields, and it's still as efficient. So the operation wouldn't reduce the atmospheric CO2, but give us energy that emits no CO2, huge progress.
Even better: I suppose raw straw in the soil emits methane, which is a greenhouse gas more potent than CO2. Conducting the first decomposition in methanizers should avoid that, so we would improve the greenhouse gas emissions.
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Methane from European straw is worth 200G€/year, figure that!
Re-re-recomputing it, now I converge to more credible 30G€/year of methane from European straw.
Which is a fabulous bonus, not to be missed!
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Irony for me maybe
I know it has been some time since this thread started but I have some time now to comment.
I saw this thread start just after I watched a video on Youtube titled
America Was Wrong About Ethanol - Study Shows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-yDKeya4SU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-yDKeya4SU)
Basically making the argument that using corn as a source for ethanol (gasoline additive and bio-fuel) was not a good idea.
Later on they suggest that
switchgrass
is a better plant.
Well I had never heard of Switchgrass before and I started doing GOOGLE and eventually came to this site by Smithsonian Magazine
The Next Generation of Biofuels Could Come From These Five Crops
Researchers are currently developing biofuels from these abundant species, which require relatively little land, water and fertilizer
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/next-generation-biofuels-could-come-from-these-five-crops-180965099 (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/next-generation-biofuels-could-come-from-these-five-crops-180965099)
The concept being that crops can take carbon from the air and be turned into biofuel and thus be carbon neutral.
I do recollect a talk (some time ago at the National Press Club maybe) given by an individual begging us not to convert farmland into bio-fuel but produce more food for the hungry instead. I am remembering that the expanding world population needs to have the USA produce more food. (Almost sounds like we are polluting the world with people.)
(I see that the OP has also started a page on food production.
https://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=111118.0 (https://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=111118.0))
two sides to every coin i guess
I have always been interested in bio-fuels in general and will continue to watch (and maybe add to) this thread.
Thanks for starting it
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Hi Billnotgatez, nice to read you here!
A general word of caution from me: the fossil fuel industry and their politicians have huge interests against biofuels, so don't believe everything you hear and read.
Bioethanol consuming more gasoline to produce: I know farmers who produce their own bioethanol to run their own machines. They do it because it saves gasoline.
Brazil switched massively to bioethanol (from sugar cane) before I went there in 1995. Not like 5% additives in gasoline, rather 1/4 ethanol for about every car
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil
Any increase in gasoline consumption would be known by now.
I have no opinion about switchgrass. Simple selection criteria include:
- How much does a hectare produce? Maize and sugar cane are hard to beat.
- What kind of fuel can it produce, in what proportion? Wood and grass typically make methanol, sugar makes ethanol. Palm makes triglycerides.
In 2022 and possibly 2023, Mankind faces food shortage. It's absolutely obvious to me that food is more important, even if we have to emit more CO2 temporarily.
What we can do right now to have more fuel and food without emitting more CO2, as I suggested here:
- Obtain methane from straw. Should be done always, the 2022 harvest is a good time to start.
- Obtain methane and combustible from palm oil production leftovers, if available.
- Make palm oil healthy, use the saturated fraction as fuel.
- No fallow fields this year.
- Eat less meat, feed less cattle with cereals.
- Use more firewood at power plants. Conversion can be quick if action is taken.
- Collect coppice and dead foliage?
Other actions are useful but take more time hence don't address the urgent crisis: hydrogen economy (if sensible), wind and sun, and so on.
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Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have stopped importing Russian gas
aljazeera (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/3/baltic-states-stop-russian-gas-imports-over-ukraine-invasion)
Poland announced stopping all imports of Russian coal, oil and gas by the end of 2022
npr (https://www.npr.org/2022/03/30/1089662657/poland-ban-russian-oil?t=1649013072072)
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Hello Enthalpy
I am still pondering your post but one line stuck out to me
...
- No fallow fields this year.
...
I would have said
No fallow fields this year and plant food or bio-fuel crops instead
or something similar and more grammatically correct
Obviously, I am agreeing with you on this item but more so.
By the way this news article talks about this very topic
Food Security: EU to Aid Farmers, Free Up Fallow Land- U.S. Farm Groups Request CRP Flexibility
https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2022/03/food-security-eu-to-aid-farmers-free-up-fallow-land-u-s-farm-groups-request-crp-flexibility/ (https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2022/03/food-security-eu-to-aid-farmers-free-up-fallow-land-u-s-farm-groups-request-crp-flexibility/)
A quote from the above
Bloomberg News reported yesterday that, “The European Union is proposing a 1.5 billion-euro ($1.65 billion) funding package for farmers, plus freeing up fallow land for crops as it seeks to shore up food security after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Seaweed and phytoplankton are said to grow quickly, they need no soil and accept seawater. Trials were conducted even in boxes in deserts.
Would they provide food for humans, food for cattle, food for fish farms, biomass? I can't make an opinion about amounts and costs. I suppose this promising direction should be considered.
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To transport electricity underground or underwater, a coaxial line with a good insulator is efficient. But because small radii concentrate the electric field, a wider and hollow central conductor can reduce the insulator thickness and volume at identical conductor volume, hence reduce the cost.
The central conductor can also comprise wires in a thinner tube, possibly of different alloys. A near-axisymmetric arrangement reduces the stray magnetic field.
Appended is an optimization of the radii ratio. It's independent of line length, power, material performance and costs. Some near-optimum values are also given for engineering freedom. I assume breakdown above a field threshold anywhere, which is approximative.
All this may be already well known. I didn't check, as usual.
Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy
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A long powerful line, for instance the coaxial one in last message, needs a good cheap insulator.
Vacuum and pressured air would be the cheapest, but I feel them too unreliable over continent distances.
I don't see how to produce and install very long segments of the expected diameter. It needs many joins at high voltage, which I believe exclude solid insulators.
This leaves liquid insulators, but leaks shall be no ecological disaster. Mineral oils don't fit. Vegetable oils and similar are possible and well-known as insulators.
To resist ageing, insulator molecules must be saturated, but saturated triglycerides are solid. Some possible solutions towards liquid saturated fatty esters:
- Isolate the short saturated fatty acids from palm kernel oil. Lauric acid C12 makes 48%. Reconstruct light triglycerides from them.
- Saturate palm kernel oil. Collect glycerides of three short acids by warm vacuum distillation. Transesterify the rest, repeat.
- Saturate triglycerides or their fatty acids, make glycol diesters, or monoesters of a fatty alcohol.
- Saturate triglycerides, transesterify with a short acid or ester so most triglycerides have only two long fatty acids.
The insulator for a long powerful line is expected to cost 1G€. This affords development and production means.
Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy
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The fatty diesters of 1,6-hexanediol and 1,4-butanediol might have a lower melting point than the diester of ethylene glycol. Just a wild guess.
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Finally I checked what other Sapiens do already to transport electricity over continents.
Very long powerful lines exist, they use DC, but with bare conductors at really tall towers. 12GW at ±1100kV over 3000km between Changji and Guquan
hvdcnewschina.blogspot.com (https://hvdcnewschina.blogspot.com/2017/01/world-longest-power-transmission.html)
almost what continental Europe needs to distribute windpower, except the vulnerability and aspect of the aerial line.
Most isolated lines are underwater. 2250MW at ±600kV over 422km between Hunterston and Wirral for 1.2Ggbp (1.46G€)
assosubsea.com (http://www.assosubsea.com/en/projects/2014/western-hvdc-link/) - wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_HVDC_Link)
The UK has links with many neighbours. 1400MW at ±515kV over 720km between Cambois and Kvilldal for 2G€
wikiwand.com (https://www.wikiwand.com/en/North_Sea_Link)
about the same with Denmark and next with Germany for 1.9G€
nsenergybusiness.com (https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/news/siemens-prysmian-neuconnect-interconnector/#)
Few HV lines are buried in continents. "Corridor A" will transport 2GW at ±525kV in Germany, comprising 300km "Corridor A-Nord" for 1G€ and 340km "Ultranet"
nsenergybusiness.com (https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/a-nord-hvdc-underground-power-transmission/#)
The usual dielectric is XLPE, cross-linked polyethylene. 1GW cables can make coils <3m wide. The central conductor is often multi-strand copper. The return current uses generally a separate cable, not the sheath, and generally at high voltage.
==========
Can buried isolated cables of this technology transport 50GW over 2000km land? Not easy!
According to the appended scaling factors, from 2250MW over 422km to 50GW over 2000km, identical radii need 105× as many cables, 499× as much conductor and insulator volume, and if it were proportional, 1.46G€ would extrapolate to 729G€. Even if the amount reduces the price by 40%, 437G€ are twice the cost of the wind turbines that produce the electricity, excluded. Or else if keeping two cables, with radii and voltage ×3.2 (that's ±1.9MV!), the volumes increase ×49 and a proportional price reaches 71G€, or much less because the production cost doesn't increase like the cross area.
Cooling is a limit to flexible cables with plastic insulation (formula appended). Take a dissipation 30MW/300km = Q/L = 100W/m and R/r=2 in XLPE insulator, the drop is 29K there. In the soil, taking R≈1.5m r=0.1m, the drop is 108K if dry, 18K if wet, so favourable conditions leave little margin. Now if dissipating 1GW over 2000km = 500W/m, the insulator fails. The design can be tweaked, uneasily.
An algebraic solution exists for the wave impedance, hence the lineic capacitance, of a round conductor over a ground plane. Adapting it to heat conduction would give a better formula than "taking R≈1.5m". Detail, I won't do it.
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The materials are cheap at a long powerful line. As unoptimized arbitrary example, r=0.14m R=0.30m L=2000+2000km need 670kt aluminium costing 2G€ (plus the sheath) and 810kt processed vegetable oil costing 1.5G€. The amounts are much less than the EU's yearly production. Lukewarn aluminium resists 1.14+1.14Ω. At ±960kV DC, these dimensions transport 50GW with 3.1% losses.
The installation of a line through the Ocean justifies an expensive high-tech cable. I believe a continental line should be low-tech, resembling more a pipeline where the parts cost little more than the materials, and the installation should accept some assembly work. Like: a dumb conductor in a tube, with transportable sections screwed or welded together on site, and oil in between. Tens of G€ saved pay easily for assembly work: that's 30k€ per joint.
==========
Oil cools well the conductors at powers inaccessible to solid dielectrics.
I take again r=0.14m R=0.30m L=2000+2000km and 50GW×3.1% losses, or 390+390W/m. Vegetable oil weighs 920kg/m3 and absorbs 2400J/kg/K, so an axial flow at gentle 2m/s exiting 10K warmer removes 10MW lost in a 25km long section. The coolers can clean and monitor the oil. The soil remains cool for normal uses. Easy, known.
A transverse flow by natural convection can also move heat from the central conductor to the sheath. I find that a 20mPa×s oil climbs in a 2.7mm thin layer around the central conductor, up to 9mm/s with a quadratic profile, and leaves only 11K warmer from 390W/m. I am unreliable here: a design needs an expert and experiments.
But then, the soil can't remove 390W/m from the sheath, and aluminium heat spreaders would add too much metal, so passive cooling needs smaller losses or about 3× as many cables. The spreaders are rather strips to let groundwater through. Or put oil loops in the soil?
Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy
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[...] Detail, I won't do it.
Finally I did it myself. The algebraic solution for the thermal resistivity between a cylinder and a plane is appended.
The characteristic impedance for a balanced line is from wiki. Versus the symmetry plane it's one half.
wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_line#Characteristic_impedance)
Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy
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The Russian Rosatom won't build a nuclear power plant Hanhikivi, Finland
CNN (https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/03/business/finnish-group-ditch-russian-built-nuclear-plant-intl/index.html)
due to "significant delays and inability to deliver the project".
7.5G€ from Rosatom was much more expensive than renewables. The other suppliers of NPP have stopped their activity or are even more extremely expensive (EDF, 12 to 19G€).
Time to consider the biomass, as proposed here?
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Just before the war in ukraine, some politicians promoted nuclear power plants - the same politicians who promoted natural gas as a "transition away from fossil fuels". Few weeks after the combats for the Chernobyl and Zaporizhia nukes, some of these politicians hope citizens have already forgotten and try to insist. Time to say: No, we haven't forgotten Chernobyl, Fukushima, and we know the hideous risks of nuclear power plants in a war.
All power plants are primary targets in a war, remember Yugoslavia and elsewhere. But nuclear ones (NPP) render a huge land area unusable for centuries when they burst, just like in Chernobyl in 1986. The AIEA's report claimed that graphite burned there to spread more radioactive pollution. That's a lie to downplay the risk of water-moderated reactors. Graphite does not burn. Averyone can try with lubricating graphite nanopowder on a candle. That's why graphite makes liners at kilns.
This time at Chernobyl and Zaporizhia, the Russian armed forces tried not to damage the reactors because Belarus and Russia are near. In France they wouldn't hesitate. With 18 plants spread evenly, the country would be uninhabitable. An enemy, not even Russia, even without weapons of mass destruction, can exert the ultimate blackmail on a country equipped with NPP.
aljazeera (https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/12/8/report-missile-strike-risks-to-middle-east-nuclear-reactors)
Read how "experts" downplay the risk:
aljazeera (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/17/is-a-nuclear-disaster-likely-in-ukraine)
"sturdy concrete and steel structure"... "can withstand an explosion caused by a shell"
=> Lie. The French NPP have a 20cm steel vessel and a 90cm concrete dome
fr.wikipedia (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceinte_de_confinement)
90cm concrete resist as little as 20cm steel. Already the stone-old T72 battle tank shoots shaped charges and flechettes that pierce 25-45cm steel
shaped charge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaped_charge) - kinetic energy penetrator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy_penetrator) - T-72 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-72#Gun) at Wikipedia
The EPR NPP claims 1.3+1.3m concrete. WWII howitzers pierced 3.5m concrete, known present bunker busters pierce 6m concrete, while hypersonic gliders break bunkers from 3000km distance
Karl-Gerät (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Ger%C3%A4t) - bunker buster (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunker_buster#Modern) - Kh-47M2 Kinzhal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-47M2_Kinzhal) at Wikipedia
A ballistic kinetic energy penetrator, present or future, is much worse. Battle tanks throw only 8kg flechettes at 1800m/s, but a penetrator launched by a truck-mounted missile can weigh 3000kg and fall at 5000m/s from 3000km distance.
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To cool a buried Hvcd line, heat pipes are better than oil loops and metal heat spreaders in every aspect.
Heat pipes evaporate and condense a fluid in a pipe to transport much heat with very little temperature drop and materials
wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pipe)
Here a small slope can move the liquid, so the tubes are smooth. AA5083 or AA5754 would be cheaper than the usual copper. The ends can be pressed or twisted close, then sealed by TIG, brazing, diffusion welding, or a cap be welded by friction, etc. Added n-propanol or isopropanol can prevent water freezing.
The lengths of line elements and heatpipes shall ease the offroad transport, I take 6m. The heatpipes are assembled with the sheath on site with no oil leak risks. More contact area transfers less power than at a Cpu maybe an AA5083 part welded on the AA5083 sheath encircles the heat pipe firmly with a screw. The central conductor, the oil and the sheath spread heat lengthwise well, so the line survives broken heat pipes.
Two <10mm 6m heatpipes per metre and per side carry 98W each. Spreading to h=0.25m in 0.4W/m/K soil drops 30K as per previous message. Conduction over 0.75m to the surface drops 61K. Comfortable for oil and aluminium. The soil isn't as bad everywhere, and as a mean, cooler aluminium loses less power.
Optional small metallic heat spreaders on the heatpipes spread heat better and can save heatpipes. No obvious advantage, cost shall decide.
Maybe the trench is 12m wide to lay the heatpipes, or it's narrower with long narrow holes to hoist the heatpipes. The conductor can lay deeper for safety, with only the heatpipes at -1m.
50GW would rather transit over several lines. Below 35GW, +960kV and -960kV can share one trench to save costs and reduce the magnetic field. They can even be twisted. If economical, both conductors can share the oil and the sheath, or 3 or 6 conductors to carry AC.
Design now, try, produce and install?
Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy
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To monitor a power line, stations along the line can listen to the electric noise created by corona or by arcs. Cross-correlating the signals received by different stations increases the sensitivity and locates the source accurately. I suppose this is long done.
Accepting 100dB losses over 25km distance (to the oil cooling stations if any) lets the line propagate up to 5MHz roughly, but I ignore the dielectric losses. Fine, since discharges create noise from audible up to GHz.
Acoustic noise too can detect and locate corona and arcs, as well as leaks, especially by correlation. Already done against leaks at gas pipes.
Optical fibres can measure the temperature and much more, and transmit the data very far. If inside the sheath, they can detect bubbles, measure the oil's optical properties, sense noise locally, measure the current, the electric field, etc. Outside the sheath, the temperature, the magnetic field hence the current, some acoustic noises, maybe leaked oil, and others are still accessible. Fibre sensors exist for long, a pipe is a perfect use for them.
Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy
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I suggested here on 20 Apr 2022 some seemingly cheap paths to refine natural triglycerides. But synthetic oils may be purer hence last longer. They can be cheaper than I thought.
A refinery shall provide a mix of 1-alkenes. Hydroformylation makes aldehydes. Oxidation gives a mix of fatty acids, reduction a mix of fatty alcohols if needed. Esterification might use fatty alcohols if the esters have good pour and flash points, or glycerol, or the pentaerythritol more common to synthetic transformer oil. Many-hydroxybenzene? Bigger polyols?
Saturated acids needed for durability tend to make solid fats, but here the lengths of the carbon chains can be nicely tuned, and the mix lowers the pour point. Though hard to predict, a more branched ester (pentaerythritol etc) may broaden the liquid range and reduce the viscosity.
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Sources claim that aerial lines are too inductive, buried lines too capacitive, justifying DC for long lines. But for really high power, the characteristic impedance of a submerged or buried line can be matched, neither capacitive nor inductive.
Take one 65Ω coaxial per phase. 30GW need 806kVrms = 1140kVpk phase to neutral: such voltages are already in use. 3 or 6 conductors in a common sheath would slightly lower the impedance, still comfortable.
If the power varies and the voltage is constant, the line becomes capacitive for lower power. Solutions:
- Lower the voltage too. But the ohmic losses don't drop at partial power. Neither does this fit well a continent-long line with intermediate taps.
- Compensate the reactive power but the usual methods. But a line matched at almost the maximum power needs less compensation at partial power.
Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy
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How big is the stray induction created by the strong current?
The appended curve gives the horizontal component divided by 40µT to compare with the geomagnetic field, as a function of the height.
- The line won't go unnoticed with the usual constructions. Passive cooling reveals it anyway.
- Bifilar lines would fool walkers, boats, planes and cars at some 100m, ouch. Only 10m if quadrupolar.
- Bifilar lines may disturb some birds and fish at 400m, ouch again, and 20m if quadrupolar. But experience exists for AC overhead lines, which animals seem to distinguish from the geomagnetic field.
- Antisubmarine boats and planes detect such a bifilar line from many km, a perfect quadrupolar one from many hm.
While a quadrupolar line seems desirable, it costs sqrt(2)× as much metal.
Twisting the conductors squeezes the field at distances greater than the helix period. It can be done at complete cables, or at conductor sets within a straight sheath. Curved extrusion exists, a curved 6m section nears the quarter period of a helix. Maybe extrusion achieves helices too? Or deform the parts into helices at the production. Parts 0.3m off-axis are 0.3% longer, hence expensive and lossy, with 4×6m period, or 4.8% longer with 6m period.
Concentric currents squeeze the field, as limited only by geometric accuracy. As the sheath must be sturdy, flowing the return current in the insulated sheath seems logical. But electric alloys are very soft and not so corrosion-safe. Possible improvements:
- Centrifuge casting can include stiffeners of locally bigger diameter, for instance where the sections are assembled.
- Could extrusion achieve tubes of sandwiched AA5083 / pure Al / AA5083? From a sandwiched feed material or from three feeds co-extruded. Nice research topic if still not done.
- Cold-working hardens the tube and keeps the conductivity. Possibly by oval deformation between rolls. If not, azimuthal cold-rolling is already done at Ariane 5's boosters. Or cold-draw the tube. More processes exist for hot Fe, apply them to cold Al.
Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy
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The European Commission presented on 18 May 2022 its plan REPowerEU
aljazeera (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/18/eu-rushes-out-210-billion-euro-investment-to-ditch-russian-energy) - REPowerEU (https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_3131) - InvestmentsHydrogenBiomethane (https://energy.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-05/SWD_2022_230_1_EN_autre_document_travail_service_part1_v3.pdf)
meant in undiplomatic terms to end the dependency on Russian fossil fuels and tackle the climate crisis.
Among the 210G€ are 29G€ for electricity grids, 86G€ for renewables, including decentralized biomethane, and zero for nukes ;D
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[...] hypersonic gliders break bunkers from 3000km distance [...] a penetrator launched by a truck-mounted missile can weigh 3000kg and fall at 5000m/s from 3000km distance.
North Korea, not exactly a high-tech country, tested missiles today
CNN (https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/24/asia/north-korea-missile-intl/index.html)
described by some people as InterContinental Ballistic Missiles, and the newspapers repeated that, optionally with comments by third parties.
The third missile flew 760km at 60km altitude. This isn't a short-range "ballistic" missile with "erratic" trajectory. It's a manoeuvring hypersonic glider, like the Russian Kinzhal that blew a bunker in Ukraine. Using public figures for hypersonic L/D, I estimate a penetrator can retain roughly 1700m/s after steering deeply down from its horizontal trajectory, and still weigh 0.2t depending on the start mass. Big ouch!
The first missile is not a "presumed ICBM". 360km range and 540km apogee don't suffice. It's a short-range missile. A decent ICBM candidate flew in late March: 6000km apogee and 1080km range. The desire not to overfly Japan can explain both abnormally high paths. But there is an other explanation: these ballistic missiles are tested to fall at steep angle on the target, which can be a bunker, or for instance an aircraft carrier, as I keep repeating for years. While one ballistic missile is easily detected, a penetrator is very difficult to destroy or even deflect for being dense, sturdy and possibly passive. Worse: such missiles can be launched in dozens and carry many penetrators each, needing no steering and being then impossible to stop nor avoid. That's why I keep repeating "big surface ships are only targets, not weapons, don't build any more".
What if a hypersonic glider or a big fast ballistic penetrator hit a nuclear power plant? You guessed. 1.3m+1.3m concrete won't stop anything. 540km apogee leave 3.2km/s to a 0.5t to 4t penetrator, 6000km leave 10km/s to maybe 100kg, while an 8kg battletank penetrator hits with 1.8km/s.
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[...] 6000km leave 10km/s to maybe 100kg, while an 8kg battletank penetrator hits with 1.8km/s.
6000km leave rather a bit under 8km/s.
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More thoughts about tubes of 5xxx/1yyy/5xxx alloys sandwich for a power line's conducting sheath, because conductivity demands "pure" aluminium while strength and corrosion resistance suggest some 5% Mg at the surfaces.
I proposed co-extrusion of the three layers. Maybe continuous casting achieves the same.
Or dip the cold tube of 1yyy alloy in molten 5xxx to deposit layers on it? It depends on how the oxide layer behaves.
- If it separates from the immersed tube, perfect.
- Break it with an arc in argon atmosphere just before dipping?
- Remove it mechanically in the bath?
- Mg can potentially reduce Al2O3. The bath could be Mg instead, or rather near the eutectic Al3Mg2 (450°C vs Al 660°C and Mg 650°C).
Deposited eutectic layers could diffuse under heat until the surfaces contain some 5% Mg. Or they could serve to solder tubes of 5xxx, 1yyy and 5xxx in an other.
In all cases, lukewarm or cold extrusion of tubes can usefully harden the 5xxx faces.
Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy
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A nuclear reactor in operation is just critical: it produces as many neutrons as are used or lost. So could a weapon hit a reactor to induce a strong power excursion (= a nuclear explosion), potentially worse than the release of the accumulated radioactivity?
Reactors have passive stability. For instance water expands at heat or boils, less water leaves more energetic neutrons which trigger fewer uranium fissions in usual reactors. Some such feedback loops are fast (hotter uranium absorbs fewer epithermal neutrons), others react in the second time range (water expansion) and can weigh in because a few % of the neutrons are emitted after a delay in the second range. But if the reactivity increases enough to sustain the reaction without the delayed neutrons, the "prompt criticital" reaction can diverge in the nanosecond time scale.
Fast neutrons reactors (=breeders) are worse.
- The loss of their coolant (often sodium) increases the reactivity, like 5%.
- Their plutonium produces fewer delayed neutrons: 0.6%.
- They lose many neutrons exiting the core, like 20%.
A missile launched from a truck can send a 3t kinetic impactor hit the core at 5km/s with an angle depending on the distance. A nuclear enemy wouldn't need to target a reactor, so imagine the impactor is of unreactive material, not plutonium. It passes the concrete dome and steel vessel unhindered, can hit the core eccentered, and creates a shock wave that compresses sodium by 30% or more.
- The compressed part of the core lets fewer neutrons exit.
- Sodium is pushed away faster than plutonium.
- The impactor can bring deuterium and lithium.
- The Superphénix breeder contained 5.7t fissile material, more than the Mk41 bomb did for 25Mt.
I can't go farther with hand estimates. After I mentioned this risk on the Internet, Angela Merkel (PhD for nuclear physics) closed all breeders in Germany. Maybe some computer simulations are still available at the government.
I've read about breeder projects in the USA, China, India.
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Uranium reactors would release their radioactivity like Chernobyl if bombed
chemicalforums (https://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=111032.msg394057#msg394057)
Hypothetical hydrogen fusion reactors would too.
I already explained that tritium regeneration is necessary at fusion reactors and would produce as much radioactive waste as uranium reactors do
chemicalforums (https://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=105156.0)
Since I put that on the Web, the fusion promoters refined their rhetoric. No more deuterium-tritium "from the Ocean". No more "limitless clean energy": fusion now only "avoids long-lived radioactive waste". Maybe, if we have no bad surprise. But the short- and medium-lived radioactive waste would be quite present, with radiation, half-lives and amount similar to iodine, strontium and cesium. And if a bomb or impactor bursts such a fusion reactor, the radioactivity will spread.
Though, small fusion reactors not meant for energy can usefully replace fission reactors to produce radioisotopes for medicine and more
chemicalforums (http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=92021.0)
Using and regenerating no tritium, they would "only" activate their materials by neutron irradiation, and with a flux 105× smaller. The flux per material amount 102× smaller eases the insoluble problem of double neutron activation 107×.
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Locking.
This thread has long run its course, now it is just Enthalpy's rants over whatever.