There have been so many articles about innovations in the energy sector that went absolutely nowhere in practice but that were announced with great fanfare and media coverage that for me the bar has been raised to the point where I'll literally believe it when I can buy it and not a day before.
Solar cells with fantastic properties and prices, windmills that produce more power than there is in the wind using configurations that have been tried long ago and discarded for very good reasons, magical conversion processes taking 'ordinary household substances' (to lift a phrase from FightClub) and turning them in to gasoline at lower-than-current-pump prices and on and on. Cars can be made to run on just about anything, almost anything containing carbon can be converted in to petroleum and by extension to its derivatives. That does not mean the process is either efficient, cheap, non-polluting, safe or even feasible in bulk.
These announcements happen with a frequency of about one per month (what was one of the hypes last year again? Solar Cells from human hair ???) never to be heard from again.
You can safely put this right next to the 'cure for cancer', 'a cure for aids', 'free unlimited energy' and a whole bunch of other things that humanity would very much like to have. If it's really that good and applicable it'll be on the shelves and someone will be raking in money hand over fist, they won't be talking about, they'll be selling it.
On the one hand this is a good thing because it indicates a growing mass awareness of the urgency of the situation. On the other hand humanity can't help but respond to urgency with a generous helping of charlatanism so yes I suspect this trend will only grow.
I was going to say "But wait! They have an experimental plant in Southern California!" I guess I haven't followed things too closely, looks like the whole plan fell apart in late 2009[1].
Did some digging around to figure out what's actually going on here; my background as a chemist includes some time working in biofuels.
This technology is micron-sized beads of ammonia borane encapsulated in various plastics. So far, they've figured out how to store hydrogen and release it at least modestly safely. They're working on varying the plastics so that they can recharge the beads with hydrogen; so far nothing they can demonstrate.
Problems: they can't recharge it, yet, it would be hella toxic if it caught on fire, and you'd have to handle it using powders-handling equipment. They gloss over this, saying it's "like a liquid", but it isn't; in particular powders are vulnerable to static charge, which in the case of metal hydrides wrapped in jellied gasoline is a Bad Thing.
That, and it's a hydrogen delivery mechanism, making it a chemical battery, not a fuel per se. One still needs to make the hydrogen.
This research, IMHO, is more likely to lead to better batteries than to a replacement internal combustion fuel for gasoline engines.
Could you let me know if I'm thinking about this correctly? My understanding is that...
1. Most battery technologies use hydrogen as the fundamental energy storer. The low energy state is Xx H_N, where Xx is some vehicle molecule, and the high energy state is Xx H_(N-n) + n H. Energy is stored in the battery by converting from the former to the latter, and it is released by doing the opposite.
2. One of the primary challenges of making a feasible battery is that the n hydrogen molecules form into hydrogen gas, which is bulky. To fit the hydrogen into a reasonable volume, it must be either compressed to very high temperature, cooled to very low temperature, or attached to a carrier molecule.
3. This technology seeks to solve the problem by putting the hydrogen in molecules of ammonia borane, H_3 N B H_3.
Is any of that right? What is the purpose of the plastic encapsulation?
Not exactly. The basic currency of batteries is the electron. A NiMH battery is a hydride battery, while LiFePO3 has no hydrogen (one of its major advantages in fact, nothing to off-gas and explode), just for two examples.
The problem these people are trying to solve is how to store and release a high density of hydrogen. The micron particle side and plastic coating is all in the service of tweaking the materials properties in favor of rapid, safe hydrogen release and reasonably safe materials handling.
My observation/guess is that this line of research, encapsulating nanoparticles of hydride materials, will be more useful in battery technology than in hydrogen delivery. A lithium aluminum hydride battery would be great, if we could keep it from exploding.
I'd like to hear your take on an idea I read about: burn boron. It only burns in pure oxygen which means (1) you need an oxygen purifies on board, so it'll take some engineering to make smaller ones than we have now, but (2) the static problem you mention for powders isn't such a problem.
Energy density is higher than gasoline, but you have to carry around the oxidized boron. Then you turn it in for recharging and get a new batch. If there's only one boron car and one recharging plant, on opposite sides of the country, it's still only 50 cents per gallon equivalent even including the shipping costs. And you can store as much in your back yard as you want, pile extra in the back seat, whatever. Chicken-egg problem solved.
Source: Prescription for the Planet by Tom Blees. (He also advocates advanced nuclear reactors to supply the energy for all this.)
Basically, you have an engine that produces glass, rather than gas. At temperatures that eats most metals, plus a pure oxygen environment: basically it would have to be made from ceramics. Really voodoo ceramics.
The challenge is in the power plant; the rest of it is awesome and relatively straightforward. If someone wants a real epic project, designing a working boron-gas turbine is a plum.
The thing is that the human kind has been feasting the last 150 years on energy that is sort of a compressed accumulation of solar energy from the preceding millions of years. Further, it's been so cheap to dig coal and pump oil that the cost of energy hasn't had the time to really be an issue yet.
For any imaginable scale of human history, consider that a one-time opportunity.
It has been observed that the global oil peak was apparently reached a few years ago which means that from now on each year will see slightly less oil produced than the previous year. That gives the tangents of monotonically but slowly diminishing supply and monotonically but perhaps not so slowly rising price.
Natural gas is running out as well. Known alternatives, such as hydrogen fuels, electric cars, solar energy, nuclear power, are and remain alternatives. They're either energy containers (such as hydrogen) or represent energy production that just doesn't scale to replace the humongous amount of W/h that we've so far been able to extract from oil almost too easily.
It's out of the scope of this rant to even start about the countless things made possible by oil, but I think I should mention industrialized mass-production of food which is prevalent in modern countries. Fertilizers and pesticides are mostly made of oil and natural gas. Take away food from people and bad things start happening.
That means that the standard of living, for better and worse, is going to radically change in the coming decades. It doesn't take much more than a pike in the price of oil to cause financial and social havoc, such as the one in the 1970's. Maybe we'll get fusion reactors up and running in 2050 but by then I suspect the world has changed already.
We should start taking this into slow but very serious consideration instead of wearing blindfolds and waiting for some scientific research centre to hand over to us the alternative energy source that is the silver bullet which allows us to continue living like the way we do now.
This is how capitalism works. As oil's price rises, the expected return to investing in alternatives increases. That's what drives research ultimately, not "blindfolds". If you think oil is running out faster than its price warrants (ie you think serious work on alternatives isn't being done), you're free to buy oil futures, since it seems you think oil doesn't have its future scarcity priced in sufficiently today.
If you think oil's near-term value is mispriced, then oil futures are a solution, yes. But oil futures basically don't trade past the 5-year contract, and contracts longer than 10 years don't even exist. So if you think oil is mispriced in the 20-year timeframe, oil futures don't do you any good.
There seems to be a persistent misbelief that futures markets are a way of hedging or speculating on long-term price movements, but they're really a way of hedging or speculating on short-term price movements, e.g. for airlines to hedge against near-term supply shocks. By far the largest volume is for less-than-a-year contracts, and there is virtually nothing out past 5 years, so they're not really useful or intended for long-term planning.
You don't need to go with a standard contract if you really believe this, though; you could go with forward contracts, or - ultimately - by stockpiling oil.
I do think that oil doesn't have its future scarcity sufficiently priced in today's numbers because for most people and especially oil companies and oil-based economies it would be too scary to think about it.
The root of the problem itself is not at all related to capitalism or other economic models. Capitalist countries are no better off with regard to this than other economies.
The problem is related to the fact that in the coming decades the energy needed to pump a barrel of oil will increase, up until the threshold in the far future where it costs a barrel of oil to pump a barrel of oil. And because modern economies are based on the availability of cheap oil, this change will transform or shatter these economies.
It's an universal cost. If it's not about the price of pumping and buying oil in dollars, it will be the time, effort, and availability of oil.
Like you said, serious work on alternatives is only as serious as dictated by the lack of availability of cheap oil. I call exactly that wearing blindfolds because it is about betting entires nations on the possibility that we'll find an alternative energy store or energy source, in time, that allows us to maintain roughly today's standard of living. I would like to see it happen, too, but from the viewpoint of a contemporary man we'll be just totally and ultimately screwed if it doesn't.
What I suggested is that we should take this into account already and not after 50 years when it might not be possible to do really serious work on alternatives. It's really about taking the hit slowly and adaptively or getting it slammed on your face at once.
Buying oil futures does not help, because cheap oil is a fundamental part of the economy. As we already found out, when oil reaches a certain price, it stops rising because of demand destruction. Instead of paying more, industries dependent on it simply shut down. The only way to bet on peak oil, at this point, is bet against the economy as a whole--and that exposes you to huge counterparty and currency risks.
> Fertilizers and pesticides are mostly made of oil and natural gas.
Because these are the cheapest sources of the relevant hydrocarbons. If necessary, coal can be cracked down to the right length. Or wood. Or hemp. Anything organic, really, so long as you have the energy input.
It's just that it's cheaper and easier to get it from oil and gas.
Oops, they aren't claiming it is gasoline, either. This is a nice example of how popular journalism works, though. 'it is sort-of liquid and it burns fairly cleanly' is sufficient to gets a press that forgets to discuss:
- where to get the energy from to make the stuff.
- what we will do with whatever is left over after burning the hydrogen in these hydrides (If I google 'hydride' I get the strong impression they aren't made from pure hydrogen atoms.)
- whether that other stuff is rare or abundant, cheap or expensive.
I definitely got the feeling its another of those pie-in-the-sky research projects we hear about and wonder a decade later what ever became of them.
Sure the gas could cost a dollar-fifty but its $500/oz right now and it assumes limitless free hydrogen to encapsulate in our nano-thingees. But hey it could happen right?
Forgive me my cynical skepticism, but call me when its at the gas pump.
Hmm, I'm not so cynical. The research has been done by Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. These guys are just down the road from Oxford University. The facility it one of the top research facilities in the UK. That gives these claims some weight.
Whilst the price is probably "back of envelope", I'm pretty sure the science is sound.
The principle might be sound, but I'm skeptical about the yield. Lots of chemical processes work at small scales but fail when they're implemented at full refinery/chemical plant scale. This is doubly true for nanotechnology.
They've demonstrated that the process works at small scales. Whether it'll scale sufficiently to work in a refinery is anyone's guess.
A conventional further objection to using hydrogen as a fuel for vehicles is its low (relative to gasoline) energy content per gallon.
According to Richard Muller's "Physics for Future Presidents," even in liquid form hydrogen has about 1/3 the energy per volume.
Muller also notes that storing liquid hydrogen requires a much stronger, heavier tank than for gasoline. Maybe these "micro-beads" can contain liquid hydrogen, given the researchers' claim they can use their fuel in an unmodified car. In that case, look for 1/3 the range. If instead their microbeads contain compressed hydrogen gas, Muller estimates a car could go in the neighborhood of 10-50 miles between fill-ups.
Also, how much energy we need to create this new gasoline. Do we need to burn petrol to obtaine energy to make it?
At the end, the article compares this gasoline with electricity, meaning that electric cars don't polute when consuming energy, but this energy must be created before somewhere, using oil, coal or uranium.
So, what do we need in raw materials and in energy to create a liter of this new gasoline?
Use breeder reactors and we'll have all the energy we need. Breeders with integral fuel cycles have little proliferation risk, fairly short-lived nuclear waste in small quantities, and extremely good passive safety. They can be fueled by the waste from light-water plants, and there's enough of that sitting around to last us a couple centuries. We had one working in the 90s and Clinton shut it down. (Source: Prescription for the Planet by Tom Blees)
The one we had working was at the Argonne national laboratory. Perhaps you're correct about that law, but it didn't apply to government research programs.
Creating hydrogen has always been an energy intensive task. It is impractical to make it from electrolysis and is now usually made from natural gas. Burning it may not create carbon but making it usually does. Pure hydrogen will infiltrate most metal making it brittle and cause premature engine failure it is in contact. Hydrogen is not safe long term for engines that have not been redesigned for it.
The price is without a reference I doubt any ligitamate company would claim it as it would be trivial to shoot down.
It's all electric (581kW (780hp) and 1600Nm) but can charge via twin turbines - yes, of the jet engine variety! Ove advantage of them is that (again, apparently) they can run on just about any fuel out there; it it burns they'll run on it.
Normally Jaguar isn't really my thing, but this, well, this is different :)
I'd hate to stand behind that thing at a traffic light (though I'd love to sit in it ;)), unless they bring down the EGT somehow that's going to be decidedly unsafe.
That's one slick car! But I'd like to see a more consumer oriented prototype aimed at the mainstream market along the same principles.
The Jaguar / Land Rover companies are actually a subsidiary of Tata, an Indian company.
Whoa that's super cool. Coupling a turbine to electric seems to get around one of the problems of turbines in land vehicles. Basically, fuel efficiency at low speed is atrociousness . It was one of the arguments against the Abrams tank when it first came out, and it's only really through your ridiculously super developed logistics system (really, it's one of the shining examples of what the US Military can do super well) that you can keep your tanks running at will.
This is too good to not think that it has drawbacks or serious concessions required. But the fact that its applicable to existing internal combustion engine makes it more feasible than electric powered vehicles.
Also, that article is full of redundancies. The phrase "The technology has been developed over a four-year top secret programme" appears twice.
Alas I concur in that it sounds too good to be true.
Yes. The phrase "at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford" also appears twice in this 256-word article. The large gap between two concepts - "high energy materials and encapsulating them using a nanostructuring technique called coaxial electrospraying" and "$1.50/gallon gasoline" with no attempt to explain how you might get from one to the other - increases my skepticism.
Most ICE's will run on pretty much anything as long as you nail stoichiometry and it burns at approximately the same speed as the hydrocarbon chains found in gasoline. It's actually pretty trivial to retrofit a normal car to run on liquid propane or natural gas. You can even run them directly on hydrogen gas, but pure hydrogen's far too volatile to be dragging around in a passenger vehicle. Interested to see where it's going.
It looks to me like it is a more efficient/convenient fuel tank.
The article says "our technology is based on materials called complex hydrides that contain hydrogen. When encapsulated using our unique patented process, they are safer to handle than regular gasoline." It also says "micro-beads".
That implies they have a new metal hydride material/manufacturing processes that stores hydrogen. IC engines can burn hydrogen "without modification" (replace the fuel injector-based system with a gaseous carburetor system).
Being able to store hydrogen compactly, safely, and efficiently would be a big breakthrough. Having said that, hydrogen is an energy storage method more than an energy source - you have to create hydrogen using some other energy source, e.g. solar, wind, or (currently most commonly) from natural gas (not quite as "green").
Solar cells with fantastic properties and prices, windmills that produce more power than there is in the wind using configurations that have been tried long ago and discarded for very good reasons, magical conversion processes taking 'ordinary household substances' (to lift a phrase from FightClub) and turning them in to gasoline at lower-than-current-pump prices and on and on. Cars can be made to run on just about anything, almost anything containing carbon can be converted in to petroleum and by extension to its derivatives. That does not mean the process is either efficient, cheap, non-polluting, safe or even feasible in bulk.
These announcements happen with a frequency of about one per month (what was one of the hypes last year again? Solar Cells from human hair ???) never to be heard from again.
You can safely put this right next to the 'cure for cancer', 'a cure for aids', 'free unlimited energy' and a whole bunch of other things that humanity would very much like to have. If it's really that good and applicable it'll be on the shelves and someone will be raking in money hand over fist, they won't be talking about, they'll be selling it.