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The Future of Energy/Alternative Fuels: What's the best method?
Emissary42
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With the advancing pace of industrialization, the world requires an incredible amount of power to maintain industry, transportation, and general power consumption by individuals. Additionally, we have come to realize that:
1: Our favored fuel type, fossil fuels, will begin to dwindle in the coming decades
2: It is extremely likely that fossil fuels have a negative environmental impact
As such, we require alternative methods of power production and ways to store energy for use in transportation. To give some basic numbers, the US currently uses around 50% as much energy toward transportation as it does to generate electricity.
Here's the fun part: what method do you think is best to go about ensuring sufficient power/energy availability for all our current and future needs, as well as those of developing countries around the world?
I think a combination of nuclear and orbital solar power, along with batteries used as the primary energy storage medium for transportation is the best way to go about doing this. Current 'green energy' production methods are not reliable or constant enough, as the vast majority of them are dependent on local and global weather patterns (wind, hydroelectric, solar).
EDIT: Note during the writing of the 7th post I found a mathematical error in my energy conversions, and that this post has been corrected to match the actual values.
1: Our favored fuel type, fossil fuels, will begin to dwindle in the coming decades
2: It is extremely likely that fossil fuels have a negative environmental impact
As such, we require alternative methods of power production and ways to store energy for use in transportation. To give some basic numbers, the US currently uses around 50% as much energy toward transportation as it does to generate electricity.
you need to do some conversions between BTUs and watt hours, but here are the sources:
http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_03.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epates.html
To switch to an alternative fuel source (like hydrogen, artificial petroleum, or batteries) the US power grid must increase to at least 150% its current size, and I suspect similar expansions would be necessary in other developed countries. It should be noted that this estimate ignores further increases in demand and the development of other nations over time.http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_03.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epates.html
Here's the fun part: what method do you think is best to go about ensuring sufficient power/energy availability for all our current and future needs, as well as those of developing countries around the world?
Fusion doesn't count - it has yet to prove to be reliable in any sense for power production. In that vein, keep it to technologically feasible approaches.
I think a combination of nuclear and orbital solar power, along with batteries used as the primary energy storage medium for transportation is the best way to go about doing this. Current 'green energy' production methods are not reliable or constant enough, as the vast majority of them are dependent on local and global weather patterns (wind, hydroelectric, solar).
EDIT: Note during the writing of the 7th post I found a mathematical error in my energy conversions, and that this post has been corrected to match the actual values.
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I don't see where you are getting that from, unless you are restricting the definition of 'energy' to 'oil' which really doesn't make much sense seeing how we barely use any petroleum based power plants.
In any event, solar is the future. It's just a matter of what we do between now and that future that things get tricksy. Chiefly it's probably going to be nuclear, solar, wind, and cleaner coal/nat gas plants. We've pretty much tapped every river for hydro so that's more or less a plateau. Maybe the generators could be improved or something to make them work better but you aren't going to see many new dams goin up since there aren't a lot of places to build any new dams. There's an awful lot of power that can be saved just by upping efficiency and investing in a more comprehensive transportation network, too, so the ever elusive 'negawatt' is a major player as well.
Energy = Energy, no matter what form it is stored in; petroleum is just one form of chemical energy storage. The point is any alternative energy source, unlike fossil fuel, does not come 'pre-charged'. We have to charge it, and to do that we need electrical power. Both those links in the spoiler are measured in units of energy - BTUs and watt hours - which is more useful for determining a replacement than measuring energy in tons of coal or barrels of oil.
EDIT: I know we don't have really all that many power plants that run on petroleum, but the energy consumed by all of the engines in all of our cars is enormous compared to what is generated by any segment of our electrical infrastructure.
Yes, but utilities produce, and industrial/commercial/residential consume, far more than the transportation sector. Electricity generation is the ball game. The only reason that transportation is an issue is because there isn't really much of an alternative that has the same level of density which is as transportable as gas/diesel. And that is only really a problem due to the logistical implications on manufacturing and freight logistics that were built over time on the assumption of increasingly cheaper transportation costs which don't suffer shocks to the system very well. Plus things being streamlined where redundancy is out the window and any issue cascades on down the line.
EDIT: My bad, the transportation sector uses slightly more energy than is produced by coal each year (50% of all electrical production). Original post will be edited as such.
That is simply not true. Like, at all.
All applications of nuclear power for energy generation seem like cutting butter with a chainsaw to me. Of course it works but its a bit overkill, no?
Ah! I see where we're mismatching. I was looking at numbers for only petroleum, whereas you were looking at total power consumption. Okay, that makes sense.
I saw that as well, but it's a full-scale plant that can only generate as much power as is needed to run a coffee maker. On top of that, it needs immense amounts of freshwater to work. Neat idea, but much like fusion, of indeterminable value.
Nuclear power is the one of the few methods available to us that both generates the power we need while at the same time not producing the waste that we're most worried about. We have excellent methods of dealing with radioactive waste; carbon dioxide, not so much.
Honestly, I think breeder reactors are a better solution than light-water reactors if we are going full-on nuclear, but people get twitchy about plutonium, so there's no telling whether it's politically viable.
I understand that Japan is experimenting with space based solar and microwave power transmission, which will be interesting.
1) While it may be relatively easy to safely contain radioactive waste, how can we be sure that human negligence won't cause radioactive waste to be disposed of in an unsafe manner?
2) How do we convince people to accept a power source that is widely feared for the harmful effects of radiation?
In addition, replacing our coal power with nuclear creates several thousand tons of waste each year that is buried underground in the middle of nowhere. Coal power produces almost 40,000 tons of waste per day, and you breath that shit in.
Regulatory agencies and safe checks, which isn't that big of a deal since if we switch over to breeder reactors the waste is really only harmful for a few centuries. We've carefully stored far more difficult things for far longer without any problems. I don't see why that would change anytime soon.
The cost of doing nothing is not zero. It's not as if people are clamoring to have a coal fired power plant put in their backyard instead of a nuke which is why those are going up so often. And in the numerous places where we already have plants people would love to see them expand. Those are good jobs and its not as if having 4 larger reactors is that much more of a blight than just having 2.
Coal plants are also much more radioactive than old school nuclear plants, let alone pebble bed or breeders.
Not challenging this, but rather actually curious, what things would you offer as examples? I'm having trouble thinking of things we've stored for a comparatively long time and they would seem to be useful in further debates on this issue.
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Magna Carta. Gutenberg Bible. 800 and 500 year old pieces of baby sheep skin that require far more upkeep and active management than simply being encased in lead and concrete far away from a water table.
Yeah, but we forgot how to put curses on things when our gods stopped having animal heads.
We obviously need deathtraps.
That way only Harrison Ford will be able to reach it.
That would be interesting for the engineers who have to work there.
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Isn't the main problem with Hydrogen Fuel cells that the energy needed to produce Hydrogen mainly comes from fossil fuels, and is an energy-intensive process in general?
We can always put it where no one in there right mind would go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Desert By the time they are stupid enough to turn the desert into a tourist attraction, they should be advanced enough to realize it houses dangerous radioactive substances.
Aren't we also developing microbes now which love to gobble various forms of toxic waste up as well?
ummm.... while technically not incorrect, the bigger point is that the actual hydrogen itself comes from fossil fuels. It's easier to convert natural gas into hydrogen + CO2 than it is to electrolyze water no matter where your input energy is coming from.
Re: #1: Along with the newer technologies that produce less waste, don't the French recycle a certain portion of their nuclear waste, further reducing the amount of waste left? I seen to recall reading an article about that. Of course, I also believe there is a US policy that prohibits this process that would need to be changed... Anyone familiar with this?
Re: #2: Good marketing. The spectre of Chernobyl is, and quite unfortunately so, what causes public fear of nuclear power. Chernobyl was a problem with Soviet lack of safety measures, etc., rather than a reflection of actual safety/dangers of nuclear power plants. To a lesser extent, there is the spectre of Three Mile Island. But as has been mentioned previously in the thread, that's no longer a real issue with the latest technologies in nuclear plant design. I think it would be necessary to address both of these issues and clearly show why neither reflects on current nuclear technology.
Communicating the tremendous benefits of nuclear power versus what we're currently dealing with as well as presenting the positive examples of modern power plants will help convince people to accept nuclear power as an excellent alternative.
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France uses a lot of MOX, which is basically a mixture of fissile material designed to behave like processed uranium.
According to that wiki article, the US prohibits the reprocessing of reactor fuel for non-proliferation reasons (because it contains plutonium isotopes that could be used to build weapons).
I'm still a fan of hydrogen because while it's easiest to get from natural gas (which won't run out for some time after oil runs out), it can also be obtained from electrolyzing - and there's no reason to suspect our ability to generate electricity in 50 or a hundred years will be inferior to what we have today, so when the gas does start to run dry it's not like we're out of options.
And really, the facilities to turn seawater into hydrogen fuel on a large scale really wouldn't be any more complex than a refinery that turns heavy crude into gasoline.
Not to say that it's never going to happen, but not for a long while. From what I've learned in this class, our best options are nuclear and high-efficiency solar. In my school's lab the professors are reporting efficiencies of 40% or higher in top-of-the-line solar cells. If we can make that work cheaply and in outside conditions, that equates to about 400 Watts per square meter at sea level peak. Combined with even more efficient batteries, that should certainly help alleviate our energy woes.
Keep in mind, however, that 400 Watts is a little more than half a horsepower. Assuming you get 200 Watts on average (between cloudy days and nighttime) you need about 3 m^2 for a single horsepower. For a 200 hp engine, that's 600 square meters of solar cells. So basically on an acre of land you could keep solar cells for 6-7 cars.
I'd note that if you're building an electric car, 200hp seems like larger than necessary power output to aim for.
EDIT: By the way, since there's talk of Hydrogen... it's no doubt a good idea, but electrolysis to create hydrogen from water is only about 10% energy efficient. Pulling Hydrogen off methane and other paraffin gasses is something like 90% efficient. So it'll take almost an order of magnitude more power to create Hydrogen "clean" than otherwise, though I do believe Hydrogen fuel cells are going to be way more efficient than IC or diesel engines, so there's that.
This. There's no reason we need to put all of our eggs in one basket. Put hydro power in coastal/river regions with strong tides, wind power on plains with a lot of wind, solar generators in places with a lot of sunlight, geothermal plants wherever they'll work, and nuclear plants anywhere people will allow them to be built. That way all of them will be operating in good conditions, and we'll make technological progress in all of them simultaneously.
The most critical factor to make orbital solar viable is you can't build them on Earth. They've got to be built in orbit, which requires several hundred billion dollars in investment. However, once the infrastructure is in place, the payoff is well worth it. A power generation technology that has an infinite fuel source, and is almost infinitely scalable. But it is unachievable without infrastructure already in orbit and on the moon to make them on-site.
I personally don't like hydrogen, because of the inefficiencies in electrolysis on top of the inefficiencies of the fuel cell itself, getting you only about 5% of the energy that went into making the hydrogen. Batteries and super-capacitors make much more sense in terms of efficiency, due to lower conversion losses in during charging and as you use the battery/super-capacitor.
MIT makes an electric car that can charge in 10 mins:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/168834/mit_electric_car_may_rival_gas_models_on_performance.html
Breakthrough in rapid charging of Lithium batteries:
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/03/lithium-breakthrough-could-charge-batteries-in-10-seconds.ars
I have some personal experience with these new batteries (lithium nanophosphate). They're currently most easily found in dewalt power tools (the ones that charge in 30 mins), and have been available for several years. The robotics team I'm on is looking into using them next year in our battlebots; they're outside of our budget this year. The biggest downside for large vehicles (like cars) is that they use a lot of current to charge. However, if you rebuilt a gas station with massive battery or capacitor banks instead of underground fuel tanks that were trickle-charged by the grid, you could probably overcome the current demand issues.
I think Japan was working on some orbital solar right now, which caught my attention because I had thought it was pretty far out there too. I read some stuff that suggested you might be able to build receivers that have relatively little land usage (they'd be something like a big antenna). That would make more since for a densely populated island nation than say, the US, where you could plop down some solar thermal plants in the desert.