As the economy slips ever farther down the black hole of imaginary values and criminal greed, the looming necessity for using this crossroads of history to re-make our energy future has moved the issues up on the To-Do list. America’s automakers are lining up, hats in hand, to obtain enough funding to keep their (union) workers employed, and the funds they want may come attached to serious strings that require more gas-efficient cars, hybrids, flex-fuel and even new lines of plug-in electric cars to help get us off our addiction to other nations’ oil.
Which then begs questions about what sources of electrical energy we need to develop that do not spew greenhouse gases into the air, leave us with millions of tons of toxic or radioactive industrial waste, and cause serious detrimental health effects (and death) to the population. Following on the issue of our choices for future development is the antiquated state of our electrical grid, which is both inefficient and dangerously likely to fail altogether without much trouble.
Fact is, energy use conservation could make a more serious dent in our consumption without doing anything at all. This is what happened this past summer when gasoline prices climbed to around $5 per gallon, and diesel prices became inverted. Millions of people limited their driving, pooled for shopping excursions, and stayed home instead of driving long distances for vacation. Petroleum usage plummeted, which informs us that we don’t really have to use as much as we do. Changing light bulbs and turning off lights and appliances and turning down the thermostat can save quite a bit of our generation capacity too, but that will of course jump when we have to charge our cars at night.
But the inefficiency of the grid system itself wastes ~30% of what we already do generate. In order to diversify our sources, we are going to need to modernize the grid to lose less of the available ‘trons between the wind or wave farm and our refrigerators. The Obama transition team is already looking into a possible massive CCC-type project to modernize the grid, and with a genuine scientist at the head of the Department of Energy (Steven Chu), we might expect more forward-looking options for how to do that than the old-timers in the outgoing administration could ever have offered.
Meanwhile, many states and industrial concerns are planning for the alternative energy sources that the new grid will rely upon for generation capacity. Since there’s no such thing as “Clean Coal,” many planners would dearly love to get away from coal and nuclear plants (that take decades to bring on-line and are increasingly expensive). Wind, wave, geothermal, hydroelectric, there are many possibilities to be developed that not only don’t emit greenhouse gases, but also don’t emit waste heat into the environment like boiler and heat transfer systems do.
The Industrial Wind Action Group understands the grid issue better than many, as the siting of industrial-strength wind farms in regions of the country that enjoy steady winds enough to achieve peak performance is going to need transmission accessibility from parts of the country that managed to get electrified mostly as an afterthought. There are even some fairly radical ideas out there about concentrating wind farms in the midwest by swapping-out government-owned land in the far west for a huge reserve in the heartland. Even the investor class is getting in on the action, as Great Ideas: Where the Buffalo Roam… Turbines Spin from the Common Sense Investor demonstrates.
We’ll keep up with developments in all areas of alternative power research and development as well as initiatives to modernize the grid. Stay tuned!
Links:
US Electric grid needs modernization
A Vision for a Modernized Electric Grid: Clean Infrastructure for a 21st Century Economy
Industrial Wind Action Group
Great Ideas: Where the Buffalo Roam… Turbines Spin
What is an Intelligent Grid?
University of Illinois crop sciences researchers released results of the largest-ever field trial of its kind in the US for growing a giant perennial grass Miscanthus x giganteus, reporting that this crop could significantly reduce the acreage necessary to meet government biofuels production goals.
Rather than re-dedicating a full 25% of US cropland to biofuels – something that would put a serious dent in food production and increase the price of everything grown – Miscanthus would require re-dedication of just 9.3% of current agricultural acreage. The findings were reported in the August issue of the journal Global Change Biology.
Researchers were judging raw amount of biomass generated each year from this perennial (meaning it regrows itself every season from roots without reseeding), and you can see from the accompanying photo that this grass takes up some vertical room. Even better, Miscanthus requires fewer chemical and mechanical inputs than corn, which is a consideration for water quality and soil fertility. Moreover, in many parts of the country farmers could reap two or more ‘crops’ a year (by mowing, as with hay). Highest productivity, in fact, came from the south in the poorest of agricultural soils. Thus Miscanthus may be a very good crop for marginal land and land not even used for crop production at present, which would lower its demand on food producing cropland further.
Miscanthus also serves as a ‘carbon sink’, accumulating and binding carbon in the soil at greater efficiency than any annual crops, such as the great biomass annual industrial hemp. Which is also a good biomass crop for fuels, fiber, oil and land conservation.
Perhaps some combination of alternatives may yet allow independence from fossil fuels, and that comes with improvements in global warming, general civilizational peace and prosperity, etc. If we were to plan ways to power our homes, churches, community buildings and businesses while at the same time developing biofuels for transportation and shipping, we might find the world economy and standards of living rising quickly instead of falling fast.
It would seem that we do still have some useful scientific creativity and inventiveness to offer the world in these trying times. All we need to do now is see to it that Big Oil doesn’t shove it all under the rug, and that we get the necessary government investments in these technologies.
Links:
Giant Grass Miscanthus Can Meet US Biofuels Goal Using Less Land
Hemp: Our Original Industrial Crop
MIT Scientist Offers Solar Revolution
photo: Donna Coveney
MIT and Science [July 31] announce that Scientists mimic essence of plant’s energy storage system in a breakthrough that promises to make rooftop solar power a reliable mainstream energy source, even for when the sun isn’t shining.
Nocera and postdoctoral fellow Matthew Kanan have developed a process of artificial photosynthesis that will use solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and using the gases to power a fuel cell that will provide electricity at night and on cloudy days. A leader in the study of photosynthesis James Barber said of the work, “The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production, thus reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem.”
The inexpensive catalyst Nocera and Kanan developed can split the molecules in a glass of water at room temperature, a process that until now has been expensive because suitable catalysts were too expensive or made of rare materials. The discovery is an outgrowth of research into artificial photosynthesis (the process plants use to split water for energy) by many chemical research groups.
“This discovery is simply groundbreaking,” said Karsten Meyer, professor of chemistry at a German university. In the development of solar energy, Meyer said, “this is probably the most important single discovery of the century.”
Nocera predicts the technology can be developed quickly and readily available within ten years to address the world’s energy needs. Technical details of the discovery and process are sketched out in the MIT release, and examined in more depth in Technology Review in their article Solar-Power Breakthrough.
When I started college in the late 1960s in Oklahoma, I could buy gas for my Volkswagon Bug for 19.9¢ a gallon. That’s 5 gallons for a dollar, enough to drive home to visit the folks, drive around town to see friends, and get back to college without having to stop at a gas station. This past weekend I drove our little pickup to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to see an old Navy buddy, a round trip equivalent to that past Oklahoma weekend trek. Gas for the journey cost us right around $50. A dollar’s worth won’t get me to the grocery store and back any more, and it doesn’t look like the price is ever going to come down.
The going price per barrel of petroleum is pushing $150 hard and will probably go over $200 before the end of the year. Diesel fuel is a dollar more expensive than gasoline, and the price of everything grown on a farm and transported by ship, train or truck must go up accordingly.
The good news – or, at least the hopeful news is that progress is being made in deciding what replacement fuels we should be developing. Most people are skeptical of corn-based ethanol and the diversion of food crops as well as crop land to biofuels. And while new techniques can make biofuels from native vegetation like switchgrass or even algae, the fact is that plants aren’t very efficient at converting solar energy into the biomass required.
Biotech researchers are now turning to engineered microorganisms as both helpers in turning biomass into fuels and as fuel themselves – photosynthetic bacteria that can capture sunlight energy 100 times more efficiently than plants – that can be grown in massive amounts without competing for cropland.
It does appear that the time has finally come when human civilization must change its ways, the only questions being how much it’s going to hurt regular people and which nations and/or multinational corporations will corner the markets. Perhaps biotechnology can be put to good use creating new fuel sources instead of turning staple foods into pesticides. That would be a positive change of focus, help get the tarnish of public resistance off the biotech bus, and maybe even save the planet.
But you and I will probably be paying at least $5 a gallon to fill our tanks, no matter what kind of fuels are developed. Just something we’ll have to get used to.
Links:
New Source for Biofuels Discovered
Harnessing Microbes to Meet Future Energy Needs
Are microbes the answer to the energy crisis?
Great news this week on ScienceDaily, picked up by Nanotechnology News and other outlets that researchers from Swansea University has developed a paint coating for steel buildings that will generate electricity even in low light situations.
Check it out at Wise Living Journal.
This is the final installment of our 50 Weird Science tidbits, odd factoids and strange-but-true trivia. There are of course more weird things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But these 50 should get you through at least one championship round down at the pub. By the way, the word “dreamt” is the only word in the English language that ends in “mt.” That’s a freebie!
41. Plants Have Family Values Too
Researchers from Canada found that plants can have complex social interactions despite being… um, vegetative. Plants will grow more aggressively near unrelated plants than when they grow near relatives from the same maternal family.
42. The World’s Most Dangerous Animal
The not-so humble mosquito wins this award hands down. Mosquitoes transmitting countless diseases kill more animals – including humans – than any other animal (or plant) on Earth.
43. Hot Bed [Bugs] of Sexual Deception
Both the males and females of the African bat bug, a relative of bed bugs, have evolved fake genitals in order to protect themselves from the species’ violent mating practices. Some females have fake genitals of both male and female variety! The species does manage to reproduce prolifically anyway.
44. One Species In Which Dad Does All The Work
In seahorses it’s the male who gets pregnant. He incubates the offspring for three weeks, spends about 72 hours in labor, then gives birth to up to 200 baby seahorses at a time.
45. Alternative Recycling of Humans
A Swedish company has developed a new, environmentally friendly means of dealing with the bodies of the dead. They freeze the bodies in liquid nitrogen, then use sound waves to smash them to powder. From which water is removed in a vacuum chamber and metals are screened out.
46. And Now for the Weather Report…
In the days when apothecaries kept leeches in jars, it was observed that when the weather was calm the leeches stayed at the bottom of the water jar. But when a change in the weather was coming, the leeches would rise to the top of the water. For storms the leeches would rise quickly, descending again when the storm passed.
47. Forecast: Sunny
A solar panel array covering an area of 100 by 100 miles in the US Mojave Desert would produce enough electricity to replace all the coal fired power plants in America.
48. Old Sol Is Expecting Visitors
A red dwarf star labeled Gliese 710 is traveling toward our sun at nearly 50 times the speed of sound. In a million years it will be within just over half a light year away. Our current closest neighbor is Alpha Centauri, just over 4 light years away. But don’t worry. In only 10,000 years a red dwarf called Barnard’s Star will be our closest neighbor.
49. Please Don’t Lick the Walls
The world’s only hotel made entirely of salt (including the dining tables and chairs) is the Hotel de Sal Playa in the Uyuni salt flats of Bolivia.
50. …And Don’t Drink the Water
97% of the water on earth is undrinkable. An estimated 20% of the world’s surface fresh water supply is contained in Lake Baikal in southern Siberia (the world’s deepest lake at more than mile in depth).
The Entire Series:
1-10 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
11-20 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
21-30 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
31-40 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
41-50 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
The dramatic breakup of the northern ice sheet has tended to confirm global warming, and there are other indications that things are worse than we thought. Turns out that North America’s Northernmost Lake is showing signs of climate change too.
An international research team reports that a core sample of lake bed sediment indicates a drastic change in algae and diatom concentrations in the lake over the last 200 years, but not in the 8,000 years prior – when the lake was permanently frozen. This tends to support the hypothesis that human industrialization has contributed to the warming.
Even if we stopped releasing greenhouse gases today we’d still have to deal with the effects of climate change, and this has been a concern for important ecosystems’ stability. Good news is that researchers have discovered Forests of Endangered Tropical Kelp surviving just fine in the deep waters off the Galapagos Islands.
According to the researchers, the discovery demonstrates a surprising resilience for tropical marine systems in response to climate change. Using a computer model designed to predict where kelp forests might survive despite warming waters, student divers explored the tropical reefs where the computer had predicted likely kelp habitat. They found the forests growing at depths from 40 to 200 feet below the surface, in the cool water layer. Their find may get this species of kelp removed from the World Conservation Union’s database of threatened species.
Meanwhile, in our struggle to develop alternatives to fossil fuels that contribute to greenhouse gases, the National Research Council has reported a serious effect of increased ethanol production from corn that may lead to changing policies on what biofuels we as a nation decide to develop.
Increase in Ethanol Production from Corn Could Harm Water Quality outlines how, if projected increases in corn production for conversion to ethanol occur, water quality could be significantly harmed. This has to do with agricultural practices and expansion of farmland for growing fuel crops, particularly into arid and semi-arid regions of the country.
Irrigation could divert water resources for drinking, industry and hydropower, fish habitat and recreation. In dry regions corn typically requires more water than soybeans or cotton. Native grasses and switchgrass are possible alternative choices for ethanol production that do not require massive irrigation or intense chemical additives, or new crops could be bioengineered that are more water efficient.
It’s good to see the NRC evaluating the relative wisdom of any dramatic change in agriculture to accommodate biofuels production, as factory farming practices already pose a significant threat to public health by pollution of land and water, and agriculture accounts for a hefty chunk of our fossil fuels use all by itself. But ethanol may not be the best choice anyway, if future cars used a different kind of engine. It turns out that just such engines are under development.
Focusing on biodiesel instead of ethanol may be a better policy. Trucks, trains, agricultural machinery and ships already run on petro-diesel, and could switch to 20-80 biodiesel blends immediately without altering the existing engines. New engines can be run on 80-20 biodiesel mixtures, thereby cutting the petroleum content by an additional 60%. GM could deploy its new passenger diesel engine for at least half its new cars and light trucks as soon as nationwide biodiesel distribution allows and the factories can be re-tooled. People would surely buy them, if the popularity of hybrids is any indication.
Production of biodiesel is more energy efficient and less polluting all the way down the line than production of ethanol, though new technologies are being developed to make ethanol production more efficient (and from more easily grown crops). Bioengineered oil crops that will grow in semi-arid climates could be deployed on land not suitable for growing food crops without intensive additions and irrigation, and the machinery that plants and harvests them can run on biodiesel. Researchers are also looking at algae as a source of oil for biodiesel.
As we plan for the future and attempt to wean ourselves from our addiction to fossil fuels, it helps to remember that Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, designed it to run on vegetable oil in the first place, though petroleum magnates in the early years of the 20th century ensured that only petroleum-based fuel would be used. 100 years later there is hope that his dream may finally come to fruition.
In this era of “peak oil” and ever more environmentally damaging methods of extracting (and using) coal, innovative R&D on alternatives and renewables have been moving forward with vigor even without massive subsidies or continued contributions to global warming.
We already know that our planet receives more energy from the sun every day than all the life forms (and human industries) could ever use, but humans haven’t yet figured out how to harvest those electrons efficiently enough to even begin to compete with green plants and their direct conversion via photosynthesis. We also know that the sun powers our atmospheric wind patterns, and have developed means of extracting electricity from that source as well. Though again, not enough.
There’s another source of power that nature provides to our planet, and which entrepreneurs and engineers have developed and are still developing. This is the immense power of gravity, and it manifests itself in regular cycles in all the oceans and seas that cover the majority of our planet. These are the tides. Tidal generators are located beneath the surface of the water, and have to deal with both the corrosive effects of salt and other minerals in the water as well as various other contaminates, including forms of sea life. Still, the French have been generating about 600 million kilowatt hours of tidal power annually at Rance for more than 30 years. So far the moon hasn’t stopped exerting its gravitational energy on the earth!
Even as those issues are being addressed with ever more clever designs, there’s yet another ocean-born form of energy to be tapped for generating electricity – waves. Energy COOL: Swell Electricity from the Sea talks about how inventors are harnessing the waves in ways that could represent world-changing applications.
These wave-power inventions – some are generating electricity as we speak – are starting to get mainstream press attention. The Washington Post reported on a technology called AquaBuOY from Finavera Renewables in September, quoting its CEO as saying:
Finavera’s chief executive, Jason Bak, believes he knows how. The equipment his company designed, called AquaBuOY, aims to generate electricity from the vertical motion of waves. The buoy, anchored in an array two to three miles offshore, will convert the waves’ motion into pressurized water using large, reinforced-rubber hose pumps. As the buoy goes up the peak of a wave and down into its trough, it forces a piston in the bottom of the buoy to stretch and contract the hose pumps, pushing water through. This drives a turbine that powers a generator producing electricity, which would be shipped to shore through an undersea transmission line.
“This is the new source of power,” Bak said. “It’s the highest-energy-density renewable out there. Wind is like light crude oil, and water is like gasoline.”
Perhaps that’s a little overboard, but Finavera’s not the only development company out there…
• Pelamis Wave Power has a snake-like device moving from test-level to commercial production of the Iberian Peninsula and in the UK.
• Verdant Power is testing its systems off coast of Manhattan. There are some new-technology problems, but they’re being addressed.
• Ocean Power Technologies has another buoy power system design. They are testing projects in Hawaii, Spain and New Jersey.
• Swell Fuel has the ‘Ocean Energy Converter’ float device that generates electricity from the swell flow in any direction, and is setting up test projects off El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Belize.
Check out some of the links below to get the latest on what’s what with various forms of renewable power sources and developing technologies to tap them.
Links: