Ryan's Air or a Big Wind Project

.

Ryan’s Air

hopefully not just Hot Air!

Big wind is afoot. No - not a storm. Irish energy Minister Eamonn Ryan has just announced a kick off of some big plans for massive offshore wind farms. Hold up there - plans - just plans at this stage.

The idea is to construct, over the coming years, off-shore wind capacity some ten times the national energy requirements, and then to sell the nine tenths surplus power to Europe via an interconnect.

First, Ireland will have to do a fair bit of convincing in the EU, and further will have to do some major spinning of the story to convince the lenders to make the necessary funds available.


Playing with Figures

The start up budget for the off-shore winds farm project is only a drop in the ocean compared to the current national deficit, at a piddling €3billion. Eventually, however,  the project budget could reach a figure close enough to the National Debt at around €15billion.


A few Minor Obstacles

Apart from securing the money and subsidies, there are a few small details to consider like:

(a) an off shore grid system,
(b) an interconnect with England, and
(c) European and British contracts to buy the intermittent and erratic wind power we might thereby generate.

Minister Ryan seemed very positive about it all and is quoted as saying “This is very real, this is very much happening today. This is very much at the centre of Government thinking”.

"This is very much" good luck with the plans Minister.

.

Waste Plastic to Oil

.

Mr. Ito's Machine

Recycling plastic, other than just melting into masses to mould as garden seats etc, has been a high-tech factory based operation. Turning plastic back into oil has been a highly technical and expensive process. We have mountains of plastic to dispose of every year. On a global scale the estimates suggest that 7% of the world's oil production is used to make plastic.

 

Japanese inventor and businessman, Mr. Akinori Ito, has developed a process so simple that it can be fully realised in a machine small enough to fit on top of your kitchen table. What is even more important, is that the process is safe, releasing no toxic gasses. The final residue can be safely disposed of.


In various forums and articles concerns have been expressed about the safety of Mt. Ito’s process. General worries about pollution and toxic residue from the process have been addressed by the Blest Company. They say that, if the recommended plastics are fed into the machine, polyethylene, polystyrene and polypropylene PP, PE,  PS plastics, that there is no toxic substance released. And, as already mentioned, any residue can be disposed of with regular rubbish. The company also state that while methane, ethane, propane and butane gasses are released during the process, the machine has been fitted with an off-gas filter. The filter effectively degrades the gases into water and carbon.

Mr. Ito’s machine is called the Blest Machine. The process is basically a controlled heat process. You place the plastic waste in a large sealed pressure cooker type of container. After switch-on the temperature begins to rise melting the plastic. The plastic firsts becomes liquid, and eventually, as the temperature further rises, it becomes a gas. The gas is filtered through water, is cooled and again forms a liquid. This time the liquid is a flammable oil. One Kilogram of plastic rubbish will produce 1 Litre of usable oil.

This oil is immediately usable for certain purposes, for instance it can be burned in just a slightly modified central heating furnace.

In fact, this was the essence of my suggestion to the Kerry County Council; to recycle the plastic and heat the County Buildings with the oil produced. The system would probably pay for itself in time. But even if it didn’t, it would still be a worthwhile exercise, simply because we would not be exporting the problem.

The oils produced by Mr Ito’s machines can be further refined into petrol, kerosene and diesel and directly used in cars and other transport vehicles.


Cost of the table top machine is around €6500.  This is little better than a demonstration / assessment machine.

 The larger machine the B120 has a capacity of 5Kgs per hour or 5 litres of oil output per hour or 120 litres per 24h day. A cycle uses 4Kw/h of electricity. That would work out at around 10 cents per litre electricity costs.

info@blest.co.jp.

.

Fate of the World

.

And Now a Game in which

You Control the Earths Destiny

My son sent me a link to a computer game, based on environmental science, in which you can doom our planet or save it according to your actions.

Might be a good learning tool for budding environmental scientists. Personally, I hate computer games, just don't have the patience for them.

If you would like to play God with the planet, you can pre-order a copy and save yourself 50%.

http://www.fateoftheworld.net/buy.html

.

Plastic Minister Martin and Oil

.

 

Plastic Mountain High

Plastic is one of the most ugly and most visual ways we have of polluting our planet. We think we are great that as developed people we “recycle” the plastic. But have you paused to consider what that might actually mean?

In many cases “recycling” consists of your local authority, in my case Kerry County Council, gathering the hundreds of tons a year of waste plastic and having it shipped off “somewhere else” to be recycled. In all too many cases, and I am not pointing the finger at Kerry County Council, this “somewhere else” is a third world or developing country. The recycling methods all too often are toxic and dangerous, but as it is far away and somewhere else, it is all right?

A Medal for Minister Martin?
He has already been awarded at least one!

Many voices are raised against this type of “recycling”. These same voices would also be calling for a reduction in use of plastics. Here let me give credit where credit is due and say that Minister Michael Martin must be thanked for his efforts in having the plastic bag more or less banned in shops. He too should be marked down in Irish history for bringing into law the smoking ban. But even if we drastically cut down our use of plastic, we still have to deal with mountains of the stuff.

That Brings me to the Core of this Story

The basis of this post is an idea I glanced at some time back and did not register too much interest in at the time.  It has again surfaced in the news with more details and a video.

The story is about a relatively simple machine that turns waste plastic directly into immediately usable oil. The machine, or rather series of machines in different sizes, are made by a small company in Japan.

I have been in contact with Kerry County Council environmental office and have suggested that they consider investing in one or more of these machines.

I will go into detail on the machine and the company in the next post.

.

Are Electric Cars Practical?

.

Batteries Not Included

Are Electric Cars practical?  Regular readers will know my answer to date is NO. I get sarky with Nissan hype here: http://wood-pellet-ireland.blogspot.com/2010/06/nissan-turn-new-leaf.html

What about the BIG Savings?



Only for city dwellers are current electric vehicles EVs of any practical use. Even then, the cost of the battery pack is a joke - a bad joke, and the charge capacity per litre of space to date would mean you would need to fill up most of the passenger areas with batteries to complete any decent round trip. Battery replacements costs would cut well into your gas savings, and I am not sure too many experts have properly costed this into the equation.

I can do around 650+ miles on a fill in my 2L ford diesel. You would be lucky to get 150 miles from a fully charged EV.

What's the Problem?

I have been writing about the re-birth of the electric car;
http://wood-pellet-ireland.blogspot.com/2009/11/electric-cars-and-goddess-of-love.html
and about what will cause that re-birth to take place. I am, of course, talking about the new breed of battery that we all have been waiting for. Waiting is the operative word here. It is like a 4 year old waiting for Santa in June!


Some of the Players

Ecolocap, FluidicEnergy, Next Alternative and EEstor are four development companies that I have been following for some time.

EEstor especially have been trumpeting loudly about their fab new battery, but not a single piece of hard evidence, not a glimpse, not a smell, not a drawing, SFA to suggest their hype and publicity is anything but hot air!!

Ecolocap published some very impressive “Independent” testing figures on their claim for a truly extraordinary leap forward in battery technology, there has been talk of factories in India and Korea - but has anyone handled one of their batteries or fitted a pack into car and road-tested it?

http://wood-pellet-ireland.blogspot.com/2010/05/nanotechnology-lead-acid-battery.html
Nothing either from Next Alternative on their Nano Lead Acid super-battery all gone real quiet there also.

FluidicEnergy are just a bit different, (1) they got two separate US government grants, not too many double whammies are given out - just like that! Either they are very cosy partners with someone high up, or they are on to something and have shown enough to get the action. (2) The have not fuelled the whisper mill, blown the mega trumpet, or wound up the spin-doctoring machines. (3) AFAIK They are a group of researchers, NOT bankers and investors.

I have been in touch with Fluidic Energy and while they are not playing the sort of games some of the other would appear to be playing, they are not releasing the goods - on the goods for fear of being ripped off - till the fat lady sings.


So When is Santa Coming Daddy?

So when will we see a proper, high capacity, reasonably priced, long lasting EV battery? You know, that has been on a sliding scale, especially with EEstor, for a good many years. Like the old saying goes; “Tomorrow never comes”

.

Technology or Balance with Nature?

.

Letter from a Reader

For a man who writes continuously about new technological advances, can you really hold such an anti-technological outlook? If so, why are you looking for the next big green solution?


Nuclear neither most Dangerous or Toxic?

As for dangerous and toxic technology, look around! Nuclear power is neither the most dangerous, nor the most toxic technology that we use in Ireland. For that you only have to look at the car and the coal-fired plant in Moneypoint. CO2, NOx in the air. Heavy metals in air and ground water. Elevated radioactivity in the environment (coal stations release more radioactive material into the environemnt through the flyash and the slag than a nuclear power station). Not to mention the direct fatalities: coal has the highest fatalities per kWh electricity produced of any power source (mainly through coal mining accidents); cars kill over 300 a year in Ireland alone.


A Solution for me?

The only consistent solution for you is to just strip off all your clothes and walk out your front door to live naked in nature, taking the trials and privations of hunger, sickness (e.g. due to dirty water), and exposure to the elements as part of the "living with nature". Anything else will depend on, and encourage the rapid move towards that type of technological society we have now. (it only took 5000 years to move from Archimedes to the Gas turbine - we'll probably do it quicker the next time!).

The only way is forward. Embrace technology. Help shape the policy decisions that have to be made based on a realistic assessment of the desires and motivations of people all over the world to protect themselves and their wives/children/husbands/parents from the arbritrary cruelties of "living with nature", as well as an honest recognition of the complexity of the problems (and solutions) that we face. As a starting point, read David MacKay's book.


My Reply:

You misread me totally I think. You jump on my metaphors and take them too literally. I love technology passionately, since a small child I have played with science and I see us advancing to yet unimaginable levels in time.

However, we (the human race) have allowed ourselves to grow both in numbers, and in our appetites for consumption, at a rate that the planet simply cannot sustain.  The trend is amplified all the more because we depend on finite energy sources to fuel our rapacious hunger for more and more. My hope is that either we soon learn to harness fusion or failing that, we learn to stay our dangerous level of expansion.

I have David MacKay's book with a year or more - good stuff indeed.

My wife enjoyed the picture you draw of me heading out my front door in the “full Monty" pot belly and all - and heading to the woods to hug some trees.

I enjoy your sharp - might I say - acidic humour. I look forward to further contact.

Kindest Regards,
Tony

As I have not had a reply, I think my correspondent is NOT amused, nor inclined towards an empathetic approach to differing, if less technological, points of view.

On second thoughts, should I have been insulted by the suggestions made?  - hmmmm!

.

LED Lighting

.

Regular readers will know that I had more or less given up on LED lighting as a viable alternative in domestic settings. The cheap bulbs were just rubbish, and the good expensive ones were just too expensive if you were fitting a room with 10 bulbs.

I have recently had another look and Chinese GU10 4 x 1watt LEDs and must say I am impressed, at least in the short term. We will have to wait on how well they maintain output and colour rendition. I will soon have a post with some basic comparisons.

.

Nuke or Wind? (round 3)

.

Round Three

Nuke or Wind?

Tony,

As a reply to your reply to my reply let me say this:

I did say that its complicated! Let me take another stab at laying the case that saying absolutely no to nuclear in any place, anywhere, anytime, is not consistent with reducing carbon emissions and improving the quality of life for the 6 billion human beings on the planet.

Here’s a graph (using data from the IEA) which plots wealth per capita (G/P) against Energy intensity (CO2 produced for Total Primary Energy Supply i.e. F/E). Each dot is a country. Ideally we would all be in the top left hand corner: Low emissions and high wealth. Now before you think wealth is a bad thing, broadly speaking GDP per capita is a reasonable indirect metric of average well being of people in a country (until you become very wealthy).

The countries that are doing the best in this context are Norway, Sweden, France and Iceland.
·    Iceland uses a lot of geothermal (specific to local geology)
·    Norway and Sweden have a lot of hydro (specific to local geology)
·    France and Sweden use a lot of nuclear

I can already hear you scream that wind is Ireland’s local specific advantage. The problem is that wind is expensive. It isn’t me who says this. The European Wind Energy Association (and you have to believe those guys will put the best possible spin on it) say that wind needs a carbon tax of €35 per ton to be cost competitive with a gas fired power plant. I know we are talking about nuclear power, but as previously noted the cost of nuclear per kW is not clear. But even this assessment is only part of the story, as you can decide to have something provided cheaply at point of use so as to maintain an equitable society, and meet the real costs through substantial subsidies. We do this with food in the EU. We could do this with energy, and the argument would then not simply be, “this is cheaper than that”.  So, you have to accept that many countries will consider all the issues and decide that nuclear is reasonable. France and the UK are two cases in point.

As Ireland has already started to expand electrical interconnection to the UK grid and has plans for interconnection to France, we will be closely linked with the nuclear generating capacity of these two countries, and indeed we may well depend on it to even out the intermittency associated with high penetration of wind power as planned.

As for the risk of bad thinks happening, I do agree that bad things do (and will) happen. The nuclear industry responded to safety concerns with technical solutions for risk mitigation (e.g. passive failsafe systems for a loss of coolant accident – LOCA- event), and have now driven the quantified risk of accidents down to very small levels. However, William Nuttall in his book “Nuclear Renaissance” argued that people want a reduction in fear, not a reduction in risk only.

But life is a risky business. For example, about 300 people die in road accidents every year in Ireland. We could cut this to nearly zero simply by choosing to fit all vehicles with speed limiters set at say 15kph. Equally we could resolve the thorny issue of climate change by everyone on the planet agreeing to live a life similar to the pre-industrial age (with endemic malnutrition driven by poor food security; high infant mortality; short average life expectancy; and huge societal inequality). Neither is going to happen, because the benefits of taking the risks of are perceived to be high. I would argue that the same is true of nuclear power.

The challenge for us as a species and as a society is to maintain the benefits of high energy consumption with manageable environmental impact. As I said previously, nuclear is de facto part of that solution. It is not a silver bullet. We need to continue to develop and deploy other, new technologies. But we need to use all the tools in the box.


Craig

Thank you again Craig for your continued input on this subject. I think we are debating on two completely different base lines. I would not, and could not argue on the basis of your science. 

My point is fundamental bog logic. Any farmer will tell you if you over crop a field, it will not be fruitful unless you pump it full of chemicals. If you continue to spread too many chemicals, the soil will deteriorate, the essential bacteria and bio balance will break down. 

Marine biologists are telling us that we are taking too much from the sea, and putting too much rubbish into the sea, and unless we stop, the balance will be destroyed. 

No maths - no science; if you use your well as a toilet, the water is contaminated.

.

.

Cleaning Stove and Fireplace Door Glass

.

Cleaning Stove Glass

One of those jobs

You LOVE to do?

A Cure?

Have you had difficulty cleaning the tempered glass window in your solid fuel stove or fireplace door?  The glass quickly gathers deposits of soot and tar that really stick.

The general advice given for cleaning varies from using white vinegar, to special cleaning compounds, to removing the glass door and soaking and washing. Many people just give up and leave the glass dirty.

I have tried quite a few different approaches to cleaning stove glass, and all of them have necessitated a great deal of elbow grease - darn hard work.

Being essentially lazy by nature, I spent a good deal of time mulling over how I might find an easier way to get the sticky soot off the glass. Then I remembered how to remove sticky price labels from plates, drinking glasses etc. What works in that case is first remove the paper bit and then deal with the glue. The best way to get the glue off was to use Mr Sheen or similar furniture polish. My guess is a combination of the solvents, greases and silicone in the polish prevents the glue re-sticking and that does the trick, but I do not know the science involved.

Anyway, this train of thought gave me the idea to try Tesco furniture polish, the one in our cupboard at the time, cheaper than the brand names and better if anything, on the stove glass. It certainly helped matters but there was still a heck of a lot of hard rubbing required.

Then I got the Eureka moment. Why not try one of those plastic dish sponge/scrubs, with the rough green side, strong enough to get through the tar but not hard enough to damage the glass.  The combination of the two ideas worked just a treat and since then the cleaning of my stove and fireplace door glass has been a breeze.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS: This is my finding and my personal experience. I offer it in good faith for what it is worth. I have used the method several times over with great success and ease of use, and with no damage whatsoever to the glass. If it doesn't work for you, go complain to the Minister for Hardship.

Remember who told you!!!

.

Wind Energy v/s Nuclear Energy (round two)

.

 

Wind or Nuke?

In the last couple of days, I had a closer look at "Craig's" letter on nuclear power, and decided that I need to answer some of the points made.


craig has left a new comment on your post "Wind Energy v/s Nuclear Reactors":

First of all, let me declare that I am an engineer who has worked on technical issues associated with nuclear plant, wind turbines, wave power and other fluid machinery.

At the risk of seeming patronising, the issue of nuclear vs "any other power source" is very complex. I do not claim total expertise, but rather a lot of informed opinion.

And before somebody tries to pigeonhole me as “pro” or “anti” anything, I am pro a highly developed society with the benefits of abundant and reliable, high grade power supply. (i.e. I prefer the idea that most of us should live in the 21st century, and not the 18th).

Some points:

1) Nuclear and wind have very similar investment profiles, per MWe: fuel costs are small, up front capital costs high, and O&M costs are similar. You seem to be talking exclusively about the installed (i.e. capital) cost. This is nonsensical, as this accounts for only about half the cost of electricity supplied by either technology and ignores grid supply issues.

[Craig - I was reporting, not commenting. Fair enough the reports I based my piece on may not be technically the best - I would not know, I am not qualified to make a judgement. Regarding grid supply issues, I did include the idea that wind is intermittent and needs storage facilities to be reliable.]

2) Wind has the huge advantage of being modular (a couple of actual MWe is the incremental unit). Nuclear comes in big chunks (~1600MWe for most modern). Nuclear has the huge advantage of being reliable base-load, with no real “security of supply” issues, at least in the short/medium term. 

[True, but seeing as how you mentioned security, the cost of security has to be factored-in in nuclear power plants - because they are prime targets for all sorts of terror groups and extremists. These costs, in addition to greater than normal on-going site security, would have to include a substantial national security input involving, police, armed forces, and air force involvement, as well as satellite and other monitoring. All that does not come for free.]

3) Wind has an energy density of about 2W/m^2, nuclear has a density 1000 times that. So the red herring question at the head of the post ("Really enhances the Natural Landscape?" under a pic of a nuclear plant) could be answered, "well yes, it does enhance the landscape, actually, as it confines the necessary developed zone to an area about 1km x 1km rather than 50km x 50km for equivalent wind power").

[ I personally would much prefer 5000 acres of windmills than 100 acres of nuclear plant in my back yard - Would you care to take bets on other people's attitudes?]

4) The cost of nuclear power is a hotly contested issue. I can quote from 6 reputable sources all at odds, which estimate nuclear wholesale power costs in the range 10-84 £STG/MWe. Onshore wind has a smaller spread in the range 25-60 £STG/MWe. (apologies for the currency). As for there being no reliable figures to depend on because there has been no new build in the USA recently, this is total crap (not that there has been no new build in the states, but that there are no reliable data). For example, China is building several. And incidentally is also building a lot of wind, so it isn’t necessarily and either/or proposition.

[Again, I reported on news items - I am no expert but as, no doubt, you will agree, there is always more than one point of view.]

5) On the issue of technological development, while modern wind power is younger than nuclear (i.e. turbines which can reasonably by called modern designs), wind power has borrowed heavily from the aerospace industry (design, materials and manufacturing), and has had many iterations, precisely because wind is more modular. Nuclear plant on the other hand, while mature and reliable now, is only on the 3rd or 4th generation. As a result, from a technical viewpoint, I am not convinced that wind has any great technological leaps to make to achieve dramatically lower unit costs.

[Who cares about technological advances - if it works for the planet and for sustainability. Personally, I would be happy to go back to Archimedes technology in order to preserve the planet for future generations.]

The bottom line is that like it or not, nuclear is definitely part of the global and regional energy mix for the foreseeable future. The real question is do we build a plant in Ireland. My feeling is that for technical reasons we should not at this point, but we will absolutely still depend on nuclear through our interconnects to UK and France, so we should be a little more reasonable about nuclear power generally.

[I, and I guess quite a few like me, find it difficult to be academic or reasonable about a technology so dangerous that it has the ability to make a country uninhabitable for a quarter million years. The old seafaring adage, generally referred to as Murphy’s Law, springs to mind when I think of nuclear reactors;  “If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong, sooner or later, and in the worst possible way, and at the worst possible time” Thankfully we do not have too many examples of Murphy’s law at work in nuclear plants, but IMHO more than enough to prove the point]

.