Sunday looks like a nice summers day 31oC , some ice cream and strawberries , but the energy discussion is hotting up , and if your a global heating theorist (i am) the last month has not looked good at all , and the met offices climate models if anything are starting to show the imbalances it predicted.
So where are we , mmm Shell for some unexplained reason are investing in carbon capture , and for those engineers who have thought about CCS , it has few problems , i mean its fine when you start out say 1000m3 store feeding at 1m3 hr , then in a 1000hrs its full , mmm so you up the pressure (which takes more energy) and eventually you end up with high pressure pumps , pushing gas into an increasing pressure , quite how you seal it is an interesting question once at pressure , however my fave is it nuts or not , was a gov idea of liquifying the CO2 and pumping it underground (where it would supposedly stay as a liquid) ,mmm i thought it would be wanting to be gas before it reached the store , and if your rock strata is a bit warm and has fissures , pretty sure you'll frack the rock and get further problems .
No sign yet of the super solar cells on graphene architecture , but the touted 20% extra electricity production per m2 than current silicone , that will be big news if its true , but please please make them recyclable.
Proposals for a New Allen Cycle power station in Teeside is taking shape , and looks interesting it can produce high pressure CO2 which i guess will be for CCS , which begs the question on what happens to the power station when the store is full …. DOH Wonder if its as thermal efficient as Sequential Oxygen combustion ??
Some interesting thinking of recyclable materials including a paper beer bottle , and that big petro chemicals user , unilever has got a paper conditioner bottle , just waiting to see what Coca Cola and Pepsi are thinking . Steel making and metals now looking like it has net zero processes and its difficult , but if they can utilise the heat recovery , they look different in the bad guy lineup of polluters.
Coal fired power still has some die hards building new ones , but quite a few have now been closed and some new builds cancelled , in most cases not because of helping the planet , but its just not economic and some are facing fly ash costs , as some types of coal produce toxic fly ash.
Not seen anything from the cement business yet , very important material , but uses huge amounts of energy and emits around 4% of global emissions , the more fuel efficient ones are appearing , but they vary so much in size and its hard to work out which ones really are better , the coal kiln ones are probably the really bad ones , but some use waste derived fuels at low combustion temperatures and arnt required to scrub emissions so they are not so good either.
MMm new fusion reactor at 1500MW from 1kg of Hydrogen didnt have much criticism , in part because its a one of those kinda wow no one has ever seen this before ideas , i think the fusion guys arnt being honest about the technical challenges of the effects of the high temperatures on the equipment , and a lot of gov money has been given in the UK , and the new large one being built in France , and costing billions of euros , has no small scale proof of operation , so first kg of H2 in that one when being tested , is theoretical wether its just a very expensive super large heater or a means of power generation , but i am not a nuclear physcist so I can only look on at the press releases and wonder ,if someone in white coat will have to take the walk of shame in the is it or isnt it a nuts idea.
Sequential Oxygen combustion still looking fave , its just so nice to the environment?