Hi all at the IET and the new IET EngX
A lot of people talk about the energy transition , some get really heated , and for environmental thinkers , we have had some pretty tough exchanges at times , and a few I suppose have yet to occur as it gets a little more organised , its been great having had the privilege to do some of the inputs at times , and like any one who sees a different way of doing things , you have those times , when your hammering out ideas on bits of paper , and all the frustration of when you have to go back and deal with the problems.
Many engineers work for companies and change can be a difficult thing , and i am optimistic that the energy transition will create interesting jobs for engineers and should work ok economically. The IET membership fees will have to wait this year , as not sure when electrical work will come back , so i guess i wont be posting for a while.
In terms of whats exciting , i think it has to be the fully recyclable EV battery , they have very poor recycling rates (up until last month) and the recycling process is very fire risk prone , so the new battery will greatly help with battery costs for future owners .There are still some aspects yet to appear with current EV technology , heard a good story about one popular make , and hed noticed charge falling , but got into car one morning and zip,nothing , car maker technicians couldn't or wouldn't diagnose fault and after some head scratching he was told , you need a new battery , which at 7k was a bit of a scary bill (its all the striping out and then re fitting ), Some makes are showing EVs big advantage over hydrogen of ability to re charge when braking , but quite a way to go with that side yet .EVs as HGV and buses i am still not happy with as a technology as they start getting quite heavy , the battery improvements may help.
Hydrogen still doesnt work for me in cars , the cell efficiency isnt good , and toyota have tried very hard , but i saw the new ones for larger cars and 6kg at 300bar , is an awful lot of energy , If they get fuels cells of 80-90% conversion , maybe , but the big factor is the cost of making and storing Hydrogen , before you dispense it , there have been some very dodgey engineering moments including showing a train at 40mph with no people on , as it seemd it didnt work too well once you added the people.
The one aspect hard to imagine is how many scientists and engineers were saying , we cant replace thermal coal and were going to need more nuclear , and I didnt question it much myself , but we now do have technology to do this , Sequential Oxygen Combustion is one (I did some of the design on this and i think both BP and Shell have the wrong technology) , and I hope we will be able to burn wastes much better and efficiently, and i hope this technology will really transform energy systems thinking . The other interesting ones have been better building systems management , and the Biogas and biomethane (its confusing in Nordic countries they call bio methane biogas) , in some of the new systems is getting more CH4 per kg of feed , and in many countries we are seeing the CNG/LNG HGV or ship filling stations , I know CNG/LNG is ICE technology , but emissions are so much lower , and it does replace fossil oil fuels very well , and performs well in HGV duty , and i think for HGV it will be an established technology.
Solar perhaps makes sense in equitorial /tropics , and of course they do have much thermal heating requirement , but do have air conditioning , the EV will no doubt create problems and we should see dustribution grids get upgraded . Solar thermal for the UK may have some good uses , and i think the gas boiler will diminish over the decades once , the distribution system can be upgraded. Solar PV for the UK , really still creates the same problems in demands in winter , and i think the uk solar farms will suffer from lower costs from generated electricity , but clearly if you have enough room for a 10kwh system , going off grid is an option , but ideally if we can or want to run and extensive elelctricty grid , with really high voltages and electrical flows it will need as many as people to use it , but some business energy uses have off grid possibilities also.
Thermal coal , will be under pressure and China is going to have think hard about what sort of system it wants , and fossil fuel gas perhaps has another 20yrs , GE have made a sub second blending transformer , which is the sort of technology , where we bring in MW scale efficiencies , it can blend renewables with grid and it will stop , all the wind array dumping that goes on . \the very large battery is appearing more and I still see ESS technology as really exciting as it has no loss of charge at 10,000 cycles , so is going to offer capacity , and current lion tech starts losing charge capacity after about 5 yrs.
I think the last fission reactors are being built and i think we might have somthing better by the time , someactually makes nuclear fusion , i am not convinced by Nuclear fusion technology and of course we have to think about safely storing the really radio active stuff at 500-1000ys , may be we could use proton beams to make it less radioactive (particularly the expensive metals/alloys) , but this has always been one of the nucle industries problems , and Chernobly and Fukishima really showed what these reactor accidents cause in ecnomic losses .
Can we do it before we get real planetary natural life systems impairment/ destruction ??? mmmm well it looks like our main cereal growing areas are under threat for many decades to come and of course the tropical rainforests have been reduced or monocultured in some countries , to the point where the microclimates have change (or dynamics) . My own view is that it will take at least 50yrs to stabilise the atmosphere , we can get through it , but water is going to be a problem (another reason for being cautious about Hydrogen) .From the pollution perspective we ceratinly have to stop just dumping stuff and covering it with soil , so i expect waste collection and sorting will need good engineering , i still think high temperature combsution is the best route , but even enviromental people get upset about recycling and burning wastes. The materials coming through and bio materials are still in small projects , the paper beer bottle looks interesting , as that bio digests also , glass may be under pressure , but waste glass has other uses , the real packing problem is the metallised foils , mainly in food products , so when that replacement material is found , that should be really good .
A quick look at M&S and they have some new meat packs using card and they look great and 70% less plastic , but the food industry is slow because its got such exacting material problems , but i dont think we will be shopping in stores full of grey boxes on shelves , and seeing before you buy is important for food, the wine bottle i dont know , they are hard to clean and re use , but glass is inert and the delicate flavours stay well in glass , and aluminium cans are just waiting for biomaterial that can with stand the integral gass pressures and being palletised and that could change quickly.
Its been gret on IET and learnt a lot form some electrical engineering posters , so grateful , hope you all find somthing of Christmas and a very good and safe 2022
Many thanks
Helios